Critical Week: Family matters

While covid continues to impact cinema on multiple layers, things are beginning to feel much more normal with an increasing number of films shown to the press in actual screening rooms. Seats are still distanced, but it's been nice to get used to seeing colleagues again regularly. And I've also had a bit of theatre to liven things up in between the movies. Films this week included The Many Saints of Newark, a prequel to The Sopranos telling an involving story about the entwined mob families, including several familiar characters, and a few sharp new ones. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Sweetheart • The Green Knight
The Man Who Sold His Skin
ALL REVIEWS >

Dev Patel gives another knockout performance in David Lowery's ambitious The Green Knight, which unfolds as an ancient legend with all kinds of inventive touches. Benedict Cumberbatch stars in the quirky biopic The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, which feels a bit over-done but is witty and clever. Ben Whishaw gives an outrageously physical performance in Surge, a London drama that shifts into a harrowing odyssey. The South African supernatural thriller Gaia is beautifully set in a lush forest where four people have a collision with nature itself. And the shorts collection Parental Guidance takes some knowing and often very dark looks at family life through a queer eye.

Screenings also started this week for the 65th London Film Festival (6-17 Oct), including the pandemic comedy 7 Days, Jacques Audiard's intertwined romance Paris 13th District, the beautifully animated refugee doc Flee, and the Finnish road movie Compartment No 6.

Coming up this next week, I have several more London Film Festival movies to watch, plus Daniel Craig's final Bond movie No Time to Die, Bill Nighy in Living and the British horror Shepherd.