Critical Week: I'm kinda busy

It was a relatively slow week for film screenings - and a short one after the Easter Monday holiday. Although I did have a couple of stage productions to cover, which is always a nice switch-up from being in a cinema. As for the films, there were two thoroughly unimpressive American independent productions. The starriest was Unplugging, with Eva Longoria and Matt Walsh (plus Lea Thompson and Keith David in scene-stealing roles). It's a corny romcom that hinges on technology addiction. Equally undercooked was the existential comedy I, Challenger, starring James Duval as a stoner trying to improve his luck with an absurd stunt. Neither film is very good, but they kill the time amiably enough.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Playground • Petite Maman
Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
Hit the Road • The Northman
PERHAPS AVOID:
Unplugging • I, Challenger
ALL REVIEWS >

Much better, and far more challenging, is Gaspar Noe's inventive drama Vortex, which follows an elderly couple (Dario Argento and Francoise Lebrun) as they grapple with ageing, mortality and memory. And Kota Yoshida's unhinged Japanese triptych Sexual Drive is packed with warped humour and clever insight into the nature of attraction and desire. Finally, I had Upon Her Lips: Butterflies, a collection of five short films looking at female identity from intriguing angles.

Coming up this next week, we have the entire cast back on the big screen for Downton Abbey: A New Era, Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All at Once, the mystery thriller Escape the Field, the French-Moroccan drama Casablanca Beats, the Nick Cave/Warren Ellis documentary This Much I Know to Be True and a screening of the restored 1959 Robert Bresson classic Pickpocket.