Critical Week: Too cool

The weather in London has been diabolical this week, more wintry than spring-like with grey skies, rainshowers and weather that's oddly cold for this time of year. So not too bad for moviewatching. I enjoyed Ben Affleck's new film Air a lot more than expected, but then I wasn't expecting much for a movie about trainers. It's a sharply well-written drama about Nike's creation of the Air Jordan brand, and has terrific performances from Affleck, Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Viola Davis and more. And the new adaptation of the roleplaying fantasy game, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, was also a pleasant surprise: a rare blockbuster that's colourful, funny and thoroughly engaging. Thankfully it takes its cues more from The Princess Bride than Marvel or DC. I wrote reviews of it for three different outlets.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Chrissy Judy • Summoning Sylvia
Dungeons & Dragons
ALL REVIEWS >

Further afield, Summoning Sylvia is a riotously silly horror comedy about a group of camp friends in a haunted house, but it has serious undertones that give it unexpected weight. Missing is a well-made thriller told through computer screens (it spins off from Searching), gripping even if the story holds no water at all. A verbatim adaptation of a recording, Reality is the riveting re-enactment of the arrest of a whistleblower, starring a superb Sydney Sweeney. Cairo Conspiracy is a strikingly involving mystery about government interference in religious leadership in Egypt. Of course, exiled filmmaker Tarik Saleh had to shoot it in Turkey and Sweden. And the lightly futuristic Japanese drama Plan 75 is a thoughtful meditation on mortality that's not particularly easy to watch, understandably. 

This coming week is mercifully slow after the past few months. I'll be watching Taron Egerton in Tetris, the Norwegian black comedy Sick of Myself, the Moroccan drama El Houb, the addiction doc Blue Bag Life, and the biographical doc Little Richard: I Am Everything. I also have a theatre show and museum exhibition to check out (reviews here soon).