Critical Week: Look over there

While critics have had plenty to watch, the cinemas still feel oddly quiet this summer, with fewer big releases than usual due to last year's strikes. And longer-gestating blockbusters are also still caught in the fallout from the pandemic. But there were two studio films screened this week. Zachary Levi stars in the lively kids' movie Harold and the Purple Crayon, which is colourful, funny and very silly. Also pretty silly, Deadpool & Wolverine teams up Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman for more fast-talking, hyper-violent, highly referential meta-jokiness. It's a lot of fun, but a bit uneven.

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Further afield was the offbeat comedy Between the Temples, starring Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane in a quirky crisis of the Jewish faith. Christianity features heavily in Mysterious Ways, a moving and intimate Kiwi drama about a vicar and his rugby coach boyfriend. The bracingly authentic Swedish drama Paradise Is Burning focusses on three sisters trying to survive on their own. Gorgeously shot and edited, the Mexican doc The Echo is so beautifully assembled that it feels like a narrative drama about agrarian life in a small village. And the powerful, urgently important narrative doc No Other Land follows two journalists, Palestinian and Israeli, as they cover the harrowing destruction of homes and lives in the occupied West Bank.

This coming week I'll be watching animated adventure Oz: Voice of the Forest, psychological thriller Detained, French coming-of-age drama Red Island, Finnish drama Sebastian, Chinese mystery thriller Only the River Flows and the Saint Helena doc A Story of Bones. I also have stage shows Amaze and Frankie Goes to Bollywood this week.