Critical Week: Making movies

It's been a busy week at the movies, as the London Film Festival came to an end and screening schedules kick into high gear for awards season. Basically, we have about eight weeks to see all the contenders before we fill in our ballots, so everyone wants to make sure we see their movies. Winning the top LFF prize, the animated Memoir of a Snail is a gorgeous stop-motion movie recounting a kid's journey for an adult audience. It's quite dark, but also wonderfully uplifting. Another animated film about kids, The Colours Within follows the Japanese anime tradition while adding terrific visual and narrative detail. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Conclave • Emilia Perez
Memoir of a Snail
ALL REVIEWS >

The starriest screening was for Pablo Larrain's biopic Maria, as Angelina Jolie turned up to chat about playing the iconic diva. It's a fascinating, cleverly made film that's worth a look. Tom Hardy is back for more action in Venom: The Last Dance, which like the previous two films is messy but watchable. Elizabeth Banks plays a paranoid health specialist in Skincare, a nutty thriller that takes some silly twists and turns. Even sillier, Jordana Brewster and Scott Speedman star in Cellar Door, in which everyone is keeping secrets, including the house. Christmas Eve in Miller's Point is an overcrowded ensemble piece without a central plot, but the mini-adventures are involving.

As for festival fare, there was the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man, in which he's depicted as a chimp. Along with lots of panache, the film is surprisingly earthy and serious, and powerfully moving. Walter Salles' superbly well-made I'm Still Here is a riveting true-life family drama, while the beautifully observed Indian drama All We Imagine as Light gently follows three women at a crossroads. There were two docs: Mati Diop's inventive and haunting Dahomey, about returning plundered antiquities to Benin, and the delicately balanced The Divided Island, which skilfully outlines the complex situation in Cyprus. I also saw two live performances: Filibuster at Jackson's Lane and Stories at the Peacock. And I attended the glamorous premiere of the TV series The Day of the Jackal, starring Eddie Redmayne and Lashana Lynch. Now I want to see more episodes.

This coming week shouldn't be quite so jam-packed. But I'll be watching Nicholas Hoult in Juror #2, Cate Blanchett in Rumours, Liam Neeson in Absolution, Pharrell's Lego movie Piece by Piece, the Aussie comedy Secrets of a Wallaby Boy, the Christopher Reeve documentary Super/Man and the disinformation doc How to Build a Truth Engine.