Critical Week: You're winding me up

After the Bafta Film Awards on Monday, the final stretch of this year's awards race is as unpredictable as ever. Apart from Zoe Saldaña and Kieran Culkin, most categories are still up in the air. A flurry of awards this weekend will further muddy the water before it all climaxes at Oscar on March 2nd. Meanwhile, movies are still arriving in cinemas, and this week's biggest was The Monkey, another enjoyably creepy film from Osgood Perkins, this time with Theo James as twin protagonists. It's funnier than it is scary. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
I'm Still Here
I Am Martin Parr
Picnic at Hanging Rock
ALL REVIEWS >

From the Netherlands, Invasion is a slickly made thriller set in sunny Caribbean locations as beefy marines take on an unexpected attack from a (fictional) rogue South American nation. It's fun but anticlimactic. The Brooklyn drama Barrio Boy is an involving depiction of Latino subculture with a story that explores homophobia in somewhat elusive ways. From China, the animated epic Chang'An is a spectacular mix of gorgeous imagery, visceral battles and moving poetry. And the entertaining, finely made documentary I Am Martin Parr explores the British photographer's inimitable career. I also attended the programme launch for the 39th BFI Flare film festival (coming 19-30 March), plus the monumental Vollmond at Sadler's Wells and the rhythmic Trash! at the Peacock.

This coming week I'll be watching Woody Harrelson in the underwater thriller Last Breath, Ralph Fiennes in The Return, Toby Jones in Mr Burton, Bruno Dumont's The Empire, Georgian drama April and the documentary Ernest Cole: Lost & Found.