Critical Week: On a mission

We don't get many big-screen premieres for TV series, but The New Legends of Monkey threw a bash for us, screening the first four half-hour episodes of this cheeky fantasy romp from New Zealand. It's thoroughly cheesy, but also a lot of fun, packed with sarcastic wit and bonkers plot twists. I now feel the need to find the remaining six episodes on Netflix.

Back to cinema releases, this week saw screenings for Andrew Niccol's new film Anon, a noir-style mystery set in an imaginative futuristic setting.  it stars Clive Owen and Amanda Seyfried. Anything is a thoughtful, clever drama starring John Carroll Lynch who strikes up an unlikely friendship with a cross-dressing Matt Bomer when he moves to Hollywood. And Born Guilty gives a welcome lead role to Rosanna Arquette, but the film is a bit too shrill to properly engage.

Further afield, Gehenna: Where Death Lives is a cheesy horror movie about a group of property developers who stumble into a scary underground maze of tunnels. Well, more yucky than scary. The Misandrists is another gonzo Euro-drama from Bruce LaBruce, railing against the patriarchy. It's blackly funny and sharply pointed, but pretty nutty. The documentary That Summer explores gorgeous footage from 1972 Long Island, including sequences featuring Big and Little Edie before the Maysles shot Grey Gardens. And Boys on Film 18: Heroes is the latest collection of queer shorts from Peccadillo, featuring quite a few great little films.

Coming up this week, we have Nicole Kidman in How to Talk to Girls at Parties, Gabrielle Union in Breaking In, Rob Brydon in Swimming With Men, the British doc 50 Years Legal, and the star-packed doc Always at the Carlyle.

Critical Week: How many fingers am I holding up?

The big screening for London critics this week was Luc Besson's deranged sci-fi thriller Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson as a woman who accesses rather a lot more than the usual 10 percent of her brain. It's utterly bonkers, but a lot of fun. Other big titles included The Inbetweeners 2, sequel to the box-office busting 2011 movie based on the British TV series. This one's more cinematic but not as funny or charming. And it's made even more cash this past weekend than the original. Blood Ties stars Clive Owen and Billy Crudup as brothers on opposite sides of the law. It's a rather dry remake of the overheated 2008 French thriller Rivals. And Hector and the Search for Happiness stars Simon Pegg in an Eat Pray Love-style quest for meaning in life. Even an all-star supporting cast including the fabulous Rosamund Pike, Toni Collette and Christopher Plumber can't rescue this one.

Off the beaten path, we also had the gonzo comedy horror of All Cheerleaders Die, the beautifully made Dutch coming-of-age drama Boys, plus two involving docs: Ballet Boys follows a group of young dancers in Norway, while Still the Enemy Within offers miners the chance to have their say about the events of Britain's notorious 1984 strikes.

This coming week, we have Liam Neeson in A Walk Among the Tombstones, Andre Benjamin in Jimi: All Is By My Side, Jack O'Connell in '71, the horror thriller Alleluia, and a chance to revisit Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie in conjunction with an exhibition of his photographs at the Royal Society of Arts.

EIFF 11: Waiting for that call

Well, I finally made it home last night, 30 hours after I set off on my train journey back to London. A bit mind-boggling really, especially since I could have travelled to Sydney more quickly. But I'm happy to be home, and I'm following the festival from afar now. For example, I know who has won the awards (more on that tomorrow), and also that John Hillcoat's Lawless was the surprise film last night. On the other hand, I missed the press screening of Brave, so will have to catch up on that later.

Shadow Dancer
dir James Marsh; with Andrea Riseborough, Clive Owen 12/UK ****
Slow and steady, this will appeal to filmgoers who like to get involved in a complex, intelligent story that refuses to follow the rules of more bombastic thrillers. And it rewards patience with a moving story about the collision of family and political values... FULL REVIEW

Dragon (Wu Xia)
dir Peter Ho-sun Chan; with Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro 11/Chn ****
A fascinating combination of wuxia action and police procedural, this riveting, well-made film holds our attention right from the start, as we witness a surprise attack on a small-town shop, during which a mild-mannered family man Jin-xi (Yen) fends off two ruthless killers. Enter detective Xu (Kaneshiro), who pieces together the fight and realises there's something fishy going on. Clearly Jin-xi is actually a master fighter, which means he's not who he says he is. Indeed, the story hinges on Jin-xi's past coming back to haunt him with a vengeance. And it's in the quiet drama that the film really works best. The action scenes are inventively choreographed, but are shot in close-up with far too heavy editing, so we can never quite see the proper context. So it's a good thing that the interpersonal drama, including a fascinating journey for both of these central characters, is so engaging. And moving, too.

Sexual Cronicles of a French Family
dir Jean-Marc Barr, Pascal Arnold; with Mathias Melloul, Valeria Maes 12/Fr ***.
There's a slightly uneven tone to this ambitious drama, which probes under the surface of a French family that has never spoken to each other about sex, even though they talk about everything else. So not much different from most Western families, then. But everything changes when Mum (Maes) decides it's time to start talking, and invasively starts asking questions of her two sons, daughter, husband and father-in-law, all of whom seem a bit relieved to be talking about these things for a change. The film also shows all of them engaged in sex with their partners, which kind of makes it feel like a (soft) porn movie, although each encounter is so detailed and realistic that it's clearly not meant only to titillate. And in the end, the film does have some great things to say about the dangers of repression, and the joy of accepting all of your humanity.

¡Vivan las Antipodas!
dir Victor Kossakovsky; with Abel Perez, Jack Thompson 11/Ger ****
Observing human life and behaviour from a fascinating perspective, filmmaker Kossakovsky takes on four sets of antipodes, places on opposite points of the planet: Russia-Chile, China-Argentina, Botswana-Hawaii and New Zealand-Spain. The imagery is simply stunning, as the cameras capture the colours and flavours of life in these places, including people going about their daily routines, flora and faun, weather and geography. There's an expanse of water in every one of these places, which is notable because most of us have antipodes that are in the middle of an ocean. And every sequence also features a pet dog. In addition to exploring the commonalities between all of these disparate people, these scenes also show some key differences in the way our lives have adapted to various settings and weather patterns. But best of all is the film's intimate, emotional tone, which holds us in rapt attention.

Critical Week: Mel's got a gun!

London critics were last week treated to a screening of Mel Gibson's new action romp, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, which isn't even being released in cinemas in the USA (where it's going straight to video with the title Get the Gringo). It's a mess, but fans of gratuitous, mindless violence will probably enjoy it. Speaking of mindless, filmmaker Todd Graff kind of wastes both his premise and cast in Joyful Noise, a church choir comedy starring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton that's silly and warm but in dire need of some proper sass.

In the prestige department, we had director James Marsh's cool, steady-handed IRA thriller Shadow Dancer, starring Andrea Riseborough and Clive Owen; the cool, rather dull futuristic romance Clone, with Matt Smith and Eva Green; and the cool, sleekly unsettling Colombian thriller The Hidden Face. And there were three docs as well, including the comprehensive theatrical edit of the thoroughly entertaining Woody Allen: A Documentary, the hugely endearing real-life adventure Mission to Lars, and the harrowing privatisation horror-doc Catastroika.

This coming week we have another very late press screening of Tim Burton's Dark Shadows, just a few days before it opens. We'll also see the ensemble rom-com What to Expect When You're Expecting, the acclaimed horror The Innkeepers, the British comedy Fast Girls, the animated feature Top Cat: The Movie, the Nazis on the moon romp Iron Sky, the Japanese drama Mitsuko Delivers, and a documentary about Ping Pong.