Critical Week: Man candy

This week's big press screening was for Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, the male-stripper drama based on the experiences of Channing Tatum (pictured above with costars Matt Bomer, Joe Manganiello and Matthew McConaughey). As if the film's heterosexual emphasis wasn't enough, the UK distributor screened the film to us after showing the England-France Euro2012 first-round match in the cinema, so it smelled like a locker room in there. Alas, comments on the film itself are embargoed for a couple of weeks.

Keeping with the theme here, we also saw heartthrob Robert Pattinson's new film Cosmopolis, a Cannes entry directed by David Cronenberg that's sleek and intriguing but ultimately impenetrable. Cillian Murphy stars in Red Lights, an increasingly strained supernatural debunking thriller costarring Robert DeNiro and Sigourney Weaver. Adrien Brody stars in Detachment, a ranty drama from Tony Kaye about the education system. And from Australia, we had the corny slapstick farce A Few Best Men with rising-star hottie Xavier Samuel.

And to appeal to our minds, we saw two potent docs: Searching for Sugar Man is a fascinating story of a forgotten Detroit musician whose failed recording career wasn't quite as disastrous as he thought, since he was bigger than Elvis and the Stones in South Africa. And Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry vividly chronicles the life and work of the charismatic, outspoken Chinese artist who is notoriously in trouble with his own government.
 

This coming week, London critics are watching Keira Knightley and Steve Carell in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Jean Dujardin and Michel Hazanavicius' next collaboration The Players, the Jo Nesbo thriller Jackpot, the Cannes-contending anthology 7 Days in Havana and the acclaimed Mormo-youth drama Electrick Children.

Finally, I'm heading to Scotland on Monday for the 66th Edinburgh International Film Festival (18 June-1 July), so the blog will reflect what I'm watching there on a daily basis over the next couple of weeks.

Critical Week: Wanted dead or alive

Two big press screenings for UK critics this week. First was Rock of Ages, the 80s power-ballad musical starring Tom Cruise (above, yes really), Catherine Zeta-Jones, Alec Baldwin and Russell Brand. Our comments are embargoed until next weekend. And then there was Ridley Scott's eagerly anticipated Prometheus, which was only shown to the press the day before it opened in UK cinemas. The studio needn't have worried: everyone is loving the film, which isn't quite the Alien prequel everyone expected but is hugely entertaining and visually stunning, especially in Imax 3D.

The only two of my online screeners I managed to get to over the rainy long weekend were Detachment, Tony Kaye's overly bleak exploration of the education system starring Adrien Brody, and Neon Flesh, a Spanish black comedy thriller that looks amazing but never makes much sense out of its fragmented plot.

Otherwise I've been keeping up with TV shows, including the final episodes in this series of Mad Men, which just keeps getting more insanely intense episode by brilliant episode. Will anyone be standing at the end? Meanwhile, Game of Thrones is struggling to bring all those plot strands to some sort of conclusion - I never feel like I get enough of any of them. Comedy-wise I'm loving the first series of Veep, enjoying the second series of Episodes and still making my mind up about the self-indulgent but funny Girls.

This coming week London critics twill be watching, among other things, Channing Tatum in Stephen Soderbergh's stripper comedy-drama Magic Mike, Robert Pattinson in David Cronenberg's urban drama Cosmopolis, Cillian Murphy and Robert DeNiro in the Spanish drama Red Lights, Olivia Newton-John in the Aussie comedy A Few Best Men, and the documentaries Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry and The Imposter.