Critical Week: Fractured fairy tale

It's the first of two short weeks in the UK, separated by the four-day Easter weekend, so of course they've been screening horror movies for critics. From Norway, The Ugly Stepsister is an inventive body-horror version of Cinderella that's witty and enjoyably ghastly. And then there's Sinners, Ryan Coogler's wonderfully bonkers new thriller with Michael B Jordan as twin gangsters in Jim Crow Mississippi facing racism and vampires. It's an astonishing must-see for fans of nuanced, layered, full-on nastiness.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Wedding Banquet • Warfare
Sinners • Freaky Tales
The Penguin Lessons
Dreamin' Wild • Grand Tour
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Switching gears, the British drama Treading Water is beautifully made, following an obsessive-compulsive guy (the superb Joe Gill) trying to get his life back on track. It's involving and moving. Lavender Men is adapted from a queer stage play, and retains the theatre setting and dense dialog. It's also provocative and meaningful as it explores our connection to history. From Mexico, Dying Briefly is a low-key and sexy dark romance set in a dance company. And the lovely British documentary Wind, Tide & Oar uses gloriously grainy 16mm film to profile impassioned people who sail without engines. I also saw the live performance Skatepark at Sadler's Wells East.

This coming week, I'll be watching Ben Affleck in The Accountant 2, Sandra Huller in Two to One, the childhood-home doc Where Dragons Live, a big-screen preview of the doc series The Wild Ones, and the stage shows Snow White: The Sacrifice and How to Fight Loneliness.

Critical Week: Back to nature

It's been another crazy week in awards season, with nominations announced for the British Academy Film Awards and several more industry guilds, plus two more groups I vote in - the Dorian Awards and the Online Film Critics Society. Even more time-consuming was my work as chair of the London Critics' Circle, as we put together our ceremony, which will be on February 5th. On the website, I'm updating the various awards pages, as well as the Shadows Sweepstakes, compiling all the awards in one place to see who's winning the overall race. Yes, I'm still a movie nerd.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Alice, Darling • Holy Spider
In From the Side
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Along the way, I caught up with four movies, all of which are out in the UK and/or US this week. Three of these films are powerfully intimate dramas. The French drama More Than Ever stars Vicky Krieps as a woman grappling with her mortality alongside her husband, played by the late Gaspard Ulliel. Half of the film takes place on a Norwegian fjord, so the film has an intriguing mix of French and Scandinavian emotion. Anna Kendrick stars in the Canadian drama Alice, Darling, as a woman in a harshly controlling relationship. As her friends offer help, things get both gripping and moving. From Argentina, The Substitute stars Juan Minujin as a teacher caught in a collection of stressful situations that feel rather plotted, but the actors and camerawork are terrific. And finally there was the documentary 1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture, a scholarly exploration of how homosexuality entered the Bible through a translation error in 1946 and proceeded to spark an anti-gay movement. It's detailed and powerful, made by and for believers.

This coming week I have press screenings of M Night Shyamalan's new horror mystery Knock at the Cabin, Gerard Butler in the action thriller Plane and the Chinese action epic sequel The Wandering Earth II, and I'll also catch up with Jennifer Lopez in Shotgun Wedding, Richard Gere in Maybe I Do, and the indie films Seriously Red and Concerned Citizen. If there's time.