Critical Week: Campfire stories

The new year has kicked off in London with rather a lot of wind and rain, which makes me want to shelter indoors rather than going out to see any movies. But screenings are starting up again this week, so I'm venturing out into the cold and damp. Meanwhile, movie awards season is cranking up another gear with more voting deadlines and the completely revamped Golden Globes coming on Sunday night. I voted in them again this year, so will be curious to see who wins, although I'll have to wait to read about it on Monday as no one broadcasts the ceremony in the UK.

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Memory • Scala!!!
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Filmwise, I watched the timely near-future thriller The End We Start From with Jodie Comer (pictured above with Benedict Cumberbatch) as a new mother in a flooded Britain - the perfect movie to watch on a very rainy day! The odyssey plays cleverly through emotions and perspectives rather than action or plotting. Bricklayer is a preposterous action thriller set in Greece with Aaron Eckhart and Nina Dobrev, directed by explosion-master Renny Harlin. The loose-limbed thriller He Went That Way follows two men on a 1960s road trip. It's a bit awkward but nicely played by Jacob Elordi and Zachary Quinty. And I also watched the five intriguing shorts nominated for the London Critics' Circle Film Awards.

This coming week I'll be watching the new adaptation of the stage show Mean Girls: The Musical, the thriller You Can't Stay Here, London-set drama Silver Haze,  Chilean drama The Settlers and the documentaries Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer and The Disappearance of Shere Hite.

Critical Week: Who wants off this crazy plane?

The big screening last week was Liam Neeson's latest action blockbuster Non-Stop, costarring Julianne Moore, Downton's Michelle Dockery and Oscar-nominee Lupita Nyong'o. I also caught a very late screening for I, Frankenstein, the rather murky action romp starring Aaron Eckhart as an unusually muscly version of the famous monster battling Bill Nighy's demon prince. And there was also a screening for the 3D animated romp Mr Peabody & Sherman, based on the 1960s cartoon, which is a very different kind of fun for adults than for the kids, thanks to the non-stop visual and verbal gags and riotous pacing.

A bit off the beaten path we had a complete re-imagining of the Mexican cannibal freak-out We Are What We Are - this American version is a horror art-film, extremely well made and very creepy, but are genre fans ready for something this subtle? The Rocket is a gorgeous crowd-pleaser that takes a fable-like turn in its lively story about a cheeky, clever boy in Laos. Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia is, like the man himself, no-holds-barred as it explores of Vidal's outspoken approach to art, politics and religion. We don't learn much about the man himself, but we can see why his views are so important. And Beyond the Edge is a strikingly well-shot 3D documentary about the first men who made it to the top of Everest.

This coming week, we have the remake RoboCop, the romance Endless Love (which is not a remake of the notorious 1980s romance), the acclaimed festival film The Motel Life, and a stack of things to catch up with on screener discs. I also have a launch for the TV series Viking. More on that next time...