Critical Week: Watch the screen

I finally caught up with a press screening last week for Eye in the Sky, starring Helen Mirren (above) as a British military officer coordinating a drone strike in Nairobi with pilots in America and operatives on the ground in Kenya. Remarkably timely and gripping. There was also a gala press screening for The Jungle Book, Jon Favreau's remake of the 1967 animated classic. This one is also animated, but in a remarkably photorealistic style. It looks so cool that we don't mind the simplistic adaptation of Kipling's stories.

Off the beaten path, Colonia stars Emma Watson and Daniel Bruhl in a gripping true-life thriller set amid the militaristic horrors of 1973 Chile. Adult Life Skills is a quirky British comedy-drama starring Jodie Whittaker as a rather annoying young woman trying not to grow up. Fan is a Bollywood action thriller starring megastar Shah Rukh Khan as a massively famous movie actor (no stretch) and also as his 20-years-younger stalker fan (impressive). And the entertaining documentary Weiner follows former Congressman Anthony Weiner as he tries in vain to steer his New York mayoral campaign away from his sexting scandal.

In the busy week ahead, we have screenings of the next Avengers extravaganza Captain America: Civil War, Julianne Moore in Maggie's Plan, Nicolas Cage in The Trust, the British dance sequel Streetdance Family, the Canadian drama What We Have, the German drama You and I, the first in the Portuguese trilogy Arabian Nights Volume 1: The Restless One and Chantal Akerman's No Home Movie. I'll also be attending Secret Cinema: 28 Days Later this weekend - watch for the review early next week.

Critical Week: Rogues gallery

One of the more anticipated press screenings this past week was for The Raid 2, Gareth Evans' sequel to his surprise hit. Although this time he ditches the gritty, linear narrative for a Hong Kong-style corruption epic. There are spectacular moments, although at two and a half hours it's somewhat exhausting. Even bigger (but barely half as long), Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the next episode in Marvel's big-screen serial, with grittier action but less suspense.

Fan-funded mystery Veronica Mars will either give closure to the truncated TV series' cult following or spark a new franchise - it's a lot of fun. An all-star cast makes the Nick Hornby-based comedy-drama A Long Way Down watchable even though it's tonally all over the place. Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return is a weakly animated adventure with an A-list voice cast (Liam Neeson, Lea Michele, Patrick Stewart) and a surprisingly strong plot.

There were also two films from Ireland: John Michael McDonagh's Calvary has the same laconic wit as The Guard, but with even deeper themes, while The Stag is a surprisingly involving bachelor-party comedy with serious edges. The independent American black comedy How to Be a Man has its moments but tries to hard to be rude and wacky, while the German drama Lose Your Head has engaging characters, but never makes much of its intriguing plot.

This coming week, screenings include the franchise wannabe Divergent, the sequels Muppets Most Wanted and Rio 2, Ben Whishaw in the British drama Lilting, the Scandinavian thriller Pioneer and the notorious Canadian black comedy The Dirties. Thursday also sees the opening night of the 28th BFI Flare, one of London's biggest and most important festivals, which runs 20-30 March. Updates on the way...

Critical Week: A song for Frank

London critics got a chance to catch up with this year's Sundance sensation, Lenny Abrahamson's Frank, starring Michael Fassbender wearing a giant papier-mache head. Yes, it's as offbeat and arty as it sounds, but also surprisingly warm and endearing, with terrific performances from Fassbender, Domhnall Gleeson, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Scoot McNairy. The other big movie was Hossein Amini's subtly involving and very twisty thriller  The Two Faces of January, starring Viggo Mortensen, Kristin Dunst and Oscar Isaac, based on the Patricia Highsmith novel.

Only slightly further afield, C.O.G. is a dark, introspective drama starring Looking's Jonathan Goff as a guy trying to run from his own shadow. Khumba is an engaging, colourfully animated South African feature, with a somewhat compromised plot about a geeky zebra. Cheap Thrills is an escalating exercise in finding the audience's breaking point - a very clever, hard-to-watch black comedy. Awful Nice is an awkwardly written comedy with some telling observations. And The Punk Singer is a lively, insightful doc about feminist punk, centring on the iconic Kathleen Hanna.

The big films screening this coming week are the Marvel sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the TV show reunion Veronica Mars and the black comedy A Long Way Down. There are two Irish films - Brendan Gleeson in Calvary and Andrew Scott in The Stag; the Indonesian action-sequel The Raid 2; Chiwetel Ejiofor in Half of a Yellow Sun; the black comedy How to Be a Man; the animated adventure Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return; and something called Patema Inverted.

Critical Week: Sheer ambition

Last week was one for screenings of seriously ambitious movies. Stalingrad is one of the biggest budget Russian epics ever made, documenting the historical pivotal WWII battle as a massive 3D show of heroism. Not exactly the most delicately nuanced movie of the year, but utterly riveting. And then there was Lars Von Trier's two-part Nymphomaniac, a four-hour exploration of the complexities of human sexuality, specifically the feminine variety, through the eyes of a woman who thinks she's an extreme example.

Smaller films were no less inventive. From Belgium, The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears is a mind-bending odyssey that folds David Lynch into Italian giallo in ways that are disorienting and rather awesome. And from the USA, An Oversimplification of Her Beauty is an involving, kaleidoscopic look at a relationship that never quite was, mainly due to expectations.

As a counterpoint, we had the blunt simplicity of the car racing romp Need for Speed, starring Aaron Paul, Dominic Cooper and Imogen Poots, and the British melodrama The Fold, starring Catherine McCormack as an Anglican priest grappling with grief over the death of her teen daughter. Eerily, both of these costar actresses named Dakota - Johnson (Fifty Shades of Grey) and Blue Richards (The Golden Compass), respectively.

This coming week we have Liam Neeson's airborne thriller Non-Stop, Aaron Eckhart in I Frankenstein, the animated adventure Mr Peabody & Sherman, the remake We Are What We Are, the festival favourite The Rocket and the doc Beyond the Edge. I'll also have a report on the 34th London Critics' Circle Film Awards, which are being held on Sunday night.