Critical Week: Beach weather

The heatwave continues to bake Britain, with the promise of thunderstorms to cool things off this weekend. Cinemas are open to full capacity, and their air conditioning is a great way to escape the stickiness. Although there's still a sense that people are looking to stay safe from this new surge in the pandemic. Critics have been wearing masks at screenings, including M Night Shyamalan's new thriller Old, starring Thomasin McKenzie, Alex Wolff and Gael Garcia Bernal. It's an enjoyably head-spinning freak-out. Matt Damon stars Stillwater, which recently screened at Cannes. It's a big movie, overlong and a bit contrived, but beautifully performed by Damon, Camille Cottin, Abigail Breslin and especially little scene-stealer Lilou Siauvaud.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Night of the Kings • Kandisha
The Man With the Answers
PERHAPS AVOID:
Joe Bell
ALL REVIEWS >

Mark Wahlberg stars in Joe Bell, a solidly made true drama that kind of misses the central point of its homophobia theme. Nicolas Cage is terrific in the above-average offbeat drama Pig. Ben Platt and Lola Kirke are both strong in Broken Diamonds, a slightly too-gentle look at mental illness. The solid horror thriller The Boy Behind the Door has two excellent young teen stars and some properly nerve-jangling suspense. The Pebble and the Boy is a slightly awkward British road-trip drama infused with Mod culture. And the superb French thriller Kandisha puts a multi-cultural community at risk from a demon, while filling scenes with nuance.

Sundance Film Festival London returns to Picturehouse Central next week, and I have 12 in-person press screenings in the diary for that, plus Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in Jungle Cruise, the drama Lorelei and horror The Offering.

Flare 5: Stand out from the crowd

The 32nd BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival is entering its final days, and there's a sense of exhaustion among the journalists who have been trying to see as many films as possible, starting each morning with a 10am press screening and usually finishing with a bit of a dance at 11pm in the BFI Southbank cafe. But the weather has taken a wet turn, so where else would you rather be? Here are a few highlights (pictured above are Laverne Cox, Abigail Breslin, Alex Lawther and AnnaSophia Robb)...

Freak Show
dir Trudie Styler; with Alex Lawther, Ian Nelson 17/US ****
While it might be a bit arch, pushing to make its point, this film has such a strong message about identity that it's both powerfully moving and deeply important. Anchored by an offbeat, beautifully textured performance from Alex Lawther, it's a story about a colourful teen who simply refuses to fit in at his high school, which leads to both triumphs and serious challenges. And it's gorgeously shot by Dante Spinotti.

Alaska Is a Drag
dir-scr Shaz Bennett; with Martin L Washington Jr, Maya Washington 17/US ***.
Expanded from a 2012 short, this warm drama centres on three people who feel trapped in the middle of nowhere, trying to make life a bit more colourful than it is. It's a gently involving story, with strongly sympathetic characters who are very well-played by a fresh cast. So it's charming and moving. And even with some rather insistent plot points, it raises important issues without ever preaching about them.

Malila: The Farewell Flower
dir Anucha Boonyawatana; with Sukollawat Kanarot, Anuchit Sapanpong 17/Tha ****
This odyssey from Thailand weaves together themes from religion, politics and sexuality as it follows a young man on a profound voyage of self-discovery. It's not a traditional narrative, instead occupying more in a spiritual space, including a touch of magical realism, and it moves at the pace of a slow-flowing river. But it's beautiful to look at, provocative in its ideas and ultimately moving in what it has to say.

Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex Fashion & Disco 
dir-scr James Crump; with Bill Cunningham, Jessica Lange 17/UK ****
A fast-paced, skilful portrait of an artist who isn't very well-known outside fashion circles, this film is infused with the sensuality of its 1970s period. Through lively, expressive interviews and a wealth of footage and stills, Antonio Lopez springs to life before our eyes, making us wish we had a chance to get to know him, because he seems like someone we'd probably fall in love with, just like everyone else did... FULL REVIEW >

Critical Week: Take the desert by storm

Films don't get much bigger than Mad Max: Fury Road, George Miller's return to the franchise 30 years after Thunderdome. Starring Tom Hardy in the title role (that's him as the grille ornament in the photo above), it's a roaringly entertaining action thriller with startling emotional and thematic depth. Speaking of which, Arnold Schwarzenegger delivers an unusually deep performance in Maggie, an involving father-daughter drama with zombie overtones. And Rupert Everett and Emily Watson play the king and queen in the comedy romp A Royal Night Out, an engaging film that's loosely based on real events in London 70 years ago this week.

Further afield, British critics are finally catching up with Song of the Sea, the stunningly beautiful Oscar-nominated Irish adventure based on local mythology. Second Coming is a low-key British drama starring Idris Elba that feels like it only has enough of a plot for a short, but is very nicely made. From Spain, Marshland is a sharply well-shot serial killer drama that's involving but a little dry. And I also caught up with The Last of Robin Hood, an involving drama directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (Still Alice), which stars Kevin Kline in a story about the final months of of Errol Flynn's life.

Special screenings this week included Magician: The Astonishing Life and Work of Orson Welles, Chuck Workman's superb doc, screened to the press on Welles' actual 100th birthday to launch the BFI's summer season featuring his films and lots of rare material. And one evening I headed to the Soho Revue Gallery for a screening of the short film Eleanor, an ambitious project starring Ruth Wilson that shows on three screens and carries quite an internalised kick (MY SHORT REVIEW).

This coming week we have George Clooney in the Disney epic Tomorrowland, Al Pacino in Danny Collins, Dustin Hoffman in The Choir, Peter Bogdanovich's comedy She's Funny That Way, the acclaimed horror Unhallowed Ground, the indie sci-fi thriller Infini and the Oscar-nominated doc The Salt of the Earth.