Critical Week: Queens of the jungle

A few big Hollywood movies screened for the London press over the past week, including Snatched, the mother-daughter kidnapping romp starring Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer. It's silly enough to be a guilty pleasure, but could have been a lot more. Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron lead the charge in the goofy action-comedy movie version of the iconic TV series Baywatch. And Charlie Hunnam takes the lead in Guy Ritchie's entertaining and somewhat rushed approach to King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.

Meanwhile, Dominic Cooper struggles to elevate the terrorism thriller Stratton above B-movie status. Much better were a couple of foreign movies: from China, I Am Not Madame Bovary is a fiendishly clever exploration of social connection and darker motivations, while Machines is a riveting, relevant, gorgeously shot documentary about workers in an Indian fabric factory.

Coming up this next week, while many London-based critics have decamped to the South of France for the Cannes Film Festival, we will catch up with Johnny Depp's fifth turn as Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge (aka Dead Men Tell No Tales), Chris Evans' drama Gifted, the Scottish biopic Tommy's Honour, the animated adventure Monster Island, the Mexican rom-com Wild Awakening and the shorts compilation Boys on Film 16: Possession.

Critical Week: Scary monsters

It's a third short week this spring here in Britain, so there have been fewer than usual screenings. But I did manage to catch up with Colossal, the genre-defying movie starring Anne Hathaway and Jason Sudeikis. It's funny, scary, harrowing and very well-made. And then there was Sleepless, an almost painfully predictable cop thriller livened up by an adept cast that includes Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan, Dermot Mulroney and Scoot McNairy.

A hybrid crime thriller and arthouse drama, Away is a small British drama starring Timothy Spall and Juno Temple as two desperate people who meet in Blackpool. It's nicely shot and acted, but jarringly edited. And Last Men in Aleppo is the prize-winning documentary about the White Helmets, rescue workers in war-torn Syria. Skilfully shot on the ground during the fighting, it's utterly devastating to watch, and urgently important.

Screenings coming up this week include Ridley Scott's Prometheus sequel Alien: Covenant, the comedy The Big Sick, the action movie Stratton, the road movie Folk Hero & Funny Guy, the period drama Interlude in Prague and the animated adventure Spark.