Critical Week: Back on the case

Awards season continues to gather speed, with the Golden Globes on Sunday. I vote in these, and it was nice to see some sign of the international voting base in some more unexpected winners. I also had ballot deadlines with two other groups who announced their nominees: the Online Film Critics Society and the Dorian Awards. My annual Sweepstakes is up and running, tallying all the awards in one place, and next week things ramp up even more with the Oscar nominees. As for movies, I watched the deliberately gritty cop thriller The Rip, which does nothing much new but reunites Ben Affleck and Matt Damon on-screen, alongside a terrific cast including Steven Yeun, Catalina Sandino Moreno and new Golden Globe winner Teyana Taylor. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Sound of Falling • Rental Family
A Private Life • Dead Man's Wire
ALL REVIEWS >

Another thriller, Bart Layton's Crime 101, features the starry quartet Chris Hemsworth, Halle Berry, Mark Ruffalo and Barry Keoghan, none of whom disappoint with their complex characterisations. And then there was the rabid chimp horror Primate, which never quite grabs hold largely due to its man-in-a-monkey-suit aesthetic. More intriguing, timely and important was the Palestinian drama All That's Left of You, with gets a bit soapy but packs a powerful kick. And I finally caught up with the animated epic Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle, which looks amazing even if it feels like watching someone else play a videogame.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Francois Ozon's new film of Camus' The Stranger, the British family doc D Is for Distance, a big-screen premiere for the TV series The Beauty and a live performance of The Wedding at Sadler's Wells East.

Critical Week: Eavesdropping

During our second short work week in a row, there were once again fewer press screenings than usual. But I still kept busy, and caught several things. Most notable perhaps is last year's acclaimed Belgian drama Julie Keeps Quiet, a powerfully well-observed film about a teen girl (Tessa Van den Broeck, above) navigating a very tricky situation. On a much larger scale, Ben Affleck is back with the action sequel The Accountant 2, which features more sparky sibling banter between the autistic finance/battle savant and his live-wire brother (Jon Bernthal). It's a lot of fun, even more engaging this time around, and still preposterous.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Treading Water • Julie Keeps Quiet
Wind, Tide & Oar
ALL REVIEWS >

Lily Collias is excellent in Good One, a relaxed drama about a teen girl on a hiking trip with her dad (James Le Gros). It's a stunner of a film from first-time feature writer-director India Donaldson. David Mamet is back with the talky but intriguing drama, Henry Johnson, starring Evan Jonigkeit as a young lawyer who has a series of very pointed conversations with various men as his life goes off the rails. Christopher Abbott has lots of internal angst in the moody, mopey drama Swimming Home, beautifully filmed in Greek locations. Sandra Huller has fun in the engaging but overlong German caper comedy-drama Two to One, based on a true story set in newly post-communist East Berlin. I also attended a big-screen preview of Apple's new adventure/conservationist series The Wild Ones, and am now looking forward to further episodes in the summer. And I saw the stage shows Snow White: The Sacrifice at Sadler's Wells and Neil LaBute's How to Fight Loneliness at the Park.

This coming week, I'll be watching Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan in Thunderbolts, Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick in Another Simple Favour, Nicolas Cage in The Surfer, Jack Lowden in Tornado, Charlie Tahan in Things Like This, Karim Ainouz's Motel Destino and Paolo Sorrentino's Parthenope.

Critical Week: Bugging out

With yet another long weekend in the UK, we're all getting used to the idea of a four-day week. But the next holiday here isn't until the end of August. Between now and then, we'll be getting roughly one enormous studio blockbuster movie per week. Some of these are greatly anticipated, while others induce a feeling of dread. This week I caught up with two that I was actually looking forward to. Sony was very late in screening Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, perhaps so they could treat us to a star-studded blue-carpet premiere experience. The film is even more eye-popping than the first one, and the story is nicely involving amid the visual mayhem. And then there was an early screening of The Flash, easily the best DC movie in years, with a lively sense of humour and two terrific performances from Ezra Miller.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Unidentified Objects • Reality
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Amanda • Fragments of Paradise
ALL REVIEWS >

I also caught up with Paul Mescal and Melissa Barrera in the ambitious and intriguing, but ultimately awkward Carmen, which is infused with music and dance. The low-budget Breaking Infinity is an enjoyably brain-bending time-travel romp.  From France, The Innocent is a superb mashup of romcom, heist caper and crime thriller from actor-filmmaker Louis Garrel. And from Italy, The Neighbor is a dark drama about a man grappling with homophobia in his partner's family. 

I also attended three live performances: as a critic for State Shift at Sadler's Wells; as an audience member for Re-Member Me, Dickie Beau's clever but difficult one-man show about Hamlet at Hampstead; and as part of the crowd right in the middle of Guys and Dolls, the wonderfully lively and engaging new version of the classic musical at the Bridge.

This next week I'll be watching the franchise reboot blockbuster Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Toni Collette in Mafia Mamma, the Canadian drama You Can Live Forever, the series-turned-feature comedy Bridesman, and the Chilean documentary My Imaginary Country. I'll also attend live performances of Inside the Blind Iris / Air de Temps at Sadler's Wells (review here soon) and the Critics' Circle National Dance Awards.

Critical Week: Looking for answers

With so many critics away in Cannes this week, you'd think it would have been a quiet one back here in London. But screenings have continued as usual, and will get even busier after the holiday weekend. For the next few months, there will be the blockbuster of the week to track down, plus whatever movies intrepid distributors decide to put up against them, either as counter-programming or to give audiences something else to feed their hunger for big-screen spectacle. For a critic, this can feel rather exhausting, as the smaller, more intriguing movies get lost in the shuffle. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Sisu • Being Mary Tyler Moore
ALL REVIEWS >

But there are some guilty pleasures lurking in the studio output, such as Robert Rodriguez's twisty thriller Hypnotic, starring Ben Affleck and Alice Braga. It's brainy enough to feel smart, even if it isn't. But it's thoroughly entertaining. Disney's remake of The Little Mermaid is still largely animated, now with the heads of ace human stars like Javier Bardem and Melissa McCarthy grafted to the digital fish-bodies. Halle Bailey is likeable as Ariel, the story and songs are engaging, but the visuals are murky and the tone feels rather grim.

Off the beaten path, Breaking Infinity is a small-budget British thriller that plays around with time travel. It's choppy but involving, and Neil Bishop is a terrific leading man. From China, the animated adventure Boonie Bears: Guardian Code is funny and silly, and also rather chaotic. And Mark Cousins' documentary My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock has some fun with the filmmaking master, to the delight of fans. There were also two stage shows: the prickly romantic drama The Misandrist the Arcola and the dazzlingly acrobatic dance piece Corps Extrêmes at Sadler's Wells.

This next week I'll be watching two highly anticipated comic book blockbusters: The Flash and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, plus Paul Mescal and Melissa Barrera in Carmen, Chris Messina in The Boogeyman, French drama The Innocent, Italian drama The Neighbour and International Male documentary All Man. I'll also attend live performances of The Ruggeds: State Shift at Sadler's Wells (review here soon), and the immersive revival of Guys and Dolls at the Bridge.

Critical Week: Too cool

The weather in London has been diabolical this week, more wintry than spring-like with grey skies, rainshowers and weather that's oddly cold for this time of year. So not too bad for moviewatching. I enjoyed Ben Affleck's new film Air a lot more than expected, but then I wasn't expecting much for a movie about trainers. It's a sharply well-written drama about Nike's creation of the Air Jordan brand, and has terrific performances from Affleck, Matt Damon, Jason Bateman, Viola Davis and more. And the new adaptation of the roleplaying fantasy game, Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, was also a pleasant surprise: a rare blockbuster that's colourful, funny and thoroughly engaging. Thankfully it takes its cues more from The Princess Bride than Marvel or DC. I wrote reviews of it for three different outlets.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Chrissy Judy • Summoning Sylvia
Dungeons & Dragons
ALL REVIEWS >

Further afield, Summoning Sylvia is a riotously silly horror comedy about a group of camp friends in a haunted house, but it has serious undertones that give it unexpected weight. Missing is a well-made thriller told through computer screens (it spins off from Searching), gripping even if the story holds no water at all. A verbatim adaptation of a recording, Reality is the riveting re-enactment of the arrest of a whistleblower, starring a superb Sydney Sweeney. Cairo Conspiracy is a strikingly involving mystery about government interference in religious leadership in Egypt. Of course, exiled filmmaker Tarik Saleh had to shoot it in Turkey and Sweden. And the lightly futuristic Japanese drama Plan 75 is a thoughtful meditation on mortality that's not particularly easy to watch, understandably. 

This coming week is mercifully slow after the past few months. I'll be watching Taron Egerton in Tetris, the Norwegian black comedy Sick of Myself, the Moroccan drama El Houb, the addiction doc Blue Bag Life, and the biographical doc Little Richard: I Am Everything. I also have a theatre show and museum exhibition to check out (reviews here soon).

BFI Flare: Let it shine

Finally back in-person, BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival kicked off with a gala opening night on Wednesday,  as Finnish filmmaker Alli Haapasalo presented her Sundance-winner Girl Picture before a lively party at the May Fair Hotel. This is London's most festive film fest, where everyone mingles together without the usual segregation between talent and audiences. And it's great to see both the friends who make this an annual highlight and the filmmakers and actors who are here to show their work. Some highlights to start with...

Girl Picture
dir Alli Haapasalo; with Aamu Milonoff, Eleonoora Kauhanen 22/Fin ****
There's a refreshing authenticity to this Finnish coming-of-age drama that continually catches the viewer by surprise, as director Alli Haapasalo continually subverts the usual cinematic tropes in lieu of something that's engagingly honest. The story follows three girls as they face a range of pressures over three Fridays. This contained structure allows for a loosely observational style that feels improvisational and raw. And it also makes it surprisingly resonant.

Benediction
dir-scr Terence Davies; with Jack Lowden, Peter Capaldi 21/UK *****
Master filmmaker Terence Davies takes a gorgeously poetic look at the life of poet Siegfried Sassoon, blending funny, sexy and wrenchingly emotional moments into a collage that continually catches us by surprise. As the film grapples with the nature of time and mortality, this swirl of punchy scenes and period newsreel footage isn't afraid to tackle hard truths about humanity. It's an elegantly devastating work of art... REVIEW >

Cop Secret
dir Hannes Thor Halldorsson; with Audunn Blondal, Egill Einarsson 21/Ice ****
Wild and loose, this punchy 1970s-style police thriller from Iceland starts with a bang and never lets up. Hilariously over the top, the film gleefully deploys the tough-guy genre cliches. The film is entertaining both for its gritty crime action and the way it makes the usual homoerotic subtext in a buddy movie much more central to the narrative. But can the nation's toughest cop admit that he's gay?... REVIEW >

F R O M   T H E   A R C H I V E S
Madame Satã
dir-scr Karim Ainouz; with Lazaro Ramos, Marcelia Cartaxo 02/Br ****
This gritty tale from 1930s Rio de Janeiro tells the real story of Madame Satã, Queen of Carnival from the '40s to until his death in 1976. Writer-director Ainouz creates a remarkable atmosphere--dark and sweaty, with a disarming style of cinematography and editing that makes it feel almost like a fantasy. It looks fantastic! There's a knowing, witty playfulness that keeps us gripped, even when we're not quite sure what's going on or who's whom... REVIEW >

Full reviews will be linked to Shadows' BFI Flare PAGE 
For tickets and information, visit BFI FLARE 

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C R I T I C A L   W E E K

 

The Batman was the only movie I saw during my three weeks in Los Angeles - I was there to spend time with family and friends after two strange years! Back in London, I dove straight into BFI Flare, and also began to catch up on other films that are coming out, including Pixar's superbly observed animated adventure Turning Red and the slickly insinuating mystery Deep Water, starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. 

In the coming days, I'll be watching Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum in the comedy The Lost City, Francois Ozon's Everything Went Fine, the horror comedy Followers and the shorts collection The French Boys 4.

Critical Week: This round's on me

As movie awards season heats up, things are getting busier for me - we're in the final week of voting in the London Critics' Circle Film Awards. I'm the chair of this group, so have quite a lot to do over the next few weeks before we announce our winners. Only a couple of the films I saw this week are awards-worthy. Ben Affleck earned a SAG nomination for his role in The Tender Bar, a gentle and somewhat uneven personal drama that also stars Tye Sheridan and is directed by George Clooney. On the big screen, I had a press screening of the fifth Scream movie, another self-referential meta-horror that plays it rather straight rather than going for something original. But it's fun to see Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox and David Arquette back together on-screen.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Memoria • Cow • Belle
Save the Cinema • Scream
ALL REVIEWS >

Smaller movies this week included the nutty horror The Free Fall, which plays out in swirly confusion before a terrific but very late reveal. Lucy Hale stars in Borrego, an underpowered thriller set on the drug-overrun desert on the California-Mexico border. There's more arthouse horror in The Scary of Sixty-First, a stylish and sexy Manhattan freak-out. And from Switzerland, The Fam (La Mif) is a riveting doc-style drama set in a children's care home.

Films to watch this coming week include Michael B Jordan in A Journal for Jordan, Christoph Waltz in Rifkin's Festival, the Brazilian thriller The Pink Cloud and the mountain-climber doc Torn, plus awards contenders Test Pattern, El Planeta, Azor and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy .

Critical Week: Put me in coach

Another week of isolation, with a list of streaming releases so long that I can't possibly keep up with all of them. Frankly, it's tricky to even know what's coming out at any given time, as each streaming service does its own thing, while websites tend to do "editor's picks" rather than simply listing everything that's new. But the worst thing for me is missing the cinema itself: I've never gone this long without going to the movies, and I miss the communal experience of watching a film (or a play) along with an audience. Even a group of grumpy critics in a small basement screening room is better than sitting alone at home, where I'm limiting myself to two films per day just to maintain some sanity.

This week's biggest movie was The Way Back [UK title: Finding the Way Back], starring Ben Affleck as an alcoholic basketball coach seeking redemption. It's moody and gritty, predictable but also movingly well-played. Also worth a look are the Netflix movie Uncorked, a warm father-son drama set in Memphis starring Mamoudou Athie and Courtney B Vance, and Standing Up, Falling Down, an understated comedy about an offbeat friendship starring Ben Schwartz and Billy Crystal.

Further afield, The Other Lamb is an artfully made and finely acted freakout about a charismatic cult leader (Michiel Huisman) and a follower (Raffey Cassidy) who begins to question things. Butt Boy is a pitch-black comedy-thriller played with a completely straight face. Tape is a worthy and perhaps overambitious take on #MeToo. And from Ukraine, Just Sex, Nothing Personal is a cute-silly comedy that isn't as sexy as it thinks it is.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching the animated sequel Trolls World Tour, Josh Duhamel in The Lost Husband, Ed Helms in Coffee & Kareem, the sci-fi romcom Same Boat, the generational drama Tigertail, the Western comedy Gold Dust and other gems from my list of forthcoming streaming titles...

Critical Week: Acting up

Most films I've seen this week have been previews for BFI Flare, the festival that kicks off on Thursday night, so I'll be writing more about them here over the next couple of weeks. Otherwise, I've seen a few movies that will work their way into cinemas over the next weeks and months. These include Madeline's Madeline, a resolutely experimental film that dances around mental illness but features a fascinating introduction to young actress Helena Howard (above with the always superb Molly Parker). Jordan Peele follows up his groundbreaking hit Get Out with Us, an even more audacious riff on the horror genre. It's freaky and often darkly unnerving, and has something powerful going on under the surface. Anna Paquin and Holliday Grainger star in Tell It to the Bees, a warm, slightly gooey forbidden romance set in 1950s Scotland. From Argentina, A Trip to the Moon is a quirky coming-of-age film with a terrific set-up, although it struggles to deliver on its promise. And I also caught up with this one...

Triple Frontier
dir JC Chandor • scr Mark Boal, JC Chandor
with Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Charlie Hunnam, Garrett Hedlund, Pedro Pascal, Adria Arjona
release US/UK 13.Mar.19 • 19/US Netflix 2h05 *.

This is one of those macho meathead movies in which beefy men go by nicknames like Redfly, Pope, Ironhead and Catfish. The plot sees Pope (Isaac) recruiting four ex-military buddies (Affleck, Hunnam, Hedlund and Pascal) for a mercenary mission to steal hundreds of millions in drug money from a kingpin in the dense jungle where Bolivia, Brazil and Peru meet. With this basic set-up and a very limited vocabulary, it feels like an unused script for Expendables 4, but the adept cast does what it can, breathing charm and camaraderie into the blunt roles. Isaac is always watchable, even in a vacuous part like this, and Affleck is charismatic enough to make his world-weary soldier vaguely intriguing, but Arjona is wasted in the requisite thankless female role. As former special ops soldiers, none of them hesitates before killing anyone who looks even remotely shifty, taking a scorched-earth approach to their work then insisting that no man is left behind, as if that makes them humanitarians. Of course, the mission doesn't go as planned, so this feels like two separate movies: an hour of heist and an hour of messy clean-up as greed literally weighs them down. It's a mix of survival thriller and action violence as these tough guys are pushed to the breaking point. Like their murderous impulses, this undermines the film's pushy moral sermon and leaves the biggest action sequences feeling rather dull (not helped by a trite Disasterpeace score). But the real problem is the clumsy plot, which gets increasingly far-fetched as these true blue heroes abandon their principles and make far too many boneheaded decisions. Frankly it's impossible to see JC Chandor's usually smart touch anywhere.

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BFI Flare: London LGBTQ+ Film Festival runs on the Southbank until the end of the month, and I'll be covering it here with regular updates and reviews. In addition to rather a lot of festival films, I'll also be catching regular releases including Tim Burton's Dumbo, Judi Dench in Red Joan, Charlize Theron in Long Shot, Mel Gibson in Dragged Across Concrete and the animated adventure Wonder Park.

Critical Week: Another day of sun

I'm in Los Angeles this week visiting my parents for Thanksgiving and enjoying the warm late-November sunshine. There were no movies on the flight's entertainment system that even remotely tempted me, so I just watched TV comedies and documentaries.

I've caught up with one film in the cinema - because I missed the press screening in London. Justice League is the latest DC movie, and it has a refreshing comic book tone that some of the more recent films have lacked. It also centres on characters rather than moody violent spectacle, although there is still too much of that. But at least the actors had more to work with this time, and it bodes well for already in-the-works movies to come. I also watched an awards screener (more of these to come)...

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The Hero
dir Brett Haley; with Sam Elliott, Laura Prepon 17/US ***
This gently loping drama never says anything terribly original, but it gives Sam Elliott a terrific role as an ageing actor facing up to both his life and his mortality. It's written and directed in a relaxed style that never challenges the audience, other than the usual cringe at an unlikely romance. But it's nicely shot, beautifully acted, the themes are never overstated, and it ends on a warmly ambiguous note.

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There are a few films I'm hoping to catch in cinemas and at screenings over the next week while I'm here, including Wonder, Coco, The Disaster Artist and Lady Bird. But we'll see if I can tear myself away from the sunshine...

Critical Week: Say what?

I was able to catch up with the London Film Festival gem Their Finest this week, a lightly handled drama about government-sponsored filmmakers during the Blitz. With a sharp cast anchored by Gemma Arterton, Bill Nighy and Sam Claflin and clever direction by Lone Scherfig, it's a telling story packed with engaging detail. Ben Affleck's Live by Night is a great-looking gangster movie, with another superb cast (including Chris Cooper, Sienna Miller and Zoe Saldana), but it's a bit too glacial to grab hold. And James McAvoy plays a man with multiple personalities in M Night Shyamalan's thriller Split. It's unnerving and sometimes full-on freaky, but rather messy.

Outside the mainstream, Bitter Harvest, a chronicle of the horrific Stalin-forced famine in the Ukraine in 1932-33, starring Max Irons, Samantha Barks and Terence Stamp. And Anna Biller's The Love Witch is a hilariously lurid 1960s-style pastiche of magic, romance and murder. Both films are clearly passion projects, and both feel rather overlong due to their choppy editing and in-your-face messages.

This coming week we have the 20-years-later sequel T2 Trainspotting, Woody Harrelson's real-time adventure Lost in London Live, the resurrected franchise XXX: Return of Xander Cage, the British/Indian drama Viceroy's House, the football icon doc Best and John Waters' long-lost Multiple Maniacs.

Critical Week: Teenage kicks

It's been a slow week for screenings, perhaps a brief intake of breath before the awards season kicks off in earnest. My first awards-consideration screenings are late next week. In the meantime, this weeks' screenings included The Edge of Seventeen, an unusually edgy teen drama starring Hailee Steinfeld with fine grown-up support from the likes of Woody Harrelson and Kyra Sedgwick. The other big movie was The Accountant, the slick but preposterous Ben Affleck autism-gangster thriller that's entertaining only if you don't think about it.

Further afield was the micro-budget British thriller The Darkest Dawn, which makes up for a simplistic script with some sharp acting and inventive effects. Ron and Laura Take Back America is an extended sketch-style comedy-doc lampooning head-in-the-sand right wing politics. And I also finally caught up with Clint Eastwood's 1997 southern gothic melodrama Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, starring baggy suited John Cusack and a scene-nibbling Kevin Spacey, plus a notable cameo from a young Jude Law.

Things are still slow over the coming days, with just three press screenings: Gael Garcia Bernal Pablo Larrain's biopic of the poet Neruda, the Italian drama One Kiss, and the UK premiere of the Korean thriller The Truth Beneath. I also have several screeners to watch at home....

Critical Week: A secret friendship

This week, London-based critics finally got to see the latest Studio Gibli film When Marnie Was There, which is getting a very late release in the UK (it came out in 2014 in Japan). It's another complex animated film that refuses to talk down to children - deep, intriguing, no easy answers, gorgeously visualised without any gimmicks.

Obviously, the biggest film of the week was Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, screened to critics just a day before it opened for obvious reasons (this film doesn't need reviews, it's about fans buying lots of tickets). It's big, loud, simplistic, annoying and worth the price of the ticket. The other big movie for us was The Huntsman: Winter's War, a prequel/sequel to 2012's Snow White and the Huntsman that basically gives fans what they expect, plus two more divas (Emily Blunt and Jessica Chastain, joining Charlize Theron).

Much more fun was Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship, a faithful adaptation of the surprisingly sharp-tongued Jane Austen novel Lady Susan, packed with terrific characters, hilarious dialog and delicious performances from Kate Beckinsale, Chloe Sevigny and Xavier Samuel. And we also caught the improv British comedy Black Mountain Poets, a rather meandering, pointless bit of fluff starring the wonderful Alice Lowe, Dolly Wells and Tom Cullen.

Coming up this week: Don Cheadle's Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead, Helen Mirren in the drone thriller Eye in the Sky, Rebecca Ferguson in the Cold War thriller Despite the Falling Snow, Kevin Costner and Gary Oldman in the thriller Criminal, and more.

Critical Week: Get out, girl!

London-based critics had a chance to catch a press screening of Effie Gray, the true story of a Victorian woman (Dakota Fanning) trying to get out of a sexless marriage so she can run off with a hot painter (Tom Sturridge). Written by and costarring Emma Thompson, it's refreshingly dark and female-focussed. Another bad marriage is at the centre of David Fincher's Gone Girl, although novelist Gillian Flynn's screenplay leaves no doubt who we're supposed to root for. At least both Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike give marvellously layered performances. Susan Sarandon stars in The Calling, a Fargo-style rural-cop mystery that gets surprisingly, and entertainingly, dark. And Steve Carell leads the family antics in the lively comedy Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. 

A little further afield, John Lithgow and Alfred Molina are terrific as a long-time couple whose life takes a turn in the New York drama Love Is Strange; New Zealand comics Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi are hilarious in the reality-TV style vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows; and the American indie comedy-drama Believe Me takes a knowing jab at organised religion.

I also had several screenings as part of the run-up to the London Film Festival (which begins on 8th October): The Keeping Room is an American Civil War horror drama starring Brit Marling and Hailee Stainfeld; Queen & Country is John Boorman's post-war comedy-drama; The Duke of Burgundy is Peter Strickland's astounding exploration of a relationship; the drug-running thriller El Nino is Luis Tosar and Daniel Monzon's followup to Cell 211; A Girl at My Door is a cleverly unnerving Korean drama; and Bjork: Biophilia Live (codirected by Strickland) is a film of the last night in the Icelandic musician's concert tour.

This coming week we'll be watching Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler, Bill Murray in St Vincent, John Cusack in Drive Hard, and Joan Allen in A Good Marriage, plus LFF screenings for Bypass, Charlie's Country, Next to Her, Wild Life, Dear White People and more...

Critical Week: Cabin fever

Things always get a bit surreal for critics this time of year, as our usual press screenings are augmented by Raindance (25 Sep-6 Oct) and press screenings for the London Film Festival (9-20 Oct)....

At 21st Raindance Film Festival: Outpost 11 (pictured) is a superbly stylised British thriller set in a parallel steampunk Cold War reality. Claustrophobic and unnerving, it's seriously inventive, and deserves a proper release. Jake Squared is a self-indulgent trawl through a filmmaker's own middle-age angst, with a terrific cast including Elias Koteas, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Virginia Madsen and Mike Vogel. But it's far too gimmicky to work. Dirtymoney is a spin on the usual London crime drama, with a much more introspective approach and a strong central performance from Anthony Welsh. And Whoops! is a pitch-black comedy about an accidental serial killer. Strong characters make up for the goofy plot.

In advance of the 57th London Film Festival (more comments to come): The festival's opening film Captain Phillips is easily one of my best of the year. Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Don Jon is absolutely hilarious. The Spectacular Now is one of the most realistic teen movies we've seen. Afternoon Delight is a sharp comedy that goes to some very bleak places. Francois Ozon's Jeune & Jolie explores the very touchy topic of teen prostitution from an offbeat perspective that forces us to think. Alex Gibney's The Armstrong Lie uses the cyclist's 2009 comeback attempt to frame a detailed story of doping and deception. The British thriller Blackwood adds a clever twist to the ghost horror genre. And the Polish drama Floating Skyscrapers tackles machismo and homophobia from a startling angle.

Meanwhile: We had a very late press screening for the disappointing online-casino thriller Runner Runner, starring Justin Timberlake, Ben Affleck and an underused Gemma Arterton. And I also caught up with the schlocker Sharknado before its UK release next week: funniest bad movie ever!

This coming week, I have at least two Raindance movies: the Latin drama The Critic and the British comedy Convenience. LFF screenings include Robert Redford in All Is Lost, the comedy Drinking Buddies, the British rom-com Hello Carter, the animated/live-action hybrid The Congress, Bernard Rose's SX_Tape, the French drama Stranger by the Lake and the doc Teenage. And for everyday movies, we have the Stallone-Schwarzenegger thriller Escape Plan, the horror remake We Are What We Are and the Alec Baldwin/James Toback doc Seduced & Abandoned.

Critical week: Oscar spreads the love

Oscar voters scattered awards around among the year's top films last night, leaving smiles on the winners' faces and confounding those who tried to predict how it would all go. I only guessed 15 of 24 awards, which wasn't too bad on a night like this. As expected Daniel Day-Lewis, Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway took Actor, Actress and Supporting Actress, with the night's trickiest major category, Supporting Actor, going to Christoph Waltz. When the dust settled, Ang Lee walked off with Director, while Ben Affleck and George Clooney also added Oscars to their mantlepiece as producers of Best Picture Argo. The film's entire team took to the stage to celebrate.

Seth MacFarlane hosted the event and had some good lines, although his opening sequence was more than a little chaotic, with the spectral appearance of Captain Kirk William Shatner and a couple of song and dance numbers (he's centre top-right with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Daniel Radcliffe), including a rather amusing misogynistic ditty called We Saw Your Boobs. Looking nervous, he peppered the show with a wide variety of gags, which continued through the night, sometimes funny, sometimes eliciting shocked gasps (a John Wilkes Booth joke) and sometimes taking a little too long to get to the punchline (a hilariously absurd Sound of Music gag).

Music dominated the ceremony, which was a nice change from recent all-business years. Three Oscared musicals from the past 10 years - Chicago, Dreamgirls and Les Miserables - recreated big moments on-stage, but the most memorable numbers were performed by Shirley Bassey (Goldfinger in the Bond tribute), Barbra Streisand (The Way We Were in the In Memoriam sequence) and Adele (middle-right) belting her soon-to-win Bond theme Skyfall.

Best and worst dressed were Jessica Chastain and Naomi Watts, respectively (bottom-right). Daniel Day Lewis' delivered by far the best acceptance speech - let him host next year! And memorable moments included Jennifer Lawrence stumbling up the steps in her massive dress, the insane pairing of Charlize Theron and Dustin Hoffman to hand out the screenwriting awards, a shambolic appearance by most of The Avengers, and Michelle Obama joining Jack Nicholson by video link to present Best Picture.

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CRITICAL WEEK: 
It's been a busy week here in London, as we caught up with a few big-name titles, including Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects, which pleasantly surprised us by shifting from a pharmaceutical drama into a trashy thriller as it went along. Jason Statham and Jennifer Lopez brought their distinctly enjoyable personas to the blunt action thriller Parker, Richard Gere had a chance to shine as a beleaguered banker in Arbitrage, and Dominic Cooper and Dan Stevens fought over Emily Browning in the true period drama Summer in February. And I also caught up with the fifth Oscar-nominated doc How to Survive a Plague just before the ceremony on Sunday. It's a serious stunner - essential viewing.

We also had the launch event for the British Film Institute's 27th London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, which was a terrific party as always. I've been catching up with some of the films in advance of the festival 14-24 March, including the hugely entertaining opening night documentary I Am Divine, the engaging closing night Canadian comedy-drama Margarita, the American romance I Do, the Korean odyssey White Night and Joy! Portrait of a Nun, a freeform doc about one of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

Coming this week: Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper in The Place Beyond the Pines, James Franco and Mila Kunis in Oz the Great and Powerful, Josh Duhamel and Rosario Dawson in Fire With Fire, the Icelandic shipwreck thriller The Deep and the French biopic Renoir. Plus several more LLGFF titles.

Oscar night: out on a limb

Here are my hopes and expectations for the big ceremony on Sunday in Los Angeles. For the first time in about four years, I'll be in London watching through the night - the ceremony runs roughly from 2am to 6am, with Best Picture awarded just as the sun is coming up.

This year's awards race has been the strangest in ages, with no runaway favourite. Most but not all of the categories have someone who is odds-on to win (Supporting Actor is the hardest to predict), but Oscar voters have a way of confounding expectations. So as always I'm cheering for upsets...

P I C T U R E
Will win: Argo
Should/could win: Life of Pi
Also quite possible: Lincoln
Dark horse: Silver Linings Playbook

D I R E C T O R
Will/should win: Ang Lee
Possible: Steven Spielberg
Dark horse: Michael Haneke

A C T R E S S
Will/should win: Jennifer Lawrence
Very possible: Emmanuelle Riva
Dark horse: Jessica Chastain

A C T O R
Will/should win: Daniel Day-Lewis
Possible: Hugh Jackman
Dark horse: Bradley Cooper

S U P P O R T I N G    A C T R E S S
Will/should win: Anne Hathaway
Possible: Sally Field

S U P P O R T I N G    A C T O R
Will/should win: Alan Arkin
Very possible: Tommy Lee Jones or Christoph Waltz
Dark horse: Robert De Niro

O R I G I N A L    S C R E E N P L A Y
Will/should win: Django Unchained
Possible: Zero Dark Thirty
Dark horse: Amour

A D A P T E D    S C R E E N P L A Y
Will win: Argo
Should/could win: Lincoln
Dark horses: Life of Pi or Silver Linings Playbook

F O R E I G N    F I L M
Will/should win: Amour
Dark horse: A Royal Affair
(NB. I haven't seen War Witch or Kon-Tiki in this category)

D O C U M E N T A R Y
Will win: Searching for Sugar Man
Should/could win: How to Survive a Plague
Dark horse: The Gatekeepers

A N I M A T E D   F E A T U R E
Will/should win: Frankenweenie
Very possible: Wreck-it Ralph
Dark horses: Brave or ParaNorman

Critical Week: Bafta with beards! On ice!

The British Academy Film Awards - better known as the Baftas - were held last night at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, a gorgeously glamorous venue even on a grisly night in which the driving rain turned to sleet and then snow. A-listers bravely made their way up the icy red carpet under umbrellas and heavy coats, with the odd instance of a starlet visibly shivering in the cold while trying to show some flesh. And as predicted, it was Argo's night in the spotlight, as Ben Affleck won two of his three nominations - for Director and Film (produced with George Clooney and Grant Heslov, above). He missed out on Actor to, unsurprisingly, Daniel Day-Lewis. Bafta voters also showed their love for Django Unchained, giving Original Screenplay to Quentin Tarantino and Supporting Actor to Christoph Waltz, essentially making this category a two-horse race at the Oscars in two weeks between Waltz and SAG winner Tommy Lee Jones.

Anne Hathaway continued her romp through the Supporting Actress category this awards season. And in a not-so-surprising upset Emmanuelle Riva won Actress, considerably boosting her chances of taking the Oscar. The nicest surprise was David O Russell winning Adapted Screenplay and delivering a genuinely unexpected thank-you. In the British categories, Skyfall was the predicted winner of British Film; British-produced docs The Imposter and Searching for Sugar Man both won awards; despite the fact that no one saw Killer Joe, Juno Temple won the public vote for Rising Star; and the two awards for venerable Brits went to filmmaker Alan Parker (Bafta Fellowship) and Film Four veteran Tessa Ross (Outstanding Contribution). Pictured at right (clockwise from top-left): Hathaway, Waltz, Temple, Tarantino, Mendes and Broccoli, and Day-Lewis.

Speaking of venerable, Stephen Fry was simply terrific as the ceremony's host, with his smart, hilarious banter, most of which probably went over the heads of the Americans in the audience, for a variety of reasons. Mixing absurd silliness with pithy commentary on recent headlines, he kept things moving impeccably as always, eliciting a kiss-to-camera this year from Jennifer Lawrence and flirting shamelessly with a slightly perplexed Jeremy Irvine. The Best Presenter-Pairing Award goes to Bradley Cooper and Affleck - there were audible "woofs" from the audience as they strode manfully tot he podium. The Best Acceptance Speech Award goes to Waltz, for a warm, snappy thank you, with Day-Lewis as a witty runner-up.

All the winners...

• Film: Argo - Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck, George Clooney
• Film Not in the English Language: Amour - Michael Haneke, Margaret Ménégoz
• Documentary: Searching for Sugar Man - Malik Bendjelloul, Simon Chinn
• Outstanding British Film: Skyfall - Sam Mendes, Michael G Wilson, Barbara Broccoli, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, John Logan
• Animated Film: Brave - Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman
• Director: Ben Affleck - Argo
• Original Screenplay: Django Unchained - Quentin Tarantino
• Adapted Screenplay: Silver Linings Playbook - David O Russell
• Leading Actress: Emmanuelle Riva - Amour
• Leading Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis - Lincoln
• Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway - Les Misérables
• Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz - Django Unchained
• Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer: Bart Layton, Dimitri Doganis - The Imposter
• Rising Star: Juno Temple
• Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema: Tessa Ross
• Bafta Fellowship: Sir Alan Parker
• Cinematography: Life of Pi - Claudio Miranda
• Original Film Music: Skyfall - Thomas Newman
• Production Design: Les Misérables - Eve Stewart, Anna Lynch-Robinson
• Costume Design: Anna Karenina - Jacqueline Durran
• Editing: Argo - William Goldenberg
• Make-Up And Hair: Les Misérables - Lisa Westcott
• Sound: Les Misérables - Simon Hayes, Andy Nelson, Mark Paterson, Jonathan Allen, Lee Walpole, John Warhurst
• Visual Effects: Life of Pi - Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer, Donald R Elliott
• Short Film: Swimmer - Lynne Ramsay, Peter Carlton, Diarmid Scrimshaw
• Short Animation: The Making of Longbird - Will Anderson, Ainslie Henderson

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CRITICAL WEEK:

Meanwhile, films screened for London critics this past week included the gonzo guilty pleasure Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, a violent fairy tale starring Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton (who both presented awards at the Baftas). Elijah Wood stars in the first-person remake of the grisly serial killer horror Maniac; Danny Dyer stars in the dire film adaptation of the British farce Run for Your Wife; Romain Duris stars in the charming, slightly too-quirky French romantic-comedy Populaire; and Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda won the week with his drop-dead gorgeous childhood adventure I Wish.

This coming week's titles include late screenings of Bruce Willis in A Good Day to Die Hard and Alice Englert in the teen-franchise launcher Beautiful Creatures. We also have James McAvoy in a film of Irvine Welsh's Filth, Viggo Mortensen in Everybody Has a Plan, Brady Corbet in Simon Killer, Joss Whedon's take on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, Mathieu Kassovitz's thriller Rebellion, the New York gang drama Gimme the Loot, the Oscar-nominated Israeli doc The Gatekeepers, and the Snoop Dogg/Snoop Lion doc Reincarnated.