Critical Week: Do a little dance

Awards season continues to crank up with this week's Bafta nominations, a pleasingly accessible set of nods that dares to break the usual mould. But of course the usuals are still in there. As for films I've watched, John Lithgow and Olivia Colman are father and daughter in Jimpa, a warm, mopey, but also astute exploration of family dynamics through the prism of sexuality and gender issues. Riz Ahmed is terrific in a bristling modern-day London adaptation of Hamlet, although the Shakespearean dialog sits at odds with the gritty realism. On the same day, I revisited one of my 2025 favourites, Hamnet. It's gorgeously assembled and powerfully performed, and great to watch it when I wasn't working. Yes, it was fun to see Hamlet and Hamnet so close together, especially with Joe Alwyn popping up in both.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Islands • Is This Thing On?
Nouvelle Vague • 7 Keys
The Love That Remains
PERHAPS AVOID:
Primate
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Other films were deliberately more entertaining, such as Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa playing brothers in Hawaii in The Wrecking Crew. A proper guilty pleasure, it's also a beefy, slick and very dumb action movie. Luke Evans and Milla Jovovich star in the post-apocalyptic thriller Worldbreaker, which maintains a nicely offbeat vibe that's also rather too low-key. More impressive was James McAvoy's directing debut California Schemin', the true story of two Scottish rappers engagingly played by Seamus McLean Ross and Samuel Bottomley. It's fun to watch them bamboozle the music industry. The Aussie family adventure Kangaroo is packed with adorable joeys (plus the likeable Ryan Corr), even if the true story has been warped into a structured screenplay. And George MacKay and Callum Turner are terrific in Mark Jenkin's Rose of Nevada,  a wonderfully grainy blur of time travel and haunted boat nuttiness set in Cornwall. I also caught up with the sequel Now You See Me, Now You Don't, which is just as entertaining, overcomplicated and implausible as the first two.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Joe Keery in Cold Storage, romantic thriller A Beautiful Breakup and a collection of docs: Oscar and Bafta nominated Mr Nobody Against Putin, fighting book bans in The Librarians and Glasgow protests in Everybody to Kenmure Street. And I'll attend the 46th Critics' Circle Film Awards on Sunday as a voting member, rather than as chair, for the first time in 15 years.

Critical Week: Ready to run

Awards season continues in full swing, with screenings every day of the week. Things will only escalate this month as voting deadlines begin to approach around the first of December. So I have a lot that I still need to see, especially since I also have to watch TV shows and podcasts for the Golden Globes. This week's big films included Glen Powell in Edgar Wright's entertainingly fast-paced remake of The Running Man, based on the Stephen King novel. There are big issues in here, but it never goes very deep. At least Colman Domingo is having a blast. And there was also the lavishly well-made post-war epic Nuremberg, starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek in a thought-provoking exploration of political morality. Leo Woodhall very nearly steals the show.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Belen • Train Dreams • Odyssey
Peter Hujar's Day • The Choral
The Marbles • Love + War
ALL REVIEWS >

One of the most delightful surprises was Song Sung Blue, an emotional rollercoaster of a true story starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson as a Neil Diamond experience. Yes, lots of great music too. Miles Teller, Elizabeth Olsen and Callum Turner also have fun in the existential romantic-triangle comedy Eternity, which finds serious emotions along the way. Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall are riveting in Peter Hujar's Day, a mundane/momentous conversation between two artists in 1970s New York. The artful French romance Eden & Charlie is simply gorgeous to look at, and carries a wistful kick. The documentary The Marbles is an entertaining, enlightening exploration of why museums have a duty to repatriate antiquities. And the interactive thriller The Run takes the audience on a wild ride, all while we choose where it goes next. I also attended a gala screening of the hilarious and sharply pointed short Burn Your Gays. And there was a live performance of the dazzling Figures in Extinction at Sadler's Wells.

Coming up for this next just-as-busy week, I'll be watching Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in Wicked: For Good, Alexander Skarsgard in Pillion, Kate Winslet's film Goodbye June, Tom Blyth in Bull Run, the animated adventure In Your Dreams, the action sequel Sisu: Road to Revenge, Hong Kong crime thriller Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the anti-romcom 300 Letters, plus a premiere screening of the first episode of Stranger Things season 5.

LFF 2: It's a woman's world

Another day of movies at the 58th BFI London Film Festival. I had a superb interview with Brazilian filmmaker Daniel Ribeiro in the morning about his film The Way He Looks (see below), and then ended the day with a Q&A after a screening of The Cut with filmmaker Fatih Akin and actor Tahar Rahim. Meanwhile, festival highlights on Day 2 included Peter Strickland's astonishing The Duke of Burgundy (above). Here are some short comments on that and other films - full reviews will be on the website soon...

The Duke of Burgundy
dir Peter Strickland; with Sidse Babett Knudsen, Chiara D'Anna 14/UK ****
After Katalin Varga and Berberian Sound Studio, no one expects British filmmaker to make a straightforward movie, and this is far from the mainstream. Yet despite its superficially shocking premise the film is actually about the core elements in any relationship, and the vivid filmmaking and raw performances bring this out as the story develops.

Queen & Country
dir John Boorman; with Callum Turner, Caleb Landry Jones 14/UK ***
Essentially a meandering collection of nostalgic anecdotes, this gentle military comedy-drama is somewhat undermined by its uneven performances and unfocused plot. But it's full of likeable characters and enjoyable moments. And it nicely continues the tradition of irreverent war movies.

Pasolini

dir Abel Ferrara; with Willem Dafoe, Riccardo Scamarcio 14/It **

Swirling with ambition, this odd collage of a movie never quite connects its disparate parts together to communicate anything very meaningful to the audience. Shot in a murky, uneven style, director Ferrara has made it difficult to make out what writer Braucci intended with this Fellini-esque dip into the mind of an iconic filmmaker. 

The Way He Looks

dir Daniel Ribeiro; with Ghilherme Lobo, Fabio Audi 14/Br ****

Brazilian filmmaker Ribeiro expands his award-winning short I Don't Want to Go Back Alone in to a feature, the title of which translates, cheekily, Today I Want to Go Back Alone. Yes, he's taking a different approach this time, not just by expanding the cast and the themes, but also in his relaxed approach to what is a startlingly warm and effective coming-of-age drama.

Wild Life

dir Cedric Kahn; with Mathieu Kassovitz, Celine Sallette 14/Fr ****

Based in an astonishing true story, this free-spirited French drama can't help but get under the skin with its pungent premise and sharp characters. It's also directed with earthy honesty by Kahn to bring out the rougher edges of the people and places. And it quietly builds to a powerful emotional kick.