Critical Week: Window shopping

There's yet another heatwave in London this week, which makes sitting at home watching movies less enticing! But lockdown rules continue, even if they're being loosened each week at the moment by the government on the basis of the economy, not the science. So I'm still being careful out there. Cinemas are set to open on July 4th, with distancing in place. They're saying no masks required, but that seems dangerous. And I suspect it will be much longer before we have a press screening.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Nobody Knows I'm Here
Irresistible • Fanny Lye Deliver'd
On the Record • Beats
PERHAPS AVOID:
Inheritance
FULL REVIEWS >

In the meantime there are some good movies to watch on streaming sites. I loved Jon Stewart's Irresistible, a snappy political satire with Rose Byrne and Steve Carell (above) as big-time political operatives squaring off in a small-town campaign. Wasp Network tries to cram an entire miniseries worth of story into a two-hour movie. At least it's very well-made, with an ace cast (Penelope Cruz, Gael Garcia Bernal, Edgar Ramirez, Ana de Armas). And Lily Collins and Simon Pegg do their best despite being miscast in Inheritance, an underwritten thriller that's far too serious for its own good.

Maxine Peake is terrific in the astonishing British thriller Fanny Lye Deliver'd, which takes on Puritanism in 17th century England. The true story of groundbreaking jockey Michelle Payne, Ride Like a Girl is a rousing Aussie feel-good drama. The dance-competition comedy Feel the Beat is a thinly developed star vehicle for the Insta-ready Sofia Carson. Homewrecker is a vicious black comedy that centres on a standoff between two tough women. From Chile, Nobody Knows I'm Here is a flat-out gorgeous drama with a lot to say, and a wonderful central performance from Jorge Garcia (Lost). It's very subtle and slow, but worth the time. And the skilfully made doc On the Record properly challenges the audience as it explores sexual harassment against black women in the music industry.

This coming week, I'm looking forward to watching Will Ferrell's pastiche Eurovision Song Contest, the adventure Four Kids and It, Disney's film of the stage hit Hamilton, the German thriller Cut Off, Swedish war thriller The Spy, the Danish fantasy adventure Valhalla: Legend of Thor, and the WWII drama Shepherd: The Hero Dog.

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.