Critical Week: I have a bad feeling about this

I arrived back in London on Tuesday, and any thoughts of starting back to work slowly quickly evaporated as I have worked to catch up on things. Not only is there a backlog of movies to watch and write about, but one of London's biggest film festivals starts next week. And it's the Oscars on Sunday night, the climax to this year's awards season (I'll post my picks and predictions as usual this weekend). Meanwhile, next year's awards season is building up some buzz already, with the astonishing Late Night With the Devil, a 1970s TV talk show pastiche that spirals into inventively thrilling demonic horror. At the centre, David Dastmalchian delivers a career redefining performance.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Origin • Soul
High and Low: John Galliano
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Other films included American Dreamer, a scrappy comedy-drama starring Peter Dinklage and Shirley MacLaine that's likeable but never quite comes together. Bonded is a very low-budget American slasher thriller that has some underlying charm. And Crossing is a stunner of a drama from Swedish-Georgian filmmaker Levan Akin (And Then We Danced). Set mainly in Istanbul's trans community, it's screening next week at BFI Flare, and deserves to be in awards conversations this time next year. I also had time to catch up with one of last year's movies while I was on the plane back to London...

Silent Night
dir John Woo; with Joel Kinnaman, Catalina Sandino Moreno 23/US ***
Leave it to action veteran John Woo to make the very most out of an explosive thriller that has no dialog at all. The story centres around a man who loses his son, and his voice, to local gang violence, so he spends the next year training to get even. Kinnaman ably balances the beefy tough-guy nonsense with a deeper emotionality, which is even more strongly felt thanks to Sandino Moreno as his understandably frightened wife. But instead of meaningfully grappling with ideas of grief and revenge, the film essentially turns this man into Batman, a seemingly independently wealthy vigilante with a muscle car and a personal arsenal. Woo makes it look fabulous, but any point is lost in the glorious mayhem.

This coming week I'll be watching Cate Blanchett in The New Boy, Sydney Sweeney in Immaculate, Emile Hirsch in State of Consciousness, Luc Besson's Dogman, relationship drama Thirty, plus several more films that will be showing at the 38th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, which kicks off next Wednesday with the drag-scene romance Layla. I'll also be staying up all night to watch the Oscars on Sunday night!

Critical Week: Road rage

It's been nearly five months since my normal everyday schedule ended abruptly, and I had a couple of firsts this week that make it feel like there may be light at the end of this long tunnel. I went to a restaurant with table service (outdoors on a gorgeous evening), and on only my third trip into Central London I had my first press screening in an actual screening room (with severe distancing measures). The movie on that big screen was Unhinged, a vicious thriller with Russell Crowe that arrives in cinemas next week.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Most Wanted
Stage Mother • Myth
FULL REVIEWS >

Other movies this week were an above-average mix, including the ripping true story Most Wanted, a Canadian drug-case drama starring the excellent Antoine Olivier Pilon and Josh Hartnett; the wrenchingly personal drama Retaliation, about the fallout from child abuse starring a raw Orlando Bloom; the gritty immigrant drama American Fighter; the ambitiously offbeat hybrid of WWII action and a haunted house in Ghosts of War, starring Brenton Thwaites and Skyler Astin; the corny but topical childbirth comedy Babysplitters, starring Community's Dani Pudi; and the clever guerrilla filmmaking comedy-drama Myth.

My list of films to watch over the coming week includes the animated comedy Animal Crackers, Patrick Stewart in Life With Music, Bella Thorne in Infamous, the indie romance Around the Sun, the backstage TV comedy Casting, the horror movie The Vigil, the arthouse film Last and First Men and the intriguingly titled doc Pornstar Pandemic.