Critical Week: Taking notes

The autumn festival season continues all over the world (London's largest fest starts next week), even as awards season has already begun, with contenders screening for voters. And yes, I need to take notes when I see so many movies in a concentrated period - tricky in the dark, but it helps to write things down even if I struggle to read my dodgy handwriting in the light later. For me, this week's movies included the comedy Mrs Harris Goes to Paris, starring a particularly radiant Lesley Manville. Yes, it's cute and sweet, but it's remarkably never silly or sentimental. A proper gem. And then there was the horror thriller Smile, which will probably top the box office this weekend thanks to horror genre fans. Anchored by a superbly committed performance from Sosie Bacon, it's unnerving, grisly and jumpy but not actually scary.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Argentina, 1985 • Flux Gourmet
Mrs Harris Goes to Paris
Girls Girls Girls • Taming the Garden
ALL REVIEWS >

Meanwhile, Francois Ozon is back with his terrific new film Peter von Kant, a skilful pastiche that's part remake and part biopic about Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Control is a contained thriller from Canada with a limited setting and small cast, and it never quite develops its high concept. From Iceland the dramatic epic Godland is gloomy and gorgeous in equal measure, packed with provocative themes. The French drama Rodeo has a kinetic sense of edgy energy, but a rather simple plot, as it follows a feisty young woman into the masculine world of trick motorbikers. And the kaleidoscopic Egyptian doc-drama Shall I Compare You to a Summer's Day? boldly explores how it feels to be a gay man in the Arab world.

Films to watch this next week include Christian Bale and Margot Robbie in Amsterdam, Sally Hawkins and Steve Coogan in The Lost King, Aubrey Plaza in Emily the Criminal, the Bronte biopic Emily, surreal comedy All Sorts, British drama Big Boys Don't Cry and the comedy Phantom Project.

Critical Week: Dress to impress

Lockdown rolls on, with another random batch of movies to watch this week. I'm always hoping there will be a gem hidden in there somewhere. The weather has been glorious in London, so I ventured out for a picnic one day, seeing friends (at a safe distance) for the first time in two months. It kind of gives you hope that this will all end someday. Meanwhile, one of this week's movies, the action comedy The Lovebirds, offered some ideas about how to dress to spice up those Zoom meetings. It's a dopey bit of fluff, but kind of just right for these times, and Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae make a unexpectedly terrific duo.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
I'm No Longer Here • Snowpiercer
Only the Animals • End of Sentence
The Man Standing Next

John Hawkes and Logan Lerman are another solid double-act in End of Sentence, an engaging father-son road movie set in Ireland. Mario Van Peebles makes the B-movie crime drama A Clear Shot almost worth watching, plus the fact that it's based on a real hostage event. But it's very cheesy. There are no big-name actors in the sweet romance Angelfish, but it's charming enough. The French mystery thriller Only the Animals is expertly directed by Dominik Moll with an excellent ensemble cast and a twisty, involving plot. From Korea, The Man Standing Next is a riveting, exceptionally well-made thriller about the real-life assassination of the Korean president in 1979. From Thailand, Krabi 2562 is a moody experimental doc about the collision of past and present in a tourist city. And The Uncertain Kingdom is a collection of 20 short films addressing current issues in Britain (nine of them were screened to the press in January, and I saw the other 11 this week). Specially commissioned, the fascinatingly varied clips were made to explore the wake of Brexit, and have an additional resonance amid the pandemic chaos.

I have a rather long list of movies to watch over the next week, so we'll see how many of these I get around to: Dakota Johnson in The High Note, Sebastian Stan in The Last Full Measure, Luke Wilson in Guest of Honor, Willem Dafoe in Tommaso, the small-town drama To the Stars, the horror thriller The Dinner Party, the German drama The Collini Case and the documentary Homosaywhat.

Venezia74: Be a team player on Day 10

The sun was out again today at the Venice Film Festival, a relief after the deluge and ongoing wash-out last night on the Lido. There's definitely a sense that things are winding down here. Most journalists are gone, the films seem oddly less glamour-intensive and those of us still hanging in there are looking a bit like the walking undead. The collateral sections gave out their prizes this evening at the Venice Days villa on the beach, so we were very glad the weather held for us today. Here are the three films I watched...

Man Hunt
dir John Woo; with Zhang Hanyu, Masaharu Fukuyama 17/Jpn ***.
John Woo returns to his roots with this rampaging action movie, which also pays homage to the history of Japanese cinema as an innocent man tries to clear his name. Set in the present, but shot in cheesy 1970s style, the film is a lot of fun with its convoluted plot and breathtakingly choreographed action scenes. It also features all the Woo trademarks, from shattered glass to fluttering doves. And bullets, lots of bullets.

Hannah
dir Andrea Pallaoro; with Charlotte Rampling, Andre Wilms 17/Bel ***
With barely any plot development or dialog, this film is essentially a cold exercise in watching a person deal with the collapse of her family. Fortunately, she's played by Charlotte Rampling, an actress who rivets the audience even when she's just watching something happen off-screen. Which she does a lot in this movie. But in her eyes, the emotions of the situation are very real, even if we never quite understand why.

Custody [Jusqu'à la Garde]
dir-scr Xavier Legrand; with Denis Menochet, Lea Drucker 17/Fr ****
A punchy drama that grips the audience with a complex situation and shifting characters, this French film only gradually reveals the truth about the dissolution of a marriage. Writer-director Xavier Legrand and his skilled cast take a bold and intense approach to a story that unfolds through a series of perspective-shifting encounters. It's often painful to watch, building to a confrontation that leaves us deeply shaken.

Tomorrow is the last day of the festival, so I'll try to catch up with a couple of things I missed. And then the big awards presentation is in the evening, so I'm looking forward to some upset decisions from Annette Bening and her jury.