Critical Week: What's cooking

It's been another busy week at the movies, even as the cinemas take another breath between blockbusters. There's still plenty to see. I thoroughly enjoyed Tony, which stars the excellent Dominic Sessa as a young Anthony Bourdain, and features strong roles for Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones and Leo Woodall. By contrast, Broken Lizard's Super Troopers 3 carries on the random silliness as a knucklehead group of Vermont cops play pranks on each other in the run-up to a Bollywood style wedding. A perfect distraction from real life.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Tony • Late Fame
Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma
ALL REVIEWS >

There were also a few star-driven movies. Glenn Close is radiant as a Finnish grandma in The Summer Book, an enjoyable but rather glowy memoir-style drama. Vicky Krieps is terrific in the French drama Love Me Tender, a far too long but powerfully involving story that centres around queerness and child custody. And the superb George MacKay gives an astonishingly full-bodied turn in the collage-style Scottish drama Mission (premieres next weekend at Edinburgh International Film Festival).

There was also the low-budget indie romcom Do Us Part, featuring a messy love triangle that emerges amusingly at a wedding. And from India, Our Share of Sand is a gorgeously observed drama about a young girl discovering truths about her family and culture (premieres at Venice Film Festival next month). I also attended a live performance of Matthew Bourne's thrillingly sexy The Car Man, a dance loosely based on Bizet's Carmen.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor in The End of Oak Street, Juliette Binoche in Queen at Sea, Claire Foy in The Magic Faraway Tree, the horror romance Leviticus and the award-winning Indian drama Songs of Forgotten Trees. I'll also be heading up to the Edinburgh Fringe for a few days.

Critical Week: Hey, bruv

I've been busy this week organising the forthcoming London Critics' Circle Awards, and also voting in both Online Film Critics Society awards and the Dorian Awards. And we also had the Bafta Film Awards nominations today, which is the biggest awards alongside the Oscars. Those nominations come next week. So there's been plenty to do along with watching a few movies... 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The End We Start From
The Holdovers • The Kitchen
ALL REVIEWS >

The British drama Gassed Up won the audience award at the London Film Festival, and is a stylish and impressively made film until it's taken over by a standard crime thriller. The cast is packed with rising stars, led by Stephen Odubola. Another British thriller was also very slickly made: Jackdaw stars Oliver Jackson-Cohen as a motocross rider who gets entangled with a crime boss who happens to be his estranged father. Strong performances make it enjoyable, including a tough Jenna Coleman and a scene-chewing Thomas Turgoose. 

More highbrow, the Swedish drama Opponent stars the always excellent Peyman Maadi as an Iranian refugee grappling with his inner demons. The charming Italian romance Fireworks gets very dark indeed as it explores prejudice in a 1980s small-town. And the offbeat comedy The Civil Dead playfully subverts the ghost story genre with its likeably sad sack characters

This coming week is also a bit slower than usual at the cinema, but I have a lot to do. I'll be watching three British films: Ian McShane in American Star, Diana Quick in Forever Young, and the offbeat drama-documentary hybrid This Blessed Plot. And I have two stage shows to cover as well.