Critical Week: Up to no good

With the distraction of the Paris Olympics on television, and the fact that they're so close we can almost touch them from London, it's easy to lose sight of the movies screening in nice, cool cinemas. But there's a steady stream of releases, and I'm trying to keep up for the moment while anticipating a drastic change in my daily routine over the next few months. The biggest filmI saw this week was The Instigators, a reunion for Matt Damon with both Casey Affleck and director Doug Liman. It's an enjoyably scrappy action comedy with sharp character touches. The cheeky animated adventure Ozi: Voice of the Forest has a starry voice cast that includes Laura Dern, Amandla Stenberg, Djimon Hounsou and the late Donald Sutherland. This helps make up for a sometimes awkward, preachy script. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Kensuke's Kingdom
A Story of Bones • Kneecap
ALL REVIEWS >

Abbie Cornish elevates the low-budget psychological thriller Detained, which is twisty but undercooked. Robin Campillo's 1970s Madagascar coming-of-age drama Red Island is gorgeous to look at, and powerfully involving as it tackles personal and political issues. The British drama Sebastian is an intimate, moving profile of a writer who becomes an escort for research, then has to rediscover himself. The Chinese noir-style thriller Only the River Flows weaves wit and visual style into a darkly resonant odyssey. And the Saint Helena doc A Story of Bones packs a powerfully resonant kick in its exploration of the importance of remembering difficult history. I also saw Jamie Allan's stage magic show Amaze, and published a roundup of TV reviews for the summer, including The Bear, Shogun, The Boys, The Acolyte, Fallout, The Curse and more.

This coming week I'll be watching Cate Blanchett and Jamie Lee Curtis in Borderlands, Eugenio Derbez in Radical and a whole bunch of films that will be showing at London's FrightFest later in the month. I'm also heading up to Edinburgh for a week to cover the Fringe theatre festival, which I'll be covering here.

Venezia74: Hit the road on Day 5

The weather returned to sunshine today, so I took a break in the middle of the day and went for a long walk on the beach. I have another gap tomorrow, and hope to cross the lagoon to Venice for some museum visiting. In the meantime I had three films today. Well, I was supposed to have four, but I did something I never do: I walked out of the French documentary Caniba. After 40 minutes, it was still insufferably pretentious and incoherent, and I remembered that I didn't need to review it anywhere, so I followed the steady flow of walk-outs and had some ice cream instead. These are the ones I watched all the way through...

The Leisure Seeker
dir Paolo Virzi; with Helen Mirren, Donald Sutherland 17/US ***.
There's an askance loopiness about this film that blurs the lines between a lively road comedy and a darker exploration of mortality. It helps that it stars the effortlessly offbeat Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland, who add layers of edgy subtext to their broad characters and on-the-nose dialog. As it travels down America's East Coast, the film tries to pack in a lot of nostalgia and a whiff of politics, but it's the more internalised moments that are most effective.

Victoria & Abdul
dir Stephen Frears; with Judi Dench, Ali Fazal 17/UK ***
This may be a crowd-pleasing film, but it never seems like director Stephen Frears can make up his mind whether he's making a frightfully British comedy or a historical drama about the final 15 years of Queen Victoria's reign. So it ends up as an awkward mix of the two that feels neither funny nor historical. Thankfully it's anchored by another hugely engaging performance by Judi Dench, who keeps the audience smiling even when the plausibility wobbles.

Team Hurricane
dir-scr Annika Berg; with Zara Munch Bjarnum, Ida Glitre 17/Den ***.
A group of eight 15-year-old girls bare their souls in this colourful Danish documentary, which feels like they made it as a school project. Or perhaps it's a public service programme made to feel down with the kids. It's busy and bursting with lively touches for a generation that thinks anything that isn't "Insta-worthy" is useless. But they also discuss on serious issues like depression, sexuality, body image and eating disorder, all from the vibrant perspective of a teen girl.

Tomorrow: Francis McDormand in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri; Koreeda's The Third Murder and the Hollywood doc My Generation...

Critical Week: Take aim

Critics got back to work this week with the first press screenings of the year accompanied by a glut of awards action - including nominees from Bafta as well as producers, directors and writers guilds. This weekend's Golden Globes kick off the ceremony season, while Oscar nominations next Wednesday shift things up another gear. But back to the movies...

Perhaps the most fun this week was had watching Bounty Killer (above), a trashy B-movie action romp that isn't very good but makes up for that with a lot of lurid energy. More low-budget fun was had with The Devil's Bargain, a devilishly twisty micro Brit-horror about three people cavorting naked in a field before the world ends ... in 1974.

Only slightly more mainstream, Giuseppe Tornatore's art-world thriller The Best Offer stars Geoffrey Rush, Jim Sturgess and Donald Sutherland. It's slightly underpowered and predictable, but looks great. Michael Cera and Gaby Hoffmann play Yanks abroad in intriguingly offbeat Chilean road movie Crystal Fairy & the Magic Cactus. Rising star Tom Schilling is a likeable slacker in the Woody Allen-style German comedy-drama Oh Boy. And the snappy documentary 1: Life on the Limit oddly blends a celebration of Formula One history with a rather sobering chronicle of the sport's fatalities over the decades.

This coming week is a mixed bag, as we've already seen most of the awards contenders that are opening in cinemas over the next month. Up next are Zac Efron and Michael B Jordan in That Awkward Moment, Nick Frost in Cuban Fury, the British comedies Svengali and 8 Minutes Idle, and the award-winning Greek mystery Miss Violence.