Critical Week: The right stuff

I caught up this week with HBO's movie All the Way, recounting how, in the wake of Kennedy's assassination, President Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr (Bryan Cranston and Anthony Mackie, above) begrudgingly cooperated to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964, standing up to opposition because it was the right thing to do. Reteaming Cranston with Trumbo director Jay Roach, the film has a bristling sense of humour that brings the situation to life. And the performances are full of punchy emotional undercurrents, from Cranston and Mackie to ace supporting players like Bradley Whitford, Melissa Leo, Frank Langella, Stephen Root, Ray Wise and Joe Morton. While the plot and themes are important and strongly relevant, the film feels oddly muted in tone, contained within rooms rather than encompassing the bigger picture. This is perhaps due to the script's stage origins, so thankfully it doesn't water down the story's powerful kick.

My only proper screening this past week was The Conjuring 2, the London-set sequel featuring real-life ghostbusters Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga). Like the 2013 original, the film is genuinely terrifying, even though director James Wan can't resist using every cliche available. I also caught three films in the upcoming East End Film Festival: Desire Will Set You Free is a freeform drama with documentary elements set in Berlin's sexually ambiguous club scene; Uncle Howard is a moving documentary about filmmaker Howard Brookner (Burroughs) by his nephew Aaron; and Transit Havana is a beautifully shot doc following transgendered men and women as they navigate Cuba's health care system. I'll have more on these and others when the festival kicks off on 23rd June.

Screenings this coming week include Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart in Central Intelligence, the animated adventure The Secret Life of Pets, the cat-kidnapping comedy Keanu and the acclaimed doc Notes on Blindness. I've also got several more EEFF movies to watch.

Festival Days: Where are we?

The East End Film Festival moves into its second week with a remarkably ambitious programme screening at cinemas all over East London. Highlights for me will be attending the world premieres of two British indies: Simon Savory's Bruno & Earlene Go to Vegas (pictured) and Daniel Audritt's The Brightest Colours Make Grey. On Wednesday evening I caught up with Ben Wheatley's latest head trip A Field in England, which is every bit as mind-boggling as expected.

Meanwhile, the 67th Edinburgh International Film Festival  wrapped up over the weekend, and now I have the excitement of catching up with those films as they are released in the UK. I've managed to see one of them this week - Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring had a mixed reception at Cannes, and I can see why: it's probably a bit too timely and prescient for most critics. I found it a clever, insightful exploration of today's fame-driven youth culture.

Other films I've caught up with this week include the animated action-comedy Turbo, about a souped-up speedy snail (comments are embargoed on this one). Gerard Butler's surfing drama Chasing Mavericks is a blanded-down true story that at least features plenty of terrific surfing action. Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger's remarkable Blancanieves will struggle to overcome comparisons to The Artist (it's also silent, black and white) and Hollywood's two takes on Snow White last year. But this is a skilfully well-told story that's essential viewing due to its gorgeous emotional resonance. Renny Harlin's The Dyatlov Pass Incident will also suffer from comparisons to The Blair Witch Project. Despite a dodgy climax, this icy thriller is actually a better film, and it's based on a fascinating true mystery from 1959 Russia (plus added present-day fiction).

The next big movies screening to London critics will be Guillermo Del Toro's alien-invasion epic Pacific Rim and Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's apocalyptic pub crawl comedy The World's End.

Festival Days: It's a conspiracy

Another film in both the Edinburgh and East End film festival is the eco-terrorism thriller The East, which also opened in UK cinemas this weekend. It's an intriguing cinematic experiment, playing with issues we usually only see in documentaries while also merging arthouse filmmaking sensibilities with some suspense-based thrills. In other words, there's something for everyone here!

As for screenings this week, I caught up with the East End Film Festival closer Lovelace, a someone straight-laced biopic of the world's most famous porn star. It's sharply well made and is packed with strong performances and amusing cameos. Daniel Radcliffe plays Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings, a true story set in his pre-writer days when he was in school with William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac (Ben Foster and Jack Huston). My comments on the film are embargoed for now, even though there are reviews all over the internet after its screenings at various film festivals, including Sundance in January. I also saw the film of Neil LaBute's play Some Girl(s), a provocative, thoughtful, slightly stagey drama starring Adam Brody. And there was also Emperor, a fictionalised take on how General MacArthur (Tommy Lee Jones) dealt with Emperor Hirohito after the war - plus a bit of romance and drama featuring Matthew Fox.

And I also saw a couple of other East End Film Festival titles: the hilarious mock-doc Discoverdale, which is like an Irish version of This Is Spinal Tap, although the band at the centre is a real one. And In the Name of is a wrenching drama from Poland about a priest struggling with his personal yearnings. Both are highly recommended.

Festival Days: Think before you watch

Set in Tunisia, the Dutch film Die Welt opens with its protagonist Abdellah (Abdelhamid Naouara, above) giving an impassioned plea to a customer at his DVD shop not to watch Transformers 2, because it represents not only American cinema at its most ridiculous, but it is also packed with lazy ethnic stereotypes. The customer ignores him, but we don't! And it's appropriate that the film is screening at both the Edinburgh International Film Festival and the East End Film Festival in London this month. I'm watching lots of things at both festivals this year, along with the regular releases. So my festival reports are taking a bit of a different form this time.

Among the regular screenings, we caught up with recent US release The Internship, a deeply silly comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. Museum Hours is a strikingly artful exploration of how art and life mingle, set around a museum worker in Vienna. And Dream On is a clumsily made teen drama that has some important themes in it.

Festival-wise we had a chance to see Mike Figgis' playful mystery thriller about movie-making and creativity Suspension of Disbelief. There was also the lively documentary Richard Pryor: Omit the Logic, packed with unseen footage and new insights. And the offbeat, unsettling Mexican drama Halley.

There are also a number of films at the Edinburgh festival that I've already seen. Among my favourite films of the year are Noah Baumbach's Frances Ha and Sarah Polley's Stories We Tell. Otherwise, I really enjoyed Monsters University, found the eco-terrorism drama The East to have some potent moments, and thought the Icelandic true thriller The Deep was pretty haunting. We Steal Secrets is a strikingly well-made exploration of the culture of secrecy, while Shane Carruth's surreal thriller Upstream Color is worth a look for it's pure bravura, not that it's easy to make much sense out of it. Full reviews to come.

Coming next week: Daniel Radcliffe in the true drama Kill Your Darlings, Tommy Lee Jones in the true WWII drama Emperor, and Amanda Seyfried in the true story of the pornstar Lovelace. Plus lots and lots of festival films. Watch this space...