Critical Week: Great American hero

This week's screenings featured rather a lot of strong women, starting with Harriet, in which Cynthia Erivo plays the tough-minded slave rescuer Harriet Tubman. The film's a bit too reverent for its own good, but Erivo is terrific. Frozen II reunites sisters Elsa and Anna for an even more thrilling adventure that has huge action beats and some properly developed emotion too. Greta Gerwig offers a new adaptation of Little Women, with a strikingly good cast (Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Timothee Chalamet, Meryl Streep) and a refreshingly sharp tone, although the structure is a bit problematic. And then there was the haunting Appalachian drama Them That Follow, starring Alice Englert and Olivia Colman as members of a freaky snake-handling church.

Further afield, there was the offbeat British comedy-thriller Kill Ben Lyk, which amusingly combines a whodunit with a slasher horror romp. The dark British drama Into the Mirror is an involving, internalised exploration of identity and gender. From Hong Kong, Adonis is a fascinating and somewhat over-sexed exploration of fate and art. And Romeo and Juliet: Beyond Words creates a strikingly inventive new genre, moving the ballet into real-world sets to recount Shakespeare's timeless story with physicality and music rather than dialog. It's beautiful.

Coming up this next week, we have Chadwick Boseman in 21 Bridges, Aaron Eckhart in Line of Duty, Edward Norton in Motherless Brooklyn, Patrick Schwarzenegger in Daniel Isn't Real, and The Amazing Johnathan Documentary. I'm also chasing several year-end awards-worthy titles before voting deadlines, which are looming less than a month away now...

Critical Week: A bit of a giggle

Well, that photo certainly isn't very indicative of Terence Davies' new film A Quiet Passion, the Emily Dickinson biopic that screened for London-based press this week (it also featured in last October's London Film Festival). A gloomy but strikingly realistic period film, it's livened up by the crisp performances of Cynthia Nixon and Jennifer Ehle, and it features lots of Dickinson's wonderfully evocative poetry, but it's pretty grim stuff. There was also a much bigger movie, Disney's remake of the 1991 classic Beauty and the Beast, which stirs live actors into the now photo-realistic animated fairy tale. It's still a hugely engaging story, and the actors and filmmakers add superb subtext, but fans of the original may find it unnecessary.

The best film of the year so far is the Oscar-nominated doc I Am Not Your Negro, which inventively reframes the race issue as the overall history of America. A stunning film, beautifully adapted from James Baldwin's words. We also had the slickly made, action-packed Korean period thriller The Age of Shadows, the grim but inventive British rural drama The Levelling, the astute and moving Chilean drama You'll Never Be Alone, and the serious-themed Italian road comedy A Little Lust.

Coming up this next week, we have Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale in The Promise, Charlie Hunnam and Tom Holland in The Lost City of Z, Dax Shepard and Michael Pena in CHiPs, and the Finnish comedy The Other Side of Hope. Also, the 31st BFI Flare kicks off on Thursday with the world premiere of the true British drama Against the Law. Look for comments on that film and lots of others in regular updates over the next two weeks.

Critical Week: Watch the screen

I finally caught up with a press screening last week for Eye in the Sky, starring Helen Mirren (above) as a British military officer coordinating a drone strike in Nairobi with pilots in America and operatives on the ground in Kenya. Remarkably timely and gripping. There was also a gala press screening for The Jungle Book, Jon Favreau's remake of the 1967 animated classic. This one is also animated, but in a remarkably photorealistic style. It looks so cool that we don't mind the simplistic adaptation of Kipling's stories.

Off the beaten path, Colonia stars Emma Watson and Daniel Bruhl in a gripping true-life thriller set amid the militaristic horrors of 1973 Chile. Adult Life Skills is a quirky British comedy-drama starring Jodie Whittaker as a rather annoying young woman trying not to grow up. Fan is a Bollywood action thriller starring megastar Shah Rukh Khan as a massively famous movie actor (no stretch) and also as his 20-years-younger stalker fan (impressive). And the entertaining documentary Weiner follows former Congressman Anthony Weiner as he tries in vain to steer his New York mayoral campaign away from his sexting scandal.

In the busy week ahead, we have screenings of the next Avengers extravaganza Captain America: Civil War, Julianne Moore in Maggie's Plan, Nicolas Cage in The Trust, the British dance sequel Streetdance Family, the Canadian drama What We Have, the German drama You and I, the first in the Portuguese trilogy Arabian Nights Volume 1: The Restless One and Chantal Akerman's No Home Movie. I'll also be attending Secret Cinema: 28 Days Later this weekend - watch for the review early next week.

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.

Paralympics: More heroes

This week has sped by in a blur for me, as I have been watching films (see below) and attending the Paralympics every day. And it's been amazing to see how the British public has taken these athletes to heart, creating heroes whose names are just as well-known as the slicker professional sportsmen and women at the Olympics last month. Just over a week ago, we barely new the names of British competitors like David Weir (above), Ellie Simmonds, Jonnie Peacock and Sarah Storey, to name just four multiple-medallists.

As an accredited journalist, I have been able to attend anything I want, which is why I am taking advantage of the proximity and going to something every day. And all of it has been inspiring! On Monday, I watched GB vs Japan in wheelchair basketball. Tuesday was sunny, so I headed for the equestrian venue in Greenwich Park, then to the fencing arena in the ExCeL. Wednesday, I watched Britain's opening wheelchair rugby match against the USA. And today was 5-a-side football (right) semifinal between Brazil and Argentina - perhaps the most amazing thing I've seen so far, as the participants are all visually impaired, so they are blindfolded to even the field. These guys make the wheelchair rugby brutes look like sissies! 

There are only three days left, and I have my plans mapped out, although I might divert to check out something I've never seen before. And of course, come Monday I will really miss the roar of the crowds as they support all of the competitors then shift into deafening mode when a Brit appears! I'll also miss roaming around in the Olympic Park soaking up the amazing atmosphere.

CRITICAL WEEK:It's been another eclectic week at the movies for UK critics, but we finally caught up with Cannes hit Killing Them Softly, starring Brad Pitt as a hitman. My opinions are also embargoed for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, a teen drama starring Emma Watson, Logan Lerman and Ezra Miller. Another Cannes film was the hyperactive and rather unengaging Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted. Much, much better were the independent dramas Keep the Lights On, a beautifully filmed and played romantic drama, and Love, an offbeat and atmospheric low-budget sci-fi drama about an astronaut stranded in space. This coming week we have Sam Riley and Kristen Stewart in On the Road, Joe Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis in Looper, Sally Potter's drama Ginger and Rosa, and the British comedy sequel Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger.