Critical Week: You're going to be just fine

It seems that awards season is arriving early this year, as screenings have already begun for many of this year's festival favourites, who are jostling for attention in the awards conversation. What's nice about this is that, at many of these screenings, we get a chance to meet the actors and filmmakers. And I particularly like getting a bit ahead of the buzz - making up my own mind without reading reviews. One of my most anticipated this year was Harris Dickinson's writing-directing debut Urchin, starring Frank Dillane (above). It's a stunner, authentic and artistic, and profoundly moving.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Plainclothes • Solo • Steve
The Lost Bus • Happyend
Tape • Peacock • Megadoc
ALL REVIEWS >

The starriest event, attended by the cast and crew, was for Steve, which stars Cillian Murphy as headmaster of an English reform school. It's another remarkably artful, skilfully shot and acted drama with a powerful kick. Paul Greengrass' riveting, immersive true story The Lost Bus stars Matthew McConaughey and American Ferrera as a pair of everyday heroes trying to save young kids during a horrific California wildfire. And Emma Thompson is terrific in the snowy and very gritty thriller Dead of Winter.

I also caught up with three festival favourites: The Love That Remains is an unusually nuanced collage of complex family life from Iceland, Two Prosecutors is a wryly ironic drama set in Soviet-era Russia as a young lawyer tries to take on the system and, from Spain, Romeria is an involving look at identity as a young woman seeks answers about her heritage. I also loved Mike Figgis' making-of-Megalopolis documentary Megadoc, which is a gorgeous portrait of Francis Ford Coppola. Finally, I attended two offbeat live performances that mix dance, music and spoken word: How to Be a Dancer in Seventy-two Thousand Easy Lessons at Sadler's Wells East and Vlaemsch (Chez Moi) at Sadler's Wells.

Films to watch this coming week include Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in The Smashing Machine, Channing Tatum in Roofman, Sam Claflin in All the Devils Are Here and Brett Goldstein in All of You, plus Acosta Danza's A Decade in Motion on stage at Sadler's Wells. I'm also hosting a Q&A with director Sophie Dupuis and actor Felix Maritaud tomorrow following their new film Solo.

Critical Week: The boy is back

There weren't many movies for me this week, as the television show I'm working on had very long days. But I managed to catch three of this week's releases. For the fourth live-action film, Hellboy: The Crooked Man returns to its snarky roots. Skilfully made, this is a snappy, edgy and genuinely horrific film, with a strongly witty central performance from Jack Kesy.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
My Old Ass • Sleep
The Outrun • Megalopolis
ALL REVIEWS >

In the cinema, I saw Francis Ford Coppola's ambitious passion project Megalopolis, which is a real stunner. It's a bit messy and over-reaching, but the scale and artistry are simply glorious, as are the meaty performances from an eclectic cast that includes Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Aubrey Plaza, Giancarlo Esposito and Shia LaBeouf, plus key roles for Jon Voight, Dustin Hoffman, Laurence Fishburne and Talia Shire. And the drama Rez Ball, set in the Navajo nation, is a rousing basketball movie that plays closely by the genre rules. The setting provides strong topicality.

This coming week will be another very busy one working on-set, but I'm also planning to see Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie a Deux, Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal in La Maquina, Quentin Dupieux's comedy biopic Daaaaaali, the romcom All Kinds of Love, the drama Beauty Grace Malice and the surfing doc Maya and the Wave, plus a couple of live performances if possible. 

 

Critical Week: Who you gonna call?

It's been a strange summer at the cinema, without a break-out hit. Disney and Marvel continue to rake up most of the box office cash, but nothing particularly outstanding has emerged quite yet. Meanwhile, it's been another eclectic week at the movies for me. Jim Jarmusch's wry zombie thriller The Dead Don't Die has his usual all-star cast, including Adam Driver, Chloe Sevigny and Bill Murray (above), plus a particularly hilarious Tilda Swinton. It's charming, dryly funny and too sardonic for mainstream audiences. And then there's the studio action-comedy Stuber, starring Kumail Nanjiani and Dave Bautista, who provide some charisma to help paper over the fact that the movie isn't particularly funny or thrilling.

Gurinder Chadha is back with her British feel-good drama Blinded by the Light, a scrappy but likeable movie set in the late-80s with a Bruce Springsteen song score. Summer Night is an equally loose American comedy-drama about a small townful of entangled characters. Even more independent, the twisty British-Dutch thriller AMS Secrets heavily channels Hitchcock's Psycho in its luridly stylised plot. From Mexico, Always Say Yes is an inventive odyssey about a young country boy in the big city. It's seriously explicit, but also insightful and disarmingly sweet. There was also the shorts collection The Male Gaze: The Heat of the Night, featuring six rather dark dramas about masculine sexuality from around the world. And I had a chance to see one of my all-time Top 5 films on the big screen in a new edit. Every edit of Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now has been a masterpiece, and he says that this summer's pristinely digitised release is his "Final Cut".

Coming up this next week, we have Disney's remake of The Lion King, the animated adventure Playmobil: The Movie, Willem Dafoe in Opus Zero, the British immigrant drama My Friend the Polish Girl, the Mexican drama The Chambermaid, and the French drama Hidden Kisses.