Critical Week: Things are heating up

The big awards season screening this week was for James Cameron's sequel Avatar: Fire and Ash, shown to us in all of its 3D glory. It's certainly an epic experience, with eye-catching action and increasingly realistic motion-capture effects. Although the story felt a bit familiar, as if that matters. Michelle Pfeiffer leads the charge as a bedraggled mum in the Christmas comedy Oh. What. Fun., which enjoyably riffs on the full range of holiday comedy classics. There were two animated movies: The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants is another frantic and very silly undersea romp, while the Japanese epic Scarlet uses distinctive imagery in its involving underworld twist on Hamlet.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Merrily We Roll Along
It Was Just an Accident
La Grazia • Eternity • Folktales
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Other awards offerings included Jim Jarmusch's Venice-winning Father Mother Sister Brother, a lovely family-connections triptych with a superior cast including Cate Blanchett and Adam Driver. Fred Hechinger and Sebiye Behtiyar are excellent as young people who fall for each other in the warm, funny, emotional Preparation for the Next Life. Jonathan Majors goes very deep indeed as a bodybuilder in the delayed drama Magazine Dreams, impressively written and directed by Elijah Bymun. There were two documentaries: the chilling Cover-Up profiles journalist Seymour Hersh in a career exposing government misdeeds, while Folktales is a warmly involving look at a Norwegian high school that specialises in dog sledding.

Beyond film, I attended the outrageously lavish premiere of Fallout season 2, attended by the cast and crew (see below). And I also managed to fit in three seasonal stage performances: Ebony Scrooge at Sadler's Wells East, the panto Beauty and the Beast at Charing Cross Theatre and The Great Christmas Feast in West Kensington.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Jack O' Connell in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Joel Edgerton in The Plague, Rosamund Pike in Hallow Road, Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Josh O'Connor in Rebuilding, plus a live performance of The Fit Prince at King's Head Theatre, and probably a bit more, all before flying out to see my family in California for the holidays.

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Critical Week: Ignite the light

My work schedule on a TV crew was a bit lighter this week, so I was able to see a few screenings. These included the documentary Will & Harper, attended by Will Ferrell, Harper Steele and director Josh Greenbaum. It's a gorgeously involving film focussed on a long-term friendship, and its topicality makes it important as well. Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Keegan-Michael Key and director Josh Cooley came along to a screening of Transformers One, the hugely entertaining animated origin story that's packed with comedy and action.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Substance • Will & Harper
Transformers One
Girls Will Be Girls
ALL REVIEWS >

Filmmaker RaMell Ross creates a stunning visual style for Nickel Boys, a powerful drama about a teen reform school in Jim Crow-era Florida. It's also beautifully played, unusually vivid and involving. From Britain, Portraits of Dangerous Women is a light-hearted multi-strand drama about a group of people whose lives intersect unexpectedly, while Inherit the Witch is a bonkers horror thriller that enjoyably evokes freaky classics. And Notice to Quit is a likeable but rather too-busy comedy starring Michael Zegen as a single dad at the end of his rope. 

This coming week, I'm planning to see Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis, Joseph Gordon Levitt in Killer Heat, Alice Lowe's Timestalker, Hellboy: The Crooked Man and the documentary Rez Ball, plus anything else I can find time to see while working long days. 

Critical Week: Grandma's got a gun!

Summertime always brings a slow-down in press screenings, which is a relief after the flurry of London film festivals in June. But there are some great movies out there, plus blockbusters that aren't always quite as great but are good fun to watch on a big screen that's been packed out with cynical critics and gung-ho influencers. The mix of groaning and cheering is a lot of fun. The best I saw this week was the action comedy Thelma, starring June Squibb as a sparky 93-year-old (take that, Joe Biden!) who takes matters in her own hands when she's scammed out of some cash. Fred Hechinger is terrific as her worried grandson. And then there's Twisters, the thinly written almost 30-years-later sequel that's tangentially connected to the rather forgettable 1996 hit. Glen Powell is even more magnetic than the impressive tornadoes, with solid sidekicks Daisy Edgar-Jones and Anthony Ramos.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Crossing • Thelma
Scala!!! • Shayda
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More arthouse offerings included The Outrun, a kaleidoscopically immersive memoir about addiction starring the always excellent Saoirse Ronan and set in gorgeous Orkney Isles landscapes. Hayley Bennett stars as Widow Cliquot in a lavishly produced but rather stilted biopic about the early 19th century Champagne innovator. And Louise Brealey brings an engaging edge to the offbeat Welsh drama Chuck Chuck Baby, which is wonderfully infused with pop tunes. I also saw two shows live on-stage: National Youth Dance Company's Wall at Sadler's Wells and Jack Tucker's Comedy Standup Hour at Soho Theatre.

Things are still quieter than usual coming week, but I'll be watching Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in Deadpool & Wolverine, Zachary Levi in Harold and the Purple Crayon, New Zealand drama Mysterious Ways, Swedish drama Paradise Is Burning, Mexican doc The Echo and Palestine doc No Other Land.