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: If the shoe fits

Some big movies were screened to UK critics this week, including Disney's new live-action Cinderella, starring Lily James and Richard Madden, plus the likes of Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, Holliday Grainger and Downton Abbey's Sophie McShera. Directed by Kenneth Branagh, this takes a more sumptuous, old-fashioned approach than Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland or last year's Maleficent, and it's rather charming. This screening included the first London showing of the hilariously entertaining short Frozen Fever, which will definitely further the franchise.

The other gorgeously well-made big-budget film was Suite Francaise, based on Irene Nemirovsky's acclaimed novel and starring an especially superb Michelle Williams, Matthias Schoenaerts and Kristin Scott Thomas. We also had very late screenings of two films opening this week around the world, and both have had their reviews embargoed until later in the week: Neil Blomkamp's Chappie and the Vince Vaughn comedy Unfinished Business. 

A bit further afield, there was Salma Hayek energetically fighting off a steady stream of goons in Everly, Julia Stiles and Scott Speedman facing creepy child ghosts in Colombia in Out of the Dark, Jean Dujardin chasing an elusive drug dealer in The Connection, a group of kids trying to be themselves in the astute comedy-drama Geography Club, some comically inept East End London criminals in the rather tired Hackney's Finest, and a subtle exploration of unexpected young love in Berlin in Silent Youth.

Coming up this week: Sean Penn in The Gunman, Charlotte Gainsbourg in Samba, Virginia Madsen in Walter, the hit American teen comedy The Duff, another meta-comical American rom-com Playing It Cool, the British indie drama The Goob, and the Colombian drama Gente de Bien.

Out on a limb: Oscar picks and predictions

This year's Oscar race is the most wide open competition in years - it's hard to remember when there were so many categories that could go one of two (or even three) ways, and this year only Best Actress is a true lock.

I'll be watching the ceremony Sunday night in London with a gang of critics and friends in a pub that's staying open all night for us. Of course, the ceremony kicks off at 1am British time and finishes around 5am, so Monday isn't going to be too terribly coherent for me! But I plan to live-tweet right through the red carpet and the ceremony.

Below are the ways I think the wind is blowing this year. I will be hoping for upsets and surprises, as always. I should also admit that I hope Gravity only wins in the craft categories, where it belongs. The film is astonishing technical genius, but let's be honest: the script makes it the least of the nine Best Picture nominees.

Picture
Will win: 12 Years a Slave
Could win: Gravity
Dark horse/should win: American Hustle

Director
Will win: Alfonso Cuaron
Could/should win: Steve McQueen

Actress
Will/should win: Cate Blanchett
Dark horse: Amy Adams

Actor
Will win: Matthew McConaughey
Could/should win: Chiewtel Ejiofor
Dark horse: Leonardo DiCaprio

Supporting Actress
Will/should win: Lupita Nyong'o
Could win: Jennifer Lawrence

Supporting Actor
Will/should win: Jared Leto
Could win: Barkhad Abdi

Original Screenplay
Will/should win: American Hustle
Could win: Her

Adapted Screenplay
Will win: 12 Years a Slave
Could/should win: Philomena

Foreign-language Film
Will win: The Great Beauty
Could/should win: The Broken Circle Breakdown

Documentary
Will win: Twenty Feet From Stardom
Could/should win: The Act of Killing

Animated Feature
Will win: Frozen
Could/should win: The Wind Rises

Score
Will win: Gravity
Should win: Her or Philomena

Cinematography/Film Editing/Effects/Sound Mixing/Sound Editing
Will/should win: Gravity

Production Design/Costumes
Will win: The Great Gatsby
Should win: American Hustle

On the Road: Frozen, alone and fearsome

After only watching two films in the past two weeks, I had a bit of a flurry this weekend in Los Angeles, starting with Disney's new animated movie Frozen, about two sisters (voiced by Kristen Bella and Idina Menzel) struggling with what seems to be a family curse. Based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, the plot has some real weight and the characters are unusually strong, offering a strong twist on the usual Disney formula . Although the filmmakers couldn't resist filling the screen with silly jokes and comic relief characters, the animation is gorgeous and the themes are handled with a refreshing lightness,

I also had a couple of awards-consideration screenings on Saturday, my first two in Los Angeles. Both were pretty harrowing films, for different reasons. First was the true thriller Lone Survivor, in which Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, Taylor Kitsch and Emile Hirsch get into serious trouble on a mission in Afghanistan. It's riveting and exhausting, and a bit too rah-rah heroic for its own good. But it's also electrically charged and sharply well made. Second was the dysfunctional drama August: Osage County, starring Meryl Streep as a fearsome matriarch who locks horns (and then some) with her equally tetchy daughter Julia Roberts. The ace ensemble includes Chris Cooper, Margo Martindale, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ewan McGregor, Abigail Breslin, Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson. And the insights from playwright/screenwriter Tracy Letts are startlingly honest. It sometimes feels hugely over-dramatic, but every scene strikes a nerve.