Critical Week: Cold shoulder

It was Liam Neeson's turn this week to bear the full brunt of self-righteous internet rage, as he told a too-candid story from his distant past, which was then wrenched horribly out of context. He wasn't racist back then; he was just stupid. He said so before telling the story in ill-chosen words as an explanation of how he could identify with the irrational urge for revenge, which he had to play in his new film Cold Pursuit. The film was screened for the press this week, an odd remake made by the original Norwegian director. It's watchable, but lacks the nuance that made the original, 2014's In Order of Disappearance, so memorable.

Asghar Farhadi got Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Ricardo Darin to headline his Spanish drama Everybody Knows, which is a bit overwrought but still finely observes human behaviour in extraordinary situations. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World wraps up the trilogy with an involving, often exhilarating adventure fans of the franchise will love. And Christopher Abbot and Mia Wasikowska star in the bonkers horror Piercing, which seems more interested in effects than creating a coherent story. But it's properly freaky.

A little further afield, Christophe Honore's personal French drama Sorry Angel is involving and moving, and bracingly honest. A pair of documentaries are notable for their willingness to embrace conflicting viewpoints: The Sunday Sessions follows a young man as he tries to eliminate his homosexuality, while The Gospel of Eureka profiles a town where a Christian pageant and a lively LGBTQ community coexist and thrive together. I also saw Desire, a collection of six shorts by Thai photographer Ohm Phanphiroj: half are evocative narrative films, while the other three are bracingly honest docs about his work and connections.

Coming up this week, we have Florence Pugh and Dwayne Johnson in Fighting With My Family, Willem Dafoe's Venice-winning/Oscar-nominated turn in At Eternity's Gate, Andrew Garfield in Under the Silver Lake, Dev Patel in The Wedding Guest and Carlos Acosta in Yuli.

Critical Week: Hard work

Being a film critic isn't a bad job: you get to see movies for free, after all, and people pay you to write what you think of them. On the other hand, they don't pay you that much anymore. And sometimes you have to sit all the way through something like Pudsey the Dog: The Movie, an almost unwatchable mess that really should be left to the trained professionals. Actually, it had potential to be a charming little adventure. But no.

So we turn to two sequels that have emerged as some of the best films of the year: How to Train Your Dragon 2 is even more ambitious than the superb first film, and it has the best action sequences in cinema at the moment. And Dawn of the Planet of the Apes may not be as delicately surprising as the reboot three years ago, but it's a remarkably complex thriller without a true villain. And the acting is hugely involving. But the best film this week was the Cannes hit Pride, a shameless British crowd-pleaser in the vein of Billy Elliot and The Full Monty, with terrific characters addressing a strongly resonant political issue through the true story of gay activists supporting striking miners in the Thatcher years.

Also this past week: Daniel Radcliffe brings his awkward charm to the quirky rom-com What If, costarring Zoe Kazan, Rafe Spall and Adam Driver; Nicolas Cage acts his socks off in the violent revenge thriller Rage, as a dad who wants to kill everyone for hurting his teen daughter; and Brian Cox plays the great Man Utd coach Matt Busby in Believe, a charmingly scruffy British comedy-drama that pushes the sentimentality button. There were also two docs: the fast-moving All This Mayhem traces the turbulent lives of Aussie skateboard-champion brothers Tas and Ben Pappas; and the inventive, colourful Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton tells the life story of the experimental filmmaker with a surge of emotional energy.

Coming up this week: Emma Roberts in the adaptation of James Franco's book Palo Alto, Gerard Depardieu in Abel Ferrara's controversial Welcome to New York, Disney's animated spin-off of a spin-off Planes: Fire and Rescue, the acclaimed 20,000 Days on Earth about Nick Cave, and the mystery-documentary The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden,

Critical Week: Metal-on-metal

Having opted to take a holiday the last week of June, I missed key press screenings of two July blockbuster sequels. But I caught up with them this week. Transformers: Age of Extinction is yet another loud and incoherent robot fighting extravaganza from Michael Bay - just as ludicrous as the previous films while wasting an all-new cast including Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer and acclaimed rising star Jack Reynor, plus this episode's requisite scantily clad female Nicola Peltz. Fortunately, I cleansed the memory of that movie from my system with How to Train Your Dragon 2, a strong film in its own right with a startlingly complex script, unusually detailed animation and the most thrilling movie action sequences we've seen all year.

Also this week, I caught up with Philip Seymour Hoffman's intriguing but relatively thin Philadelphia drama God's Pocket; Michael Caine in the engaging but somewhat lightweight French drama Mr Morgan's Last Love; the rather too-repressed but sharply well-made period drama A Promise, starring Rebecca Hall and Alan Rickman; the moving and visceral American indie Hide Your Smiling Faces; the extremely well-observed Danish mystery thriller Keeper of Lost Causes; and the blackly comical Spanish zombie-soccer thriller Goal of the Dead, which actually has its moments. There were also two artful but deeply pretentious epics: from Mexico, Julian Hernandez's I Am Happiness on Earth is a sensual exploration of physical connections. And with Norte, the End of History, gifted Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz takes an unnecessary four hours to tell a darkly involving story about crime and unjust punishment. I also managed to revisit Bob Fosse's classic 1972 film version of Cabaret, starring a particularly fabulous Oscar-winning Liza Minnelli.

This coming week, we have the Daniel Radcliffe rom-com What If, the acclaimed British feel-good drama Pride, the British football drama Believe, the Britain's Got Talent-inspired Pudsey the Dog: The Movie, and the Aussie skateboarding movie All This Mayhem, among other things.