Critical Week: Be excellent to each other

As the American political landscape gets uglier, with flagrant lies deployed to stoke fear and division, perhaps we should all be listening to Bill and Ted, who are back on the big screen with their ridiculous but deeply engaging third adventure Bill & Ted Face the Music. It was refreshing to watch something that never pretends to be anything other than optimistic and fun.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Les Miserables • Mulan
Socrates • Unknown Origins
FULL REVIEWS >

Even better this week is Mulan, retelling the folktale from the Disney animated classic as a proper Chinese action epic. It's a powerhouse story told beautifully by director Niki Caro and star Yifei Liu, and it's such a visual feast that it really should have been released on the big screen. Hopefully Disney will see sense and put it into cinemas where it belongs.

I went to the cinema once this past week, to see a film that had no screenings or review links available: The New Mutants had its release delayed by Disney's dismantling of Fox, and it's not as awful as some critics have said. Although it's not great either, a muddled attempt at a terrific idea, combining teen angst and horror in the X-Men universe. There were also two films from Australia: I Am Woman is a likeable biopic about singer Helen Reddy that opts more for politics than depth of character, while Measure for Measure is a clever and somewhat murky adaptation of Shakespeare starring Hugo Weaving as a present-day Melbourne crime boss. Outside the mainstream, Unknown Origins is a terrific comic book movie from Spain that's smart, funny and full of action. Right Beside You is a new collection of five strong short films under the New Queer Visions label, pointed dramas about companionship. And premiering at Fantasia International Film Festival this week, Undergods is a fiendishly clever dystopian parable with a superb pan-European cast in multiple storylines.

I have one actual press screening in the diary for the coming week, the British drama Rocks. Otherwise, as the first physical film festival continues in Venice, I'll be watching online screeners of Charlie Kaufman's I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Andrea Riseborough in the sci-fi horror Possessor, the romantic comedy Love Guaranteed, the thriller Up on the Glass and the Thai trafficking drama Buoyancy.

Critical Week: London marches on

London critics caught up with a couple of big blockbusters this week. Mortal Engines is a whopping effects extravaganza from Peter Jackson, so it's surprising to find the story so simplistic. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a whizzy animated adventure with lively characters and plenty of thrilling action.

On the awards-worthy front, we had Hugh Jackman as The Front Runner, the true story of Gary Hart's 1988 presidential campaign scandal, which tells the story in an oddly straight-arrow style. Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe star in Boy Erased as parents who send their son (Lucas Hedges) to gay conversion therapy. It's thoughtful and moving. John C Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix are The Sisters Brothers in Jacques Audiard's refreshing spin on Western vengeance thrillers. And Natalie Portman is terrific as a Gaga-like popstar in the meaty drama Vox Lux.

A bit further afield, Tyrel stars Jason Mitchell as the only black guy on a white dudes weekend in a cabin in the woods. It's superbly insinuating and creepy. Carol Morely's evocative Out of Blue stars Patricia Clarkson as a haunted detective in a film more about her psychology than the serial killer case. All the Devil's Men is a clunky British action thriller starring Milo Gibson as an anti-terror mercenary. And Newly Single is a bracingly abrasive comedy-drama about a hapless filmmaker.

We have a similar mix of genres this coming week, as voting deadlines in the awards I vote for get closer and closer. These include the Transformers prequel Bumblebee, underwater superhero Aquaman, Christian Bale in Vice, the Coen Brothers' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, topical drama Blindspotting, and rock-climbing doc Free Solo, among others.

Critical Week: Old friends

As the weather finally broke, giving us relief from this relentless heatwave, screenings this week for London-based critics were led by Christopher Robin, which was a nice surprise: a sensitive live-action Winnie-the-Pooh sequel starring Ewan McGregor. Although it might be a little slow for children. Much livelier but not nearly as engaging, The Festival has a bright young cast and superb real-world setting, but the story is thin and the jokes simply aren't funny. Featuring an even starrier young cast, including Ansel Elgort, Taron Egerton and Jeremy Irvine, Billionaire Boys Club is a slick money-based thriller that feels eerily over-familiar.

A little further afield, there was the superb Irish thriller Black '47, set during the devastating 19th century potato famine and featuring terrific characters in a riveting story. David Tennant chomps on the scenery as a killer in Bad Samaritan, a nasty little thriller with very little in the way of subtext. We the Animals is a simply stunning coming-of-age drama, gorgeously shot and played on every level. And Memoirs of War is a wrenching, slow-burn WWII epic starring Melanie Thierry as author-filmmaker Marguerite Duras.

Still further off the beaten path, Redcon-1 is a crazed British zombie apocalypse adventure that makes very little sense on any level. From Norway, Revenge is a, well, revenge thriller that's insinuating and involving as its story twists and turns. The sensitive German drama Paths traces the dissolution of a long-term relationship in a quietly meaningful way. And the documentary Nureyev is perhaps a little too ambitious for its own good, with a lot going on with the imagery, sound and voiceovers, but a too-"official" narrative.

This coming week we have Idris Elba's directing debut Yardie, Australian thriller I Am Vengeance, acclaimed Italian drama Dogman, the German thriller The Year I Lost My Mind and three documentaries: Hot to Trot about ballroom dancing, Gun No 6 tracing the life of a firearm and the, ahem, self-explanatory American Circumcision.

LFF 2: Live in the now

The 57th London Film Festival continues at venues all around the city, plus red carpet events in Leicester Square tonight, as filmmakers and stars brave the chilly drizzle. Here are some highlights...

The Spectacular Now
dir James Ponsoldt;  with Miles Teller, Shailene Woodley 13/US ****
Credit to these filmmakers for creating an adolescent comedy-drama that feels bracingly raw and honest. And their willingness to go places most movies shy away from gives the actors a chance to create fresh characters who are engaging even when they do stupid teenager things... [full review to come]

Adore
dir Anne Fontaine; with Naomi Watts, Robin Wright 13/Aus ***.
Infused with a sense of sun-kissed physicality, this drama has a provocative premise that would be hard to take if it weren't shot so beautifully and played with such offhanded authenticity by the solid cast. And despite the Australian surf-community setting, the film has a refreshingly grown-up European sensibility... FULL REVIEW >

Mystery Road
dir Ivan Sen; with Aaron Pedersen, Hugo Weaving 13/Aus ***.
Writer-director Sen captures a vivid sense of life in the Australian Outback in this rural Wild West-style drama. And he cleverly undermines the film's thriller-like plot with low-key pacing and a refusal to indulge in genre cliches. The problem is that this makes the film almost inert, as it never generates even a hint of suspense... [full review to come]

Child's Pose
dir Calin Peter Netzer with Luminita Gheorghiu, Bogdan Dumitrache 13/Rom ***.
Romanian filmmaker Netzer takes a strikingly intimate look at the layers of control within families and society. And while some of the details are a little heavy-handed, witty touches and rippingly honest acting hold our attention. As does the unusually intimate, urgent filmmaking... [full review to come]

The Sarnos: A Life in Dirty Movies
dir Wiktor Ericsson; with Joseph Sarno, Peggy Steffans Sarno 13/Swe ***.
Leave it to a Swedish filmmaker to find the important social relevance in the 1960s sexploitation movies of the legendary Joseph Sarno! But that's exactly what this documentary manages to do while exploring the filmmaker's lengthy career, his enduring marriage and the history of cinema itself since the 1960s... [full review to come]