Critical Week: Fashion victim

This past week, I caught up with Elle Fanning in Nicolas Winding Refn's new horror drama The Neon Demon, the latest slick, lurid, fascinating, infuriating film from the Danish filmmaker. Another stylish thriller, Nerve, stars Emma Roberts and Dave Franco (sorry, comments are embargoed). And then there was some comedy: Ghostbusters entertainingly reboots the franchise with a terrific quartet of comedic actresses, while Ice Age: Collision Course carries on the ridiculous antics of that growing herd of loveable but random prehistoric critters.

Further afield, Pedro Almodovar's Julieta is a fluid, beautifully emotive drama with a twisty story and a terrific cast. The acclaimed Greek comedy-drama Chevalier is a fiercely clever dissection of masculine bravado. K-Shop is a solidly made British horror thriller with blackly comical overtones. And the latest collection from Peccadillo, Boys on Film 15: Time & Tied, features nine strikingly well-made short films addressing issues of gender and sexuality from a variety of astute, personal angles.

This coming week we have the long-awaited Matt Damon-starring sequel Jason Bourne, Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Roald Dahl's The BFG, Disney's remake of Pete's Dragon, Chris Pine in Hell or High Water and the oddly titled journalist doc Jim: The James Foley Story.

Critical Week: Bedtime stories

Topping the US box office, Seth MacFarlane's raucously funny comedy Ted was screened to UK critics this past week and kept us laughing all the way through (this had nothing to do with the beer and pizza they served to us beforehand). We also caught up with Marc Webb's enjoyable but unnecessary origin-reboot The Amazing Spider-man, of which the best aspect is the teen rom-com between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone;; and the still-entertaining fourth animated adventure Ice Age: Continental Drift, which was preceded by a Simpsons short that's nothing short of genius - The Longest Daycare, a wordless adventure starring Maggie.

We also had an early screening of Bradley Cooper and Dax Shepard in the roady comedy Hit and Run, for which reviews are embargoed. And further off the beaten path were the low-budget British prison drama Offender, an ambitious approach to a rather tired genre, and the British indie thriller In the Dark Half, which is a proper cinematic creep-out.

Coming up this week, I'll catch up with two Edinburgh Film Festival titles I missed while I was there: Disney-Pixar's Scottish epic Brave and John Hillcoat's Lawless. There's also the British drama My Brother the Devil, the American indie Shut Up and Kiss Me, the Monty Python doc A Liar's Autobiography, the green-technology doc Revenge of the Electric Car, and restored versions of Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and Orson Welles' F for Fake.