Critical Week: The homecoming queen's got a gun!

It's been another eclectic week for London-based film critics. One of the more offbeat films was Barely Lethal, starring Hailee Steinfeld (above) as a teen who was raised to be a ruthless spy, then runs away to see what going to high school is like. It's a likeable pastiche of teen movies, although it oddly seems both too safe and too gun-happy. A much more anticipated family movie was a late screening of the already acclaimed new Pixar-Disney animation Inside Out, which had a gala Sunday morning screening introduced by director Pete Docter and cast members Amy Poehler and John Ratzenberger. The lovely film is both a comical adventure and a strikingly honest look at growing up. And it screens with the simply gorgeous short film Lava.

Other big-name films this week included the Ryan Reynolds thriller Self/Less, which starts well but opts to ignore its themes in lieu of a contrived action-thriller plot. And Michael Douglas hunts Jeremy Irvine in the New Mexico desert in Beyond the Reach, which is utterly preposterous but has its moments thanks to the actors and the landscapes.

A bit further afield, we had the indie mob drama 10 Cent Pistol, which is sharply made but waits too long before it lets the audience into the story; the clever, jaw-dropping reality TV romp Shooting the Warwicks, which is one of the blackest comedies you'll ever see; the floaty-whiny indie drama Buttercup Bill, which spends so much time being achingly cool that it forgets to properly tell its story; and the well-made eye-opening doc Bolshoi Babylon, which digs into the controversial workings of the world's top ballet theatre.

This coming week, we have the lean-mean Jake Gyllenhaal in a late screening of Southpaw, Tom Cruise back in action for Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation,  Reese Witherspoon and Sofie Vergara in the action-comedy Hot Pursuit, Emily Blunt in the dark drama Sicario, Josh Hutcherson in the drug cartel drama Escobar: Paradise Lost, Danny Huston in the underwater thriller Pressure, and the military dog drama Max.

Critical Week: A food and film love-in

It doesn't get much more luvvie than this: Oprah Winfrey producing a movie starring Helen Mirren that's all about delicious-looking French and Indian food. The Hundred-Foot Journey is already out in America, while British critics have only just had their first screenings, smartly accompanied by a seriously amazing spread of snacks, starters and mains from Patak's. Directed by Lasse Hallstrom, the film is as glossy and warm as expected, but a sharp Steven Knight script helps maintain a hint of an edge. It also makes the audience ravenously hungry. Be warned.

The biggest film we saw this week was Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, screened to the press just a couple of days before it opened. It's evoking the same polarised responses as the first film. After nine years the technology might not seem as fresh, but the addition of 3D and a more darkly emotion-based story help. The best film of the week, easily, was the Dardenne brothers' Two Days One Night, starring Marion Cotillard as a woman put into a seriously difficult position. There was also the British mock-doc United We Fall, about a fictional Manchester United squad, although without real players or football footage it's tricky to imagine who the audience will be.

Finally, I caught up with two more FrightFest films, both British horror movies. The Mirror is a lively found-footage thriller about a haunted mirror, while Xmoor is a grisly freakout set over one fateful night on Exmoor. Full reviews of these and a few other FrightFest films can be found HERE.

This coming week is a short one, so I only have a few screenings in the diary. But I'm also going on holiday for the following week, so have several things to see before I can leave - including the animated adventure The Boxtrolls, Elijah Wood and John Cusack in Grand Piano, the American ensemble comedy About Alex, the indie comedy-drama Turtle Hill Brooklyn, the British drama Luna, the gay drama anthology ErOddity(s), the Donald Trump doc A Dangerous Game, and the offbeat family doc Two: The Story of Roman & Nyro.