Critical Week: I have a bad feeling about this

I arrived back in London on Tuesday, and any thoughts of starting back to work slowly quickly evaporated as I have worked to catch up on things. Not only is there a backlog of movies to watch and write about, but one of London's biggest film festivals starts next week. And it's the Oscars on Sunday night, the climax to this year's awards season (I'll post my picks and predictions as usual this weekend). Meanwhile, next year's awards season is building up some buzz already, with the astonishing Late Night With the Devil, a 1970s TV talk show pastiche that spirals into inventively thrilling demonic horror. At the centre, David Dastmalchian delivers a career redefining performance.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Origin • Soul
High and Low: John Galliano
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Other films included American Dreamer, a scrappy comedy-drama starring Peter Dinklage and Shirley MacLaine that's likeable but never quite comes together. Bonded is a very low-budget American slasher thriller that has some underlying charm. And Crossing is a stunner of a drama from Swedish-Georgian filmmaker Levan Akin (And Then We Danced). Set mainly in Istanbul's trans community, it's screening next week at BFI Flare, and deserves to be in awards conversations this time next year. I also had time to catch up with one of last year's movies while I was on the plane back to London...

Silent Night
dir John Woo; with Joel Kinnaman, Catalina Sandino Moreno 23/US ***
Leave it to action veteran John Woo to make the very most out of an explosive thriller that has no dialog at all. The story centres around a man who loses his son, and his voice, to local gang violence, so he spends the next year training to get even. Kinnaman ably balances the beefy tough-guy nonsense with a deeper emotionality, which is even more strongly felt thanks to Sandino Moreno as his understandably frightened wife. But instead of meaningfully grappling with ideas of grief and revenge, the film essentially turns this man into Batman, a seemingly independently wealthy vigilante with a muscle car and a personal arsenal. Woo makes it look fabulous, but any point is lost in the glorious mayhem.

This coming week I'll be watching Cate Blanchett in The New Boy, Sydney Sweeney in Immaculate, Emile Hirsch in State of Consciousness, Luc Besson's Dogman, relationship drama Thirty, plus several more films that will be showing at the 38th BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival, which kicks off next Wednesday with the drag-scene romance Layla. I'll also be staying up all night to watch the Oscars on Sunday night!

Critical Week: Survival of the fittest

Awards season continues with nightly Q&As designed to focus voter attention on various films. I've been able to host a couple of these, which has been a lot of fun, chatting with actors and filmmakers around the world. Another group I vote in, the Online Film Critics, released its nominations this week. Beyond awards contenders, films I watched this week included Outside the Wire, a standard action-packed military thriller elevated by lead actors Anthony Mackie (as a robot!) and Damson Idris. From India, The White Tiger is a must-see blackly comical drama about a guy who leaves his low caste behind through sheer determination.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Are We Lost Forever
The White Tiger • Breaking Fast
PERHAPS AVOID:
The Exception • Imperial Blue
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It was an eclectic week of movies for me. From the US, Brothers by Blood is a growly, grim Philadelphia crime drama starring the always excellent Matthias Schoenaerts and Joel Kinnaman. From Sweden, David Fardmar's Are We Lost Forever is a gorgeously observed drama about a painful breakup. From Belarus, Persian Lessons is a fascinating true story of one man's survival during WWII, starring the terrific Nahuel Perez Biscayart. And from Denmark, The Exception is an intriguing thriller with big themes, although the filmmakers take a rather contrived approach to it.

I still need to catch up with a couple of this week's releases, including the acclaimed Mexican drama Identifying Features and the shorts collection The Male Gaze: Hide and Seek, plus the biographical documentary The Capote Tapes. And there are also some awards contenders: Radha Blank's prize-winning The Forty-Year-Old Version, the animated drama The Wolf House and the five shorts nominated in the London Film Critics' awards. 

Critical Week: Never walk alone

My best film this past week was last year's festival favourite A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, an outrageous Wild West-style Iranian vampire movie filmed in California. It's so fiercely original (and so much fun) that director Ana Lily Amirpour is bound to be dragged to Hollywood, if she hasn't already. As for big-name movies, we had Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace and Gary Oldman in the Russian mystery-thriller Child 44, which is interesting but somewhat overstuffed, and Samuel L Jackson and Ray Stevenson in the Finnish action romp Big Game, which has lots of attitude and a great premise but kind of runs out of steam.

Further afield were the insane Chinese horror mash-up Rigor Mortis and the entertaining Soviet hockey team doc Red Army, plus a 30th anniversary version of John Hughes' The Breakfast Club, a classic that's definitely worth revisiting - and feels oddly timeless.

This coming week we've got screenings of the next Marvel blockbuster The Avengers: Age of Ultron, the hotly anticipated sequel Pitch Perfect 2, Carey Mulligan in a new adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd, the social media drama Unfriended, the animated Noah's Ark romp Two by Two, the Oscar-nominated animation Song of the Sea and the British indie Taking Stock.

Critical Week: Dancing on air

I essentially took the week off, because I had family visiting. But still managed to attend a few screenings in between the London Eye, the National Gallery, Madame Tussaud's, We Will Rock You (not bad!) and even a day trip to Paris. Filmwise, Pedro Almodovar's latest film I'm So Excited is a broad 80s-style farce about a group of people on what they think is a doomed airliner. It's unusually camp and ridiculous even for Almodovar, and will probably divide audiences. Some will be disappointed that Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz only have cameos in the film, but gay audiences will at least get all the hilarious jokes.

London critics also got to see Mud, Jeff Nichols' new drama with Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon. It's skilfully written, directed and played, as expected - a fascinating Huck Finn-style drama - but it feels very long. Also overlong, the Swedish thriller Easy Money with Joel Kinnaman is finally getting a UK release (it was made in 2009) - it's slick and enjoyable, but not hugely original. And Disney's Chimpanzee is also getting a long-delayed UK release. It's a cuddly doc that shamelessly humanises a baby chimp.

This coming week we have a very late screening of Tom Cruise in the apocalyptic thriller Oblivion, Paddy Considine in Honour, Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha, the rock band adventure Bula Quo, and two collections of short films: this year's Bafta nominees and Boys on Film 9: Youth in Trouble.