Critical Week: Do a little dance

Awards season continues to crank up with this week's Bafta nominations, a pleasingly accessible set of nods that dares to break the usual mould. But of course the usuals are still in there. As for films I've watched, John Lithgow and Olivia Colman are father and daughter in Jimpa, a warm, mopey, but also astute exploration of family dynamics through the prism of sexuality and gender issues. Riz Ahmed is terrific in a bristling modern-day London adaptation of Hamlet, although the Shakespearean dialog sits at odds with the gritty realism. On the same day, I revisited one of my 2025 favourites, Hamnet. It's gorgeously assembled and powerfully performed, and great to watch it when I wasn't working. Yes, it was fun to see Hamlet and Hamnet so close together, especially with Joe Alwyn popping up in both.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Islands • Is This Thing On?
Nouvelle Vague • 7 Keys
The Love That Remains
PERHAPS AVOID:
Primate
ALL REVIEWS >

Other films were deliberately more entertaining, such as Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa playing brothers in Hawaii in The Wrecking Crew. A proper guilty pleasure, it's also a beefy, slick and very dumb action movie. Luke Evans and Milla Jovovich star in the post-apocalyptic thriller Worldbreaker, which maintains a nicely offbeat vibe that's also rather too low-key. More impressive was James McAvoy's directing debut California Schemin', the true story of two Scottish rappers engagingly played by Seamus McLean Ross and Samuel Bottomley. It's fun to watch them bamboozle the music industry. The Aussie family adventure Kangaroo is packed with adorable joeys (plus the likeable Ryan Corr), even if the true story has been warped into a structured screenplay. And George MacKay and Callum Turner are terrific in Mark Jenkin's Rose of Nevada,  a wonderfully grainy blur of time travel and haunted boat nuttiness set in Cornwall. I also caught up with the sequel Now You See Me, Now You Don't, which is just as entertaining, overcomplicated and implausible as the first two.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Joe Keery in Cold Storage, romantic thriller A Beautiful Breakup and a collection of docs: Oscar and Bafta nominated Mr Nobody Against Putin, fighting book bans in The Librarians and Glasgow protests in Everybody to Kenmure Street. And I'll attend the 46th Critics' Circle Film Awards on Sunday as a voting member, rather than as chair, for the first time in 15 years.

Critical Week: The winner takes it all

Staying up all night in London to watch the Oscars is a tradition for film fans, who are recognisable the next day by their dazed expressions. The show offered several highlights, including that opening number featuring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo offering soaring renditions of Wizard of Oz, The Wiz and Wicked belters. The night was a terrific celebration of independent filmmaking, with big love for Anora, for which Sean Baker won a record 4 Academy Awards for a single movie. Other memorable elements included Morgan Freeman's beautiful eulogy for Gene Hackman, Isabella Rossellini honouring David Lynch by wearing a blue velvet dress and bringing Laura Dern as her date, and the powerful appearance of the No Other Land filmmakers as they accepted Best Documentary.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Day of the Fight • Mickey 17
Ernest Cole: Lost & Found
ALL REVIEWS >

I also watched some movies this week, including Robert Pattinson in Bong Joon Ho's Mickey 17, a comical sci-fi adventure that's actually remarkably warm. John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush are on fine form in creeky Kiwi horror The Rule of Jenny Pen; Bruce LaBruce is back with The Visitor, yet another provocative, nutty and remarkably inventive satire; the hyperactive animated adventure Giants of La Mancha is enjoyably silly. There were two documentaries: Ernest Cole: Lost and Found is a riveting, urgent portrait of the South African photographer, while the artful Riefenstahl tells the story of the controversial German filmmaker. I also saw Wayne McGregor's Deepstaria at Sadler's Wells.

This coming week I'll be watching Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in Black Bag, Ayo Edebiri in Opus, Brian Cox in The Parenting, the comedy She's the He, Chinese thriller Brief History of a Family and Peacock at the opening of WatchAut, the Austrian Film Festival. There are also two stage shows: Dear Martin at the Arcola Theatre and Drum Tao: The Dream at the Peacock Theatre.

Critical Week: Pesky kids

After missing them during the festival, I caught up with this week's two big releases at press screenings on Tuesday. Pet Sematary is a remake of the horror thriller adapted from Stephen King's novel. It's better than the first stab at it, as it were (I dredged up my archive review of the 1989 version and posted it together with the new one HERE.) And then there was Shazam!, easily the most enjoyable movie in recent memory from DC. It's lively and funny and has a solid plot and characters.

Seth Rogen has made unlikely romantic-comedies before, but perhaps Charlize Theron seems like a stretch too far. Well, their pointed political comedy Long Shot is a nice surprise, hilariously well written and sharply played. Judi Dench is of course great in Red Joan, as a woman accused of working with the communists back during her Cambridge University days. The film is a bit plodding and choppy, but the true story is fascinating. And from Wales, Gwen is a grim, atmospheric 19th century drama with strong horror overtones. Superb performances and skilful photography make it worth a look.

Coming up this week we have Isabelle Huppert in Neil Jordan's Greta, bonkers horror Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich, medieval German thriller Hagazussa and Sergei Loznitsa's Donbass.

Sundance London: Drink to that

The fifth Sundance Film Festival: London is now fully underway with a series of screenings and quite a few chances to meet the filmmakers at Picturehouse Central in Piccadilly. Last night's opening event was superb, with the team from Beatriz at Dinner in attendance - writer Mike White, director Miguel Arteta and actor Salma Hayek, all on great form. I'm catching movies all weekend, including the surprise film tonight (I have an inkling). Here are a few more highlights...

Beatriz at Dinner
dir Miguel Arteta; with Salma Hayek, John Lithgow 17/US ****.
A third teaming of the terrific director-writer duo Miguel Arteta and Mike White (see also Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl), this astute pitch-black comedy cuts a razor-sharp line through affluent American society. It's a fiendishly smart film with moments in which we're not sure whether this is funny or terrifying, simply because it resonates so strongly. And it's anchored by Salma Hayek's best ever performance.

Walking Out
dir-scr Alex Smith, Andrew J Smith; with Matt Bomer, Josh Wiggins 17/US ***.
A sensitive drama about the awkward bonding between a father and son takes a very dark turn in this beautifully photographed film. As things get genuinely gruelling, filmmakers Alex and Andrew Smith somehow manage to avoid both melodrama and sentimentality. The themes get a bit lost in the dictates of the plot, which makes the pace feel draggy, but there's still a thoughtful, moving edge.

Bitch
dir-scr Marianna Palka; with Jason Ritter, Jaime King 17/US ***
A jarring production style and unsympathetic characters make it difficult to enjoy this offbeat pitch-black comedy, but there are important themes that surge up throughout the story that make it worth a look. And it's always great to see a film that keeps you off-balance. In addition, writer-director Marianna Palka draws boldly realistic performances from her cast. And herself.

Icarus
dir Bryan Fogel; with Bryan Fogel, Grigory Rodchenkov17/US ****
This documentary starts out to explore drug use among professional cyclists then becomes engulfed in another series of events that have far bigger repercussions. Filmmaker Bryan Fogel may be too involved in what happens to tell the story with journalistic vigour, unable to resist framing everything as some sort of epic spy thriller, but what's revealed is genuinely earth-shaking. And it's a movie that's impossible to ignore.

Critical Week: Teenage kicks

It's been a slow week for screenings, perhaps a brief intake of breath before the awards season kicks off in earnest. My first awards-consideration screenings are late next week. In the meantime, this weeks' screenings included The Edge of Seventeen, an unusually edgy teen drama starring Hailee Steinfeld with fine grown-up support from the likes of Woody Harrelson and Kyra Sedgwick. The other big movie was The Accountant, the slick but preposterous Ben Affleck autism-gangster thriller that's entertaining only if you don't think about it.

Further afield was the micro-budget British thriller The Darkest Dawn, which makes up for a simplistic script with some sharp acting and inventive effects. Ron and Laura Take Back America is an extended sketch-style comedy-doc lampooning head-in-the-sand right wing politics. And I also finally caught up with Clint Eastwood's 1997 southern gothic melodrama Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, starring baggy suited John Cusack and a scene-nibbling Kevin Spacey, plus a notable cameo from a young Jude Law.

Things are still slow over the coming days, with just three press screenings: Gael Garcia Bernal Pablo Larrain's biopic of the poet Neruda, the Italian drama One Kiss, and the UK premiere of the Korean thriller The Truth Beneath. I also have several screeners to watch at home....

LFF 7: The beat goes on

At the 58th London Film Festival today, the gala presentation was the premiere of Sundance winner Whiplash, attended by stars Miles Teller and JK Simmons (above). The film kicked off the critics' day with a breathless 9am screening that certainly got our adrenaline pumping for the rest of the day. Here are some more highlights...

Whiplash
dir Damien Chazelle; with Miles Teller, JK Simmons 14/US ****.
With a literally breathtaking pace and outrageously high energy, this film grabs you by the lapels and shakes you until you're a blubbering wreck. This is about as black as comedies can get, hurtling through the story of a talented young man coming up against a seriously fearsome teacher. And it's so powerful that it takes awhile to recover after the credits roll.

Love Is Strange 
dir Ira Sachs; with John Lithgow, Alfred Molina 14/US ***.
Gentle and almost overwhelmingly bittersweet, this drama is packed with such engaging characters that the weaknesses of the plot don't seem too distracting. It has something powerful to say about extended relationships as it explores a long-term romance in a quietly moving way.


Jamie Marks Is Dead
dir Carter Smith; with Cameron Monaghan, Noah Silver 14/US ***.
This soft-spoken film is both a sensitive teen drama and one of the most inventive ghost stories in recent memory. It's haunting and visually stunning, with moments that are deeply moving and genuinely horrific. And at its core it's a thoughtful exploration of adolescent yearning to make sense of unexpected feelings.

Electricity
dir Bryn Higgins; with Agyness Deyn, Lenora Crichlow 14/UK **.
While this film has enough visual panache to please arthouse audiences, its script is simply too thin to back up the imagery with any resonant meaning. The solid cast never gets the chance to delve deeply into the characters and, in the end, the filmmaker's emphasis on eye-catching flourishes leave everything else feeling rather simplistic and empty.

Next to Her
dir Asaf Korman; with Liron Ben Shlush, Dana Ivgy 14/Isr ****
This offbeat Israeli drama features vivid characters and a series of stunning twists and turns that continually challenge the viewer's attitudes. With a strong sense of realism, director Korman creates a strikingly involving film that touches on big issues while remaining deeply grounded in the characters.