Critical Week: So in love

It's been another busy week at the movies, as Cannes announced its programme of films, instantly launching next year's awards season with a bang. Almodovar! Refn! Pawlikowski! Farhadi! Zvyagintsev! Kore-eda! Sachs! Hamaguchi! Dhont! The Javis! Meanwhile, I bought a ticket to see Zendaya and Robert Pattinson in The Drama, because I wasn't invited to the one and only press screening. I really enjoyed it, an unhinged black comedy that pushes the audience to take a side.

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Otherwise, there was the family comedy whodunit The Sheep Detectives, an enjoyably silly Babe-style romp starring Hugh Jackman and Emma Thompson, with the voices of Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Bryan Cranston. Keanu Reeves leads Jonah Hill's quirk-filled Outcome, a smart comedy-drama about Hollywood packed with fantastic characters. The cast includes Cameron Diaz, Matt Bomer, Martin Scorsese and Susan Lucci. Gaten Matarazzo, Lulu Wilson and Sean Giambrone star in the riotous stoner comedy Pizza Movie, which is far smarter than it looks thanks to filmmakers Nick Kocher and Brian McElhaney. The Japanese anime romcom ChaO looks like nothing you've ever seen, and tells an oddly engaging story about a man who marries a fish. And I also attended a special cast and crew screening of the pointed and involving short film Geronto, plus a live performance of Palatable Gay Robot at Udderbelly Boulevard.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching the British romcom Finding Emily, Jude Law in The Wizard of the Kremlin, Charli XCX in Erupcja, Bob Odenkirk in Normal, John Magaro in Koln 75, the romantic comedy Almost Us and the French comedy-drama Colours of Time.

Critical Week: Brotherly love

There weren't many press screenings for me over the past week, as I was a bit busy with the London critics' awards. But I did manage to catch up with two coming-of-age dramas. Mid90s is Jonah Hill's writing-directing debut, an involving, realistic drama about a young teen (Sunny Suljic, above right, with Lucas Hedges as his thuggish big brother) who turns to skateboarding to find his place in life. The British film Old Boys has currents of comedy and slapstick as it follows a teen (Alex Lawther) at a posh boarding school caught in a Cyrano-style love triangle. It's a bit goofy, but engaging and inventive.

Even further afield, In Like Flynn is an Australian biopic about Errol Flynn's pre-Hollywood days. Thomas Cocquerel is dashing in the lead role, but the film is far too cliched and corny. The Polish drama Nina is set up as a lesbian coming-of-age drama for a married woman, but the elusive filmmaking leaves the audience on the outside looking in. And ParTy Boi: Black Diamonds in Ice Castles is a gritty documentary about the rise of crystal meth among America's black gay subculture. It's pretty harrowing, cautionary without shying away from telling the whole story.

This coming week we have screenings of the upcoming animated sure-fire hits The Lego Movie 2 and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, plus Christophe Honore's Sorry Angel, and the British independent dramas Lucid, He Loves Me and Wretched Things.

Critical Week: Join the jet set

Diane Kruger and Bryan Cranston are terrific in The Infiltrator, based on the true story of federal agents infiltrating the Colombian drug trade in the mid-80s. And then there's Jonah Hill and Miles Teller getting involved in the illicit arms trade in War Dogs, a lively and too-violent comedy from the director of The Hangover. The week's other heavy hitter was also a true story, although it's from the 1860s. Free State of Jones is a long, important and perhaps too-earnest drama starring Matthew McConaughey as a southerner who rebelled against the Confederacy.

And then there was the British post-apocalyptic thriller The Girl With All the Gifts, a terrific premise with an excellent cast that includes Gemma Arterton, Glenn Close, Paddy Considine and talented newcomer Sennia Nanua. The third film in the series, The Purge: Election Year continues the rather anachronistic anti-violence preachiness alongside gratuitous grisly horror. 400 Days is an uneven low-fi thriller starring Brandon Routh and Caity Lotz as astronauts preparing to go to Mars but ending up somewhere entirely different. And Liebmann is an involving, offbeat German drama set in France, as a guy moves to a rural town to escape his past, but it of course catches up with him.

This coming week I have screenings of Kristen Stewart in Personal Shopper, the animated adventure Kubo and the Two Strings, the action mayhem of Kickboxer: Vengeance, the arthouse thriller Under the Shadow, the acclaimed festival film The Clan and the horror romp We Are the Flesh.

Critical Week: Mommy issues

It was a busy week for UK critics, with another head-spinning collection of screenings. Robert Carlyle stars in and makes his directing debut with The Legend of Barney Thompson, an uneven black comedy costarring a scene-stealing Emma Thompson (as his mum, above) and Ray Winstone. It never quite gets the tone right. Also struggling with its tone, True Story recounts a fascinating real-life mystery starring Jonah Hill, James Franco and an almost-not-there Felicity Jones. Fascinating but too mopey to come to life properly. And Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman are terrific in Ruth & Alex (aka 5 Flights Up) as a long-married couple planning a move from their beloved Brooklyn apartment. It's engaging but slight.

I took a break from the cinema to catch A Deadly Adoption on Channel 5. Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig star in this hilariously overwrought thriller that is either a raucous spoof or just another ridiculous Lifetime movie. You be the judge. Either way, it's very funny as it follows a damaged couple hoping to save their marriage by adopting a baby from an apparently sweet young pregnant woman. But of course it all turns nasty. Full credit to Ferrell and Wiig for never winking at the camera.

Further afield, we had the Aussie animation Maya the Bee, a charming and energetic little adventure; the found-footage horror The Gallows, which should really put an end to the genre with its utter lack of originality; and the riotous 1980s slasher movie spoof Dude Bro Party Massacre III, which manages to maintain the joke perfectly right to the very end. And there were also two docs that both rely far too heavily on talking heads: Misery Loves Comedy is an intriguing all-star exploration of the life of a stand-up, while Looking for Love explores romance in London's Afro-Caribbean community with insight and lots of personality.

Coming up this week: the new Disney-Pixar hit Inside Out, Ryan Reynolds in Self/Less, Jessica Alba in Barely Lethal, Michael Douglas in Beyond the Reach, Jena Malone in 10 Cent Pistol, the American indie drama Buttercup Bill, and two docs: exploring the Russian ballet company in Bolshoi Babylon and an acclaimed profile of six teen brothers in The Wolfpack.

Critical Week: Guns out for spring break

Virtually every genre taste was catered to for London critics this past week. We caught up with the Jonah Hill/Channing Tatum sequel 22 Jump Street this week, a raucous comedy that has very little plot but keeps the audience in spasms of laughter all the way through, mainly as it pokes fun at sequels and franchises. There was a very late screening of Edge of Tomorrow, the time-loop alien invasion thriller with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt. (No one quite knows why a sharply well-made film as entertaining as this was only screened the day before it opened in the UK, but word of mouth should build for this one.) And we only had one more day's notice for Seth MacFarlane's comedy-Western A Million Ways to Die in the West, a relatively amusing vanity project saved by Charlize Theron, superb supporting actors and cameo turns.

Nicole Kidman does what she can with Grace of Monaco, a corny and heavily fictionalised account of one year in the life of the actress-turned-princess. The stylish and intriguing dark thriller Anna stars Mark Strong as a memory detective tasked with investigating a very troubled teen (Taissa Farmiga). A bracingly original twist on the haunted house movie, Oculus stars Karen Gillan and Brenton Thwaites as siblings confronting an evil mirror. And the terrific Rosamund Pike and David Tennant are upstaged by three gifted child actors in the surprisingly solid British black comedy What We Did on Our Holiday.

This coming week, we have Kevin Costner in 3 Days to Kill, the Scottish musical drama God Help the Girl, the horror movie Home, the French rom-com A Perfect Plan, the Iraq War protest doc We Are Many and quite a few other documentaries that are coming to festivals around Britain this month.

Critical Week: And I feel fine

By far the most enjoyable press screening of the past week was the apocalyptic comedy This Is the End (with James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel and Danny McBride, above). Reviews are embargoed for a couple of weeks so I can't say any more. We also had screenings of Baz Luhrmann's lavishly entertaining version of The Great Gatsby, which sharply captures the hollowness under the hedonistic excess. Then there was the underwritten British spy thriller The Numbers Station starring John Cusack, and Marlon Wayans' ghost-movie spoof A Haunted House, which is better than it looks but still a missed opportunity.

Further off the beaten path we had the fragmented British romance/drama/romp Spike Island, a choppy story about teen Stone Roses fans in 1990; the topical and deeply involving low-budget German drama The Visitor; and a 50th anniversary restoration of John Schlesinger's timeless British comedy Billy Liar, starring the fabulous Tom Courtenay and Julie Christie. It's simply wonderful - get your hands on a copy.

Just before it opens, the press will finally get to see the end of the trilogy with The Hangover Part III. I also have screenings of Steven Soderbergh's Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, the thriller Black Rock, Studio Gibli's From Up on Poppy Hill, the Canadian comedy The Year Dolly Parton Was My Mum and the French drama Atomic Age. And it's another long weekend here, so maybe I can carry on catching up with my stack of DVD screeners.

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