Critical Week: Drop the mic

Another rather crazy week at the movies for critics, with screenings of forthcoming releases mingled with awards contenders and catch-up screenings of films I've missed this year. Plus the first of my voting deadlines in year-end awards, as big prizes like SAG and the Golden Globes announced their nominees. And also rather a lot for me to do as chair of the London Critics' Circle Film Awards! Plus the UK general election, which tonight will decide the fate of the nation (not feeling hopeful). So it's clearly not just another week.

The biggest new release screened is Spies in Disguise, an action-packed animated spy adventure voiced by Tom Holland and Will Smith. Adam Sandler veers wildly off-type (in a very good way) for the bold, in-your-face drama Uncut Gems, which is unforgettable cinema. Justin Long stars in the prickly but very timely comedy drama After Class. And Hugh Jackman and Zach Galifianakis voice the lead roles in the gorgeously animated global romp Missing Link.

France's official Oscar contender is Les Miserables, a present-day drama about cops patrolling a rough Parisian suburb. It bristles with life, and nails its themes skilfully. Also from France, Amanda is a gentle, rather sweet drama about everyday people in the wake of an unthinkably horrific event. And there were two docs: Asif Kapadia's sharply edited archive bio Diego Maradona and the entertainingly star-packed filmography doc QT8 Quentin Tarantino: The First Eight.

This coming week there are more awards contenders to catch up with before further voting deadlines. These include Isabelle Huppert in Frankie, Jonathan Majors in The Last Black Man in San Francisco, the animated Weathering With You, and the drama Long Day's Journey Into Night. As for regular release screenings, there's Daniel Radcliffe in Escape From Pretoria and Gary Oldman in The Courier. And since studios are refusing press screening requests, I'll be at the cinema to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and the musical Cats with the fans.

Critical Week: Save your sole

It's been a very odd week for press screenings in London, the lull between the blockbusters. The only big-name movies I saw were a bit lacklustre: Adam Sandler in The Cobbler, an underwhelming comedy-drama with a supernatural touch; Simon Pegg in Kill Me Three Times, an uneven Aussie crime comedy that strains for a wacky Tarantino vibe; Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer in Elsa & Fred, a gentle romantic drama that never quite gets on track; and Justin Long and Emmy Rossum in the artful and evocative romance Comet.

More interesting were two darkly moving movies further from the beaten path, namely the cleverly understated German drama West, set in1978 Berlin, and the intensely introspective rural Hungarian drama Land of Storms. Both films explore societal pressures that can destabilise relationships and make people doubt themselves and their loved ones.

I also caught the extraordinary A Sinner in Mecca, a documentary having its world premiere at HotDocs in Toronto this week. It's about a devout Muslim exploring his faith by performing his hajj, the ritual pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, which in his case could be fatal since he is an openly gay filmmaker. A seriously stunning film that will find resonance with anyone who struggles to balance faith with sexuality.

Ahead, it's another long weekend with a short week next week. Screenings coming up include Chris Rock in Top Five, Gugu Mbatha-Raw in Beyond the Lights, the zombie horror What's Left of Us, the animated adventure Dino Time and the fashion-world doc Iris.

Critical Week: Everyone play nice

It's been an odd week of screenings for London critics, with a variety of offbeat movies that probably have very specific audiences. The starriest one was A Late Quartet, in which Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walker, Catherine Keener and Mark Ivanir play a long-time string quartet whose tenuous bond is shaken by a few unrelated events. It's beautifully made and acted, although a bit dull. And if you have a problem with actors pretending to play instruments, look away now. The other semi-mainstream offerings were the Halloween-themed Fun Size, a resolutely unfunny comedy romp, and the somewhat better For a Good Time, Call...,  an underdeveloped friendship comedy-drama. At least the films were livened up by Chelsea Handler and Justin Long, respectively.

Further afield, we had Shock Head Soul, an artful, ambitious but utterly impenetrable doc-drama about psychoanalysis, and London: The Modern Babylon, Julien Temple's dazzling look at the psyche of Londoners - it's utterly essential viewing for anyone interested in history or social culture. Or London, of course. And finally, I turned off all the lights in my flat and stayed in one evening all alone to rewatch Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which is being reissued in UK cinemas this week. I hadn't seen it in 32 years, and it was even scarier than I remembered!

Next week is another random collection of screenings, including Anthony Hopkins as Hitchcock, the British black comedy May I Kill U, the long-awaited award-winning Romanian film Aurora, the Indian drama The Pool,the musician doc Hit So Hard, and the photojournalist doc McCullin.