Critical Week: Driving me crazy

Screenings continue to be a bit less frequent this time of year, although I somehow found plenty of movies to watch this week. Eddie Murphy is back in action-comedy mode, starring in The Pickup alongside Pete Davidson and Keke Palmer. Their banter is enjoyable even if the plot is almost ridiculously simplistic. Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan are back for Freakier Friday, a hugely enjoyable 20-years-later body-swap comedy sequel. And there were two astonishingly grisly horror movies: Together stars Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a couple that's growing eerily close, while Weapons stars Julia Garner as a teacher whose students have mysteriously vanished. Both are stomach-churningly yucky in all the best ways, and both have serious subtext that holds the interest.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Young Hearts • Weapons
Stans • Freakier Friday
ALL REVIEWS >

In addition, there was the family adventure Sketch, about a teen whose drawings come to life and menace a small town. It's well-made and engaging. There were two films from France: The Musicians is an engaging and warmly understated comedy about a group of egotistic artists who form a historic quartet. And Bambi: A Tale of Life in the Woods is a nature documentary adaptation of the classic novel about a young deer growing up. It's beautifully shot, and openly emotive. I also watched Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical (arrives on Apple TV on 15th August), which I thoroughly enjoyed. As a lifelong Peanuts fan, the line-art animation was particularly nice. And the catchy songs were fun too. I also attended a live performance of new absurdist comedy Lost Watches at Park Theatre.

This coming week I'll be watching Jacob Elordi in On Swift Horses, Bob Odenkirk in Nobody 2, Orlando Bloom in The Cut, Matilda Lutz as Red Sonja, the animated comedy Fixed and the Chinese remake of Richard Linklater's Tape.

Critical Week: I've got your back

Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington provided some muscle for British critics this week in the action-comedy 2 Guns, which surprisingly is more skilfully written, directed and acted than most of this summer's action options. A pumped-up Wahlberg turned up to meet the press, right off the plane from the set of Transformers 4, charming us with his chatter. Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa turns out to be another above-par action-comedy - it's a hilariously well-written and impeccably played romp bringing Steve Coogan's iconic 1990s radio/TV character to the big screen. The week's other big movie was the sequel no one really asked for, Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters. It's pacey and perfectly thrilling for its target pre-teen audience.

More high-brow fare came with Julianne Moore in What Maisie Knew, a strikingly astute family drama costarring Steve Coogan (again!), Alexander Skarsgard and astonishing newcomer Onata Aprile. We also had the trashy delights of Paul Shrader's The Canyons, starring a frazzled Lindsay Lohan alongside swaggering porn-icon James Deen; the fiercely clever and not quite as bleak conclusion to Ulrich Seidl's trilogy Paradise: Hope; the impeccably made but far too long girl-gang drama Foxfire; Ferzan Ozpetek's latest clever mix of present-day Italy with the ghosts of WWII in A Magnificent Haunting; and the involving true story of a gender-bending scandal at the Olympics in Berlin '36.

Coming this week: Cate Blanchett in Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine, Paul Rudd in Prince Avalanche, Keri Russell in Austenland, Bryan Cranston in Cold Comes the Night, Kristen Scott Thomas in Looking for Hortense, the Austrian-Turkish drama Kuma, Rikki Beadle Blair's bigotry drama Bashment and Lucy Walker's snowboarder doc The Crash Reel.