Critical Week: Movie night

With the sunshine blazing across Great Britain, cinema box office is likely to take a hit these days. Although maybe the air conditioning will lure people to escape from the heat. I've certainly enjoyed attending press screenings this week, a cool break from the sweaty sunshine. I caught up with Pixar's new animated feature Elemental, which premiered at Cannes. It's a little uneven plotwise, but the characters are terrific and it looks spectacular. And then there's the return of Chris Hemsworth in Extraction II, an even more confident thrill-ride. It's ripping entertainment, but very violent.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
You Can Live Forever • The Flash
Elemental • Extraction II
ALL REVIEWS >

Also at Cannes, Wes Anderson's new slice of whimsy is Asteroid City, in which a vast ensemble of A-listers circle around strange goings on in a desert crater. It's quirky and has moments of genius, but little resonance. Take That's songs were adapted into the British stage musical The Band, which has now become the comedy romp Greatest Days. But the laughs are undermined by several pushy dark plot points.  And I also saw two smaller films centred around addicts: God's Petting You is an offbeat, messy heist comedy about a junkie who teams up with a sex addict to rob a pornstar, while Sunlight is a likeable but contrived Irish drama about an addict trying to have a final connection with his dying sponsor.

This next week I'll be watching Harrison Ford in action in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, British drama To Nowhere, French drama Mother & Son and two documentaries: Baato from the Himalayas in Nepal and The Last Rider about the 1989 Tour de France.

LFF: Tell your story

Aside from watching everything online, another major difference in this year's London Film Festival is that there isn't that usual nagging feeling that somewhere else in the city there are parties and filmmakers and actors hanging out having fun without you. This year everyone's joining in from home, aside from a precious few actual screenings. Here are two more highlights, plus this week's non-festival roundup...

Shirley

dir Josephine Decker; with Elisabeth Moss, Michael Stuhlbarg 20/US **.

A fictional story involving iconic author Shirley Jackson is told with inventive style by director Josephine Decker, who infuses the screen with imagery and sounds that play on Jackson's work, using wildly colourful flourishes and nods to murky horror tropes. The actors are superb as people who become twisted around each other. But the story never quite clicks into gear, so it's only the creepy tension that keeps us watching.

The Painter and the Thief

dir Benjamin Ree; with Barbora Kysilkova, Karl-Bertil Nordland 20/Nor ****

Playing out as a fascinating dramatic narrative, this documentary unfolds its story using found footage, surveillance cameras and remarkably intimate fly-on-the-wall sequences. Filmmaker Benjamin Ree is following the extraordinary story of an unexpected friendship, two people who shouldn't be able to see each other with such remarkable clarity. Perhaps they recognise that they're both survivors of difficult situations. And in many ways they're still struggling to get through.

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C R I T I C A L   W E E K

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Black Box • Kajillionaire
Song Lang • Yes 
PERHAPS AVOID:
The War With Grandpa 
FULL REVIEWS >

In between the festival films, I managed to watch the amusing but badly underpowered slapstick comedy The War With Grandpa, the guilty pleasure twisty sci-fi thriller Black Box, the provocative black comedy Yes, the warm midlife crisis comedy From the Vine, the scruffy road movie Making Tracks, the bonkers Turkish parable The Antenna, the meandering French odyssey The Wanderings of Ivan, and the moving Vietnamese drama Song Lang.

And this coming week I need to fit these in around LFF screenings: Paul Bettany in Uncle Frank, the horror films Evil Eye and Nocturne, the mystery Don't Look Back, and a doc called JR "Bob" Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius.

Critical Week: Put me in coach

Another week of isolation, with a list of streaming releases so long that I can't possibly keep up with all of them. Frankly, it's tricky to even know what's coming out at any given time, as each streaming service does its own thing, while websites tend to do "editor's picks" rather than simply listing everything that's new. But the worst thing for me is missing the cinema itself: I've never gone this long without going to the movies, and I miss the communal experience of watching a film (or a play) along with an audience. Even a group of grumpy critics in a small basement screening room is better than sitting alone at home, where I'm limiting myself to two films per day just to maintain some sanity.

This week's biggest movie was The Way Back [UK title: Finding the Way Back], starring Ben Affleck as an alcoholic basketball coach seeking redemption. It's moody and gritty, predictable but also movingly well-played. Also worth a look are the Netflix movie Uncorked, a warm father-son drama set in Memphis starring Mamoudou Athie and Courtney B Vance, and Standing Up, Falling Down, an understated comedy about an offbeat friendship starring Ben Schwartz and Billy Crystal.

Further afield, The Other Lamb is an artfully made and finely acted freakout about a charismatic cult leader (Michiel Huisman) and a follower (Raffey Cassidy) who begins to question things. Butt Boy is a pitch-black comedy-thriller played with a completely straight face. Tape is a worthy and perhaps overambitious take on #MeToo. And from Ukraine, Just Sex, Nothing Personal is a cute-silly comedy that isn't as sexy as it thinks it is.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching the animated sequel Trolls World Tour, Josh Duhamel in The Lost Husband, Ed Helms in Coffee & Kareem, the sci-fi romcom Same Boat, the generational drama Tigertail, the Western comedy Gold Dust and other gems from my list of forthcoming streaming titles...