Critical Week: When the wine runs out

It's been another busy week for screenings, and this year's festival season kicked up a gear with the announcement of the programme at next month's 79th Cannes Film Festival. Already everyone is trying to work out who will feature in next year's awards season. Three of the films I watched this week featured terrific offbeat performances: Charli XCX leads the cast of the improvised romantic comedy Erupcja, which is set in Warsaw. It's rather uneven, but strikingly well shot and performed. Jude Law and Paul Dano are excellent in The Wizard of the Kremlin, Olivier Assayas' expertly crafted fictionalised biopic about Vladimir Putin. And John Magaro shines as legendary pianist Keith Jarrett in Koln 75, based on the true story of an 18-year-old promoter (played by rising star Mala Emde) who organised a groundbreaking concert.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Diamanti • Wasteman • Departures
The Wizard of the Kremlin
Rebuilding • Miroirs No 3
Eagles of the Republic
PERHAPS AVOID: Balls Up
ALL REVIEWS >

More in the mainstream, Mark Wahlberg  and Paul Walter Hauser star in the chucklehead comedy Balls Up, which has a sharp script thanks to Deadpool writers Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese. But it's resolutely unfunny. Set in Manchester, the British romcom Finding Emily stars Spike Fearn and Angourie Rice. It's charming and funny and very predictable. Bob Odenkirk is back in action in Normal, which also sticks very closely to the formula but engages us with its quirkiness. The entertaining romantic melodrama Almost Us is a bit awkward, but nicely uses its setting in Phoenix's Black queer community. And the French comedy-drama Colours of Time is an entertaining and astute look at how history echoes in everyday life today. 

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching the Michael Jackson biopic Michael, Paul Rudd in Power Ballad, John Magaro in Omaha, Mads Mikkelsen in The Last Viking and three live performances: The Center Will Not Hold at Sadler's Wells, We Caliban at Sadler's Wells East and Misconduct & Ladykiller at White Bear (Tube strikes notwithstanding).

Critical Week: Watch the hands

Actual in-person screenings were back with a vengeance this week, after a recent slow stretch. And yes, it was great to settle into proper cinemas and screening rooms to watch movies on a big screen where they belong. Especially a film as visually astounding as Everything Everywhere All at Once, which stars Michelle Yeoh as a middle-aged woman thrown into parallel-reality craziness. Thankfully, the filmmakers remember that this is about real human emotions rather than wacky science. The big screen also helped with the lavishly designed Downton Abbey: A New Era, a return to the upstairs-downstairs drama with an enormous ensemble of likeable characters, each of whom somehow gets some good screen time. It's just what's expected, which is both comforting and a bit boring.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Casablanca Beats • Firebird
The Feast • Vortex
ALL REVIEWS >

Elsewhere, Mark Wahlberg tells the inspiring true tale of boxer-turned-priest Father Stu. There's only a slight rough edge to what should be a more complex story. Sophie Marceau is terrific in I Love America, a gentle comedy about a French filmmaker who moves to California. And the Moroccan drama Casablanca Beats bristles with life as a rapper teaches a group of lively, politically engaged students to create music.

A little further afield, Nick Cave lets the cameras watch as he and Warren Ellis create music in the gorgeously shot documentary This Much I Know to Be True. Robert Bresson's masterful 1959 morality tale Pickpocket gets a pristine big-screen restoration. And the documentary White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch just about makes sense of the clothing brand's horrible history of employment prejudice, while completely missing the point of why the clothes were so popular (and perhaps aren't so much now).

This coming week features another long weekend, and I'll also be watching a range of films including Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the Irish coming-of-age drama The Quiet Girl, the Danish black comedy Wild Men, the chilean romance The Sea, the Iranian drama Atabai, and the Palestinian bombing doc Eleven Days in May.

Critical Week: Go ahead jump

Oscar nominations this week threw the awards season into some chaos, and put some races into focus. There will be lots of conjecture before the ceremony at the end of March. Then after several weeks with a drip-feed of big releases, three come along all at once. All three had late press screenings this week in London just before they opened. The most fun was Uncharted, a lively adventure that just about gets away with its simplistic script because Tom Holland is so ludicrously charming. And Mark Wahlberg almost keeps up with him, which is pretty impressive. Kenneth Branagh is back with another lavish but underwhelming Agatha Christie adaptation, Death on the Nile, which has lovely (mainly digital) Egyptian settings and an all-star cast that includes Gal Gadot, Armie Hammer, Letitia Wright, Russell Brand and an underused French and Saunders. And Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson find surprising chemistry in Marry Me, a romcom that never veers form the formula, but has some fun with it.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Flee • Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
ALL REVIEWS >

More offbeat films included Johnny Depp in the biopic Minimata, about a noted photojournalist raising awareness of toxic waste in 1970s Japan. It's well-made but a bit dull. Give or Take is a charming little drama about two men who share a grief and little else. Watching them find friendship is nicely underplayed. Small Body is a bold fable from Italy about a woman on an epic quest from the sea to the mountains. It's packed with provocative themes, and is deeply haunting. And I also watched the six short films featured on The French Boys 3, another collection of terrific small dramas that grapple with masculinity.

This coming week I'll be watching Naomi Watts in The Desperate Hour, Zoe Kravitz in Kimi, Jason Isaacs in Streamline, Max von Sydow in Echoes of the Past, the French coming-of-age drama A Night in the Fields and the surreal drama Strawberry Mansion. I'll also be at the press night for the London stage musical production of Saturday Night Fever.

Critical Week: Beach weather

The heatwave continues to bake Britain, with the promise of thunderstorms to cool things off this weekend. Cinemas are open to full capacity, and their air conditioning is a great way to escape the stickiness. Although there's still a sense that people are looking to stay safe from this new surge in the pandemic. Critics have been wearing masks at screenings, including M Night Shyamalan's new thriller Old, starring Thomasin McKenzie, Alex Wolff and Gael Garcia Bernal. It's an enjoyably head-spinning freak-out. Matt Damon stars Stillwater, which recently screened at Cannes. It's a big movie, overlong and a bit contrived, but beautifully performed by Damon, Camille Cottin, Abigail Breslin and especially little scene-stealer Lilou Siauvaud.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Night of the Kings • Kandisha
The Man With the Answers
PERHAPS AVOID:
Joe Bell
ALL REVIEWS >

Mark Wahlberg stars in Joe Bell, a solidly made true drama that kind of misses the central point of its homophobia theme. Nicolas Cage is terrific in the above-average offbeat drama Pig. Ben Platt and Lola Kirke are both strong in Broken Diamonds, a slightly too-gentle look at mental illness. The solid horror thriller The Boy Behind the Door has two excellent young teen stars and some properly nerve-jangling suspense. The Pebble and the Boy is a slightly awkward British road-trip drama infused with Mod culture. And the superb French thriller Kandisha puts a multi-cultural community at risk from a demon, while filling scenes with nuance.

Sundance Film Festival London returns to Picturehouse Central next week, and I have 12 in-person press screenings in the diary for that, plus Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt in Jungle Cruise, the drama Lorelei and horror The Offering.

Critical Week: Creation in isolation

With all film releases being online at the moment, studios are taking a few chances. Made in 2017, the JD Salinger biopic Rebel in the Rye has finally come out in the UK. The delay is surprising considering that it stars Nicholas Hoult (above), even if feels a bit lacklustre. Even more surprising, Bong Joon Ho's 2013 sci-fi action thriller Snowpiercer has never been released in Britain but is finally arriving this month, no doubt due to Bong's Oscar triumph (the delay was a Weinstein debacle). It was fun to revisit this bonkers classic. And Warner Bros released its animated blockbuster Scoob! straight to streaming, which is a shame for audiences who like to see high-quality animation on a big screen. It's a rather contrived corporate product, but fun too.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Boys on Film 20 • The County
Cassandro the Exotico!
ONLY OK:
Scoob! • Frankie
Rebel in the Rye

Lower profile films include the cheesy horror anthology Evil Little Things, which centres on three very creepy dolls; the apocalyptic epic Edge of Extinction is gripping, even if it reveals both the ambition and inexperience of its filmmakers; the Spanish romcom I Love You, Stupid is predictable but pointed and engaging; the hugely involving Mexican drama I'm No Longer Here has a strikingly well-observed sense of style and music; the beautifully made Icelandic drama The County expertly stirs up some righteous rage at corruption; and Peccadillo's 20th short film collection is released to celebrate the distributor's 20th anniversary. Boys on Film 20: Heaven Can Wait is an essential set of LGBT-themed shorts, even if the 11 clips are a mixed bag.

The next movies on my to-watch list are: Issa Rae in The Lovebirds, John Hawkes in End of Sentence, Denis Menochet in Only the Animals, the Argentine thriller Intuition, the Korean thriller The Man Standing Next, and the Thai documentary Krabi 2562.

Critical Week: Heat and dust

Screenings are only just starting up in the new year, so I've only seen a few things this week. Although much of the attention for film critics centred around reacting to Sunday's rather odd line-up of Golden Globe winners and Wednesday's just as bizarre collection of Bafta nominations. Meanwhile, I saw Love Sonia, a powerful Indian drama about a 17-year-old (Mrunal Thakur, above) who is trafficked from her small village to Mumbai and beyond. It's pretty harrowing, but strikingly well made and urgently important. Instant Family is a rare comedy with a more serious, meaty theme, as Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne play a couple that fosters three siblings. It's played for laughs, but also remembers that the events carry weight as well.

Jellyfish is a small British drama about a feisty 15-year-old (the amazing Liv Hill) who takes care of her two younger siblings as well as her clearly unwell mother. It's superbly well written and directed, with a bracing realism that brings out the deeper themes. Robert Guedigian's ensemble drama The House by the Sea is very French: lots of people sitting around agonising about their lives, relationships, the changing world. But it's beautifully assembled and full of moving moments.

The screening schedule is picking up now, and over the next week I have M Night Shyamalan's Glass, Tom Everett Scott in I Hate Kids, the sinkhole horror The Hole in the Ground, the acclaimed Italian drama Happy as Lazzaro, and the coming-of-age drama Pond Life. I'm also in the final week of prep as chair and chief organiser of the 39th London Critics' Circle Film Awards. So it'll be a busy one!

Critical Week: Inter-connected

In this job, it can be frustrating watching film festivals like Venice and Toronto from afar: clearly these are the movies that will factor in at year-end, yet those of us not at the festival have to wait, and wait, wondering when we'll be able to see them so we can write about them and consider them for the awards we vote in. Clearly I was spoiled by being in Venice for the last couple of years! Anyway, we caught up with one notorious title, a Sundance film that will play at the London Film Festival next month: Assassination Nation is a full-on satire of modern teen culture, playing on social media and toxic masculinity as it heads into its horrific climax.

The rest of the week was eclectic: Mark Wahlberg and director Peter Berg reteam for another action thriller, Mile 22, and the film feels loud and thin, even for them. The Rider is an exquisite doc-style drama about a South Dakota rodeo cowboy grappling with a new reality. Lucky is a delicate, witty tale about a salty 90-year-old war veteran in rural Arizona, played by the wonderful then-90-year-old Harry Dean Stanton. A Boy. A Girl. A Dream. is a beautifully shot single-take romantic odyssey through nighttime Los Angeles starring Omari Hardwick and Meagan Good. And Lost Child tells a creepy story from the backwoods of the Ozarks, cleverly weaving folklore with current social issues.

A little further afield, José had its world premiere in Venice, and I got to see it in London: it's a powerful drama from Guatemala about a young gay man who finally begins to think he might be able to have a happy life. Complex and beautifully made, it won the Queer Lion. Another gay-themed drama, Sodom is a contained British drama set in Berlin about two strangers whose lives cross momentously. From Palestine, Wajib is a quietly involving look at an estranged father and son going about their family duty before a wedding. And Bisbee '17 is a strikingly original doc that explores events in the Arizona mining town a century ago.

This coming week is a little slower than usual - no idea why that might be, as there are plenty of films on the horizon that I need to see. Anyway, I'll be catching up with Willem Dafoe in Padre, Mischa Barton in The Basement, Sam Sheperd in Never Here and Rory Culkin in The Song of Sway Lake, among other things, no doubt.

Requisite Blog Photo: Wine not guns

Critical Week: Never surrender

It was a disparate collection of movies this past week. The most obviously prestigious one was Darkest Hour, which chronicles the first month of Winston Churchill's first term as UK prime minister. It's a lavishly made film, anchored by a bullish performance from Gary Oldman. At the other end of the spectrum, Daddy's Home Two reunites Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell (plus Mel Gibson and John Lithgow as their dads) for a holiday comedy that's amusing without doing anything very new. More ambitious, The Dinner features strong performances from Richard Gere, Steve Coogan, Laura Linney and Rebecca Hall, although the film might be too tricky for its own good.

There were also three more true stories. Josh Brolin and Miles Teller lead the firefighting drama Only the Brave, which gets a little too caught up in its heroic machismo. Colin Firth stars in the sailing adventure The Mercy, a riveting tale with an enigmatic core. And The Man With the Iron Heart is a great story of the Nazi resistance, thrown out of balance with its duelling plot-strands starring Jason Clarke, Rosamund Pike, Jack O' Connell and Jack Reynor.

I'm travelling over the next week or so, and not sure what I'll be able to catch up with along the way. Targeted films include Justice League, Wonder, Thank You for Your Service, The Disaster Artist and The Current War. I'll be posting comments whenever I can...

Critical Week: Trust no one

There were two very different action movies screened to the press this past week. Edgar Wright's Baby Driver is a whizzy thriller packed with gimmicky filmmaking touches and snappy performances from the likes of Ansel Elgort, Jamie Foxx, Eliza Gonzalez and Jon Hamm (above), plus Kevin Spacey, Lily James and others. Michael Bay's Transformers: The Last Knight, the fifth in the series, is a cacophonous adventure that looks pretty awesome on Imax 3D but is a painful two and a half hours without a coherent story or characters.

Outside the mainstream, we also had a screening of Phyllida Lloyd's bracingly inventive Julius Caesar, a filmed version of her female-prison set version of Shakespeare's eerily resonant play. Scribe is a Hitchcockian thriller from Belgium starring Francois Cluzet as a man pulled into a political nightmare that seems to be actually taking place right now in the world around us. Tom of Finland is a gripping if somewhat mannered biopic about the unassuming man who completely changed the world's image of masculinity with his hyper-macho illustrations. Risk is Laura Poitras' long-in-the-works doc about Julian Assange, whose enigmatic nature infects this film. And City of Ghosts is the stunning, essential documentary about a group of brave journalists covering Daesh's destruction of their hometown Raqqa, Syria.

As the East End Film Festival continues in London, the Edinburgh Film Festival gets underway in Scotland. And this week's press screenings include the animated sequel Despicable Me 3, Ryan Reynolds in The Hitman's Bodyguard, Armie Hammer in Final Portrait, the French period drama The Death of Louis XIV, the Indian drama Hotel Salvation, and the Baltic road movie You Can't Escape Lithuania.

Critical Week: Show some style

There were a couple of big animated movies screened for London critics this past week. First up was Sing, Garth Jennings' lively musical-animals romp, which comes complete with a witty satirical swipe at TV talent competitions. There was also Disney's Moana, a gorgeously animated South Pacific adventure with a rather fluffy plot but engaging characters.

Other mainstream movies included Robert Zemeckis' World War II romantic drama Allied, which is overproduced but has a great story and solid leads in Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. Mark Wahlberg reteams with director Peter Berg for another true story in Patriots Day, sharply recounting the Boston Marathon bombing with raw emotion and nerve-jangling suspense. And Billy Bob Thornton returns for Bad Santa 2, which has its moments but is undermined by a cheap, rather mean script.

A little further afield, Briana Evigan stars in the high-concept drama Love Is All You Need, with inverts social ideas about sexuality to make a pungent statement, although the film is melodramatic and rather corny. And the engaging, sweet and ultimately shattering Italian teen drama One Kiss has a powerful message about diversity and subtle bigotry.

Screenings coming up this week include Nicole Kidman in Lion, Annette Bening in 20th Century Women, the noir thriller Kiss Me Kill Me and the documentary Cameraperson. And I also have a few for-your-consideration titles to watch before voting starts in various awards groups over the next few weeks.

Critical Week: She's gonna blow!

Back from Venice, I had a week to recover before being hit by two big film festivals at home - the 24th Raindance starts on Wednesday, and press screenings for the 60th London Film Festival (5-16 Oct) started on Monday. But we also need to watch normal releases coming into cinemas, and the biggest this week was Deepwater Horizon, starring Mark Wahlberg as the super-heroic supervisor who kicks into action mode as the biggest oil spill in US history unfolds off the coast of Louisiana. The film is very well made, but relentlessly celebrates its machismo.

We also had Renee Zellweger in the surprisingly entertaining sequel Bridget Jones's Baby, David Oyelowo and Lupita Nyong'o in the genuinely inspiring true drama Queen of Katwe, Daniel Radcliffe and Toni Collette in the intense undercover thriller Imperium, and Sam Neill in the absolutely delightful Kiwi adventure Hunt for the Wilderpeople.

From Ireland, Emma Greenwell stars in the gently amiable but also nicely pointed gardening drama Dare to Be Wild. And there were three docs: filmmaker Brian De Palma takes us through his career in the aptly titled De Palma, a vivid depiction of the past 60 years of Hollywood. The Guv'nor energetically traces the life of British boxer and enforcer Lenny McLean, largely through the eyes of his son Jamie. And Francofonia is Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Sokurov's witty, experimental exploration of the Louvre (it's a companion piece to his 2002 Hermitage drama Russian Ark).

I'll report on London festival films once that event kicks off, and also on Raindance movies I catch up with. Other movies in the diary this week include Emily Blunt in The Girl on the Train, Mel Gibson in Blood Father, Luke Treadaway in A Street Cat Named Bob and Anne Fontaine's The Innocents.

Critical Week: All hands on deck

London critics caught up this past week with Ron Howard's watery epic In the Heart of the Sea, starring Chris Hemsworth. It's an impressive film, based on the story that inspired Moby Dick and plotted like a small indie film rather than the blockbuster it looks like, which may not help its box office prospects. Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell star in Daddy's Home, a comedy pitting a father against a stepdad. It's funny and rather lightweight. Taron Egerton stars in a biopic about Britain's most notorious Winter Olympian Eddie the Eagle, a crowdpleaser costarring Hugh Jackman. And Matthias Schoenaerts continues his stream of superb performances this year in the creepy Belgian PTSD drama Disorder.

And there was just one press screening of the year's most anticipated movie, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, the 30-years-later sequel to 1983's Return of the Jedi reuniting stars Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, plus a terrific collection of young actors including Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson. It's a rousing adventure that harks back constantly to the original trilogy. And it relaunches the franchise in energetic style.

Between screenings, most of my week has been spent organising the nominations announcement for the London Critics' Circle Film Awards on Tuesday 15th December (see the FULL LIST OF NOMINEES). This coming week I'll catch up on nominees I may have missed, plus the Jason Sudeikis comedy Sleeping With Other People and two Zac Efron movies: the comedy Dirty Grandpa with Robert DeNiro and the drama At Any Price with Dennis Quaid.

Critical week: Hive mentality

A couple of big films screened to the London press this week, including Marvel's latest blockbuster Ant-Man, a hilariously engaging action romp that's sure to win over just about everyone in the audience. The adult comedy Ted 2 carries on the story of Mark Wahlberg and his best pal, a talking teddy bear voiced by Seth MacFarlane. And its nonstop barrage of adult-aimed humour is packed with laugh-out-loud moments. Saoirse Ronan is superb as always in Brooklyn, an emotional epic about a young woman migrating from Ireland to America in the 1950s.

There were also two very different documentaries: The Salt of the Earth is the stunning story of photographer Sebastao Salgado, who changed the world (and himself) with his daring, potent photos of humanity and nature, while The Nightmare is a gimmicky doc about sleep paralysis told as a horror freak-out without any expert commentary. There was also the inventive British indie thriller 51 Degrees North shows considerable promise, even if the found-footage structure leaves it somewhat fragmented. And the American indie Angels With Tethered Wings felt rather thrown together with jarringly contradictory tones in each plot thread, amateurish direction and a cast that can't keep up.

This coming week we have Ryan Reynolds in Self/Less, James Franco in True Story, Diane Keaton and Morgan Freeman in Ruth & Alex, Craig Roberts in Just Jim, the horror thriller The Gallows, the animated adventure Maya the Bee, the romance doc Looking for Love and two horror comedies: 100 Bloody Acres and Dude Bro Party Massacre III.

Critical Week: Postcard from La-la Land

In rainy Los Angeles, I've been able to catch up with several awards-season contenders at Oscar-consideration screenings around the city. The highlight was a raucously enjoyable screening of Into the Woods at the Writers Guild, including a spontaneous mid-film applause break after the show-stopping princely duet Agony. With an up-for-it all-star cast (Anna Kendrick is the film's soul, Chris Pine is the scene-stealer, Meryl Streep [above] gets the big numbers), the film is pure joy - then turns satisfyingly serious for the post-happy ending final act. Side note: the stage musical was my first-ever Broadway show, on a visit to New York back in the late-80s. 

The other highlight was a screening of Selma at the Directors Guild, followed by a memorable Q&A with director Ava DuVernay and lead actor David Oyelowo, both of whom deserve serious awards recognition for a remarkably grounded, resonant, relevant drama about three momentous months in the life of Martin Luther King. There were at least four standing ovations! Also this week: Bradley Cooper is excellent as a real-life military marksman in Clint Eastwood's grippingly stark American Sniper, and Mark Wahlberg is solid as an irritatingly unlikable guy in Rupert Wyatt's remake of The Gambler.

This coming week, before I return to London this weekend, I am planning to catch Angelina Jolie's inspirational true drama Unbroken, Tim Burton's painting-scandal biopic Big Eyes, and Peter Jackson's final Tolkien film The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Then back in London I'll have one week to see the rest of this year's contenders before voting deadlines in the four awards I participate in: London Critics' Circle, Online Film Critics Society, Fipresci and Galeca's Dorian Awards.

Critical Week: Metal-on-metal

Having opted to take a holiday the last week of June, I missed key press screenings of two July blockbuster sequels. But I caught up with them this week. Transformers: Age of Extinction is yet another loud and incoherent robot fighting extravaganza from Michael Bay - just as ludicrous as the previous films while wasting an all-new cast including Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer and acclaimed rising star Jack Reynor, plus this episode's requisite scantily clad female Nicola Peltz. Fortunately, I cleansed the memory of that movie from my system with How to Train Your Dragon 2, a strong film in its own right with a startlingly complex script, unusually detailed animation and the most thrilling movie action sequences we've seen all year.

Also this week, I caught up with Philip Seymour Hoffman's intriguing but relatively thin Philadelphia drama God's Pocket; Michael Caine in the engaging but somewhat lightweight French drama Mr Morgan's Last Love; the rather too-repressed but sharply well-made period drama A Promise, starring Rebecca Hall and Alan Rickman; the moving and visceral American indie Hide Your Smiling Faces; the extremely well-observed Danish mystery thriller Keeper of Lost Causes; and the blackly comical Spanish zombie-soccer thriller Goal of the Dead, which actually has its moments. There were also two artful but deeply pretentious epics: from Mexico, Julian Hernandez's I Am Happiness on Earth is a sensual exploration of physical connections. And with Norte, the End of History, gifted Filipino filmmaker Lav Diaz takes an unnecessary four hours to tell a darkly involving story about crime and unjust punishment. I also managed to revisit Bob Fosse's classic 1972 film version of Cabaret, starring a particularly fabulous Oscar-winning Liza Minnelli.

This coming week, we have the Daniel Radcliffe rom-com What If, the acclaimed British feel-good drama Pride, the British football drama Believe, the Britain's Got Talent-inspired Pudsey the Dog: The Movie, and the Aussie skateboarding movie All This Mayhem, among other things.

On the Road: Frozen, alone and fearsome

After only watching two films in the past two weeks, I had a bit of a flurry this weekend in Los Angeles, starting with Disney's new animated movie Frozen, about two sisters (voiced by Kristen Bella and Idina Menzel) struggling with what seems to be a family curse. Based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, the plot has some real weight and the characters are unusually strong, offering a strong twist on the usual Disney formula . Although the filmmakers couldn't resist filling the screen with silly jokes and comic relief characters, the animation is gorgeous and the themes are handled with a refreshing lightness,

I also had a couple of awards-consideration screenings on Saturday, my first two in Los Angeles. Both were pretty harrowing films, for different reasons. First was the true thriller Lone Survivor, in which Mark Wahlberg, Ben Foster, Taylor Kitsch and Emile Hirsch get into serious trouble on a mission in Afghanistan. It's riveting and exhausting, and a bit too rah-rah heroic for its own good. But it's also electrically charged and sharply well made. Second was the dysfunctional drama August: Osage County, starring Meryl Streep as a fearsome matriarch who locks horns (and then some) with her equally tetchy daughter Julia Roberts. The ace ensemble includes Chris Cooper, Margo Martindale, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ewan McGregor, Abigail Breslin, Juliette Lewis and Julianne Nicholson. And the insights from playwright/screenwriter Tracy Letts are startlingly honest. It sometimes feels hugely over-dramatic, but every scene strikes a nerve.

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.

Critical Week: Through the dangerzone

Speed was the name of the game at press screenings this week, as critics boarded Disney's Planes, the spin-off from Pixar's Cars movies; Ron Howard's Formula One drama Rush, about the rivalry-respect between 1970s champs James Hunt and Niki Lauda; Johnny Depp's latest wacky sidekick in The Lone Ranger, which is bloated but more fun than expected; and Mark Wahlberg and Dwayne Johnson in Michael Bay's Pain & Gain, an over-pumped comedy based on a true story of torture and murder (!).

Our pulses slowed a bit for the all-star sex-addiction comedy-drama Thanks for Sharing, with Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow, Josh Gad, Tim Robbins and Alecia Moore (better known as Pink); the dark drama Ain't Them Bodies Saints, with Rooney Mara and Dane DeHaan; the warm, funny and extremely telling Saudi drama Wadjda; and two docs: the straightforward biographical Hawking and an exploration of privacy-erosion in Terms and Conditions May Apply. Finally, we were jolted back out of our seats by a horror double bill: Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga in the demonic possession chiller The Conjuring, and a family under siege by masked killers in You're Next.

Coming up this week: Hugh Jackman is The Wolverine (again), those all-star retired killers are back for RED 2, Sandra Bullock teams with Melissa McCarthy for The Heat, there's more muscled men in skirts in Hammer of the Gods, Ulrich Seidl closes out his trilogy with Paradise: Hope, The Great Hip Hop Hoax documents Scots pretending to be American rappers, And we get a look at a reissued-remastered version of the 1981 epic Heaven's Gate.

Critical Week: An actor's second skin

For me, the biggest event of the week was a visit to the V&A's Hollywood Costume exhibition, showcasing hundreds of iconic movie costumes - from the silent era up to this past year. It's a mind-boggling collection, and difficult to pick favourites. Obvious ones include gowns worn on screen by goddesses like Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo. But I really enjoyed the two Harrison Ford items - an expanded exploration of each item of Indiana Jones' costume, and the actual Han Solo outfit. There's also a superb section featuring Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro, and several round-table discussions between actors, costume designers and directors (for example: Tippi Hedren, Edith Head and Alfred Hitchcock "discussing" The Birds). Unmissable.

As for screenings, there were two big action movies - Arnold Schwarzenegger and Forest Whitaker in The Last Stand and Mark Wahlberg and Russell Crowe in Broken City - and a big weepy - Josh Duhamel in Safe Haven. Sorry, but I can't say anything about these films just yet - embargoes apply. I can, however, confirm that the two revival films I saw this week were wonderful: the 3D conversion of my favourite Pixar movie Monsters Inc and a big screen revival of A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor at their most achingly gorgeous. And I quite enjoyed the subtle, low-budget comedy The Men Next Door.

This coming week is pretty dominated by the 33rd London Critics' Circle Film Awards on Sunday night - I am the chair of the awards committee, so am thoroughly involved in organising the ceremony. It should be great fun as always - and I'll offer a full report. Screening-wise, we have James McAvoy in Welcome to the Punch, Pierce Brosnan in Love Is All You Need, and Alex Gibney's documentary Mea Maxima Culpa, among others.