Critical Week: Camera ready

It's been a ridiculously busy week, with too many film releases and too many screenings as well, perhaps because Venice Film Festival ended last weekend. Eclectic screenings this week have included the terrific Gael Garcia Bernal in the biopic Cassandro, a colourfully well-made biopic about the exotico wrestler. Ken Loach's latest, and perhaps final, film The Old Oak is a triumph, a staggeringly clear-eyed depiction of ugly British attitudes with an emotive glimmer of hope. And Pablo Larrain's El Conde is a viciously inventive satire that depicts Augusto Pinochet as a 250-year-old vampire with a jaw-dropping mentor.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Golden Delicious • Love Life
Cassandro • Fremont
A Haunting in Venice
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Kenneth Branagh is back this week with another all-star Agatha Christie adaptation, and A Haunting in Venice is the best one yet, a superbly gothic mystery thriller packed with shifty characters. Michael Jai White directs and stars in Outlaw Johnny Black, an enjoyable 1970s style action-comedy Western. Aaron Pierre lights up the screen in the small Canadian drama Brother, a dark drama celebrating tenacious immigrant mothers. And Pablo Berger's animated Robot Dreams is a pure delight, tracing the complex friendship between a lonely dog and his robot friend.

And there were even more: Bolan's Shoes is a melodramatic British drama that's beautifully acted but deliberately enigmatic. The Latent Image is an inventively freaky meta-thriller about storytelling; 20,000 Species of Bees is a moving Spanish drama about an 8-year-old wondering why he feels so uneasy about his gender; Gurkha Warrior is a skilfully made rah-rah celebration of the military prowess of the Gurkhas; and Samsara is an offbeat experimental drama that takes the audience on an inventive trip between lives. There were two docs: Carlos is a chatty visit with legendary musician Carlos Santana, while Summer Qamp profiles an extraordinary retreat centre for queer kids in rural Canada. There were also live shows Deeper and Deeper and Myra Dubois: Be Well.

Films this coming week include the all-star action sequel Expend4bles, Almodovar's Western A Strange Way of Life, Michael Caine and Glenda Jackson in The Great Escaper, Accused, Relax I'm From the Future, Ballywater, Rebel and the live show The White Factory.

Critical Week: Looking good

London critics finally had a chance to catch up with Spike Lee's Cannes prize-winning BlacKkKlansman, and it was well worth the wait. The film is a fierce, skilfully told true story with lots of present-day resonance. John David Washington (son of Denzel) is terrific in the title role. Meanwhile, the week's blockbuster was the tongue-in-cheek guilty pleasure The Meg, with Jason Statham doing what he does best, diving into the action and winking at the camera. But the latest near-future young adult adventure The Darkest Minds was a disappointment, despite a strong cast led by Amandla Stenberg and Harris Dickinson.

Outside the mainstream, we had the animated true story Sgt Stubby: An Unlikely Hero, which is involving and very moving. Making a Killing is a wildly entertaining true crime romp, told with heavy doses of irony. Tides is a meandering, improv-style British comedy-drama set on a canal boat holiday. And The King is a staggeringly clever documentary about Elvis Presley, layered with a telling exploration of American culture today.

There were also three excellent European films. From France, The Guardians is a gorgeous drama about women who run the family farm while their men are off fighting WWI. From Germany, The Captain is a pitch-black satire about a deserter who assumes power as an officer during the final weeks of WWII. And from Iceland, the unnerving, involving Under the Tree weaves irony into a darkly witty story of a war between two neighbours.

Films screening in this coming week include Ewan McGregor in Christopher Robin, Ansel Elgort in Billionaire Boys Club, Hugo Weaving in Black '47, the British comedy The Festival, the coming-of-age drama We the Animals, the zombie apocalypse thriller Redcon-1, the German drama Paths, and the ballet documentary Nureyev.