Critical Week: Keep an eye out

Battling an eight-hour jetlag from Seoul, I dove straight back into action with screenings and deadlines here in London. It'll take awhile before I feel normal, but I'm getting there. And it's nice to have some intriguing films to fill the space between blockbusters. For example, Shortcomings is a terrific comedy with a superb Asian-American perspective, starring Justin H Lin and Sherry Cola as friends grappling with their own flaws as they seek romance. And then there's Tom Cruise's seventh franchise entry Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, a thunderously entertaining action thriller that holds the attention for nearly three hours with epic stuntwork and a knotted if absurd plot. From Germany, the drama Afire astutely explores the artistic sensibility in an offbeat tale set in a holiday home next to a forest on fire. And from Belgium, Easy Tiger is an almost silent drama about a man trying to work out his own nature.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
The Damned Don't Cry
Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning
Afire • Amanda
Name Me Lawand • Easy Tiger
ALL REVIEWS >

I saw five films on four flights halfway around the world: Return to Seoul is a gorgeous drama about a Korean-American girl trying to come to grips with her ethnic identity; Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson team up for the corny but enjoyable action comedy The Man From Toronto; Adam Driver finds himself in Earth's distant past in the derivative but enjoyable dinosaur thriller 65; a Spanish water polo team battles trite internal rivalries as they head to a rousing gold-medal Olympic match in The Final Game; plus a revisit to a favourite musical Hairspray. Back in London, I also attended the lively press night for Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing.

Coming up this next week are Margot Robbie in Greta Gerwig's Barbie, Cillian Murphy in Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus in You Hurt My Feelings, Greta Lee in Joy Ride, the thriller The Dive and the docs Kokomo City and Bobi Wine: The People's President. I'll also attend a couple of events at Sadler's Wells Flamenco Festival (reviews here soon).

Critical Week: Fooling no one

It's been a busy week in the press screening rooms this week, and I saw a few films that have been among my favourites of the year so far. Sundance award winner American Animals (above) is a stunner, a true heist thriller that happily breaks genre rules. Performances are terrific, and Bart Layton's direction is masterful. And Mission: Impossible - Fallout was a very pleasant surprise, easily the best in this six-film series, and the most satisfying action blockbuster of the summer. Tom Cruise even manages to deepen the iconic character he first played 22 years ago.

Playing on our social media culture, Searching is an inventive thriller that is viewed on various screens, yet is also taut, moving and packed with superb performances. Jon Hamm is excellent in The Negotiator (aka Beirut), a gritty and very well-made thriller set in the chaos of early-80s Lebanon. Hot Summer Nights features another solid turn from Timothee Chalamet, but the film itself is too hyperactive and grim to be the pastiche it seems to want to be. And the documentary King Cohen is a joy for movie fans, especially lovers of cult movie guru Larry Cohen.

There were also three small British films: Apostasy is simply excellent, a fair-minded depiction of a crisis within a family of Jehovah's Witnesses that makes us think about our own belief systems. Strangeways Here We Come is an uneven black comedy about a group of neighbours who concoct a murderous plan. And Possum is a somewhat pretentious arthouse thriller about a man with the creepiest ventriloquist dummy in movie history. Finally, the American web-series Paper Boys has been compiled into an involving, nicely flowing little feature about young people trying to start their lives in San Francisco.

This coming week I'll finally catch up with Ant-Man and the Wasp, plus the comedy The Spy Who Dumped Me, offbeat WWII adventure The Captain, coming-of-age drama Brotherly Love, horror comedy Fanged Up, French WWI epic The Guardians, Italian mystery A Sicilian Ghost Story, Portuguese horror The Forest of the Lost Souls, anime fantasy Mirai, and the doc The Eyes of Orson Welles.

Critical Week: Never grow up

I took it relatively easy this week - only six films! And I neglected all of my screener discs and links to escape London for the rainy weekend. So this coming week will be a bit of a catch-up movie marathon. At screenings, there were several enjoyable surprises. Meryl Streep (above) is of course terrific as an ageing rock chick in the snappy family drama Ricki and the Flash. Tom Cruise (below) is lean and ready for action in the dark and involvingly gritty Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. And the terrific Emily Blunt is lean and tough in the riveting drug cartel thriller Sicario, ably supported by Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro on top form.

Less a horror movie than a dark drama about bullying, The Gift is a solid freak-out starring Jason Bateman, Rebecca Hall and actor turned promising writer-director Joel Edgerton. Danny Huston, Matthew Goode and Joe Cole do what they can with the waterlogged script of the underwater thriller Pressure. And Ian Ziering and Tara Reid are back for another silly romp in Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No, which sees the budget increase but not the filmmakers' skills. At least they keep finding new ways to make us laugh.

Coming up this week, we have Amy Schumer in Trainwreck, Adam Sandler in Pixels, the teen romance Paper Towns, the star-packed doc Unity, the historical British drama Captain Webb and the Russian drama Stand. Plus the aforementioned catching up.