Critical Week: In your face

After a very long five-month lockdown, cinemas are once again open in the UK, and distributors are flooding screens with both new films and several that have been previously released online but really should get some big screen love. I'm hoping to revisit some titles over the coming weeks. New films I watched this week include Mainstream, which stars Andrew Garfield as an influencer who takes social media by storm. It's a bold, overreaching film that demands attention. On the big screen with an awesome sound system, I watched John Krasinski's sequel A Quiet Place Part II, once again starring Emily Blunt, Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe as a family trying to keep silent around terrifying monsters. It's a nail-biter, packed with thrillingly scary set-pieces.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Hating Peter Tatchell • Nomadland
Ammonite • Minari • Undergods
PERHAPS AVOID:
Those Who Wish Me Dead
Rare Beasts
ALL REVIEWS >

Less effective was the thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead, with Angelina Jolie as a tough guy smokejumper. The plot was even more contrived than that, but the filmmaking is solid. A Hitchcock homage, The Woman in the Window is gloriously well-made, with a terrific cast led by Amy Adams and a plot that barely holds water. Finn Whitehead stars in the loose, relaxed drama Port Authority, as a homeless teen who falls for a trans dancer. Another British-based animated drama from Studio Ghibli, Earwig and the Witch is visually innovative but narratively awkward. From Austria, Why Not You is an involving, very dark drama about a young man struggling in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. And from Australia, Hating Peter Tatchell is a riveting, expertly assembled doc about the groundbreaking London-based activist.

Oddly, press screenings seem to be re-opening very slowly, and I only have one in the diary for this coming week, namely the dark drama Zebra Girl. But I suspect more will come along soon. In the mean time, there are screener links to watch for Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead, Emma Stone in Cruella, the Hollywood romcom Introducing Jodea and the documentary A Space in Time. I also have some theatre and dance performances to attend, so watch for those reviews here.

Critical Week: Stargazing

The big news this week was Disney's decision to put Mulan on its streaming service, essentially robbing all distributors and exhibitors of their chance to make money from the film. It's a scary move that has of course shaken the industry badly, and everyone's waiting to see if this is the new normal. Although it's only likely to change if the pushback comes from the general public who want to see movies on big screens.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
La Llorona • I Used to Go Here
Around the Sun • Young Ahmed
PERHAPS AVOID:
Infamous • Endings Beginnings
FULL REVIEWS >

The films I saw this week were another eclectic bunch. There was the teen mystery What We Found (above), well-made and involving if not exceptional. Seth Rogen is excellent in two roles in An American Pickle, a watchable comedy-drama that never quite settles on a tone or theme. Gillian Jacobs brings her childish grown-up persona to I Used to Go Here, an insightful, knowing little comedy-drama. 

Bella Thorne can't make much of her underwritten character in Infamous, a crime-spree road movie that's high on style but low on coherence. Nat Wolff has a bit more to work with in Mortal, a darkly intriguing story about a young guy who discovers his god-like powers. The British two-hander Around the Sun has a witty, swirling structure that keeps the audience on its toes. From Algeria, Papicha is a powerful look at personal freedom in an oppressive society, only slightly over-egged. And from Guatemala, La Llorona is a masterful mix of deeply provocative social commentary and freak-out horror.

Coming up this next week, I have Robert Pattinson in Waiting for the Barbarians, Brian Cox in The Bay of Silence, Alexandra Shipp Endless, Anthony LaPaglia in Pearl, the doc Big Fur and a few more to get ahead on things so I can take a short break later this month.

Critical Week: I'll be right here

It was a bit of a mixed bag of screenings this past week, with a variety of expectations leading to so-so movies. Paper Towns has a terrific lead in Nat Wolff, with plenty of presence from Cara Delevingne, but the story never quite develops into anything truly meaningful. Amy Schumer brings her distinct brand of comedy to the big-screen in Trainwreck, with a superior leading-man performance from Bill Hader, but the script hedges too many bets, ultimately winding up as a standard rom-com. And Pixels proves that Adam Sandler needs to take a long break and work out if he wants to make movies anymore. According to this evidence, he gave up long ago.

More intriguing, The Lobster is the latest bit of amazing weirdness from Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth), a pointed relationship satire with Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz and Ben Whishaw. Max is a predictably slushy boy-and-his-dog movie sideswiped by an unnecessary arms-trade thriller subplot. Captain Webb is an enjoyably quirky low-budget British drama about the first man to swim the Channel, in 1875, but the narrative is pointlessly fragmented. From Ukraine, Stand is a harrowing Moscow-set drama about the result of government-sponsored bigotry against gay men. And the documentary Unity blends 100 starry narrators into a swirling collage about the meaning of humanity, concluding that we should all be vegetarians.

This coming week we have Michael Fassbender as Macbeth, Ben Foster as Lance Armstrong in The Program, and very, very late press screenings for the superhero remake Fantastic Four, the 60s-TV inspired action romp The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and the Monty Python gang's alien-invasion comedy Absolutely Anything.

Critical Week: High school blues

This week's most impressive debut came from Gia Coppola (Francis' granddaughter), adapting James Franco's internalised short story collection Palo Alto. A strikingly honest exploration of teen life, it also features a star-making lead performance from Jack Kilmer (Val's son) alongside Emma Roberts (pictured), Nat Wolff and Franco himself. The other two big movies shown to London critics this week were colon-wielding sequels. The Purge: Anarchy carries on the lawful carnage one year later from the opposite economical perspective, which drains the premise of the irony that made the first film work so well. And Planes: Fire & Rescue is actually an improvement, a better-written and occasionally enjoyable romp that's still marred by that ropey "World of Cars" premise.

Off the beaten path we had a fearless Gerard Depardieu as a shameless womanising politician in Abel Ferrara's controversial and superbly outrageous Welcome to New York; the charming but cheesy gay romantic comedy Love or Whatever; the edgy but somewhat familiar Danish youth drama Northwest; and two documentaries: Nick Cave's artful, fiercely inventive and vaguely pretentious 20,000 Days on Earth and Charlie Lyne's enjoyable romp through a decade of teen movies in Beyond Clueless.

In the coming week, we'll be catching up with the summer's big Marvel blockbuster Guardians of the Galaxy, Dwayne Johnson as Hercules, Jennifer Aniston in Life of Crime, Colin Firth in A Most Wanted Man, the next in the neverending franchise Step Up: All In, the indie sibling drama Tiger Orange, and Al Pacino's take on Oscar Wilde's Salome, plus the making-of doc Wild Salome.