Critical Week: Troubled teens

After a very nice break, screenings have started up in London again, and I've had a couple this week. It's been a gentle start to a new year, with the usual offbeat January releases alongside awards-season gems that are being released this month. My first screening was the comedy-horror Get Away, written by and starring Nick Frost (Sebastian Croft and Maisie Ayres, pictured, play his kids). It's nutty and gleefully grisly enough to keep fans happy, but is a bit undercooked. Claes Bang stars in a big-scale account of the Swiss legend of William Tell. The settings are gorgeous and the starry cast is terrific, even if it's never hugely involving.

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From France, the always enjoyable Laure Calamy stars in It's Raining Men, a comedy about a middle-aged woman who tries to spice up her marriage by hooking up with other men. It feels a little simplistic, but is likeable enough. A UK production filmed in India, filmmaker Sandhya Suri's Santosh is a riveting if slightly underpowered procedural thriller with very strong character beats. And the meta-comedy Extremely Unique Dynamic his hilariously packed with layers of gags as it highlights the friendship between filmmakers Harrison Xu and Ivan Leung.

This coming week, among the films I'll be watching are Michelle Yeoh in Star Trek: Section 31, Julia Garner in Wolf Man, Tom Hanks in Here and the documentaries Changing the Game and Zodiac Killer Project.

Critical Week: Chasing monsters

It's been another eclectic week in the screening rooms around London. First up, there was Slaughterhouse Rulez, a blackly comical horror romp that mixes pastiche with nastiness. The idea is great, but the film is a little choppy. Juliet, Naked is a gently engaging British comedy-drama with romantic inclinations featuring nicely understated turns from Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke and Chris O'Dowd. And Monsters and Men is a provocative American drama about three young men in Brooklyn who are pushed into a corner regarding white-on-black police violence. Its light touch makes it notable.

We had a festive Halloween screening of Hell Fest, a throwback teen horror romp so bog-standard that it's neither scary or funny. Lars Von Trier's The House That Jack Built is an epic-length exploration of a serial killer (a superb Matt Dillon), expertly made and fiercely provocative. And from France, Boys [Jonas] is a finely acted low-key drama about a young man confronting an event in his past through a series of encounters that won't let him go.

Over the next 10 days, I'll travel to Greece to be on the international critics' (Fipresci) jury at the 59th Thessaloniki International Film Festival. While there, I'm also planning to catch some festival films I've missed so far, including Alfonso Cuaron's Roma, Berlin winner Touch Me Not, London winner Joy, Lazlo Nemes' Sunset and Ben Wheatley's Happy Birthday, Colin Burstead.

Critical Week: Creatures of the night

Critics who missed the latest Jim Jarmusch movie Only Lovers Left Alive at the London Film Festival in October had a chance to catch up with this enjoyably offbeat, meandering vampire drama starring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston (above). It certainly was a nice contrast to more crowd-pleasing fare like Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, an entertaining but run-of-the-mill spy thriller with a beefy tone and no substance at all. Even more fun, Cuban Fury is a British comedy-drama starring Nick Frost as a now-(over)grown child dancer trying to get back into the salsa groove. It has a terrific supporting cast including Olivia Colman, Rashida Jones and Chris O'Dowd.

A little further afield were two American indies: the comedy-drama G.B.F., a gay spin on Mean Girls that tries to be colourful and silly but actually has some real depth, and the prison drama Jamesy Boy, a true story that can't resist the usual watered-down cliches. Even less commercial were the overwrought, sometimes histrionic low-budget British drama Celluloid and the indulgent art-installation piece Visitors, which at least looks pretty and has a lush Philip Glass score.

This coming week is a bit thin on screenings (at the moment). The only things in the diary are the Russian epic Stalingrad, the festival head-spinner The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears and the dark British drama The Fold. But that gives us more time to obsess about Oscar and Bafta nominations, and to prepare for the 34th London Critics' Circle Film Awards on Sunday 2nd February. I'm the chair of that event, so I certainly won't have spare time on my hands.

Festival Days: You've been papped!

The East End Film Festival winds up on Wednesday with its closing night gala screening of the biopic Lovelace, starring Amanda Seyfried (pictured) as the pornstar turned anti-porn crusader. Directed by Oscar-winning filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, the film has divided opinions due to its selective, doc-style approach, but it's still jarringly revelatory.

Other East End Film Fest titles I've caught up with include Ben Wheatley's brain-spinning 17th century Civil War odyssey A Field in England, which also opened in Britain on Friday (simultaneously released on DVD, VOD and screened on Film4). It's impossible to unpack, but is also unmissably insane. Any Day Now is a punchy drama about equality starring the superb Alan Cumming and Garret Dillahunt, managing to make a vitally important point without becoming an issue movie. Prospects is a loose, honest doc about two young British boxers trying to make it through the amateur system to get to the Olympics. It's superbly assembled and almost painfully involving. I also attended two world premieres: The Brightest Colours Make Grey is a low-budget London relationship drama that looks amazing on the big screen and benefits from a perhaps too-literate script. And Bruno & Earlene Go to Vegas is also gorgeously shot. It's a lively road movie that scrambles issues of sexuality for its characters. Cast and crew members were on hand from both films for Q&As.

Outside of the festival things were just a bit more massive, starting with Guillermo Del Toro's entry in the robotic blockbuster genre Pacific Rim, which is expertly assembled but ultimate sinks due to its underwhelming script. A lot more fun will be had when Edgar Wright's The World's End opens the following week - a raucous reunion of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, along with Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan and Rosamund Pike, all creating memorable characters amid the blind-drunk chaos of an apocalyptic pub crawl.

This coming week, British critics finally get a look at Johnny Depp in The Lone Ranger and Michael Bay's Pain & Gain, as well as Disney's Cars spin-off Planes, the Sundance winner Ain't Them Bodies Saints and the horror romp The Conjuring.