Critical Week: On the run

It's been the hottest week in Britain for 60 years, and I don't think I've stopped sweating for more than about 30 seconds. Great weather for heading to the cinema, if only there were press screenings! But no, I've watched everything this week in my very warm home office. And it's been another eclectic collection of films. Claes Bang (above) is terrific in The Bay of Silence, a slightly muddled mystery that spins a twisty Hitchcockian plot, costarring Brian Cox and Olga Kurylenko. Waiting for the Barbarians boasts the powerhouse trio of Mark Rylance, Johnny Depp and Robert Pattinson, all excellent in an insightful and challenging exploration of imperialism.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Big Fur • Babyteeth
Waiting for the Barbarians
PERHAPS AVOID:
Endless
FULL REVIEWS >

Ethan Hawke is superb as Tesla in an odd, artful biopic that loosely depicts the genius' life story and celebrates a complex man who is still changing the world. Alexandra Shipp stars in Endless, a relentlessly sappy romantic drama that ultimately lets her down. Roberto Benigni is perfectly cast as Geppetto in an earthy, faithful adaptation of the classic Italian novel Pinocchio. Jay Baruchel writes, directs and costars in the comic book thriller Random Acts of Violence, which starts very well before giving into its own into grisliness. Anthony LaPaglia stars in Pearl as a failed filmmaker who finds meaning through the teen daughter he never knew he had. Yes, it's as sentimental as it sounds, but also surprisingly edgy. And there were two docs: Barbara Kopple's astonishing Desert One offers astonishing firsthand accounts of the failed US rescue mission to free the hostages in 1980 Iran, while the entertaining Big Fur is a cheeky profile of a taxidermist trying to recreate a sasquatch for the world championships.

I'm taking a few days off this next week, but I have some films to watch before and after the break, including Jamie Foxx in Project Power, Janelle Monae in Antebellum, the animated adventure The One and Only Ivan, the British drama S.A.M, the revenge thriller Message Man and the Iranian drama Ava.

Critical Week: Kitties for Christmas

On Tuesday evening I was able to get into two huge press screenings, easily the most surreal double bill of the year. First up was Cats, Tom Hooper's bizarrely imagined adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's already bizarre musical. It looks like nothing you've seen before, awful and brilliant at the same time. Immediately after that, the critics shuffled across Leicester Square for the only press screening of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth film in the 42-year-long movie saga. It's very entertaining, but a little too carefully concocted to be the masterpiece we were hoping for.

Being busy planning the announcement of the London Critics Awards nominations, I didn't have a lot of time for screenings this week. But I did catch up with Ryan Reynolds in 6 Underground, a massively colourful action romp directed by Michael Bay with little concern for plot or character or coherence. The Courier is an odd patchwork action thriller, as it seems like stars Gary Oldman, Olga Kurylenko and William Moseley never met each other. But it's slick and fast. And Daniel Radcliffe continues to defy expectations, playing a real-life 1970s South African hippie activist in Escape From Pretoria, a grippingly straightforward prison-break movie with a political angle.

Over Christmas I'll be catching up with some late-season awards movies, and also binging on the TV series I've fallen behind on. I'm definitely looking forward to some down time, especially a slowdown in the glut of emails relating to the three film awards I vote for.

Requisite Blog Photo: Don't shoot

Critical Week: Lost in La La Land

I had never seen Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Russ Meyer's notorious 1970 romp that gets a special edition DVD release in the UK next week. So of course I had to sieze the chance to catch up with it ... and it's even more bonkers than I imagined. This is the raucous story of three young women who take their rock trio to Hollywood and fall in with all kinds of decadence, hedonism and wanton debauchery. Roger Ebert's script is so freeform that it feels like a spoof, especially with the hilariously moralistic epilogue. It's completely nuts. But also thoroughly groovy.

Also seen this week: Sebastian Silva's offbeat comedy-drama Nasty Baby, in which he stars with Kristen Wiig as best friends trying to conceive a child against the odds. It's strikingly well made, but the plot points are a bit heavy-handed. Benicio Del Toro is superb in A Perfect Day, a comedy-drama set in the Balkans in 1995. The M.A.S.H.-like vibe works, and the cast is great, but it feels oddly superficial. And Mavis! is a documentary about Mavis Staples, whose 50-year-career has spanned just about every genre of American pop even as she continues to fill her songs with hopeful messages. Not particularly notable as a film, but she's amazing.

This coming week we have screenings of the Casey Affleck action thriller Triple 9, the Oscar Isaac thriller Mojave, the Tim Roth drama Chronic, the Juliet Stevenson drama Departure, the Brazilian drama Aya Arcos and the adventure doc Meru.

And of course Sunday is the London Critics' Circle Film Awards at the May Fair Hotel - of which I am the chair - so organising the event is taking up most of my time this week. Watch this space for a full report and pics!

Critical Week: One last shot

Yes, UK critics saw another of the year's most anticipated films this week, the final instalment in the franchise: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2. The A-list cast and Suzanne Collins' terrific source material continue to make this a superior series, with a epic-sized conclusion that's packed with strongly emotional moments in between the action mayhem. Jennifer Lawrence's usual costar Bradley Cooper leads the cast of the super-chef drama Burnt, which never quite sells either the story or the too-fancy food, but it's watchable enough.

Also this past week, we had a look at two prestige films going for awards-season attention: Tom McCarthy's Spotlight is a superb investigative drama about a news team (led byMark Ruffalo and Michael Keaton) looking into Boston's abusive priest scandal; Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies is a stately period thriller starring Tom Hanks as a negotiator navigating the tricky waters of Cold War Berlin.

At the other end of the spectrum, the nonsensical South African action movie Momentum stars a plucky Olga Kurylenko being chased by a scene-chomping James Purefoy. Somewhere in the middle, The Queen of Ireland is a fabulous, inspiring doc about Rory O'Neill and his iconic drag alter ego Panti Bliss; and the earthy, honest Mexican drama Velociraptor centres on two teens exploring their sexuality as the world is about to end.

I'll be in America over the next two weeks, so hope to catch up with several things that are out there but haven't screened here, including The Peanuts Movie, The 33, By the Sea, Love the Coopers and Secret in Their Eyes. We'll see how that goes! Watch this space...

Critical Week: Fields of gold

London-based critics finally had a chance to catch up with last year's Terrence Malick film To the Wonder, a deeply personal meditation on relationships and faith starring Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams (pictured), plus Olga Kurylenko. It's a swirling, virtually dialog-free drama that kind of spirals out of control in the final third, but leaves us thinking. The only real mainstream film last week was the enjoyable geriatric caper romp Stand Up Guys, with the all-star trio of Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin. I also had the chance to catch up with Roman Coppola's A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, an unhinged style-over-substance comedy-drama clearly based on elements from the life of star Charlie Sheen.

Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral is an exercise in style and substance, a gleamingly yucky futuristic tale of fandom taken to life-threatening extremes. Sammy's Great Escape is a sequel to 2010's A Turtle's Tale, and keeps us entertained with a slightly deranged script and a gloriously excessive use of 3D. Aussie filmmaker Cate Shortland's unnerving dramatic thriller Lore is so gorgeously well shot and naturalistically acted that we almost forget that it's set in Nazi Germany. The Argentine anthology Sexual Tension: Volatile is an intriguing collection of six shorts exploring unexpected attraction between men. And bringing things full circle, Muzaffer Ozdemir's loosely plotted Home (Yurt) is a deeply personal meditation on the effects of progress on nature in the mountainous wilds of Turkey.

Coming this week: Bruce Willis in A Good Day to Die Hard, the gothic teen romance Beautiful Creatures, Danny Dyer in Run for Your Wife, Elijah Wood in Maniac, Barry Levinson's found footage thriller The Bay and Hirokazu Koreeda's I Wish.