Critical Week: Purging the underworld

Aside from films I saw as part of BFI Flare, I caught up this past week week with Keanu Reeves' latest career boost movie John Wick, a rippingly stylish revenge thriller that's far better than it has any right to be. Also enjoyable, but not quite as artistically ambitious, Fast & Furious 7 (aka Furious 7) is a thunderously entertaining step in the franchise, including a lot more emotion than these actors have attempted before. And they just about get away with it. The action stuntwork looked pretty cool on the Imax screen.

Further afield there was the superb Cliff Curtis in the dark and intense true story The Dark Horse; the astonishingly grim and unnerving Belgian thriller The Treatment, which compares chillingly with The Silence of the Lambs and Seven (yes it's that good); and the raucous documentary Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films, a mist-see for movie fans tracing the Hollywood career of Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, who produced an outrageous run of films over about 15 years.

We now have two short weeks with the four-day Easter weekend in between. Film screenings on the schedule include Anna Kendrick in The Last Five Years, Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart in Clouds of Sils Maria, Jack Reynor in the Sundance-winner Glassland, the German thriller The Samurai, the comedy Undocumented Executive and the documentary Lambert & Stamp.

Critical Week: London's burning

London was the centre of the Star Trek universe last week with the first press screenings of JJ Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness, an epic press junket at City Hall looking over the river at the skyline (not burning in real life but glistening in the spring sunshine) and a mammoth world premiere in Leicester Square. I attended two press screenings and hugely enjoyed the film both times. It's definitely one for the fans, as those who don't know the back-story will struggle to understand the significance of the plot and characters, but the cast is terrific. Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Karl Urban and Alice Eve were all on great form at the press event.

Also last week, we had Paul Walker in the rather implausible but involving Johannesburg road thriller Vehicle 19, Tim Roth and Jack O'Connell in the darkly comical British crime thriller The Liability, Alexey Balabanov's violent and pointed black comedy The Stoker, and the Belgian-Turkish culture clash drama-romance Mixed Kebab. I also planned a Madeline Kahn marathon over the long weekend with friends who had never seen her best work. We thoroughly enjoyed the genius of What's Up Doc and Young Frankenstein, but the warm sunshine tempted us to put off Blazing Saddles for another day. Frankly, those are three films I could happily watch on a loop.

This coming week, we have Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, the uber-reunion sequel Fast & Furious 6, Michael Shannon in The Iceman, the animated adventure Epic, the German fable The Wall, the acclaimed doc Blackfish, and a second attempt to see the Brazilian doc Tropicalia after a projector issue cancelled last week's screening. I also still have to see those reissues: Theorem, The King of Marvin Gardens and Billy Liar - let's hope for bad weather this weekend!