Critical Week: Tea, biscuits and a spot of murder

Cinemas are a bit busier, as a bunch of high-profile movies arrive in the weeks before the autumn festival season kicks off awards season. This time of year also signals the return of London's FrightFest, which plays out over this long weekend. I've been watching those scary movies all week, and have many more to see between now and Monday night. As the festival kicked off tonight in Leicester Square, I was across the way attending the UK premiere of the all-star British whodunit The Thursday Murder Club, starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and Celia Imrie (above). Unsurprisingly, it's warm and funny, perfectly cosy entertainment.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Sorry, Baby • Battleship Potemkin
Eddington • Dongji Rescue
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We finally got to see The Toxic Avenger, shot three years ago and now being released uncut. Peter Dinklage has a lot of fun as Toxie in this hilariously messy remake, which is packed with pointed satire and gleefully excessive gore. Danny Power gives a terrific debut performance in the intimate Irish drama Christy, the involving story of a teen discovering who he is. From China, Dongji Rescue is a thrilling true WWII action story told on a grand scale. Its set pieces are seriously heart-pounding, and the characters are great. And from Germany, the animated romp Grand Prix of Europe sends animals on a racing tour, punctuating every scene with nutty slapstick silliness.

This coming week I'll be watching several more FrightFest movies (quick reviews will be here over the weekend), plus Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch in The Roses, Austin Butler in Caught Stealing, the Japanese drama Happyend and the restored 1980 thriller Night of the Juggler.

Critical Week: Pleased to meet you

It's been another eclectic week at the cinema, with a very, very wide range of movies to watch. Sophisticated audience will love the nuances in Materialists, Celine Song's second film, which plays on the romcom formula. It stars Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans. Rather a lot more low-brow, Smurfs features voice work from Rihanna, James Corden, Nick Offerman and John Goodman. It's very silly, and also occasionally funny.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Unicorns • Friendship
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The sweeping Irish romance Four Letters of Love stars powerhouse actors Helena Bonham Carter, Pierce Brosnan and Gabriel Byrne, but its strongest roles go to the terrific Fionn O'Shea and Anne Skelly. A prickly bromance is at the centre of the provocative black comedy Friendship, starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd. Despite its three-hour running time and rather grim title, the German drama Dying is mesmerising, witty and wonderfully thoughtful. The first film in the Oslo Stories Trilogy, Dreams is an astute and involving look at teen longing. And because I'm seeing the sequel this weekend, I finally caught up with the animated action comedy The Bad Guys, which is cool, funny escapism.

This coming week we have Pedro Pascal in The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Liam Neeson in The Naked Gun,  Sam Rockwell in the animated sequel The Bad Guys 2, Fiona Shaw in Park Avenue, the mystery thriller Gazer, Slovenian drama Little Trouble Girls, and the second chapter in the Oslo Stories Trilogy, Love. I'm also looking forward to the 100-year restoration of Eisenstein's iconic Battleship Potemkin, which I've never seen projected. And there's a special 3D premiere of the new trailer for Avatar: Fire and Ash.

Critical Week: It's party season

December is here and festive gatherings have started to pop up, a nicely warming alternative to cold, damp winter nights. I'm still catching up on movies, seeing things for various awards voting deadlines. Nominees start coming in next week. This past week's films included Daniel Levy's warm-hearted Good Grief, an uneven comedy-drama that has some strong things to say about grief (above: Himesh Patel, Levy, Jamael Westman and Ruth Negga). Pierce Brosnan loses none of his charm as a grizzled fixer in Fast Charlie, a predictable crime thriller that's surprisingly engaging.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Poor Things • Wonka
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
The Boy and the Heron
Origin • The Peasants
ALL REVIEWS >

Higher brow films included George Clooney's The Boys in the Boat, which recounts a wonderful true story in an oddly bland way. Ava DuVernay's Origin tackles a massive issue with an involving story and perhaps too much to think about. Kelly Reicherdt reunites with Michelle Williams for Showing Up, a loose but observant comedy about the art world. Juliette Binoche cooks up a storm in the French period drama The Taste of Things, which is overlong and far too mouthwatering. Trace Lysette is magnetic in Monica, a tough and moving drama about a mother and daughter. From Poland, The Peasants is an superb historical drama with a strong kick, animated using oil paintings. And I also saw three live on-stage performances: Lunar Halo at Sadler's Wells, Tossed at Royal Vauxhall Tavern and Gary Starr Performs Everything at Southwark Playhouse.

Movies this week include Jodie Comer in The End We Start From, Eva Longoria's Flamin' Hot, Michael Winterbottom's Shoshana, the Turkish drama The Teachers' Lounge and more that need catching before the next voting deadline.

Critical Week: Say cheese

Covid restrictions are lifting in Britain, but I haven't had many press screenings this week, mainly because many of the films opening this month are ones I saw at a festival last year. Thankfully, this gives me some extra time to work on the forthcoming London Critics' Circle Film Awards - there are less than three weeks to pull everything together for that, even as a virtual event. Bigger films this week included A Journal for Jordan, a sentimentalised true drama starring Michael B Jordan and Chante Adams, directed by Denzel Washington. It's a good story, but feels too gentle and worthy. And then there's the silly fantasy fairy tale The King's Daughter, in which Pierce Brosnan plays Louis XIV, whose daughter (Kaya Scodelario) befriends a mermaid (Bingbing Fan) and refuses to fall for the suitable man. It's ridiculous but fun.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Belfast • Cicada • Torn
Nightmare Alley
ALL REVIEWS >

And then there's the jaunty Spain-set comedy Rifkin's Festival, which has some terrific touches but is another uneven film from the troublesome Woody Allen. From Brazil, The Pink Cloud is eerily prescient, shot in 2019 but expertly capturing the feeling of lockdown in its story about a toxic cloud that traps a new couple in a flat for years. Buzzy Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi skilfully tells three separate stories in Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, and their thematic angles dovetail beautifully. And in the documentary Torn, filmmaker Max Lowe recounts the involving, twisty story of his mountain-climbing superstar father and his legacy.

This coming week I have mainly documentaries to watch, including The Real Charlie Chaplin, Taming the Garden, Boris Karloff: The Man Behind the Monster and awards contenders Procession and The Rescue.

Requisite Blog Photo: There's a fire within my soul

Critical Week: A winning couple

I'd been looking forward to seeing Andrew Haigh's new film 45 Years ever since it was announced, and even more so when lead actors Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay won the acting awards at the Berlin Film Festival (above). So it was an extra pleasure that it turns out to be my kind of film: a gentle, beautifully observed masterpiece. Rather less amazing but still entertaining: Survivor is a nicely human-scaled thriller starring Milla Jovovich as a security expert chased by Pierce Brosnan's icy killer; Gemma Bovery is a loose French comedy starring Fabrice Luchini as a bored guy in rural France whose imagination is sparked by a new English neighbour (Gemma Arterton); and the genuinely scary Belgian horror movie Cub is a scouting holiday with a nasty twist right out of a campfire story.

There were also three documentaries: That Sugar Film is a punchy, entertaining, seriously essential Super Size Me-style doc about the effects of the sugar in our diets, and it should change the way we think about food; the sensitive, eye-opening Czech doc Daniel's World is difficult to watch as it takes a bracingly honest, balanced approach to one of the biggest taboos, pedophilia; and Before the Last Curtain Falls is a lovely document about a group of seriously engaging Belgian transsexuals at the end of a triumphant stage tour. There was also a launch for the Edinburgh International Film Festival, which takes place later this month. There's a very strong programme this year, and I'm sad that I won't be able to travel up to Scotland to enjoy it, but I'll cover it as much as possible from London.

I also caught up with Nightingale, an HBO movie starring David Oyelowo as an unhinged young man who kills his mother and then struggles to make a life for himself. Told through this young man's frazzled perspective, there isn't another actor on-screen, and Oyelowo is magnetic and more than a little terrifying. The film elusively swirls in all kinds of big issues, from post traumatic stress to religious fanaticism to the repression of sexuality. Written by Frederick Mensch and directed by Elliott Lester, it's the kind of movie that provokes a lot of thought, then wisely lets us work out what it means for each one of us.

This coming week, I have more horror with a screening of Insidious Chapter 3, plus the sequel/reboot blockbuster Jurassic World, the New York romance Those People, the Sao Paulo comedy Boys in Brazil, and the Vidal/Buckley doc The Best of Enemies. 

Critical Week: There's gonna be a floody-floody

This past week's big screening for London press was for Darren Aronofsky's biblical flood thriller Noah, which pretty evenly divided critics. While I admired Aronofsky's stunning time-lapse version of creation, I was a bit put off by the fact that these militant vegans wear leather accessories. The other big movies were Arnold Schwarzenegger's gritty cop drama Sabotage and the Emma Thompson-Pierce Brosnan rom-com heist romp The Love Punch, both of which I'm embargoed from discussing quite yet. I also had a chance to interview Arnie and Emma for those films - Arnie was surreally accompanied by British anti-comic Keith Lemon; Emma came with costar Celia Imrie. Both were charming.

Smaller films included Juliette Binoche's storming performance as a photojournalist in the complex Irish drama A Thousand Times Good Night, Kristin Scott Thomas' steely turn opposite Daniel Auteuil in the repressed French drama Before the Winter Chill, and a trio of terrific Guatemalan teens as youngsters trying to travel to California in the astonishingly well-made and rather bleak The Golden Dream. There were also two British comedies: Almost Married is a somewhat under-cooked stag night farce, while Downhill is a superbly telling and very funny doc-style road movie about four middle-aged men walking coast-to coast-across England.

This coming week's movies include Emile Hirsch and Stephen Dorff in The Motel Life, Gina Carano and Cam Gigandet in the action movie In the Blood, the offbeat drama Concussion, a new 3D animated version of Tarzan, the Lisbon gang thriller After the Night, and the superbly titled Swedish hit The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared.

Critical Week: Rogues gallery

One of the more anticipated press screenings this past week was for The Raid 2, Gareth Evans' sequel to his surprise hit. Although this time he ditches the gritty, linear narrative for a Hong Kong-style corruption epic. There are spectacular moments, although at two and a half hours it's somewhat exhausting. Even bigger (but barely half as long), Captain America: The Winter Soldier is the next episode in Marvel's big-screen serial, with grittier action but less suspense.

Fan-funded mystery Veronica Mars will either give closure to the truncated TV series' cult following or spark a new franchise - it's a lot of fun. An all-star cast makes the Nick Hornby-based comedy-drama A Long Way Down watchable even though it's tonally all over the place. Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return is a weakly animated adventure with an A-list voice cast (Liam Neeson, Lea Michele, Patrick Stewart) and a surprisingly strong plot.

There were also two films from Ireland: John Michael McDonagh's Calvary has the same laconic wit as The Guard, but with even deeper themes, while The Stag is a surprisingly involving bachelor-party comedy with serious edges. The independent American black comedy How to Be a Man has its moments but tries to hard to be rude and wacky, while the German drama Lose Your Head has engaging characters, but never makes much of its intriguing plot.

This coming week, screenings include the franchise wannabe Divergent, the sequels Muppets Most Wanted and Rio 2, Ben Whishaw in the British drama Lilting, the Scandinavian thriller Pioneer and the notorious Canadian black comedy The Dirties. Thursday also sees the opening night of the 28th BFI Flare, one of London's biggest and most important festivals, which runs 20-30 March. Updates on the way...

Critical Week: London's gleaming

UK critics last week got to see the upcoming London crime thriller Welcome to the Punch, starring James McAvoy and Mark Strong. Our comments are embargoed ahead of the March release date, but the still above gives a pretty good idea of filmmaker Eran Creevy's sleek, glassy approach. We also watched Pierce Brosnan's gentle and rather enjoyably sweet romance Love Is All You Need, which is actually a Danish film (directed by Susanne Bier and costarring Trine Dyrholm and Paprika Steen) set mostly in Italy.

Speaking of Italy, we also caught up with last year's surprise Berlinale winner Caesar Must Die, a clever twist on Shakespeare by the Taviani Brothers. And we were glued to the harrowing genius of Alex Gibney's latest documentary Mea Maxima Culpa, which compellingly, lucidly sets the abusive-priest scandal in the context of a staggering global conspiracy.

This coming week I have a few more films to catch up with - since I took a bit of time out last week to work on the London critics' awards ceremony. I'll be seeing Rafe Spall and Rose Byrne in the rom-com I Give It a Year, Mia Wasikowska and Nicole Kidman in the acclaimed Sundance film Stoker, Brandon Cronenberg's Antiviral, the British drama Papadopoulos & Sons, the festival hit A Hijacking, the anime horror The King of Pigs, and the indie horror Crawl.