Critical Week: Where the buffalo roam

As a heatwave sets in around Britain, creating our hottest week of the year so far (in September!), audiences are likely to avoid cinemas in lieu of parks and beaches. So box office data is likely to disappoint come Monday. But there's plenty to see, including one of my very best films of the year, Past Lives. Meanwhile, I finally caught up with Riley Keough and Gina Gammell's award-winning debut War Pony, a strikingly authentic and pointed Native American drama. Nia Vardalos and family are back for My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, another charming mess of a movie that wins us over despite ourselves. And Richard E Grant, Julie Delpy and Daryl McCormack have a lot of fun with the arch melodrama of The Lesson, an overwrought thriller that doesn't quite hold water but keeps us entertained.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Past Lives • La Ronde
Rotting in the Sun
REVIEWS >

A bit further afield, Carol Morley is back with a bracingly original look at mental illness in Typist Artist Pirate King, which traces an adventurous road trip with under-appreciated British artist Audrey Amiss, powerfully played by Monica Dolan. Rotting in the Sun is a smart and provocatively original mashup of mystery, drama and crime comedy from Sebastian Silva. The British doc A Life on the Farm highlights a true eccentric who made hilariously nutty home movies. And the Australian series (released as a compilation) Single, Out is charmingly awkward as it follows a young guy navigating gay life. I also attended Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre at 65 at Sadler's Wells.

This coming week I'll be watching Pablo Larrain's bonkers Pinochet vampire thriller El Conde, Kenneth Branagh's whodunit A Haunting in Venice, British battle epic Gurkha Warrior, Canadian immigration drama Brother, animated adventure Robot Dreams, Spanish drama 20,000 Species of Bees, Laotian monks drama Samsara, Santana doc Carlos, Anselm Kiefer doc Anselm and live shows Deeper and Deeper and Myra Dubois: Be Well.

Critical Week: The stars came out

Sunday was the 76th Bafta Film Awards, with a new venue at the Royal Festival Hall and a new host in the charmingly British Richard E Grant (with contributions from a lively but distracting Allison Hammond). It was a star-packed event, with a glittering audience of nominees and special guests, which allowed for the usual offbeat presenting duos (Eugene Levy with Cynthia Erivo?). Among the winners, the biggest surprise was Austin Butler being named Best Actor, which bodes well for Oscar night. And Barry Keoghan was a popular surprise winner for Supporting Actor, although perhaps Ke Huy Quan has the edge for Oscar. And then there was All Quiet on the Western Front with its unprecedented seven huge wins, including film and director over Tár and Everything Everywhere All at Once, top nominees that had to settle for just one prize each. But the issue of inclusivity still needs to be discussed, when awards like these (and the London Critics' Circle) opt for overwhelmingly white winners even with a superbly diverse set of nominees.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Joyland • Broker • Juniper
ALL REVIEWS >

As for the movies I've been watching, the biggest one was a very late press screening of Elizabeth Banks' crazed action thriller Cocaine Bear, a riotously grisly throwback to '80s nature-gone-wild mayhem movies. It took me awhile to catch up with Hirokazu Kore-eda's Broker, another wonderfully humane drama that sympathises with people on the moral fringes. How to Blow Up a Pipeline is an entertaining caper adventure about a group of young people taking on Big Oil. The twisty antics kind of overshadow the serious themes, but it's good fun. From Argentina, Wandering Heart is a superbly naturalistic drama about a man trying to pull himself together after a breakup. And the Oscar-nominated doc A House Made of Splinters highlights a situation in war-torn Ukraine with a hugely resonant kick.

This coming week I'll be watching Michael B Jordan's Creed III, Lily James in What's Love Got to Do With It, Michael Shannon in A Little White Lie, the Aussie drama Lonesome and the French drama Love According to Dalva, plus a couple of theatre shows.

Critical Week: Things are heating up

These strange times continue to challenge the film industry, as distributors keep shifting release dates, and changing the rules about attending press screenings (I had my first screening this week that required a negative covid test). But it's definitely getting busier, and it's great to be seeing the big movies on huge screens again. Let's just hope that hospital numbers don't rise again. As for the movies this week, one of the more intriguing was the English-language Polish thriller Mosquito State, which is very big on style (see above) even if the plot remains rather elusive. One of the most entertaining Marvel blockbusters yet, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is a thrilling martial arts action adventure adeptly led by Simu Liu and Awkwafina. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II leads the identically named nearly 30-years-later sequel Candyman, a punchy political horror that's more darkly unsettling than scary. 

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Candyman
The Last Bus • The Nest
PERHAPS AVOID:
Mosquito State
The Pebble and the Boy
ALL REVIEWS >

A hit West End musical based on a true story, Everybody's Talking About Jamie has been adapted into a surprisingly emotive film. It's still exuberant and inspiring, but everything feels much more intense now. From Peru, the animated adventure Ainbo: Spirit of the Amazon looks fantastic and features some lovely magical touches in its rather simplistic story. From Germany, the English-language futuristic thriller The Colony blends Waterworld/Mad Max-style imagery to say some intriguing things about humanity. And it was great to catch the restored 1963 Joseph Losey classic The Servant on a big screen. Still rivetingly deranged after all these decades, it's adeptly anchored by devastating performances from Dirk Bogarde and James Fox.

I'm also watching films as part of both Outfest (Los Angeles) and FrightFest (London) at the moment. These have included the award-winning nonbinary drama Firstness, the quirky autobiographical memoir Potato Dreams of America and the astonishing Swedish thriller Knocking. There are a few more of these to come, and they're being covered both on the site and in other blog posts.

This coming week I'll be watching more FrightFest movies,Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin in Respect, the family drama A Wake, the British drama Second Spring, the British thriller Shorta, the German revenge thriller Plan A and the true boxing drama The Champion of Auschwitz.

39th London Critics' Circle Film Awards: words and pics...

Yes, it was time for the London film critics to hold their annual gala red carpet event. And for the seventh year, I was the chair of the organising committee, which meant that I was involved in every aspect of the day's events. The 39th London Critics' Circle Film Awards, presented by Dover Street Entertainment at The May Fair Hotel, had a distinct tone this year - awash in diversity almost any way you looked at it. We had fewer high-wattage Hollywood stars, but we made up for that with humour, energy and some properly talented guests in attendance. It was a great celebration of film - and a fantastic party. Here are some photos to help tell the story...

Pedro Almodóvar was awarded our top honour, the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film. Tamsin Greig (left), who starred in the West End production of his classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, presented the award to him. At right, Critics' Circle Film Section Chair Anna Smith and I stand on either side of the evening's host, the fabulous British comic Judi Love.

Left to right: Richard E Grant accepts Supporting Actor for Can You Ever Forgive Me; writer-director Michael Pearce wins Breakthrough Filmmaker for Beast; producer Nicolas Celis accepts Film of the Year for Roma.

Pawel Pawlikowski's gorgeous Cold War won both Foreign-Language Film and the Technical Achievement Award for Lukasz Zal's cinematography; Rupert Everett sent his friend and costar Emily Watson to pick up his award for British/Irish Actor for The Happy Prince; Yorgos Lanthimos collects the prize for British/Irish Film of the Year for The Favourite.

One of my jobs was to chase down video thank yous from winners unable to be present (I knew the winners before anyone else). Both of these were shot in dressing rooms: Olivia Colman was on set filming The Crown and gave a witty thank you for Actress of the Year in The Favourite, and Ethan Hawke is in a play on Broadway, and made some clever, thoughtful observations as he collected Actor of the Year for First Reformed.

Alfonso Cuaron sent a video greeting as he won Director of the Year for Roma, while Agnès Varda spoke for herself and co-director JR to accept Documentary of the Year for Faces Places.

Rachel Weisz spoke from her kitchen to accept Supporting Actress for The Favourite, while Jessie Buckley was also stuck on-set on Sunday, offering a heartfelt thank you for British/Irish Actress in Beast, and hoping she'd finish early enough to come join the party (sadly, she couldn't).

Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara were on-hand to collect their award for Screenwriters of the Year for The Favourite, as were director Lara Zeidan and producer John Giordano, who won Short Film of the Year for Three Centimetres.

Molly Wright was wonderfully surprised when she won Young Performer of the Year for Apostasy (she also helped read out our nominations when they were announced last month); her director Daniel Kokotajlo was a nominee for Breakthrough Filmmaker; while Liv Hill was up for Young Performer for The Little Stranger.

Fionn Whitehead was nominated for Young Performer for the second year running, this time for The Children Act; Anya Taylor-Joy was also up for that award for her work in Thoroughbreds; and writer-director Deborah Haywood was up for Breakthrough for Pin Cushion. (She was one of three women we nominated for directing, along with Debra Granik and Lynne Ramsay in the Director category.)

Other guests included Gonzalo Maza, screenwriter of Foreign-Language Film nominee A Fantastic Woman; actress Muna Utaru (The Keeping Room); and filmmakers and diversity activists Hannah and Jake Graf.

I have spent the last six months working on this event, and it has completely taken over my life over the last six weeks (with a bit of a breather when all the publicists' offices closed over the holidays!). After we have a debrief and work out what we can do even better next year, we'll be able to forget about all the chaos until it begins cranking up again next summer. The 2020 event will be our 40th anniversary, so I think we need to plan something unexpected.