Critical Week: Baby you're a firework

While most London critics decamp to the South of France for 10 days, I prefer to avoid the chaos of the Cannes Film Festival if I can, as screening rooms get a bit quieter here. But it's not easy to read about all the intriguing films screening over there. While I have a bit more free time, there are still movies to watch! This week's films included the warm and properly inspiring biopic Young Woman and the Sea, starring Daisy Ridley as groundbreaking swimmer Trudy Ederle. This week's big release is IF, a child-friendly movie from actor-filmmaker John Krasinski that's remarkably sweet, warm and funny. And next week's kids' movie is The Garfield Movie, a frenetic animated romp that will keep very, very young children happy.

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A bit more high-brow is the fact-based action romcom Hit Man, starring the terrific Glen Powell as a teacher pretending to be an assassin to help a police sting operation. It's a great story, very well-told by Powell and director-cowriter Richard Linklater. Elizabeth Hurley stars in the sudsy erotic thriller Strictly Confidential, which is so camp that it's hilarious. JK Simmons goes all-in to play a ruthless killer menacing a nice family in the harrowing and rather harsh thriller You Can't Run Forever. From Pakistan, In Flames is an inventive dramatic horror film about women confronting the patriarchy. And I also caught up with Guy Ritchie's new film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, a snappy WWII adventure based on a true story. A terrific cast led by Henry Cavill, Eiza Gonzalez, Alan Ritchson and Henry Golding keeps it funny and sometimes thrilling. There was also a live performance by musical stand-up comic Dave Hill with his riotously hilarious Caveman in a Spaceship at the Soho Theatre.

This coming week I'll be watching Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Greg Kinnear in both The Present and Sight, the Canadian drama Solo and the animated adventure Deep Sea. Plus on stage I have Pieces of Me at Camden People's Theatre.

Critical Week: Welcome to the club

UK critics had a chance to screen Richard Linklater's new comedy Everybody Wants Some!!, a spiritual follow-up to two of his earlier films: Dazed and Confused and Boyhood. It's clever, funny and very sharp. Jake Gyllenhaal is simply terrific in Jean-Marc Vallee's Demolition, a parable that is a bit obvious in its metaphors but still wrenchingly powerful. By contrast, Melissa McCarthy's The Boss has a lot of potential, but it's squandered with filmmaking that's based on pratfalls instead of the vivid central character.

John Cusack and Samuel L Jackson find more intriguing characters than expected in the horror thriller Cell, a freaky twist on the zombie genre from Stephen King. Rio I Love You is the latest collection of shorts in the Cities of Love series, and a much more coherent, warm and involving film as a whole. Arabian Nights: The Desolate One is the second in Miguel Gomes' inventively surreal trilogy. This one's drier than the first one, but has a terrific dog at the centre of the third set of shorts.

Further into indie movie land, Daddy is a well-made and sharply acted American film that shifts uneasily from a lively rom-com into a very, very dark drama. And there were two low-budget British crime dramas: The Violators is a compelling story of siblings in crisis, while the fact-based Hard Tide follows a guy who discovers something valuable in himself. Both give in to cliches and underpowered filmmaking.

Of course, proper reviews will follow in each film's week of release - some are already up on the site.

Screening this next week: Tom Hanks in A Hologram for the King, Ricky Gervais in Special Correspondents, Susan Sarandon in Mothers and Daughters, the apocalyptic Aussie drama These Final Hours, the final episode in the trilogy Arabian Nights: The Enchanted One, Michael Moore's sociological doc Where to Invade Next and the British public unrest doc The Hard Stop. We also have a three day weekend ahead!

35th London Critics' Circle Film Awards: words & pics

My third year as chair of the London Critics' Circle Film Awards at times felt like it might do me in, but after all the work, the night was another triumphant celebration of the year in cinema. On Sunday 18th January we gathered at The May Fair Hotel for our annual ceremony and party, joined by a smattering of wonderful guests.

Our ceremony hosts this year were Alice Lowe and Steve Oram (below left), who won our Breakthrough Filmmaker award two years ago for their Sightseers screenplay. They set the tone for the ceremony perfectly: irreverent humour mixed with a love of cinema. After the clatter of the red carpet (above with Miranda Richardson and below right with me and Richard Linklater), the ceremony felt intimate and almost conspiratorial because it was so much fun.

After a couple of introductions (from me and from our Film Section Chair Anna Smith), we were straight on to the awards themselves. Winners included Mica Levi (below left), who won the Technical Achievement Award for her score for Under the Skin, and Dirk Wilutzky and Mathilde Bonnefoy (below right), recently Oscar-nominated producers of the Documentary winner Citizenfour.

Three of our Young British Performer nominees were in the house, left to right: Corey McKinley ('71), Daniel Huttlestone (Into the Woods) and the winner Alex Lawther (The Imitation Game).

And we invited some potential future nominees along as well. Below left, that's Toby Sebastian (soon to be seen in Game of Thrones) and his sister Florence Pugh (star of Carol Morley's upcoming stunner The Falling). Below right are Ferdinand Kingsley (Dracula Untold) and Louise Brealey (Sherlock).

Quite a few British filmmakers were on hand, including Breakthrough Filmmaker nominees, left to right, Hossein Amini (The Two Faces of January), James Kent (Testament of Youth) and Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth (20,000 Days on Earth), here flanking director Jonathan Glazer, whose film Under the Skin won the Attenborough Award for British Film of the Year.

Breakthrough British Filmmaker was won by Yann Demange for '71 - he accepted his award by video (below right), as did Andrey Zvyagintsev (below left), whose Leviathan won Foreign-Language Film of the Year.

More video messages were sent by Michael Keaton (bringing down the house with a trouser-free acceptance of Actor of the Year for Birdman), Rosamund Pike (British Actress of the Year), Patricia Arquette (Supporting Actress for Boyhood) and Wes Anderson (Screenwriter for The Grand Budapest Hotel. Actress of the Year winner Julianne Moore (Still Alice) sent a generous written speech, while Supporting Actor winner JK Simmons (Whiplash) was conspicuously absent.

And Richard Linklater took to the stage twice for Boyhood, winning Director of the Year and Film of the Year (the award I presented). Finally, Stanley Tucci presented our biggest honour to the gorgeous Miranda Richardson - The Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film. Both gave speeches that combined sharp humour, warm friendship and a love of cinema.

Finally, at the after-party I was snapped in perhaps my luvviest picture of all time - with Miranda and our British Actor of the Year winner Timothy Spall. Darlings!

Photos by Dave Bennett

Critical Week: Soak up the sun

London critics had a chance to catch up with John Carney's long-awaited follow-up to Once, and Begin Again turns out to be essentially the same story retold with starrier actors in New York. It's also disarmingly enjoyable, with wonderful songs and nicely offhanded performances from the entire cast, which includes Keira Knightley (who can truly sing), Mark Ruffalo, Adam Levine and James Corden. Richard Linklater's ambitious and utterly amazing Boyhood is nearly three hours long, was shot over 12 years, and stars Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke as parents of young actors who grow up before our eyes.

We also caught up with the British indie Love Me Till Monday, a charming and somewhat thin romantic comedy that's mainly notable for its clever refusal to indulge in any formulaic rom-com plotting. And there were also two docs: Children 404 is an eye-opening look at children in Russia who identify themselves with the LGBT community and hate the way their government is sidelining them while making it acceptable to be targets of homophobic hatred (it's the closing film at the Open City Docs Fest). And The Final Member documents the world's only penis museum, which is located in northern Iceland, and its founder's tenacious attempt to complete his collection of mammals with a human specimen. It's dryly hilarious and rather telling too.

This week, I'm taking my first no-email/no-film holiday in six years and won't resurface until Sunday, 29th June. The first screenings on my return will be Melissa McCarthy's zany (sigh!) comedy Tammy, Philip Seymour Hoffman in God's Pocket, Noel Clarke and Ian Somerhalder in The Anomaly, and the Scandinavian crime-thriller The Keeper of Lost Causes. And I'll also be looking to catch up with things I missed while away, including How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Transformers: Age of Extinction. So until then, bring on the sunshine...