Critical Week: Boys will be boys

It's been a relatively low screening week here in London, mainly because most of the PR agencies were at the Berlin Film Festival. The biggest movie screened here was the Coen brothers' new Hollywood romp Hail, Caesar!, and it was a nice surprise to see that it's a more serious film than it looks. Along with deliriously knowing pastiches of 1950s movie genres (including Channing Tatum's show-stopping song and dance "No Dames", above), there's something much more thoughtful going on here.

We also had one of Robin Williams' last films, Boulevard, an intimate drama about a 60-year-old man finally coming to terms with his sexuality. It's beautifully played by the entire cast, and remarkably sensitive. Golden Years is an oddly fluffy British romp about retirees who set off on a bank-robbing spree when their pensions are lost. At least the cast is solid. And Naz & Maalik is a clever comedy about two teens in Brooklyn who, over one afternoon, are confronted with issues of religion, politics and sexuality.

Coming up on Sunday is the Oscar ceremony (all-night in Britain from 1.30am to 5.30am), which I am watching live at the official Ampas party in town. It'll be a lot of fun being with a large crowd of diehard movie fans, then travelling home as the sun comes up. As for screenings, I've got Gerard Butler's action sequel London Has Fallen, Sacha Baron Cohen's spy comedy Grimsby, Geoffrey Rush's drama The Daughter, the filmmaker conversation doc Hitchcock/Truffaut, the American politics doc The Brainwashing of My Dad, and the short film collection Mexican Men, among other things.

Requisite Blog Photo: Smoking gun

Critical Week: Let the race begin

Awards season officially kicked off this week with a flurry of accolades including the New York Film Critics and the British Independent Film Awards. I've been voting already, and have more to do in the coming weeks. In my last few days in California, I caught up with a few more contenders, including Angelina Jolie's biopic Unbroken, starring Jack O'Connell as Olympic runner Louie Zamperini, who later survived 47 days adrift at sea before being captured by the Japanese during WWII. It's a staggering story of resilience, made with unexpected subtlety. Tim Burton's Big Eyes is another gorgeously made biopic. It stars Amy Adams as Margaret Keane, who painted all of those sad-eyed children in the 60s and 70s while her husband (Christoph Waltz) took the credit. It may look sunnier than most of Burton's films, but it's just as gleefully deranged, and it carries a big emotional kick.

But of course the biggest film screened to the press this past week was Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, another enormous epic of a film, packed with lively characters, first-rate effects and huge, expertly staged action sequences. Frankly, until some engaging personal drama emerges in the second half, it's a bit exhausting. Somewhat smaller films included The Face of Love, a gimmicky, melodramatic romance starring Annette Bening and Ed Harris. And The Great Museum is a riveting fly-on-the-wall doc about the backstage workings of Vienna's national gallery.

Coming this week: Julianne Moore in Still Alice, Ben Stiller in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, Quevenzhane Wallis in a remake of the musical Annie, Christian Bale in Exodus: Gods and Kings, Aardman Animation's Shaun the Sheep Movie, the acclaimed Spanish anthology Wild Tales and the British drama Wasp. I'll also finally catch up with the sequel Dumb and Dumber To, although frankly I'd rather not.

Critical Week: It's just so hilarious

Judging by the poster image, Hollywood veterans Susan Sarandon, Robert DeNiro, Diane Keaton and Robin Williams clearly found their new movie The Big Wedding absolutely hilarious. And there was plenty of laughter at last week's UK press screening, although reviews are embargoed until next Friday. Reviews are also embargoed for Iron Man 3, which was screened to us on Wednesday night with director Shane Black and his cowriter Drew Peace on hand to do a stand-up style introduction. They certainly got us in the right mood for the film.

Off the beaten path: we also saw Olivier Assayas' ambitious but somewhat dry youth-in-revolt drama Something in the Air and the very nicely written and played Spanish drama The Sex of Angels (released this week as The Angels of Sex in the USA), which dares to take a complex and offbeat approach to romance. I also attended the opening night of "The Film That Changed My Life" at the Barbican Centre, which is celebrating the centenary of the Critics' Circle with 14 special screenings at which critics introduce a key film. Friday's launch film was Gillo Pontecorvo's urgent and stunningly relevant 1966 uprising thriller The Battle of Algiers, presented by David Gritten. And from the sublime to the ridiculous, I also had to watch nine episodes of the latest series Spartacus: War of the Damned, in all its ludicrous, bombastic, macho-posturing glory.

This coming week, we'll be seeing Jason Statham in Hummingbird and the Italian drama Shun Li and the Poet. And we also have press screenings all week as part of the Sundance London Film and Music Festival, including Lynne Shelton's Touchy Feely, Sleepwalk With Me, A.C.O.D., Upstream Color, In Fear, In a World, Emanuel and the Truth About Fishes, The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete, The Kings of Summer, The History of the Eagles (with an appearance by the band), Metro Manila, The Summit and God Loves Uganda. Full coverage of the festival starts here on Thursday....