Critical Week: Things are heating up

The big awards season screening this week was for James Cameron's sequel Avatar: Fire and Ash, shown to us in all of its 3D glory. It's certainly an epic experience, with eye-catching action and increasingly realistic motion-capture effects. Although the story felt a bit familiar, as if that matters. Michelle Pfeiffer leads the charge as a bedraggled mum in the Christmas comedy Oh. What. Fun., which enjoyably riffs on the full range of holiday comedy classics. There were two animated movies: The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants is another frantic and very silly undersea romp, while the Japanese epic Scarlet uses distinctive imagery in its involving underworld twist on Hamlet.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Merrily We Roll Along
It Was Just an Accident
La Grazia • Eternity • Folktales
ALL REVIEWS >

Other awards offerings included Jim Jarmusch's Venice-winning Father Mother Sister Brother, a lovely family-connections triptych with a superior cast including Cate Blanchett and Adam Driver. Fred Hechinger and Sebiye Behtiyar are excellent as young people who fall for each other in the warm, funny, emotional Preparation for the Next Life. Jonathan Majors goes very deep indeed as a bodybuilder in the delayed drama Magazine Dreams, impressively written and directed by Elijah Bymun. There were two documentaries: the chilling Cover-Up profiles journalist Seymour Hersh in a career exposing government misdeeds, while Folktales is a warmly involving look at a Norwegian high school that specialises in dog sledding.

Beyond film, I attended the outrageously lavish premiere of Fallout season 2, attended by the cast and crew (see below). And I also managed to fit in three seasonal stage performances: Ebony Scrooge at Sadler's Wells East, the panto Beauty and the Beast at Charing Cross Theatre and The Great Christmas Feast in West Kensington.

Coming up this next week, I'll be watching Jack O' Connell in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Joel Edgerton in The Plague, Rosamund Pike in Hallow Road, Rose Byrne in If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Josh O'Connor in Rebuilding, plus a live performance of The Fit Prince at King's Head Theatre, and probably a bit more, all before flying out to see my family in California for the holidays.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rich Jack Cline (@ukcline)

Critical Week: Feeling grinchy

As movies get increasingly heartwarming, it can be a challenge to ward off that inner Scrooge. Thankfully I have been watching quite a few more disturbing arthouse movies alongside the more warmly emotional wide-audience titles. And then there's A Man Called Otto, the engaging forthcoming Tom Hanks comedy that's a sentimental remake of the much edgier Swedish hit A Man Called Ove. Blockbuster sequel Avatar: The Way of Water also adds an undercurrent of emotion to its visually stunning action violence, as James Cameron creates another epic that entertains on various levels. 

BEST FILMS OUT NOW:
Rimini • The Silent Twins • Lynch/Oz
She Said • Matilda the Musical • Nanny
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
ALL REVIEWS >

More offbeat movies contending for awards included, appropriately, the UK's international film entry Winners, an enjoyable romp set about an Oscar statuette that takes its own mini-adventure in rural Iran. Ulrich Seidl's Rimini is a riveting pitch-black comedy about a desperate has-been singer in an off-season seaside resort town. Lukas Dhont's moving drama Close traces a pre-teen's harsh coming-of-age through the disruption of his relationship with his best friend. The hugely involving Polish odyssey EO follows a loveable donkey on an incredible journey that's sweet, challenging and often scary. And last year's crowd-pleasing Oscar nominee Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom is set in a gorgeous isolated corner of Bhutan. And outside awards contention were two indie titles: the Italian comedy-drama Marscapone, a warmly intimate look at maintaining your identity within a relationship, and American drama Peridot, an intriguingly loose portrait of a street hustler.

There are still a lot of movies to catch up with as year-end voting deadlines approach, including Will Smith in Emancipation, Lea Seydoux in One Find Morning, Toni Collette in The Estate, Christian Bale in The Pale Blue Eye, the animated adventure The Amazing Maurice, the war epic All Quiet on the Western Front and the David Bowie doc Moonage Daydream.

Critical Week: Digging deep

London critics had a chance to catch up with Jennifer Aniston's acclaimed performance in Cake this week - a moving film about pain and grief. The script is sometimes obvious, but the acting and filmmaking are raw and sensitive. Aniston's work is definitely worthy of Oscar attention - but competition is brutal! For contrast we also had the sci-fi action blockbuster Jupiter Ascending, starring Mila Kunis and Channing Tatum - a lively, seriously eye-catching romp that's a lot of fun of you don't try to make sense of it. Like most of the Wachowskis' work, its reputation is likely to grow as time goes on.

This rather busy week also featured screenings of: Miles Teller and Analeigh Tipton in the contrived but watchable rom-com Two Night Stand, Bernard Rose's nutty period biopic-thriller The Devil's Violinist, the inventively head-spinning spacial-rift thriller Coherence, the awkwardly trashy horror comedy Suburban Gothic, the not-very-likeable British black comedy Down Dog, the cleverly artistic horror remake/sequel The Town that Dreaded Sundown, Viggo Mortensen in the Argentine wilderness in the surreal gem Jauja, the gorgeous Oscar-nominated animated epic The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and the pointed, surprising documentary The Overnighters. Whew!

This coming week's screenings include: the sci-fi action Robot Overlords, the acclaimed Ukrainian doc The Tribe, the Cold War doc The Man Who Saved the World, and I'll also get to see Ridley Scott's Blade Runner: The Final Cut on a big screen for the first time. Sunday night is also Bafta night - perhaps the best predictor of what will happen on Oscar night, as the voters overlap heavily. Expect lots of stars on the red carpet, and some surprise winners.