Critical Week: Don't wake up

This week's big movie event was Secret Cinema: 28 Days Later, which is great fun but a bit of a let-down after the highs of Back to the Future and Star Wars. The elaborate interactive experience runs until the end of May in London (see my FULL REVIEW). Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke and the divine Julianne Moore star in Maggie's Plan, Rebecca Miller's Woody Allenesque New York comedy, which is a bit uneven but very entertaining. Nicolas Cage and Elijah Wood stage a heist in the Las Vegas black comedy The Trust, also entertaining if rather thin and forgettable.

Off the beaten path, there was the German drama You & I, a cleverly original look at three young men on a road trip, breaking all the rules about sexuality and friendship. What We Have is a thoughtful, haunting Canadian film about a young man trying to escape his past. Arabian Nights: The Restless One is the first part of Miguel Gomes' fiendishly inventive trilogy combining classic tales with a satire of present-day austerity. And there were two documentaries: the lively and moving if rather limited Street Dance Family follows the UK's most successful dance troop, while Chantal Akerman's No Home Movie is a difficult, experimental doc with some striking insights.

This coming week, we have the next Avengers action epic Captain America: Civil War, Jake Gyllenhaal in Demolition, John Cusack in Cell, Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some!!, the anthology movie Rio I Love You, the true thriller Hard Tide, the British drama The Violators and part 2 in the series Arabian Nights: The Desolate One.

Critical Week: Watch the skies...

Secret Cinema presents Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back hit London this past week, and looks set to be a box office presence until it winds up at the end of September. And rightly so: staged with a mind-boggling level of inventiveness, this is a staggering experience that lets the audience live the final sequences of A New Hope (travelling to Mos Eisley, the rebel base and the Death Star itself) and then watch The Empire Strikes Back as part of an epic six-hour evening. MY REPORT >

Other films screened to UK press this week include the gorgeously creative Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy, starring John Cusack, Paul Dano and the great Elizabeth Banks; the corny farce She's Funny That Way, starring Imogen Poots, Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston; and the arty, mannered character study Manglehorn, starring Al Pacino. Further afield there were three uneven but promising low-budget dramas: American posh boys in Those People, a working class British guy in SoftLad, and three Sao Paulo teens in Boys in Brazil.

There were also a few more documentaries. Going Clear is a staggeringly strong doc about Scientology, taking only one side (no one else would talk) but still offering a rare glimpse into the workings of the mysterious religion. The Yes Men Are Revolting furthers the activists' cause with more lively pranks, this time calling attention to the urgency of climate change. And the still ahead-of-its-time experimental 1929 Soviet classic Man With a Movie Camera gets a digital restoration that reminds everyone why it's consistently named one of the 10 best films ever made.

This coming week I only have a couple of screenings before I take a week off, including the WW2 thriller 13 Minutes, the Brazilian drama The Second Mother, the British indie thriller 51 Degrees North and the supernatural gay thriller Angels With Tethered Wings.

Requisite Blog Photo: Wanted throughout the galaxy

Explorer Niles Torwyn was briefly detained by Imperial police in Mos Eisley on Tatooine on Friday evening, but he managed to escape and rejoin the rebel forces. He's currently at large.

Critical Week: 88 miles per hour

The big event this past week was the opening night of Secret Cinema presents Back to the Future, a fabulously immersive event being held in London until 31st August. Audience gets to experience life in 1955 Hill Valley including the events of the classic 1985 film as it's projected in a vast outdoor cinema. My review is HERE.

As for regular releases, our biggest screening was for The Expendables 3, the latest in Sylvester Stallone's meathead action franchise. Sly was also in town with costars Jason Statham, Antonio Banderas, Kellan Lutz and Wesley Snipes to chat with the press before the film's premiere. We also caught up with Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson in the gritty but sometimes too-slow burning Aussie thriller The Rover, Chris Evans and Jamie Bell in Bong Joon-ho's ambitious and inventively bonkers post-apocalyptic action thriller Snowpiercer (still without a UK release date), and the not-too-long awaited spoof disaster sequel Sharknado 2: The Second One, which is livened up by a string of cameos as the freak weather system arrives in New York (hopefully the next stop will be London).

We also had the strained, not-so-rude comedy Behaving Badly starring Nat Wolff and Selena Gomez; the involving and nicely acted inspirational drama 4 Minute Mile starring Richard Jenkins and gifted newcomer Kelly Blatz; the astonishingly bold French drama My Name is Hmmm...; and the fascinating epic architectural documentary Cathedrals of Culture.

This coming week there are screenings of the Brit-com sequel The Inbetweeners 2 (the day it opens), Scarlett Johansson in the action romp Lucy, Simon Pegg in Hector and the Search for Happiness, Clive Owen in Blood Ties, horror movie Found, dance doc Ballet Boys and British miners' strike documentary Still the Enemy Within.