Critical Week: Follow your nose

In the New Year so far, there have been no actual press screenings, so my movies have been on the small screen. This includes a couple that were made for TV. Benedict Cumberbatch was back for Sherlock: The Six Thatchers, an enjoyable mystery that continued this sporadic series' drift into insufferably smug tricksiness. This includes Sherlock's obsession with Twitter, swiftly abandoned when the plot needs to move. Let's hope upcoming episodes are more focussed on solid storytelling and character development. I also finally caught up with the pilot for The Get Down, directed by Baz Luhrmann. It's a hugely engaging movie set amid the burgeoning rap scene in 1977 New York. There's plenty of whizzy style, as expected, but also a clever depth of character that developed nicely through the following five episodes. I also caught the financial thriller The Crash, which has a starry ensemble cast good enough to make the film watchable despite a startlingly dull script.

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My Scientology Movie
dir John Dower; with Louis Theroux, Marty Rathbun, Marc Headley, Andrew Perez, Rob Alter 16/UK ***.
British journalist Louis Theroux seems to fall into the Twilight Zone as he tries to make a balanced and open-minded, sympathetic documentary about Scientology. Despite never setting out to be combative, he keeps running into bizarre roadblocks, inexplicable reactions and aggressive resistance. Even the ex-members he talks to seem to be less than forthcoming. Some elements of this film don't work very well (such as all of the repetitive driving around or hiring actors to play prominent church members like Tom Cruise), but the film paints an intriguing portrait of an organisation that doesn't want any scrutiny at all - friendly or otherwise. And while Theroux goes out of his way to find the positive aspects of their beliefs and practices, Scientology's rather comically intimidating, incessant meddling ultimately makes it impossible for the audience to remain objective. Which of course ends up being the point.

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Before the Flood
dir Fisher Stevens; scr Mark Monroe; with Leonardo DiCaprio, Barack Obama, Ban Ki-Moon, Pope Francis, Elon Musk, Alejandro Inarritu 16/US ****
This documentary may be rather pushy, but then it's about what should be the most important issue facing humanity at the moment: climate change. The film follows DiCaprio as he travels around the world for two years as a United Nations messenger of peace, asking questions, talking with leaders and experts, exploring the situation from devastated boreal forests to melting ice caps to burnt-out jungles to the flooded streets of Miami. Scientists have almost never so wholeheartedly agreed on any issue, including what needs to be done to slow the changes and avert catastrophe. And yet idiots (most of whom are paid off by oil company lobbyists) continue to deny that this is taking place, unforgivably jeopardising future generations. This isn't about ignorance, it's about evil. And there's plenty we can do if we can muster up the will. This clear-eyed, beautifully assembled documentary is a bit gimmicky, but it carefully highlights the issue for anyone who wants to know the truth.

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Screenings start up again on Monday, and I have the James McAvoy thriller Split in the diary. There's also Ben Affleck's mobster drama Live by Night, the 60s-style thriller The Love Witch and a German drama called Jonathan.

Critical Week: A trick of the mind

There haven't been any press screenings in London over the past week, so I've been catching up with things on the small screen. Well, one TV show had a big-screen event opening: Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman were back on New Year's Day for Sherlock: The Abominable Bride, a film so relentlessly, almost exhaustingly clever that it felt a bit too much like Inception. But the cast is terrific, and a sharply evocative visual sensibility kept it riveting. Also, I wanted to revisit Star Wars: The Force Awakens when I wasn't working, and it was fun to see it again with a boisterous crowd in a local cinema to watch it again (although I didn't enjoy the boisterous snack-rustling and constant phone-use). Yes, the film holds up to a second viewing, as the box office bonanza is proving.

The only other new film I watched was the Ecuadorian coming-of-age drama Holiday, a sensitive story beautifully shot in the country I grew up in (homesickness alert!). And I also caught up with the final two awards nominees I hadn't yet seen - both British-made docs...

A Syrian Love Story
dir Sean McAllister; with Amer, Raghda, Bob, Shadi 15/UK ****
Beautifully assembled, this strikingly involving documentary follows a Syrian family through four years of upheaval. British filmmaker McAllister first starts videotaping Amer and his children while his wife Raghda is being held in prison in 2011, then follows them as they flee to Lebanon and eventually get refugee status in France. Along the way, they watch their country reduced to rubble by a government willing to massacre its own people rather than allow them to have a democratic vote. But it's the film's personal touch that makes it compelling, tracing Amer and Raghda's difficult relationship, often through the eyes of their precocious young son Bob. (Nominated for Documentary of the Year in the London Critics' Circle Film Awards.)

Palio
dir Cosima Spender; with Gigi Bruschelli, Giovanni Atzeni 15/UK ***.
Gorgeous cinematography and clever editing set this documentary apart. The Palio is a bareback horse race that has been run around Siena's Piazza del Campo since the 14th century, pitting the city's districts against each other. Filmmaker Spender lets the participants tell the story, which seems to make the city properly medieval for two races each summer. Rivalries are out of control, the money passing around is absurd, and both the horses and the jockeys are crowned as heroes or vilified as losers. By having three generations of jockeys narrate the film, it unearths all kinds of fascinating, unexpected details. Although the relevance of all of this outside Siena is rather tenuous, it's a sharply well-observed exploration of one of Europe's most colourful traditions. (Nominated for Documentary of the Year in the London Critics' Circle Film Awards.)

Screenings are cranking up very slowly so far this year, but I have Kristen Wiig's festival film Nasty Baby in the diary, plus the gospel singer documentary Mavis! More are sure to come along soon...

Critical week: The game's afoot

I've been deliberately avoiding movies over the Christmas and New Year break, but there's been plenty of television to distract me. The most anticipated holiday show was obviously the return of Sherlock on New Year's Day for a third series - it's been a long two-year wait. Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman and Rupert Graves are back for another brain-bender that's as engaging as ever, but feels more like a standard TV episode than previous seasons' movie-style instalments. It's also rather gimmicky and indulgent, so let's hope they calm down a bit for Sunday night's second episode.

Meanwhile, there was the annual Downton Abbey Christmas special. Last year they used this as an opportunity to essentially ruin the holidays with a horrific fatality. This year was much less momentous, merely entangling the soapy story-strands further while having a bit of fun with American guest stars Shirley MacLaine and Paul Giamatti. Slightly more prestigious was The Thirteenth Tale, a moody ghost story that pitted acting veteran Vanessa Redgrave opposite the equally gifted Olivia Colman as a dying novelist and her suspicious biographer, respectively. A nicely made film, with another involving turn by Colman, but Christopher Hampton's script was undercooked.

I also finally got caught up with the American version of the rude comedy Shameless - I was behind by a whole season and managed to watch all of series 3 over the holidays. Superb writing, directing and acting from the entire cast pushed these characters much further than we ever would have imagined. Few TV shows can induce squirms like this one, bless it.

I'll be back on the screening circuit starting next week, with a number of interesting things in the diary, including Michael Cera in Crystal Fairy, the post-apocalyptic romp Bounty Killer, the British musical comedy Svengali, the horror romp Devil's Bargain, the Venice-winning thriller Miss Violence, the acclaimed documentary After Tiller and the Formula One doc 1: Life on the Limit.