Critical Week: Kick into action mode

Women led the charge in two big action thrillers screened to London-based press this past week. Noomi Rapace stars in Unlocked as a CIA sleeper agent put back on active duty in London. Comments on the film are embargoed, but the starry cast includes Toni Collette, Michael Douglas, John Malkovich and Orlando Bloom. And Scarlett Johansson takes the lead role in Ghost in the Shell, an exhilaratingly visual but thematically thin sci-fi mystery-thriller that's well worth seeing in Imax 3D.

A bit further afield, two low-budget horror dramas were effectively freaky. Catherine Walker and Steve Oram star in A Dark Song, a creepy story of angelic incantations in an isolated house in Wales. And The Transfiguration is an evocative drama set in New York, where a young boy with vampire tendencies befriends an unsuspecting neighbour.

Screenings over this rather busy coming week include Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson in The Fate of the Furious, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine in Going in Style, Jim Broadbent and Charlotte Rampling in The Sense of an Ending, Octavia Spencer and Sam Worthington in The Shack, Arnold Schwarzenegger in Aftermath, Dennis Quaid in A Dog's Purpose, Cate Shortland's Berlin Syndrome and the Oscar-nominated animation My Life as a Courgette.

Critical Week: Double trouble

Tom Hardy himself popped up at the press screening for his stylish and entertaining movie Legend, in which he delivers two astonishing performances as the Kray twins, who ran London's gangland in the 1960s. Ed Helms stars in Vacation, a next-generation sequel to the Chevy Chase comedies that's just as rude but more silly than edgy. Robert Redford and Nick Nolte star in the enjoyably earthy comedy A Walk in the Woods, based on the Bill Bryson book. Marcia Gay Harden heads to Costa Rica in the warm comedy-drama After Words, and has a life-altering encounter with a cheeky local. And Josh Hutcherson heads to Colombia in the realistic, gritty thriller Escobar: Paradise Lost, where he becomes entangled with the 1990s drug kingpin, played with disarming charm by Benicio Del Toro.

A little further afield, we had the sequel Sinister 2, which has an extreme embargo on it: until the day it opens. We also saw the beautifully made gentle Los Angeles drama Brahmin Bulls, with Sendhil Ramamurthy and Roshan Seth as father and son; actor-turned-filmmaker Craig Roberts' perhaps too audacious,but skilfully made British coming-of-age movie Just Jim; actor Steve Oram's even more experimental, and rather genius, sociological pastiche Aaaaaaaah!; the rather bleak but moving Australian homophobia drama Drown; and Dishonoured Bodies, a collection of nine somewhat preachy but very cleverly assembled experimental shorts by Spanish filmmaker Juanma Carillo.

This coming week we have the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton, Zac Efron in We Are Your Friends, Kevin Costner in McFarland, Rupert Friend in Hitman: Agent 47 and M Night Shyamalan's The Visit.

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

33rd London Critics' Circle Film Awards

It wasn't just another Critics' Circle ceremony for me: this year I was chair of the awards committee, so the whole evening was my baby. And it was odd to see every tiny detail I've agonised over for the past few months slot into place so nicely, despite some significant obstacles. We lost four nominee attendees at the last minute due to the snow (Tom Hooper) and the flu (Andrea Riseborough, Will Poulter and Jacqueline Durran), and others couldn't come because they were working far, far away. But everyone who made it had a great night.

The day started on Sunday morning as I looked out the window to see snow falling. It's been a snowy week in London, with the usual travel chaos any change in the weather brings. But we were in motion, and couldn't be stopped. I headed from home via replacement bus (my Tube line was helpfully closed) to the May Fair Hotel in Mayfair, where the production team ran through the show in the theatre at noon. Then there were fine-tuning adjustments, printing up the winners cards for the envelopes, collating the speeches from those who couldn't be there to accept their award, and of course changing into our finery for the show. The critics who were presenting awards arrived at 5pm to run through their parts of the presentation with our host Richard Herring (who has blogged brilliantly about his experience).

By 5.30pm the first attendees were assembling on the red carpet and facing the press line. The cameramen of course latched on to the glamorous women, including Helena Bonham Carter (recipient of our top honour, the Dilys Powell Award for Excellence in Film), Emily Blunt (nominee for British Actress), Samantha Barks (nominee for Young Performer) and Olivia Colman (last year's British Actress winner, who generously came to help me present the award this year).

Also very popular with the press was young Jack Reynor, nominated as Young Performer, who has just been named as the star of Transformers 4. He had a great night, knowing he was heading home to Dublin in the morning to begin four months of physical training for the film. Although I told him he really needs to take a break to celebrate his 21st birthday this week!

I had a chance to talk to all of our special guests as they arrived, including Ben Drew (nominated for Ill Manors), Charlie Creed-Miles and Dexter Fletcher (nominatees for Wild Bill), and three nominees from the superb British film My Brother the Devil: writer-director Sally El Hosaini, actor Fady Elsayed and cinematographer David Raedeker. At 6.30pm the champagne reception was shifted into the theatre for the awards ceremony, which clipped along thanks to Richard Herring's snappy hosting. Several early winners weren't present: Anne Hathaway's Supporting Actress award was accepted by Les Miserables producer Debra Hayward, and Philip Seymour Hoffman was unable to be here to get his Supporting Actor award, Emmannuelle Riva sent a lovely video message from Paris to accept Actress, and Joaquin Phoenix wrote the thank-you note of the night* to accept Actor.

But most of the British winners were on hand to collect their prizes. Above: The Impossible's Tom Holland with his Young Performer trophy, Rafe Spall turned up to accept the Director award for his Life of Pi director Ang Lee, and The Imposter's Bart Layton took home the award for Documentary. Below: Alice Lowe and Steve Oram were multiple nominees for British Actress and British Actor, and won Breakthrough Filmmaker for their Sightseers script.

Andrea Riseborough won the British Actress award, which I presented, but she'd had to cancel her attendance at the last minute due to illness. So last year's winner Olivia Colman accepted the award and read a message from her. Toby Jones (below) won the British Actor award, and then came back to the stage with sound designer Stevie Haywood (a Technical Achievement nominee) to claim British Film of the Year for Berberian Sound Studio.

There was a warm acceptance video from Bill Westenhofer, who won Technical Achievement for the visual effects in Life of Pi. And Michael Haneke sent two thank-you videos - accepting his awards for Screenplay and Film of the Year for Amour. He's in Madrid at the moment staging a version of Cosi Fan Tutte. 

The highlight of the evening was Mike Newell presenting the Dilys to Helena Bonham Carter: "She's like a kaleidoscope, she is able to deliver these wonderful, vivid characters again and again. They're all full of variety, full of wit and energy and I think people long to see what she's going to try next. She's become an institution. Working with her is always surprising, always harmonious. Not one tiny little bit of foot-stamping or tantrum-throwing."

Her speech was hilariously witty, warm and honest, and she later told the press: "It feels like a rash. It suddenly seems like I've got a contagion of diseases - I mean awards! But it's nice, it's a nice feeling. It's so weird, because I'm only 46. A lifetime achievement award - it feels like 'I'm not over yet'. I hope they're not trying to say it's time to stop. I'm only just getting the gist of it." She clearly had a great evening, and she and Tim Burton were among the last to leave, happily chatting to everyone throughout the after party. I left shortly after them, sharing a cab through the snowy streets to North London with fellow critic and awards committee member Pauline McLeod (that's us below).

I didn't open my goody bag until this morning - quite a haul! I need to thank our charity partner Missing People and our amazing sponsors for making this happen. And now I feel like I need a holiday before I start thinking about 2014....

---

Critics' Circle Film Section - top 10 films of 2012:

1. Amour
2. The Master
3. Life of Pi
4. Argo
5. Beasts of the Southern Wild
6. Zero Dark Thirty
7. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia
8. Django Unchained
9. Tabu
10. Rust and Bone