Critical Week: Movie night

With the sunshine blazing across Great Britain, cinema box office is likely to take a hit these days. Although maybe the air conditioning will lure people to escape from the heat. I've certainly enjoyed attending press screenings this week, a cool break from the sweaty sunshine. I caught up with Pixar's new animated feature Elemental, which premiered at Cannes. It's a little uneven plotwise, but the characters are terrific and it looks spectacular. And then there's the return of Chris Hemsworth in Extraction II, an even more confident thrill-ride. It's ripping entertainment, but very violent.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
You Can Live Forever • The Flash
Elemental • Extraction II
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Also at Cannes, Wes Anderson's new slice of whimsy is Asteroid City, in which a vast ensemble of A-listers circle around strange goings on in a desert crater. It's quirky and has moments of genius, but little resonance. Take That's songs were adapted into the British stage musical The Band, which has now become the comedy romp Greatest Days. But the laughs are undermined by several pushy dark plot points.  And I also saw two smaller films centred around addicts: God's Petting You is an offbeat, messy heist comedy about a junkie who teams up with a sex addict to rob a pornstar, while Sunlight is a likeable but contrived Irish drama about an addict trying to have a final connection with his dying sponsor.

This next week I'll be watching Harrison Ford in action in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, British drama To Nowhere, French drama Mother & Son and two documentaries: Baato from the Himalayas in Nepal and The Last Rider about the 1989 Tour de France.

Olympics Day 16: Big finale

It feels like the Olympics just started a few minutes ago, and now they're finished. The closing ceremony tonight was another random collection of British cultural influences, from The Who to One Direction by way of the Spice Girls, Take That, Annie Lennox, George Michael and Eric Idle singing the marvellous Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (my personal highlight!). It made no sense, had no discernible narrative and was packed with moments that were wonderfully wacky and thoroughly bewildering.

But of course the best thing is seeing all the athletes clumped together regardless of political or geographical boundaries, celebrating their experiences over the last 17 days. So watching the flame dwindle out is always profoundly moving. It's been a blur of energy, flooding through every part of London in a way that won over most (but not all) of the most die-hard cynics. yes, the Olympics are over-commercialised and ruthlessly corporate, but they also celebrate human achievement at the most simple, honest level. And it's a rare moment every four years when everyone gets together and forgets that they're at war with each other.

I'm looking forward to the Paralympics in a little over two weeks. I've never attended one, and will be covering these Games in an intriguing way that will let me soak up a lot of the experiences firsthand. I'll be blogging about that later.

But now back to our regularly scheduled movie nonsense. The Expendables 2 opens this week, after all...