Critical Week: Take the wheel

It's been another week of movies here, and I'm enjoying how things are back to a relatively normal schedule after months of intensity. The biggest movie this week was an online feature: Ghosted is an engaging action romcom that reteams Ana de Armas and Chris Evans. Rather a lot mopier, To Catch a Killer stars Shailene Woodley as a troubled cop pulled into an FBI investigation into a mass-shooter. It's dark and timely, but feels somewhat undercooked.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
A Thousand and One
The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan
PERHAPS AVOID:
Padre Pio
ALL REVIEWS >

The best surprise this week is The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan, a familiar story sharply well told with a first-rate French cast and properly thrilling action. The latest in the franchise, Evil Dead Rise is never very scary but will please fans with its outrageously excessive gore. And then there's the inventive and hugely engaging Filipino comedy I Love You Beksman, which kicked off the Queer East Fest in London on Tuesday. 

Outside the cinema, I loved the Nederlands Dans Theater programme at Sadler's Wells. And this was my first year attending the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards as a voting member (I am a member of the Critics' Circle Theatre Section, in addition to being chair of the Film Section). These awards are great fun, held at @sohoplace, the first new theatre built in the West End in 50 years. And most winners were in attendance, so it was great to celebrate them.

This next week I'll be watching the biopic Big George Foreman, Jay Baruchel in the story of BlackBerry, Kate Bosworth in Last Sentinel, the Greek drama Broadway, the Swedish comedy RSVP and the dance art film Transparent.

Critical Week: Eye of the tiger

It's a busy but short week here in London, and I've been running around catching the usual eclectic variety of movies at press screenings. I've been a fan of Henry Golding since his excellent work in Crazy Rich Asians and Monsoon, so I was willing to set Snake Eye aside and look forward to Assassin Club. Alas, this one's a generic, poorly written thriller. At least he's good in the first act, before things get truly nutty. Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult are gleefully over-the-top from the start of Renfield, and they're the best thing about the movie, which mashes-up horror, comedy, romance and drama in ways we've seen before. But at least it's good fun.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Suzume • Everything Went Fine
Private Desert • Cairo Conspiracy
PERHAPS AVOID:
Assassin Club
ALL REVIEWS >

Jim Broadbent and Penelope Wilton are of course excellent in The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, a very British road movie about a man who decides to walk the length of England. Thankfully, it avoids sentimentality for something darker and more resonant. Teyana Taylor is a force of nature in A Thousand and One, an unusually realistic New York drama that traces a mother and son over a decade that's as tumultuous for the city as it is for them. And the Norwegian pitch-black comedy Sick of Myself, which lampoons how everyone is vying for attention, is so bone-dry that it makes us feel uncomfortable in all the right ways.

This next week I'll be watching Eva Green in The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan, Jim Gaffigan in Linoleum, the Polynesian epic Pacification and the Filipino drama I Love You Beksman, which opens the Queer East Film Fest (reviews here soon).