Critical Week: Body issues

Cinemas are now absolutely jam-packed with awards movies, leaving people unsure what they should watch. The box office is always ruthless, rarely rewarding the films that actually deserve it. And the awards are skewing populist as well this year. After the producers (PGAs) and actors (SAGs) went all over the place, all eyes are on the directors (DGAs) this weekend to restore a sense of order before Bafta and Oscar arrive. But could Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star Is Born and Green Book knock the more ambitious, accomplished films out of the spotlight?

Press screenings this week included the much-anticipated Akita: Battle Angel, which James Cameron developed before handing off the directing job to Robert Rodriguez. It's a big, action movie, with lots of action, flashy effects, some cool themes and, erm, bashing robots. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part has huge shoes to fill, and is thankfully relentlessly hilarious as it rockets through its insane plot with engaging, silly characters, outrageous storytelling, inventively crazed visuals and a nonstop peppering of references to everything, including itself.

A little off the beaten path, Untogether is an artful romantic comedy-drama starring Jamie Dornan, Jemima Kirke, Lola Kirke and Ben Mendelsohn. It's sharply made, observant and a little mopey. Lucid is an independent British thriller about a young guy who learns to control his dreams, sort of. It's intriguing and visually stunning. Wretched Things tells three stories linked by themes about sex and morality. It's inventive and beautifully shot and performed, if a little on the nose. He Loves Me is a fiercely artful Greek drama with no dialog (there's a voiceover) about two men on a beach holiday trying to save their relationship.

And finally, I managed to watch the recent American TV production of Rent: Live, which turned out to be the dress rehearsal, and it showed in the low-energy performances and uneven technical quality. But it was also far too frantic, busy and even a bit dated. Surely a stripped-down update would give new life to this awesome musical.

This coming week, I'll buy a ticket to see How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, as I was unable to attend the only press screening. I also have screenings of Liam Neeson in Cold Pursuit, Penelope Cruz in Everybody Knows and two docs: The Gospel of Eureka and The Sunday Sessions.

Critical Week: Bafta celebrates Boyhood

It was the biggest night in the UK film calendar, as the British Academy Film Awards were handed out at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Richard Linklater's Boyhood emerged as the big winner, taking Film, Director and Supporting Actress. Pictured above is the movie's attending cast and crew, plus Tom Cruise, who presented Best Film. Alas, Linklater was absent due to the Directors Guild Awards the previous night in Los Angeles.

The other big winner was Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, which took home five Baftas: Original Screenplay, Score, Production Design, Costumes and Make-up & Hair. Other triple winners were The Theory of Everything (British Film, Actor, Adapted Screenplay) and Whiplash (Supporting Actor, Editing and Sound). Pictured at the right is Best Actress winner Julianne Moore with presenters Henry Cavill and Chris Evans, and Best Actor winner Eddie Redmayne with the person he played in the film, Stephen Hawking.

Bafta is always a strange one, because the BBC refuses to broadcast it live, waiting a few hours and chopping it down to two hours to show later at night - meaning there are several "awards presented earlier" bits in the closing credits. This butchers the ceremony's flow and momentum, leaving it feeling oddly dry and dull. It doesn't help that Stephen Fry has been hosting just a bit too long - he's still timely and pithy, but offers nothing remotely new from year to year.

As for other awards, Bafta usually gets to present at least one worthy winner that Oscar ignored, and Sunday night's was The Lego Movie, which won Animated Feature. It was also great to see Ida win Foreign-Language Film and Pride's writer and producer win the Outstanding Debut award. Finally, it was no surprise that Jack O'Connell won the Rising Star Award - he's had an awesome year with Starred Up, '71, Unbroken and even 300: Rise of an Empire.

Meanwhile, Screenings this past week were all rather low-key titles, including the strikingly involving transgender comedy-drama Boy Meets Girl, the enjoyable British indie alien invasion adventure Robot Overlords, the astonishing Ukrainian deaf-gang drama The Tribe and the eye-opening narrative documentary The Man Who Saved the World. I also got a chance to see Blade Runner: The Final Cut on a big screen for the first time in advance of its re-release in a couple of months.

This coming week's collection will include the event movie Fifty Shades of Grey, Will Smith in Focus, Chris Hemsworth in Blackhat, Francois Ozon's The New Girlfriend, the Kiwi drama The Dark Horse and the acclaimed doc Dreamcatcher.

Critical Week: But is it art?

The week's big film was George Clooney's The Monuments Men, which quickly answered questions about why its release was shifted outside awards contention and why it wasn't screened for the press until just a few days before release: it's only ok. The story it tells is certainly essential, but it's mainly watchable because the strong cast inserts engaging detail into thinly written characters. Speaking of whom, the gang descended on London for Tuesday's press junket and premiere: Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Bob Balaban and Dmitri Leonidas, plus author Robert Edsel and surviving Monuments Man Harry Ettlinger. Alas, no Cate Blanchett or Hugh Bonneville.

Another very late screening was for the remake of RoboCop, screened the night before it opened. It's not half bad, thanks to a solid performance from Gary Oldman. There was also the tepid remake of another 1980s movie, the romance Endless Love. And we also caught up with Craig Fairbrass in the rather clunky LA thriller The Outsider as well as the latest in Peccadillo's shorts collections, Boys on Film 11: We Are Animals. But the film of the week, hands down, was The Lego Movie, a hilariously inventive animated romp that landed atop the box office in America and is likely to do the same thing in Britain this weekend.

This coming week we've got Scarlett Johansson as a sexy alien in Under the Skin, Wes Anderson's all-star The Grand Budapest Hotel, the British workplace comedy 8 Minutes Idle, the designer biopic Yves Saint Laurent and the cinema doc A Story of Children and Film. And the British Academy Film Awards hands out the Baftas on Sunday night.