Critical Week: Dress to impress

Lockdown rolls on, with another random batch of movies to watch this week. I'm always hoping there will be a gem hidden in there somewhere. The weather has been glorious in London, so I ventured out for a picnic one day, seeing friends (at a safe distance) for the first time in two months. It kind of gives you hope that this will all end someday. Meanwhile, one of this week's movies, the action comedy The Lovebirds, offered some ideas about how to dress to spice up those Zoom meetings. It's a dopey bit of fluff, but kind of just right for these times, and Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae make a unexpectedly terrific duo.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
I'm No Longer Here • Snowpiercer
Only the Animals • End of Sentence
The Man Standing Next

John Hawkes and Logan Lerman are another solid double-act in End of Sentence, an engaging father-son road movie set in Ireland. Mario Van Peebles makes the B-movie crime drama A Clear Shot almost worth watching, plus the fact that it's based on a real hostage event. But it's very cheesy. There are no big-name actors in the sweet romance Angelfish, but it's charming enough. The French mystery thriller Only the Animals is expertly directed by Dominik Moll with an excellent ensemble cast and a twisty, involving plot. From Korea, The Man Standing Next is a riveting, exceptionally well-made thriller about the real-life assassination of the Korean president in 1979. From Thailand, Krabi 2562 is a moody experimental doc about the collision of past and present in a tourist city. And The Uncertain Kingdom is a collection of 20 short films addressing current issues in Britain (nine of them were screened to the press in January, and I saw the other 11 this week). Specially commissioned, the fascinatingly varied clips were made to explore the wake of Brexit, and have an additional resonance amid the pandemic chaos.

I have a rather long list of movies to watch over the next week, so we'll see how many of these I get around to: Dakota Johnson in The High Note, Sebastian Stan in The Last Full Measure, Luke Wilson in Guest of Honor, Willem Dafoe in Tommaso, the small-town drama To the Stars, the horror thriller The Dinner Party, the German drama The Collini Case and the documentary Homosaywhat.

Critical Week: A colourful life

I ended last year watching Federico Fellini's masterpiece La Dolce Vita, and then this week caught his earlier I Vitelloni as part of the Fellini retrospective at BFI Southbank. All of which confirms Fellini as my favourite all-time filmmaker: his way of capturing the energy of life on-screen is unparalleled. I Vitelloni (which essentially translates as The Young Bucks) is a powerful 1953 drama about a group of lazy, life-loving guys in their late-20s, grappling with thoughts about their future. Marriages, affairs, capers, relationships and some provocative personal issues make the film vivid and intensely engaging. The cast is terrific, and it's so cool that it's almost overpowering. A great reminder to see classics on the big screen whenever possible.

There were only two press screenings for me this week. The Runaways is a gently paced British adventure about three kids and two donkeys travelling across Yorkshire to find their mother. It's beautifully shot, and surprisingly dark. And The Uncertain Kingdom is a collection of 20 short films (they screened 9 for us) that highlight the turbulence in British culture at the moment - beautifully made dramas, comedies and documentaries looking at income inequality, racism and bigotry, government apathy and of course Brexit.

In addition, I had a chance to revisit two films. First was Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which I needed to see as a fan (the first time felt like work), and I had the same reaction: it's both hugely entertaining and naggingly disappointing. And I attended the premiere of The Host, a British-Dutch thriller that riffs on the premise of Psycho, with some added twists. It was fun to host the post-screening Q&A with actors Mike Beckingham, Maryam Hassouni, Suan-Li Ong, Nigel Barber, Togo Igawa and the awesome Ruby Turner, plus producer extraordinaire Zachary Weckstein and gifted cinematographer Oona Menges.

I've only got one press screening in the diary this coming week, James Norton as a journalist in the true story Mr Jones. I'm sure other things will come up, and in the meantime I've got a lot of work to do producing the London Critics' Circle Film Awards at the end of the month.