Critical Week: Baby you're a firework

While most London critics decamp to the South of France for 10 days, I prefer to avoid the chaos of the Cannes Film Festival if I can, as screening rooms get a bit quieter here. But it's not easy to read about all the intriguing films screening over there. While I have a bit more free time, there are still movies to watch! This week's films included the warm and properly inspiring biopic Young Woman and the Sea, starring Daisy Ridley as groundbreaking swimmer Trudy Ederle. This week's big release is IF, a child-friendly movie from actor-filmmaker John Krasinski that's remarkably sweet, warm and funny. And next week's kids' movie is The Garfield Movie, a frenetic animated romp that will keep very, very young children happy.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Tiger Stripes • IF
ALL REVIEWS >

A bit more high-brow is the fact-based action romcom Hit Man, starring the terrific Glen Powell as a teacher pretending to be an assassin to help a police sting operation. It's a great story, very well-told by Powell and director-cowriter Richard Linklater. Elizabeth Hurley stars in the sudsy erotic thriller Strictly Confidential, which is so camp that it's hilarious. JK Simmons goes all-in to play a ruthless killer menacing a nice family in the harrowing and rather harsh thriller You Can't Run Forever. From Pakistan, In Flames is an inventive dramatic horror film about women confronting the patriarchy. And I also caught up with Guy Ritchie's new film The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, a snappy WWII adventure based on a true story. A terrific cast led by Henry Cavill, Eiza Gonzalez, Alan Ritchson and Henry Golding keeps it funny and sometimes thrilling. There was also a live performance by musical stand-up comic Dave Hill with his riotously hilarious Caveman in a Spaceship at the Soho Theatre.

This coming week I'll be watching Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Greg Kinnear in both The Present and Sight, the Canadian drama Solo and the animated adventure Deep Sea. Plus on stage I have Pieces of Me at Camden People's Theatre.

Critical Week: Be excellent to each other

As the American political landscape gets uglier, with flagrant lies deployed to stoke fear and division, perhaps we should all be listening to Bill and Ted, who are back on the big screen with their ridiculous but deeply engaging third adventure Bill & Ted Face the Music. It was refreshing to watch something that never pretends to be anything other than optimistic and fun.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Les Miserables • Mulan
Socrates • Unknown Origins
FULL REVIEWS >

Even better this week is Mulan, retelling the folktale from the Disney animated classic as a proper Chinese action epic. It's a powerhouse story told beautifully by director Niki Caro and star Yifei Liu, and it's such a visual feast that it really should have been released on the big screen. Hopefully Disney will see sense and put it into cinemas where it belongs.

I went to the cinema once this past week, to see a film that had no screenings or review links available: The New Mutants had its release delayed by Disney's dismantling of Fox, and it's not as awful as some critics have said. Although it's not great either, a muddled attempt at a terrific idea, combining teen angst and horror in the X-Men universe. There were also two films from Australia: I Am Woman is a likeable biopic about singer Helen Reddy that opts more for politics than depth of character, while Measure for Measure is a clever and somewhat murky adaptation of Shakespeare starring Hugo Weaving as a present-day Melbourne crime boss. Outside the mainstream, Unknown Origins is a terrific comic book movie from Spain that's smart, funny and full of action. Right Beside You is a new collection of five strong short films under the New Queer Visions label, pointed dramas about companionship. And premiering at Fantasia International Film Festival this week, Undergods is a fiendishly clever dystopian parable with a superb pan-European cast in multiple storylines.

I have one actual press screening in the diary for the coming week, the British drama Rocks. Otherwise, as the first physical film festival continues in Venice, I'll be watching online screeners of Charlie Kaufman's I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Andrea Riseborough in the sci-fi horror Possessor, the romantic comedy Love Guaranteed, the thriller Up on the Glass and the Thai trafficking drama Buoyancy.