Critical Week: I'll drink to that

In this full week between two short ones, I've been working to get ahead of things before taking a break starting next week. So I've been both attending screenings and watching films at home on links. And there were a couple of big ones along the way. Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick are back for the frothy comedy-thriller Another Simple Favour, this time set in gorgeous locations around Capri. Both silly and violent, it's also very entertaining. Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan lead a ragtag ensemble in Thunderbolts*, a more character-based Marvel film than usual, with a terrific linear narrative that outs the effects nonsense into emotional context.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Where Dragons Live • Thunderbolts*
Parthenope • Another Simple Favour
ALL REVIEWS >

Nicolas Cage gives one of his wonderfully bonkers performances in The Surfer as a guy who simply wants to return to surf the waves on the Australian beach where he grew up. Then things get outrageously messy. From Scotland, the 18th century samurai-Western mashup Tornado is set in the Highlands, slow and riveting, and superbly played by Koki, Tim Roth, Jack Lowden and more. From Italy, Paolo Sorrentino's Parthenope is yet another sumptuously gorgeous free-spirited epic odyssey, enjoyable and yet oddly out of reach. From Brazil, Karim Ainouz's bracingly colour-drenched dramatic thriller Motel Destino is bursting with passion and yearning. The Argentine drama Most People Die on Sundays has a much lighter tone than the title suggests, and it's a warm exploration of identity and connection. And the British doc Where Dragons Live is a fascinating look at a middle-class family sifting through its personal history.

This coming week, I'll have a few things to watch over the long weekend before heading off to visit my parents for a couple of weeks. Films include the musical drama Midnight in Phoenix, and there's also a stage production of Blood Wedding at the Omnibus in Clapham.

LFF: Queen of hearts

It's only day two but I'm already feeling a bit worn out by the 65th London Film Festival, and I'm blaming it on these super-early screenings. While most of the year morning movies start around 10.30am, during the festival it's 8am, which is perhaps a bit early for something violent or sexual, or indeed violently sexual. But we're trained professionals, so we persevere. Alas, limited capacity means that even arriving 45 minutes early was no guarantee of getting in, and I spent more time waiting in queues today than actually seeing films. And I was actually on the red carpet tonight with Kristen Stewart, briefly. Here are highlights from inside the cinemas...

Spencer
dir Pablo Larrain; with Kristen Stewart, Timothy Spall 21/Ger ***.
Taking an inventive, ambitious approach to a familiar story, writer Steven Knight and director Pablo Larrain elicit resonant emotions over a few days in the life of Princess Diana. Calling this "a fable from a true tragedy", the film uses surreal touches to get deep under the surface of events depicted. This adds humour, melodrama and even horror, while pulling us down into the rabbit hole.

Red Rocket
dir Sean Baker; with Simon Rex, Bree Elrod 21/US ***.
Pushing his loose, improvisational filmmaking style in a new direction, filmmaker Sean Baker combines comedy with a hint of a thriller for this engagingly unhinged exploration of masculinity and ambition. It helps that the lead character is such a likeable loser, because as he ricochets from one potential crisis to another, we find it eerily easy to identify with him. And the setting becomes another character in the story.

Bergman Island
dir-scr Mia Hansen-Love; with Vicky Krieps, Tim Roth 21/Swe ***.
A textured look at the nature of relationships that's played as a warm homage to all things Ingmar Bergman, this multi-layered drama isn't quite as grim as you'd expect it to be. Writer-directer tinges the story's knowingly sad angles with glimpses of hope and even happiness. This is a provocative depiction of the challenge of balancing a connection with deeper, lingering feelings. And it's gorgeously shot in striking locations.

Cop Secret [Leynilögga]
dir Hannes Thor Halldorsson; with Audunn Blondal, Egill Einarsson 21/Ice ****
Wild and loose, this punchy 1970s-style police thriller from Iceland starts with a bang and never lets up. Hilariously over the top, the film gleefully deploys the tough-guy genre cliches. The film is entertaining both for its gritty crime action and the way it makes the usual homoerotic subtext in a buddy movie much more central to the narrative. But can the nation's toughest cop admit that he's gay?

Full reviews of festival films will be posted when possible and linked at Shadows' LFF HOMEPAGE  
For full information, visit BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 

Critical Week: Boys gone wild

There weren't any kids' movies screened to critics this week, thankfully (it's been a bit much this summer!). But we had some films about kids aimed at grown-ups. The biggest is Good Boys, which is basically a standard rude teen movie featuring tweens in the central roles instead. Jacob Tremblay (above) leads the cast of kids and scene-stealing adults. Lupita Nyong'o plays a smart teacher in Little Monsters, taking her kindergarten class on a tour of local farm when a zombie apocalypse breaks out. Being an Aussie film, it's primarily a comedy, but there's also real gore and emotion too. And Steve Coogan leads Hot Air as a radio host who suddenly has to take care of his teen niece (Taylor Russell). It's snappy is rather predictable.

Two smallish movies benefit from big Hollywood actresses: Julianne Moore and Michelle Williams star in After the Wedding, as two women connected by a long-time secret involving Billy Crudup. Naomi Watts stars in the smart, provocative drama Luce, as a woman coping with possible issues relating to her adoptive teen son's past. Further afield we had the superb Iranian drama Permission, about a fierce, intelligent woman taking on an unjust system; the light, silly romantic comedy One Last Night is set around a struggling cinema; and Tu Me Manques is an artful, devastatingly emotional drama based on a play that links New York with Bolivia.

I've also been watching horror films that will be at the upcoming FrightFest (in London, 22-26 Aug). The quality of these films has been very high; for me horror is the perfect movie genre, because if done well it can truly make you forget the world outside. These include the opening film Come to Daddy starring Elijah Wood, the closing film A Good Woman Is Hard to Find starring Sarah Bolger, Eddie Marsan in Feedback, the teen-killers thriller Extracurricular and the dark psychological nightmare I Trapped the Devil. More to come on the festival next week.

This coming week we have screenings of Sam Taylor-Johnson's A Million Little Pieces, Guillermo Del Toro's Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, Alexandre Aja's Crawl and Francois Ozon's By the Grace of God. Plus several more FrightFest titles.

Critical Week: Not to be messed with

The most unforgettable performance in a press screening this week easily belongs to Kate Winslet's fierce Russian mobster in Triple 9, John Hillcoat's urban Western, which opens next month boasting a fierce cast that also includes Chiwetel Ejiofor, Casey Affleck, Anthony Mackie, Woody Harrelson and Gal Gadot, to name a few. (Side note: it was fun to chat with Winslet about this film at the London critics' awards on Sunday - she hadn't seen it yet.)

We also reunited with Ice Cube and Kevin Hart for the rote action-comedy sequel Ride Along 2, a sequel even worse than the lacklustre original (part 3 is pretty much guaranteed after audiences in America flocked to see it last weekend). Much more challenging were William Monahan's desert thriller Mojave, a choppy dramatic thriller starring Oscar Isaac and Garrett Hedlund; the dark and deeply moving British drama Departure, starring the amazing Juliet Stevenson and Alex Lawther; and the unnerving, elusive drama Chronic, starring a terrific Tim Roth.

This coming week I have very, very late press screenings of J Blakeson's The 5th Wave with Chloe Grace Moretz and Dark Places with Charlize Theron (both open this Friday), plus Michael Bay's Benghazi thriller 13 Hours, acclaimed arthouse drama Green Room, animated adventure Capture the Flag, cycling doc Battle Mountain and shorts compilation Boys on Film 14: Worlds Collide.

Critical Week: Field of dreams

UK critics were this week finally shown Clint Eastwood's new film Trouble With the Curve, and the delayed screening was probably due to the fact that baseball-themed films never do well here. The bigger problem though is that the film is only superficially dramatic and sentimental. More interesting was the overwrought and very dark British neighbourhood drama Broken, starring Tim Roth and Cillian Murphy. Speaking of overwrought, Bernard Rose's latest modernisation of Tolstoy starring Danny Huston is Boxing Day, a clever but relentlessly pushy drama.

Further off the beaten path was the American Christmas comedy Walk a Mile in My Pradas, with a clever variation on the body-swap genre as two men trade sexualities. It's too silly to say much, but is enjoyable enough. And there were two documentaries: a chilling exploration school-bullying in a beautifully made, heart-wrenching Bully, and the official film of the 2012 Olympics, First, which plays like a corporate promotional video but contains some genuinely inspiring stories.

This coming week I'll finally catch up with awards contender Life of Pi as well as the not-so-acclaimed The Man With the Iron Fists. And then there's the documentary Ballroom Dancer and the festival favourite Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Plus a few other things as they come....