Critical Week: Lie low

With the big autumn festivals behind us, it feels like awards season kicked off this week, as studios begin jostling for attention with special screenings of their contenders. Channing Tatum gets one of his best roles yet in Roofman, the astonishing true story of a nice-guy criminal. It's entertaining and surprisingly moving too. I also attended a lively Q&A screening with Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt and writer-director Benny Safdie for another true story, The Smashing Machine. It's an unusually realistic mixed martial arts biopic with terrific performances from the whole cast.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Brides • Ellis Park
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Dylan O'Brien is terrific in Twinless, starring opposite gifted writer-director James Sweeney in an offbeat drama about grief and obsession. Marion Cotillard goes glacial in The Ice Tower, a too-murky fantasy about a teen girl who because fascinated by an actress on a film set. Eddie Marsan and Sam Claflin go very dark in All the Devils Are Here, an intriguing, artful British crime drama set in a gloomy farmhouse on a moor. 

Hong Kong icons Jackie Chan and Tony Leung face off in riveting, fast-paced cops-and-crooks thriller The Shadow's Edge. From Argentina, Kill the Jockey is a skilfully made and very quirky romp infused with dark emotions. And Justin Kurzel's doc Ellis Park beautifully explores the life of musician Warren Ellis and his involvement in rescuing animals in Indonesia. I also attended Acosta Danza's exhilarating A Decade in Motion on stage at Sadler's Wells. 

Films to watch this coming week include Leonardo DiCaprio in One Battle After Another (after I was unable to attend the only press screening), Riz Ahmed in Relay, Marlon Wayans in Him, Malcolm McDowell in The Partisan and Hunter Doohan in The Wilderness. There are also live performances of Lacrima at the Barbican and Get Down Tonight at Charing Cross Theatre.

Critical Week: Watch the hands

Actual in-person screenings were back with a vengeance this week, after a recent slow stretch. And yes, it was great to settle into proper cinemas and screening rooms to watch movies on a big screen where they belong. Especially a film as visually astounding as Everything Everywhere All at Once, which stars Michelle Yeoh as a middle-aged woman thrown into parallel-reality craziness. Thankfully, the filmmakers remember that this is about real human emotions rather than wacky science. The big screen also helped with the lavishly designed Downton Abbey: A New Era, a return to the upstairs-downstairs drama with an enormous ensemble of likeable characters, each of whom somehow gets some good screen time. It's just what's expected, which is both comforting and a bit boring.

BEST OUT THIS WEEK:
Casablanca Beats • Firebird
The Feast • Vortex
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Elsewhere, Mark Wahlberg tells the inspiring true tale of boxer-turned-priest Father Stu. There's only a slight rough edge to what should be a more complex story. Sophie Marceau is terrific in I Love America, a gentle comedy about a French filmmaker who moves to California. And the Moroccan drama Casablanca Beats bristles with life as a rapper teaches a group of lively, politically engaged students to create music.

A little further afield, Nick Cave lets the cameras watch as he and Warren Ellis create music in the gorgeously shot documentary This Much I Know to Be True. Robert Bresson's masterful 1959 morality tale Pickpocket gets a pristine big-screen restoration. And the documentary White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch just about makes sense of the clothing brand's horrible history of employment prejudice, while completely missing the point of why the clothes were so popular (and perhaps aren't so much now).

This coming week features another long weekend, and I'll also be watching a range of films including Benedict Cumberbatch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, the Irish coming-of-age drama The Quiet Girl, the Danish black comedy Wild Men, the chilean romance The Sea, the Iranian drama Atabai, and the Palestinian bombing doc Eleven Days in May.