Critical Week: Pretty in pink

Screenings are back in full swing now, alongside continuing awards-season events, so there's plenty to watch out there these days. As a voter, it was nice to have a link to watch the Golden Globes live on Sunday, even if it finished at 4am London time. I enjoyed seeing the results of the all-new voting base, journalists scattered across some 75 countries who don't follow the usual Hollywood script. And the feed I was watching kept running during the ad breaks, so it was cool to watch the astonishing array of stars schmoozing and playing around before being called back to their seats. Now I have three weeks to finalise plans for the London critics awards, where we hope to have plenty of big names in the room to celebrate.

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As for the movies, the big screening this week was for the musical remake of Mean Girls, which is essentially the same movie with added music video-style songs and references to social media. Some of this works nicely, but it feels a little uneven. Race for Glory: Audi vs Lancia is a rather dry tale of rivalry between German and Italian car companies, livened up by a solid cast and a bit of racing action. The 90s-set New York drama You Can't Stay Here makes up for its low budget with some big underlying ideas and cool cinematic references. The British arthouse drama Silver Haze is relentlessly miserable, but shows some visual style. And the documentary Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer is fascinating for both fans and potential fans, but surprisingly straightforward.

This coming week I'll be watching Viggo Mortensen in Eureka, British thriller Jackdaw, award-winning British drama Gassed Up, Swedish refugee drama Opponent, Italian romance Fireworks and offbeat comedy The Civil Dead.

Critical Week: Locker talk

Amid sunny weather in London, while many critics decamp to Cannes for 10 days of frantic festival action, there has been the usual eclectic collection of press screenings. Olivia Wilde steps behind the camera to direct the hugely entertaining teen comedy Booksmart, as raucous as any high school comedy and comes from a refreshingly female perspective. For contrast, Keanu Reeves is back in killing mode for John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum, which starts off with a series of breathtakingly inventive action sequences before settling in for a relatively rote final act.

The week's indie was Funny Story, a comedy with a very dark undercurrent, beautifully played and bravely written. The foreign film was Portugal's frothy ambrosia Diamantino, a surreal and pointed but surprisingly sweet satire of politics and celebrity culture. And there were three docs: Apollo 11 is a gripping archival film with no present-day material, telling the story of the first man on the moon with pristine film footage and a strikingly intimate perspective. From the brilliant mind of Werner Herzog comes Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin, which cleverly traces the life of the late writer on an unusual trek through history and geography. And the finely assembled The Lavender Scare recounts a little-known spin-off of the McCarthy hearings, as government workers were hunted down and ruined for being gay from the early 1950s until the law was repealed in the 1990s.

I have two more screenings before I leave London for a couple of weeks: Will Smith in Disney's live-action Aladdin remake and the animated sequel The Secret Life of Pets 2. There may be some films I can catch up with while I'm in the US, not to mention whatever might be on the plane. I'll be updating the blog along the way...

Critical Week: Yes, mother

London-based critics had two traumatic female-centred dramas this week to consider. First up was the trashy melodramatic thriller Unforgettable, featuring a wonderfully nasty mother-daughter relationship between Katherine Heigl and Cheryl Ladd (above), plus Rosario Dawson as the innocent woman caught in the mayhem. Terrible, but a lot of fun. Meanwhile, Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin star in a remake of My Cousin Rachel, based on the Daphne Du Maurier novel about a suspicious 19th century woman who might be manipulating her way into a fortune. (Comments on the film itself are embargoed until closer to the release date in June.)

A little further afield, this week I was able to catch up with Werner Herzog's strangely offbeat drama Salt and Fire, about corporate greed and natural disasters in Bolivia. It has an intriguing central role for Michael Shannon, and at least gets you thinking. And then there's the documentary David Lynch: The Art Life, tracing the iconic filmmaker's pre-cinematic inspiration in his own words, with some added slightly overwrought filmmaking from the trio of directors who made this doc.

This coming week we have screenings of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, the acclaimed Russian film The Student and something called Detour. I also have quite a few screener discs to catch up on.