Critical Week: Seriously

The fallout from my holiday is still being felt on two fronts: First, I'm generally more relaxed than normal while facing the ongoing chaos of my daily schedule. Second, my daily schedule is that much more chaotic since I have additional deadlines, writing to catch up on, and a bit more madness since I am going away again (this time on a working trip) for two weeks soon.

But never mind, my first film-filled week back from holiday was an intriguing one, with a couple of summer blockbusters that were actually good for a change. Namely, The Dark Knight, which Christopher Nolan continues to spin into a thinking-person's action movie, with bleak situations and seriously complex characters. The other nice surprise was Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which Guillermo Del Toro pushes a whole lot further than the first film, with even more outrageous displays of pure imagination underscored by strong characters and lots of dry humour.

I also caught up with the disturbing, thought-provoking German drama The Wave; the not great but impossible to criticise documentary Blindsight, about blind Tibetan children climbing one of the Himalayas; the beautifully filmed but still lacklustre new version of Brideshead Revisited; and the only for extreme skiing fans doc Steep. On my own time, I also managed to watch two classic love stories on video, which come from polar extremes of the movie spectrum: David Lean's 1945 masterpiece Brief Encounter and Judd Apatow's 2007 crowd-pleaser Knocked Up.

This week is a much rougher ride, I suspect, with a vast array of dodgy comedies: Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, Mike Myers' The Love Guru, Adam Sandler's You Don't Mess With the Zohan, Will Ferrell's Step Brothers and Emma Roberts' Wild Child. To provide a sense of balance and restore my faith in cinema, I have some acclaimed little films: Steve McQueen's Hunger, Mark Herman's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir and Sarah Silverman's Jesus Is Magic.

Critical Week: After the break

I'm back in London today after nine days in sunny France - visiting Bordeaux (home of the art cinema pictured here), Biarritz, Bayonne, San Sebastian, Pau and St Emilion, among other stops. It was a terrific time to lounge in the sunshine, enjoy local food and wine, celebrate the wedding of friends, and watch not one single movie.

But taking a vacation is always a risky proposition for a film critic, because when you book the trip you know you'll miss something big. I booked this holiday about eight months ago, and it wasn't until the day before I left that I realised that I would be missing all of the press screenings (plus a chance to interview the stars) for my most-anticipated film of the summer: The Dark Knight. I will now need to buy a ticket to see it on the day it opens in the UK (Thursday) and wait until the sold-out period ends in a week or so before I can see it on an Imax screen.

Other screenings I missed, in descending order of annoyance: Hellboy II, Baby Mama and The Love Guru. I should be able to catch up with these, if the distributors put on more screenings, but these things happen.

Meanwhile, the highlight of the week before I left was, oddly enough, the surprise appearance at the Get Smart screening on Friday 11th July of Steve Carell, Anne Hathaway, Dwayne (don't call him The Rock) Johnson and director Peter Segal t0 provide a rather entertaining introduction to the film, which wasn't too bad actually, as long as you understood that they were completely re-interpreting the source material.

Other films that week were Journey to the Center of the Earth in 3D, which was great, stupid fun (although I'm not sure how well it'd work without the 3D); Keira Knightley's new costume drama, The Duchess, which has a terrific plot and a fascinating performance from Ralph Fiennes; and the hysterically silly 1950s beach movie/serial killer satire Psycho Beach Party. There was also, appropriately, a veritable mini-fest of French films: the Liam Neeson thriller Taken, which is actually a typically enjoyable but far-fetched Luc Besson actioner; Jamel Debbouze in Agnes Jaoui's latest rambling drama Let's Talk About the Rain; the Kristin Scott Thomas stunner I've Loved You So Long; a reissue of Bruno Dumont's controversial and still-shocking La Vie de Jesus; and the Dardenne brothers' The Silence of Lorna (OK, this is technically Belgian).

Finally, this week sees a handful of hopefully promising offerings, including The X Files: I Want to Believe, Brideshead Revisited, Steep and festival favourites The Wave and Blindsight. I also hope to catch up with The Dark Knight and Baby Mama. Not that I expect any sympathy.

Critical Week: Here I go again

The last week was fairly normal for me - seven film screenings and one press conference, with all the associated deadlines and hours hunched in front of my computer. But the weather in London was also pretty spectacular, so also I tried to get outside as much as possible.

Most notable was the Mamma Mia press conference on Monday, attended by the entire cast (except for Julie Walters). Meryl Streep has long been atop my list of actors I've wanted to interview, and she certainly didn't disappoint - as in the film, she's a bundle of mischevious energy and raw talent. A nice birthday gift for me, eh?

Other films this week included The Rocker (Rainn Wilson channelling Jack Black), Gravitation (metrosexual manga), The Chaser (astonishing Korean thriller), Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (British teen comedy), Swing Vote (Kevin Costner political comedy-drama), Meet Dave (Eddie Murphy alien romp) and, yes, Mamma Mia again at the world premiere engagement at the Odeon Leicester Square, complete with videotaped introduction from Benny & Bjorn and Pierce Brosnan and clips from the world premiere on Monday night.

The one other moment of surrealness last week was a photo shoot for an article in the Observer (due to run 13 July) on the state of critics. They have lumped me into the blogging group, and we gathered in front of the Tate Modern for a series of group photos that got increasingly surreal as they asked us to strike rather silly poses. I shudder to think which ones will appear in the paper. And I'm kind of glad I'll be on holiday next week when the article appears.

Films this week include: Let's Talk about the Rain, Journey to the Centre of the Earth (3D!), I've Loved You So Long, The Silence of Lorna, Taken, The Duchess, Get Smart and a remastered print of Kurosawa's Ikiru. More on those next week.

My plan is to do a roundup like this every week - so let me know what you think.

And the winners are...

After the lavish closing night film screening and party for Faintheart last night, Edinburgh celebrated the best of the fest today, presenting its awards at a ceremony hosted by patron Sean Connery (pictured presenting the acting award to Robert Carlyle). And the winners are...

• Michael Powell Award for Best New British Feature Film: SOMERS TOWN (Shane Meadows)
• Best Performance in a British Feature Film: ROBERT CARLYLE (Summer)
• Audience Award: MAN ON WIRE (James Marsh)
• Best Documentary Award: ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD (Werner Herzog)
• New Directors Award: MARIANNA PALKA (Good Dick)
• Best British Short Film: SON (Daniel Mulloy)
• European Short Film Award: 2 BIRDS (Rúnar Rúnarsson)
• Scottish Short Documentary Award: CHRISTMAS WITH DAD (Conor McCormack)
• New British Animation: SPACE TRAVEL ACCORDING TO JOHN (Jamie Stone & Anders Jedenfors)
• Best British Music Video: HAPPINESS - Goldfrapp (Dougal Wilson)

And finally, here are my 10 best films of the fest:
WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, US)
SOMERS TOWN (Shane Meadows, UK)
OF TIME AND THE CITY (Terence Davies, UK)
THE SONG OF SPARROWS (Majid Majidi, Iran)
STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE (Errol Morris, US)
GOOD DICK (Marianna Palka, US)
THE VISITOR (Thomas McCarthy, US)
THE BLACK BALLOON (Elissa Down, Australia)
BETTER THINGS (Duane Hopkins, UK)
RED (Trygve Allister Diesen, US)

All of these are reviewed - or will be soon - at Shadows on the Wall. Here's a quick link to the EDINBURGH FILM FEST page, which will eventually link to reviews of all the festival films I've seen. (But I've still got a lot of catching up to do!)

The rising star

In the week that his star-making Prince Caspian opens in the UK, up-and-coming heartthrob Ben Barnes turned up in Edinburgh to promote his much smaller-budget British comedy Bigga Than Ben, a Borat-style romp with a serious twist in its tale of two Russians trying to rip off London.

And now it's the final day of the festival, with only the awards to hand out tomorrow along with a full day of screenings tomorrow of the films the organisers have flagged up as the best of the fest. I'll be back with a rundown of the winners tomorrow.

Here are two highlights today...

Married Life (Ira Sachs, Can) ***
A terrific cast and a stylish attention to period detail set this quietly intense drama out from the crowd. Chris Cooper plays a man who is desperate to leave his wife (a terrific Patricia Clarkson) for his Grace Kelly-like mistress (Rachel McAdams), and he might even resort to extreme measures. Then his best friend (Pierce Brosnan) decides he wants the mistress for himself. Set in 1949, the film has a slow-burning Hitchcock vibe, although for the serious issues it's tackling, it also feels a bit repressed and slight.

Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, US) *****
This is my pick for the best film of the entire festival. Pixar departs from formula (for the most part) to create another beautifully animated gem of a movie. And this endearing post-apocalyptic romantic adventure never puts a foot wrong... MORE >

Top of the world

Tightrope walker Philippe Petit arrived in Edinburgh yesterday and showed off his balancing skills atop the delegate centre. He's promoting the documentary about him, Man on Wire, which traces his jaw-dropping 1974 stunt to walk on a wire between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center.

A few highlights today...

Just Another Love Story (Ole Bornedal, Den) ***
This noir thriller from Denmark starts as a quiet study in obsession, sparked by vivid cinematography and editing, as a forensic photographer (Anders W Bertelsen) inadvertently pretends to be the boyfriend of a beautiful girl in a coma. But rather than go down the While You Were Sleeping route, this film drifts more towards Vertigo, and then into pure terror and black irony. It sometimes feels a bit contrived, but is utterly gripping

The Princess of Nebraska (Wayne Wang, US) ***
A lower-budget companion piece to Wang's A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, this is an even more effective drama about immigration and human connections, as a young Chinese student travels from her university in Nebraska to San Francisco, where she encounters friends both old and new over the course of 24 hours. It emerges that she's pregnant and trying to consider her options, and everyone offers very different advice. Lively and energetic, this is a terrific little film, with a few clunky, preachy scenes but a wonderful central performance from Ling Li.

Bigga Than Ben (Halewood, UK) ***
Ben Barnes (aka Prince Caspian) stars in this raucous mock-doc about two Russians (the other is played by Andrei Chadov) who visit London with the intention of making a film to help their countrymen rip off the British system. It starts with Borat-like inventive wackiness, knowingly satirising everything about the city while also creating a series of vivid characters. But when it turns very serious, it stops being quite so engaging. It's a rather drastic shift that the film never quite recovers from. There are some superb themes in here, but once the hilarity ends we kind of lose interest.

Heavy hitter

The big guy himself, Sir Sean Connery, was spotted roaming around the festival delegate centre yesterday - he's not easy to miss. I actually felt a shiver when I heard his voice right behind me, and tried to turn around to gawk at him with a shred of dignity. (Is that possible?) Anyway, he's a patron of the festival and is on hand to give out the awards this weekend.

Soon afterwards, my week in Edinburgh came to an end as I headed back to London by train. I'll be watching the rest of the fest from afar. But I've already seen a number of films that will be showing over the next few days.

Here are some highlights today...

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Wayne Wang, US) ***
Wang continues his observational approach to filmmaking with this gentle drama about a retired scientist from China who travels to Seattle to visit his daughter, who has made her home in America for the past 12 years. It's an insightful and quietly involving film that touches on some strong issues without ever getting too political about it. Wang's companion film The Princess of Nebraska, which addresses similar themes with a strikingly different cast and setting, is playing tomorrow.

Man on Wire (James Marsh, UK) ****
It may seem like a lot of time has passed, but this documentary is thoroughly gripping as it traces Philippe Petit's legendary stunt to walk a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. This well-assembled film is a fascinating combination of heist movie (tracing Petit and crew as they plan and then sneak in to accomplish this remarkable feat) and a historical document about the twin towers, which were unfinished at the time. It also reminds us of how much the world has changed over the past few decades.

The Fall (Tarsem, UK) ***
Filmmaker Tarsem took several years to shoot this film around the world, exploring the most visually stunning settings he could find for a Princess Bride-style tale of a young girl who's told an epic story by a depressed young soldier (the excellent Lee Pace) who feels trapped in his hospital bed. But as we go on, it becomes doubtful that this story will have a happy ending. It's a little rambling and uneven, but it looks absolutely gorgeous.