Critical Week: Meathead alert!

Honestly, you know when Vin Diesel's name is above the title of a dystopian action movie that you're not in for something subtle or thought-provoking. Indeed, Babylon A.D. plays out like a blunt, dumbed-down version of Children of Men. The film wasn't screened at all for American critics, and there were only a couple of press screenings in the UK. Director Mathieu Kassovitz says the film is bad because the studio interferred with production and then re-edited his work. Honestly.

Other films this week were the Noel Coward adaptation Easy Virtue, with some superb performances (Kristin Scott Thomas, Colin Firth) and also some pretty-but-empty acting (Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes). It's entertaining, but also a bit annoying. Which is how I felt about Live!, a slightly stale black satire of reality TV starring Eva Mendes as a ruthless network exec. The Warriors is a meaty historical epic from China with a trio of heavy hitters (Jet Li, Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro) as 19th century military leaders who take a blood oath that's strained to the breaking point. And finally, Eden Lake is a genuinely scary thriller with unnerving subtext, as a couple (Kelly Reilly and fast-rising star Michael Fassbender) is terrorised by a gang of disaffected teens.

For this coming week, I have the stoner comedy Pineapple Express, the Ewan McGregor-Michelle Williams thriller Incendiary, the past its sell-by date spoof Disaster Movie, Canadian-Indian romantic drama Partition, Wong Kar-wai's redux of his 1994 Ashes of Time, the Korean horror A Bloody Aria, and a bunch of crime movies: Al Pacino in 88 Minutes, the 3D kidnapping thriller Scar, the Cannes-winning Gomorrah from Italy, Outlanders from the UK and Jar City from Iceland.

Yes, it's a busy week, and it also includes the RocknRolla press conference, the launch event for the forthcoming Raindance Film Festival and the launch of the British Film Institute's 75th anniversary festivities. I'm tired just thinking about it.

Critical Week: Bigger not better

Howdy from Beijing, where I'm working a non-film freelance job for two weeks. As I've been out and about around the city, I've kept an eye out for two movie-related things: cinemas and bootleg dvds. But I haven't seen any sign of either. Apparently cinemas here are pretty low profile, hidden in the bowels of shopping malls. And bootleg dvds have been swept out of sight by officials cleaning up the city for Olympic tourists. I have seen two film posters - one for Hancock (which opened here in June) and the one pictured here - John Woo's forthcoming historical Chinese action movie Red Cliff (which opened here last month).

Anyway, I'll be back in London over the weekend and back in movie mode. Looking back at my last week before I came here, I had three very big movies - and all of them disappointed me in some way. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor got the earlier film's B-movie tone all wrong, going for mega-budget archaeological thrills in the same summer that Indiana Jones returned. Star Wars: The Clone Wars boasted seriously impressive animation, and some terrific action sequences, but barely enough plot to sustain a 20-minute TV episode. And Guy Ritchie's Rock N Rolla is a roaringly entertaining London crime drama with a superior cast, but it doesn't really add anything new to the genre that Ritchie himself kickstarted with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. By far the best film of the week was Walter Salles' small, sensitive innercity drama Linha de Passe.

Next week I already have a few screenings lined up, and have no idea what to expect from them. Babylon AD looks like pretty mindless action fun. Easy Virtue has a terrific cast and a script based on a Noel Coward play. Live! is an overdue mocumentary about reality television. Gardens in Autumn is a French comedy by a Georgian filmmaker. And The Warlords is a Chinese action epic with Jet Li, Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro. Looks fantastic, but I really want to see Red Cliff...

Critical Week: Not another comedy!

This past week will go down as the most mixed of the year for me, filmwise. I saw two of the best movies I've seen all year, but the duds nearly drowned them out. The main problem was star-led comedies, all of which had the stale stench of vanity project about them. Here's the hall of shame, in the order I saw them: Mike Myers' The Love Guru mined a bottomless pit of bottom jokes; Adam Sandler's You Don't Mess With the Zohan missed the central joke of his premise; Emma Roberts' Wild Child actually managed to wring a few decent laughs out of a seriously tired premise; Will Ferrell's Step Brothers was a one-gag movie stretched beyond the breaking point; Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder was far too much of a clever thing; and Simon Pegg's How to Lose Friends & Alienate People couldn't decide if it was goofy slapstick or a silly rom-com (and should have been neither).

Much better were the arthouse offerings: Steve McQueen's astonishing Hunger is one of the most original films of the year, with a killer kick of emotion to go with its provocative central theme; Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir is a remarkably inventive animated documentary that emotionally probes the whole idea of war; Mark Herman's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas cleverly looks at Nazi inhumanity from a naive 8-year-old's point of view; and the outrageous Sarah Silverman's Jesus Is Magic shows no fear as it tackles one taboo after another, proving how conditioned our moralistic responses actually are.

Anyway, this coming week is my last full week of movies before I head to Beijing to work at the Olympics for a fortnight. And these are the films that are sending me off: Liv Tyler's horror thriller The Strangers, Brendan Fraser back for third helpings in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Star Wars goes animated in The Clone Wars, Guy Ritchie returns to London crimeland with RocknRolla, and Walter Salles returns to Brazil in Linha de Passe. I'll let you know the verdict next week.

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!)