Critical Week: Let love rule

Well, it's pretty easy to know which cinematic event was the biggest of the past week for me. I was invited to the Peace One Day celebration at the Royal Albert Hall last night, including a special screening of the new documentary The Day After Peace, in which filmmaker Jeremy Gilley tracks his 10-year process to try to get the UN to back a global cease fire for one day every year (aka Peace Day, 21 Sep). The film's climax is a trip with Jude Law to Afghanistan to begin the process of brokering peace there - with astonishing results. Before and after the film, the night was hosted by Law and Gilley live on stage, with acoustic sets by Peter Gabriel (low-res picture courtesy my phone), Annie Lennox, Lenny Kravitz and Bryan Adams, as well as John Legend and his 10-piece band. Visit the Peace One Day site for more info.

Back to the regular movies now, and it was a very mixed bag: from the tribal rhythms of Chiwetel's fierce performance in David Mamet's Redbelt to the hysterical French spy spoof OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies; from Ulrich Seidl's harrowing Ukraine-Austria drama Import Export to the utterly ridiculous and surprisingly charming The House Bunny; from the grisly horror of Quarantine, a shot-for-shot remake of Spanish cult gem Rec, to gorgeous Imax 3D animation with a corny story in Fly Me to the Moon. Honestly, it's amazing that I haven't developed some sort of split personality.

And this coming week is more of the same, with a couple of things I'm looking forward to for very different reasons: DeNiro and Pacino squaring off in Righteous Kill, likeable action musclehead Jason Statham in Death Race, Richard Gere and Diane Lane reuniting for Nights in Rodanthe, Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen riding the Wild West in Appaloosa, and Brendan Fraser joined in Inkheart by an all-star cast including Helen Mirren, Paul Bettany and Jim Broadbent. Plus I have a little trip around Europe with Richard Jenkins in British freak-out thriller The Broken, Italian political intrigue in Il Divo, 1960s German terrorists in The Baader Meinhof Complex, and Manoel de Oliveira's 40-years-later Belle de Jour sequel Belle Toujours.

Critical Week: My eyes!

It was another busy week in filmland! As the Toronto and Venice film festivals overlapped, I was here in London sitting in darkened screening rooms. A nice place to be while the weather was as gloomy as that - although it perked up nicely for a sunshiny weekend.

Big films for me this past week included the new Fernando Meirelles movie Blindness, with Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo navigating a seriously freak-out apocalypse - and a seriously haunting film. The Women featured Meg Ryan, Annette Bening and a cast of only females in a rather light version of Sex and the City. Choke, based on the Chuck Palahniuk novel, gave Sam Rockwell another outrageously hilarious role to sink his fangs into. And Barry Levinson's What Just Happened is a savvy, entertaining look under the veneer of Hollywood.

Further under the radar were Partition, with Jimi Mistry, Neve Campbell and Kristin Kreuk telling a Romeo & Juliet tale on the India-Pakistan border in 1947. Gonzo is a terrific doc about Hunter S Thompson, as examined by the filmmaker who gave us the masterful Oscar winner Taxi to the Dark Side. Zombie Strippers is an utterly unapologetic exploitation B-movie - and it's pretty funny too. And House of Usher is a shockingly inept made for cable movie written by a friend of mine - the script is genius, but the acting and directing are, erm, diabolical. And I also found time to rewatch one of my all-time favourites, Hitchcock's Rear Window, which features Grace Kelly at her most drop-dead gorgeous.

This coming week's delectable delights include Chewitel Ejiofor in David Mamet's Redbelt, Ulrich Seidl's Austria-Ukraine odyssey Import Export, the American remake of the cult Spanish film Rec, Quarantine, the 3D Imax animation Fly Me to the Moon, an arthouse oddity called OSS-117 Cairo Nest of Spies and the Peace Day doc The Day After Peace. It's not a bad job to watch all these things - the work comes in figuring out what to write or say about them when the time comes....

Critical Week: Well are you?

The big event for me last week was the RocknRolla junket, presented in fine style on the Southbank with Guy Ritchie, Joel Silver and the whole cast. I even got the t-shirt to prove I was there. (For the full story, read the feature.) Other press events last week included the launch of the British Film Institute's 75th anniversary celebrations this month, and the launch for the upcoming Raindance Film Festival.

But the film screenings were a mixed bunch. Here's what I learned: Disaster Movie was a true disaster; Incendiary demonstrated the danger in letting your story get too heavy; Outlanders showed how difficult it is to make a film about a serious social issue; Bangkok Dangerous proved that Nicolas Cage should avoid po-faced action; 88 Minutes proved that Al pacino should read the script before he accepts the paycheque; and Scar showed that a decent premise and 3D effects aren't enough to rescue the torture porn genre.

Much better news was provided by the ripping Icelandic thriller Jar City, the outrageous Korean black comedy A Bloody Aria, the simply excellent Italian mob drama Gomorrah, and the hilarious Seth Rogen comedy Pineapple Express.

This coming week is another minefield. I've got the Hunter Thompson doc Gonzo, The Chuck Palahniuk adaptation Choke, the Barry Levinson political comedy What Just Happened, Fernando Meirelles' controversial Blindness, and the Canadian-Indian drama Partition.

I'm also looking forward to the launch party for this year's London Film Festival on Wednesday. At screenings we've been trying to guess which films are going to be in their lineup - and they always have lots of surprises in store. Plus a decent goodie bag. And maybe even a t-shirt.

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.