Wednesday 27 July 2016

Critical Week: Off the grid

London critics had a chance to catch up this week with the pointed drama Captain Fantastic, starring Viggo Mortensen as a father raising his six kids out in the forest with a very well-rounded education. It's packed with great ideas, and has terrific performances from Mortensen and George MacKay as his eldest son.

Also this week, Matt Damon was back as Jason Bourne, reuniting with Paul Greengrass for another ripping espionage thriller. Chris Pine, Jeff Bridges and Ben Foster all get great roles in the present-day Western Hell or High Water, a riveting exploration of the modern world with plenty of added suspense. There was also a new movie version of the children's' classic novel Swallows and Amazons, with the excellent Kelly Macdonald, Rafe Spall and Andrew Scott in the cast, but little in the way of tension. And the TV series Looking concluded with a movie that continued creator Andrew Haigh's refusal to play into stereotypes in his exploration of the intertwined lives of three gay men in San Francisco, beautifully played by Jonathan Groff, Murray Bartlett and Frankie Alvarez.

I have no screenings in the diary for the coming week, because I am heading out of London on holiday. It will be my first time out of England since last November - a well earned break, I think! So I intend to see no movies, although I may preload a couple on my phone for the flights, such as Brian Cox in The Carer and the gritty teen romance Black. But I need a screen break...

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