Parky at the Pictures (DVD 5/9/2012)

The 18 year-old Lawrence dominates Debra Granik's adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's bleak Ozarks novel, Winter's Bone. Indeed, Michael McDonough's camera can barely pull itself away from her steadfast features to focus on Mark White's meticulous production design, which barely distinguishes between the dwellings occupied by the feuding families and the ramshackle outhouses surrounded by rusting junk. But this is far from being another clichéd backwoods melodrama, as the dealings are largely conducted by the womenfolk, who never seem to use more words than are strictly necessary.

With her father in jail for cooking methamphetamine, 17 year-old Lawrence takes care of her mentally fragile mother and dependent younger siblings. She gets help putting food on the table from neighbour Shelley Wagganer. But when sheriff Garret Dillahunt calls to inform her that her father has jumped bail after putting up their home as collateral, she has no option but to walk the mountains in the hope that somebody knows where he is hiding. Unfortunately, her father has made many enemies, including his testy brother John Hawkes, who advises Lawrence against meddling in matters that can only provoke trouble.

But, with best friend Lauren Sweetser offering to keep house in her absence, Lawrence ventures into a pitiless world of drink, drugs, ignorance and internecine violence to call in some family favours. Cousin Casey MacLaren tells her that clan chief Ronnie Hall is the only one who can help her, but access to him is firmly blocked by his doughty wife, Dale Dickey. Hawkes tries to convince Lawrence that her father died in a brewing blaze, but she refuses to accept the evidence of a torched shack and inevitably finds herself dragged back to Hall's estate to be taught a lesson in minding her business.

Although this is bound to invite comparisons to Courtney Hunt's Frozen River (2008), this unflinching saga is actually closer in spirit to Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Rosetta (1999) and Lance Hammer's Ballast (2008). The Oscar-nominated Lawrence is fearless in her deadpan determination to find her father, as much in a bid to salvage a last vestige of respect for him as to hold him to account for his reckless selfishness. Her showdowns with Hawkes and Dickey are particularly striking, both for their frankness and their simmering unpredictability. But she also impresses when teaching her siblings to fend for themselves in the kitchen and how to handle a gun in the wilds. Her triumph is never in doubt, especially when Hawkes decides to do his avuncular duty. But Granik never takes for granted the tenacity and mettle Lawrence has to display in order to stand firm in the face of unregenerate chauvinism.

There's little doubt that Lawrence's display prompted her being signed up for Gary Ross's take on The Hunger Games, the first instalment of Suzanne Collins's bestselling trilogy, which is, typically, being brought to the screen in four pictures, with Catching Fire due to be followed by a two-part adaptation of Mockingjay. Such is the Twilight-like reverence that has been bestowed upon these books by their juvenile coterie that the casting of Lawrence as Katniss was as crucial as Kristen Stewart's selection as Bella Swan. Clearly her imposing presence has had much to do with this 142-minute epic taking $673 million at the box office worldwide. Yet, while the screenplay by Ross, Collins and Billy Ray is sufficiently faithful to the text to satisfy devotees, those less wrapped up in the phenomenon will notice its similarity to Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale and Daniel Minahan's Series 7: The Contenders (both 2001) and lament the fact a few more creative risks were not taken to make this solid interpretation a touch more cinematic.

In the post-apocalyptic nation of Panem, the bulk of the former North American population lives in 12 districts that are ruled by a ruthless elite from the Capitol. As a result of a quashed rebellion, it has long been the custom for each district to hold a Reaping in order to select a boy and a girl aged between 12 and 18 to participate in the Hunger Games, which see the so-called tributes fight to the death for a reward of untold wealth and fame.

When 12 year-old Primrose Everdeen (Willow Shields) is chosen at her first Reaping, her 16 year-old sister Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) volunteers to take her place at the 74th Games and urges best friend Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth) to protect her sibling and mother (Paula Malcomson) from the vicissitudes of life in the tough coal-mining town of Seam. Travelling to the Capitol with Katniss is baker's son Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), who once gave her some bread after the family was left destitute by her father's fatal pit accident. Yet, while he has a crush on her, he keeps his feelings secret as they are introduced to former champion Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) and his assistants Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks) and Cinna (Lenny Kravitz), who have been assigned to help prepare the pair for their ordeal.

During an interview with TV host Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci), Peeta lets slip his affection for Katniss and she accuses him of playing to the crowd in the hope of landing sponsors who could provide the food, tools and medicines he might need to secure his triumph. However, Head Gamemaker Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley) thinks a little romance will boost the rating and, despite the misgivings of President Coriolanus Snow (Donald Sutherland), he urges Flickerman and announcer Claudius Templesmith (Toby Jones) to play up the relationship during his nightly overview of the day's key events.

Armed with a bow and relying on her hunting experience, Katniss survives the first day, while Peeta throws in his lot with Cato (Alexander Ludwig), Clove (Isabelle Fuhrman), Marvel (Jack Quaid) and Glimmer (Leven Rambin), who are Careers long in training for the Games and who know the value of establishing a stockade to defend against surprise attacks. He is uneasy, however, when they plan to ambush Katniss in the woods and she only manages to escape when Rue (Amandla Stenberg) helps her unleash a nest of deadly tracker jackers that account for Glimmer.

Now working as a team, Katniss and Rue succeed in blowing up the Careers' supply dump. But when audiences in Rue's District 11 see her being killed by Marvel, they start to riot and President Snow warns Crane that he will not tolerate either mismanagement or insurrection. Thus, Crane decides upon a rule change allowing dual winners in the hope that a blossoming love story between Katniss and Peeta will calm the masses. Initially feigning feelings for the wounded Peeta in order to court audience favour and sponsorship, Katniss finds herself growing fonder of him after they survive encounters with Thresh (Dayo Okeniyi) and Foxface (Jacqueline Emerson). Indeed, when Crane reinstates the single winner rule after they confound Clove at the Cornucopia, Katniss and Peeta threaten to consume poisonous nightlock berries rather than compete against each other. However, as the couple prepare to return to District 12, Haymitch warns them that the dictatorial Snow has not taken kindly to their show of defiance.

Owing much to the dystopia conceived by production designer Philip Messina and the costumes fashioned by Judianna Makovsky, this is a surprisingly engaging feature that treats the absurdities and pomposities of the reality game showesque plot with laudable gravitas. Considering the ferocity of the challenge, the Games action is rather tame (although this is perhaps understandable given the target demographic). But, more damagingly, Ross struggles to give the topical references sufficient satirical edge, even though the scenes between Sutherland and Bentley are so crucial to what will follow in Catching Fire. He also has difficulty developing character between the forest showdowns, which are ably photographed by Tom Stern and energetically edited by Stephen Mirrione and Juliette Welfling.

However, he is baled out by Lawrence's ability to appear physically and emotionally vulnerable while also having the grit and ingenuity to dispatch her adversaries with a chilling efficiency. Notwithstanding a touching turn from the debuting Stenberg, too few of the younger supports are afforded similar opportunity to shine. Hutcherson is particularly ill-served, as his courtship of Lawrence lacks conviction. By contrast, several senior cast members delight in pushing things to extremes, with Tucci, Jones, Harrelson and Banks all seeming to have taken their cues from Roger Vadim's pantomimic sci-fi, Barbarella (1968). Kravitz supplies some much-needed compassion, while Sutherland's no-nonsense authoritarianism keeps the sinister nature of the regime and the Games it has devised firmly fixed in the viewer's mind. But the performances suffer from the same reluctance to stray too far from the readership preconceptions that prevents Ross (whose previous outings were the markedly different Pleasantville, 1998 and Seabiscuit, 2003) from imposing his own creative vision upon a picture that drifts between action thriller, social critique and adolescent soap without any palpable sense of cohesion.

At the opposite end of the action spectrum, Gareth Evans's The Raid makes no compromises in assaulting the audience with non-stop violence, carnage and mayhem for 101 exhausting minutes. Following an Indonesian special forces unit as it battles its way through a 15-storey building, this was an overnight cult sensation that also drew a fair number of admiring notices from arthouse critics. Boasting exceptional fight choreography by Evans and his stars Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, this throws down the gauntlet to Hong Kong's purveyoys of both martial arts and heroic bloodshed movies. Moreover, it raises the question why the Welsh director had to travel to the other side of the globe to produce this follow-up to his 2009 opus, Merantau.

Jakarta drug lord Ray Sahetapy has commandeered a derelict apartment block as a safe house for his organisation. However, Sergeant Joe Taslim has been ordered to flush him out and he enters the property with a 20-strong SWAT team that includes the potentially shady Lieutenant Pierre Gruno and rookie Iko Uwais, whose wife is expecting a baby. All goes well until the unit reaches the sixth floor when a lookout manages to alert Sahetapy before he is gunned down. Suddenly, snipers open fire on the isolated cops and Sahetapy enlists the support of the remaining residents by offering them free accommodation to anyone with a proven kill.

With the loss of power making a difficult situation almost impossible, Taslim discovers that his mission didn't have official clearance and that he will have to shoot his way out in the absence of any back-up. Aware that ammunition is running low, Uwais improvises an explosion that kills several crooks and is rewarded by being asked to guard the wounded Tegar Satrya on the seventh floor while Taslim, Gruno and Eka `Piranha' Rahmadia try to regain control of the fifth. Uwais hides Satrya in a secret passage in an apartment belonging to a kindly man and his ailing wife. But he is captured himself by Sahetapy's adjutant Donny Alamsyah, while Taslim's crew is cornered by ruthless henchman Yayan Rushian.

Having crushed Taslim in a straight fight, Rushian is ordered to hunt down Alamsyah, who just happens to be Uwais's estranged brother and is willing to risk his life in order to help him. But Uwais comes to his rescue and he reciprocates by giving him the names of corrupt officers on the force. He also escorts Uwais to safety after Gruno kills Alamsyah and Sahetapy and they fetch Satrya from his bolthole. However, Rushian rejects Usais's offer to switch sides and strolls back into the tenement alone.

A bald outline of the plot can do little justice to the frenetic pace and audacious combustibility of the action that Evans presents with a panache that makes the average BritCrime flick look like an episode of Dixon of Dock Green. But this isn't just a shoot `em up thick ear of a picture. There is something Dr Mabuse-like about Sahetapy's villain, as he surveys skirmishes on a vast bank of CCTV monitors and uses the in-house tannoy system to taunt his foes. Moreover, Evans astutely pauses the pandemonium for more intimate moments, such as Uwais's reunion with Alamsyah and Sahetapy's cynical exchange with Gruno that could easily have come from a yakuza or triad thriller by a much more lauded auteur.

Nevertheless, the emphasis is firmly on visceral sensation and Evans owes much to production designer Moti D. Setyanto and cinematographers Matt Flannery and Dimas Imam Subhono. However, by acting as his own editor and employing his deep knowledge of silat combat, Evans is able to control every flesh-ripping gunshot and bone-crunching punch. Even the most hardened action fanboy might find himself wincing when not cracking a wry smile at the copious dark humour. But it's the precision of Evans's style rather than its power that makes this so convincing and commendable.

The contrast couldn't be starker with the first feature of another British director, Simon Aboud. Yet, while Comes a Bright Day frequently flirts with BritCrime convention, it also seeks to do something a little bit different. A commercials veteran, who just happens to be Paul McCartney's son-in-law, Aboud strives to put a romantic spin on a Dog Day Afternoon situation, as two of the hostages in a bungled jewellery heist grow closer. But, while he proves technically proficient, the debuting writer-director struggles with the scenario's shifts in tone and, consequently, this never quite works as either a hard-boiled thriller or an offbeat love story.

Twentysomething Craig Roberts is working as a bellboy at a plush London hotel until he can gather the wherewithal to open a restaurant with his chef pal Anthony Welsh. However, while taking boss Geoff Bell's broken watch to the Mayfair jeweller's run by genial Timothy Spall, he not only finds himself instantly smitten with elegant assistant Imogen Poots, but also in the middle of a robbery targeting a priceless butterfly brooch. Following a shootout that accounts for elderly customer Sibéal McGuinne, Kevin McKidd and Josef Altin (who are operating under the pseudonyms Cameron and Clegg) hole up in a backroom and inform the besieging police that they will not hesitate to kill their captives.

Despite being wounded, Altin manages to conduct the negotiations while keeping the short-fused McKidd relatively calm. But tension soon mounts as he begins to lust after Poots, who has started to suspect that Roberts might be part of the gang after catching him out in an innocent lie. As time passes inexorably slowly, Spall (who is widowed and specialises in selling antique pieces with amorous histories) encourages Roberts to ignore the gulf in class and persist with Poots, who is planning to travel around the world before making any plans to settle down. And he finally gets his chance after the crooks make a couple of fatal errors and Spall reveals himself to be much more than just a soft-centred matchmaker.

By confining the key action to a single setting, Aboud places considerable emphasis on the byplay between the characters. Yet, while John Lynch's photography is consistently stylish, such is the banality of much of the dialogue that the movie quickly loses what little dramatic momentum it has and becomes something of an ordeal. Roberts and Poots spark reasonably sweetly and Spall is persuasively avuncular. But the increasingly erratic McKidd is allowed to gnaw the scenery, while his hair-trigger mood swings are too often utilised to kickstart the plot whenever it stalls.

The determined bid to fuse Ealing whimsy with social realist grit in insisting that most people are essentially decent is encapsulated by a post-traumatic coda that ties up the loose ends a touch too neatly. Yet, for all the flaws in the screenplay and the odd tonal lurch, Aboud displays a visual confidence that suggests he may flourish as a director for hire. However, some of the blame for the writing deficiencies must be borne by the producers, who should have eradicated such glaring miscalculations as the smug joke at the expense of the Coalition leaders in the development stage.

A credibility problem also besets Jon Sanders's Late September, as too few of the supporting players seem comfortable with the gambit of improvising the dialogue, while the bid to couch a Yasujiro Ozu-style domestic drama in a very English idiom comes closer to reproducing the kind of rarefied dissection of bourgeois mores favoured by Joanna Hogg. Yet Sanders is to be commended for his rigorous adherence to the mise-en-scène technique of filming in long takes and for managing to raise the £10,000 budget for a 32-shot feature that will doubtless enhance a reputation forged with Painted Angels (2000) and Low Tide (2007).

Kent couple Anna Mottram and Richard Vanstone have been married for some four decades, but the strain is starting to show as the guests begin arriving for his 65th birthday party. They bicker over a shopping list in front of Charlotte Palmer, who is feeling a little fragile after just breaking up with her long-term boyfriend, and the mood scarcely lightens after a testy exchange about the positioning of garden lanterns when widowed friend Jan Chappell pitches up.

Following an awkward encounter with Mottram in the spare room, Chappell enters into a rambling discussion downstairs with Palmer and their hostess about embarking upon a new romance. Mottram is clearly unsettled by the topic and is still feeling tense when neighbour Emma Garden pops up to see her before the party to reassure her that she will always be there for her if she needs a shoulder to cry on. Meanwhile, Vanstone is sharing a glass of wine in the garden with twentysomething son Sam Woodward, who claims to be unconcerned about recently splitting up with his girlfriend.

As the festivities move indoors, old pal Bob Goody presents Vanstone with a tabernacle for his sailing boat. However, their whisky-laced banter is interrupted by the tetchy Mottram and it comes as something of a relief when Woodward and his friends Seonaid Goody and Douglas Finch put on a musical puppet show based on the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. This rather stilted entertainment is followed by Goody making a gushing speech about what a perfect team Mottram and Vanstone make. However, she can no longer brook the hypocrisy and rushes into the garden where she demands a divorce, as she would rather be lonely on her own than with a man who no longer appreciates her or shows her the slightest token of affection.

Vanstone reacts furiously and orders her to leave him alone and attend to her guests. Distraught at having provoked the row, Goody invites Palmer to look at his boat and they have a moment on the riverbank that she instantly regrets. Having made it clear she wants nothing more to do with Goody, she returns to the house and is chastised for her folly by Mottram. Elsewhere, Vanstone and Chappell doze in chairs, while Finch and Garden fool around at the piano. But nobody seems concerned about Goody, as he drifts off in his boat as the dawn breaks and the revelation that he has drowned barely registers on Garden, Chappell and Mottram, as Vanstone potters into the garden to take the decorative lanterns out of the tree.

Lacking the bite of one of Mike Leigh's workshopped pictures and the assurance that has come to characterise Joanna Hogg's work, this always feels more like an exercise in acting and camera technique than a slice of life. The cast lacks the agility to summon the requisite naturalism, while cinematographer Jeff Bayne's slow pans frequently feel unmotivated and distracting. Yet, in concocting their scenario, Sanders and Mottram teasingly withhold vital background information that forces the viewer to concentrate on the exchanges in order to elicit clues. Unfortunately, though, the fact that none of the characters is fully fleshed out makes it difficult to empathise with their emotional or marital problems and, for all its ingenuity and intensity, this rarely matches up to the chamber dramas of Chekhov, Strindberg and Bergman to which it so obviously aspires.

The debuting Ryan Redford exercises much more control over both his material and his cast in Oliver Sherman, a tense psychological drama that explores the bond between comrades in arms and the extent to which victims of post-traumatic stress disorder are left by the military and the government they have served to solve their own problems on returning to civvy street. Adapted from the Rachell Ingalls story `Veterans', this could easily have lapsed into the melodramatics that have undermined so many screen studies of discarded soldiers. But by refusing to reference any particular conflict, Redford gives the action a recessional relevance that will be recognised by anyone who has been left to fend for themselves after a prolonged period of devoted duty.

Seven years after he was wounded in battle and had to endure a year-long stay in hospital following the insertion of a metal plate in his skull, Garret Dillahunt boards a bus in an unnamed city and heads into the Mid-West in search of the man who saved his life. Having escaped his tour unscathed, Donal Logue is now a mill worker in a small country town and has two young children with his wife, Molly Parker. He is, therefore, surprised to find Dillahunt on his doorstep. But he realises he needs a friend and offers him a bed in the attic while he pulls himself together.

Although Dillahunt doesn't say much, Parker is quickly discomfited by his attitude and comes to resent the amount of time that he spends with her husband drinking beer on the porch or at the nearby roadhouse. Feeling responsible for the man he rescued and guilty for not keeping in touch, Logue dismisses her fears and seems content to relive old times that he had not been able to discuss with anyone else. Thus, he misses the signs that Dillahunt is not only becoming increasingly possessive and hostile towards Parker, but he is also becoming more resentful of the fact that Logue has had such a nice life without giving a second thought to the consequences of his so-called heroism.

Abetted by cinematographer Antonio Calvache's evocative use of confined space and sprawling landscape and by a moody piano score by Benoît Charest, Redford slowly builds the suspense as Dillahunt's mood becomes ever more unpredictable. But this is never a thriller in the accepted sense of the term. Instead, it is a sensitive account of a confused man's struggle to reacquaint himself with the normality his buddy takes for granted.

The performances are admirable. Dillahunt initially seems peculiar rather than sinister, while Logue subtly conveys the mix of loyalty and regret that so frustrates Parker, who believes that his first allegiance is now to his family and not to someone from a distant past who is essentially a total stranger. The ending is a touch anti-climactic. But this is a thoughtful piece of work that reveals Redford as a director of compassion and precision.

A reunion of four old friends goes even more spectacularly wrong in Mark Pellington's I Melt With You, a mid-life crisis melodrama scripted by Glenn Porter that starts badly and rapidly goes downhill. Often feeling like a stage play, while sounding like one of John Cassavetes's improvised buddy sagas and looking like a Danny Boyle study in untrammelled decadence, this is a massive disappointment considering the calibre of the acting talent and the fact that since graduating from music videos Pellington has been responsible for such solid entertainments as Arlington Road (1999) and The Mothman Prophecies (2002).

Having reached the grand old age of 44, college friends Jeremy Piven, Rob Lowe, Thomas Jane and Christian McKay decide to spend Spring Break at the California resort of Big Sur. They quickly start to whoop it up, with drink and drugs fuelling catch-up conversations that make it clear each is decidedly unhappy with his lot. Piven had been thriving in the financial services industry until the recession bit and the SEC started taking a close interest in his affairs, while Jane has finally realised that the promise he had once shown as a novelist has deserted him and that he is doomed to spend the rest of his days as an English teacher. Despite recently getting divorced, Lowe is less downbeat about the fact that he has long since ceased to help his patients and merely supplies them with prescriptions for expensive medications.

But the openly bisexual McKay is easily the most despondent, having recently been responsible for the car crash that killed both his wife and his boyfriend. Thus, following a role-playing threesome with waitress Sasha Grey and her friend, McKay hangs himself in the shower and leaves behind a note that the four friends had drafted in 1986 promising to kill themselves if they had failed to fulfil their goals and find happiness by middle age. But, rather than calling the cops, Lowe, Piven and Jane convince themselves that they will be deemed complicit in McKay's demise and decide to bury him on the beach.

On heading into town for lunch, however, Lowe helps a man suffering a heart attack and attracts the attention of police officer Carla Gugino, who becomes more suspicious that something is amiss when she visits the chalet and the drunken Piven tries to usher her away. Too terrified to go home and face the authorities, Piven begs his buddies to help him and they dispose of his body in the same way as McKay's. However, following a fight at a party in town, Lowe also decides he has had enough and the inquisitive Gugino finds herself speeding towards Big Sur Lighthouse to prevent Jane from completing the pact.

The synopsis alone makes it plain how ridiculous this movie is. But the posturing of the leads and the flamboyance of Pellington's direction compound the failings of the narrative and only the hardest hearted viewer will not be howling with laughter by the denouement. A sense of pathos is vital to the credibility of any lost weekend scenario, but none of the characters here is worthy of the slightest sympathy.

Ian Sebastian Kasnoff's production design neatly juxtaposes the seascapes and the various interiors, while the songtrack packs in the punk anthems that reinforce the creeping air of nihilism. But Eric Schmidt's polished visuals are too often compromised by flashy flourishes that belong in a pop promo rather than a feature (even one with Godardian pretensions). Curiously, everyone deserves a modicum of credit for committing so wholeheartedly to the project. But this is so awash with self-indulgence and self-importance as to be almost unwatchable.

In the not too distant past, Christopher Walken might well have been cast in this kind of picture. Nowaways, he has to settle for character supports such as the grumpy father in Todd Solondz's Dark Horse. Teamed with Mia Farrow, Walken gives a typically good account of himself. But the veteran scene-stealer is roundly upstaged by Jordan Gelber, as the eponymous loser who lives at home and notionally works as an accountant for his father's estate agency when not riding around in his bright yellow Hummer or bidding on action figures on Ebay. However, the only thing that really motivates the pudgy thirtysomething is his all-encompassing detestation of humanity.

It comes as a shock, therefore, when he walks over to the heavily medicated Selma Blair's table at a Jewish wedding and proceeds to chat her up in such an aggressive manner that she feels almost obligated to give him her phone number. Similarly resident with her parents, emotionally scarred by a liaison with Aasif Mondvi (who hails from Dubai) and suffering from Hepatitis B, the morose Blair continues to be so bowled over by Gelber's straight-talking lack of charm that she even accepts his cumbersome marriage proposal. But the need for the two families to meet and for Gelber to be introduced to Mondvi coincides with his growing fixation with chubby secretary Donna Murphy, who comes to dominate fantasies that become increasingly indistinct from Gelber's already tainted reality.

Eventually, Gelber's bid to become a late-blooming dark horse makes him so unreliable that Walken fires him and he drives off in a rage. He envisages himself visiting a vast toy store to select a better model of fiancée, only he comes round to discover that he has been in a coma for four months after crashing his car. Worse still, although Blair is pregnant with his child, she has been receiving positive treatment from Gelber's detested doctor brother Justin Bartha and has become his girlfriend. Typically, Bartha can do nothing to save his sibling and his ghost haunts the family home with a simmering fury that would be intensified if Gelber knew that Murphy had been in love with him all along.

As admirers and detractors alike will know, Todd Solondz's films have always sought to provoke, whether he was discussing bullying and parental neglect in Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995), paedophilia in Happiness (1998), promiscuity in Storytelling (2001), sexual deviancy in Palindromes (2005) and a mixture of all of the aforementioned in Life During Wartime (2009). But, whereas he has frequently opted for ensemble scenarios, here he focuses on a single, deeply flawed character whose disconcerting physical and psychological issues are mirrored in the problems facing the women he lusts after.

Curiously, the consequence is a dilution of the dark humour that has become the Solondz trademark and which allows for the seeping in of a hint of compassion (albeit of a particularly bleak variety). Some critics have seen this as a betrayal, others a sign of middle-aged mellowing. However, the majority have decided that, while this may not be as incisive or subversive as earlier Solondz dissections of the American psyche, it maintains his reputation as the indie sector's most fearlessly abrasive satirist.

Brilliantly creating an individual of monumental insensitivity and boorishness, Justin Gerber is well supported by the underrated Blair (playing what may well be a variation on her doormat wannabe writer in Storytelling) and the affable Murphy, whose real or imagined presence enables Gerber to fathom the recesses of a personality so resistible that even parents Walken and Farrow find him hard to like. In many ways, he resembles the kind of man-child depicted by Seth Rogen in the mainstream comedies of Judd Apatow and his acolytes. But, as the ranting monologue about irredeemable humanity demonstrates, Solondz is always more merciless in his denunciation and that is why his fleeting sympathy for Gerber (such as when Blair is surprised by how unhorrible their first kiss is) is all the more unexpectedly potent.

Some two decades ago, Solondz was part of an indie boom that also included Hal Hartley, Amos Poe, Todd Haynes and Whit Stillman. It would be fair to say that they have enjoyed mixed fortunes since their heyday and it's a shame that 59 year-old Stillman fails to recapture the glories of the Oscar-nominated Metropolitan (1990) and its follow-ups Barcelona (1994) and The Last Days of Disco (1998) with his comeback feature, Damsels in Distress. Once again scrutinising his preferred preppie milieu, this is every bit as erudite and strewn with delightful digressions as Stillman's earlier outings. There are even a couple of niftily judged musical numbers. But, despite the spirited playing of a fine young cast, this often genial feature seems to be stuck in a time warp.

Greta Gerwig is the queen bee of a small clique devoted to improving life at Seven Oaks University. Acolytes Megalyn Echikunwoke and Carrie Maclemore readily assent to her views on body odour and the dating of socially, physically and intellectually inferior males. But new recruit Analeigh Tipton is more disposed towards independent thinking. She still accompanies her friends when they do their bit at the campus suicide prevention centre and dishes out the doughnuts and good advice to those who can prove that they are definitively depressed. Despite her misgivings, Tipton even tries to join in with the therapeutic tap-dancing lessons. But she fails to see the point of associating with ugly and stupid boys when she could be consorting with more promising prospects like French Cathar Hugo Becker and sophisticated businessman Adam Brody.

Things start to unravel for Gerwig when Caitlin Fitzgerald takes her advice about doltish swains and steals her boyfriend Ryan Metcalf, whose failure to attend kindergarten has made him so dim that he doesn't even know the colour of his own eyes. Yet rather than settling for Metcalf's spectacularly palookaish pal Billy Magnussen, Gerwig goes to ground, leaving Tipton to step up to her plate by agreeing to date Brody even after he is exposed as an eighth-year education student.

When Gerwig eventually returns, she begins dispensing a remarkable new soap that is capable of overpowering even the most Neanderthal niffs. She also has a renewed determination to turn her dance, The Shambola, into a worldwide craze. Thus, with everyone happily partnered off or safely ensconced in their niche, Gerwig seems to be back to her primly effervescent best after partnering Brody in a closing routine to `Things Are Looking Up' that irresistibly recalls Joan Fontaine's game attempts to keep up with Fred Astaire while dancing to the same George and Ira Gershwin number in George Stevens's 1937 musical comedy, A Damsel in Distress.

Stillman clearly had the pre-war screwball style in mind when he wrote his screenplay, which has apparently reached the screen shorn of several other musical interludes. But in harking back to the Hollywood of yesteryear, he completely fails to take account of the changes that have transformed twentysomething existence in the 13 years since he last made a film. No one is complaining about the absence of mobile phones or the need for the characters to check their emails, Facebook pages or Twitter feeds. But the decision to dispense entirely with such modern faddery detaches the action from the realism that made Eric Rohmer's comedies of juvenile manners so relishable and authentic.

As she proved in her mumblecore days, Gerwig is a compelling presence and her timing and deadpan delivery of what can only be described as zingers is immaculate. But too few of the supporting cast can match her effortless precision and, as a result, some of the bon mots feel a tad too burnished and rehearsed. Elizabeth J. Jones's production design, Ciera Wells and Krista Blomberg's costumes and Doug Emmett's cinematography suffer from a similar calculation. Yet this quirky inversion of The Big Bang Theory is never anything less than amusing, sweet and sincerely affectionate towards both its characters and the kind of lovingly crafted studio cinema that inspired them. So, one hopes we don't have to wait too long for Stillman's next opus.

There's also an old-fashioned feel about Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, which could easily have been set in the Argentine in the 1930s as a vehicle for William Powell or in the Levant in the 1950s for Rock Hudson. Instead, Lasse Hallström and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy's adaptation of Paul Torday's epistolary bestseller is headlined by Ewan McGregor, who finds an admirable latterday Myrna Loy or Doris Day in Emily Blunt. Somewhat disappointingly, the book's political satire also feels as though it has had its ferocity attenuated by that bygone protector of American mindsets and morality, the Production Code. But this is still an enjoyable romp that is guaranteed to poke gentle fun without offending anybody.

Already suffering from Asperger's Syndrome and frustrated with working for bumbling boss Conleth Hall, fisheries scientist Ewan McGregor is less than enamoured when he is contacted by Emily Blunt, the London representative of Yemeni sheikh Amr Waked, who is keen to introduce salmon fishing to his arid homeland. However, just as McGregor is dismissing the proposal as the pipe dream of a man with more money than sense, Downing Street press secretary Kristin Scott Thomas declares it to be the perfect initiative for improving Britain's image in the Islamic world and coerces McGregor into abandoning his dissertation on caddis fly larvae and embarking upon an expedition.

Thrown together in the back of beyond, McGregor and Blunt become closer, even though he is married to careerist Rachael Sterling and she is dating soldier Tom Mison, who has just returned for another tour of duty in Afghanistan. McGregor provides a shoulder to cry on when Blunt learns that Mison has been killed. But he also saves Waked from a fundamentalist assassin and starts to wonder why he is putting himself in such a perilous position.

Testy text messages from Scott Thomas keep him at his post, however, even after Mison is discovered alive and the ever-savvy attaché stage manages their reunion for the media. However, there are some things that even a spin doctor cannot control and growing opposition to the reservoir leads to an increase in terrorist activity that again endangers McGregor and Waked. But, on seeing that some of the salmon have survived the bomb blast, McGregor finally feels committed to the project and, encouraged by the news that Mison has stepped aside, he joins with Blunt in trying to make Waked's harebrained scheme work as a politically correct enterprise.

As he proved with The Cider House Rules (1999) and Chocolat (2000), Hallström is more than adept at turning acclaimed novels into middlebrow movies. He is well served here by cinematographer Terry Stacey, whose lakeland vistas and desertscapes ably convey the magnitude of the challenge facing McGregor. But Beaufoy's script lacks the edge of Torday's original and, while Scott Thomas is splendid as the press maven juggling her professional duties with a complicated home life, her dialogue misses the stinging cynicism that made Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker so venomously effective in The Thick of It. Similarly, no real effort is made to discuss the ironies of the fact that a Yemeni sheikh's factotum could be dating a British war hero, while the delineation of Waked's sheikh and his snarling enemies risks being stereotypically simplified.

Some of the gambits used to make a miscast McGregor seem suitably boffinish also feel clumsy. But he and Blunt make a pleasant couple and their awkward conversations are neatly juxtaposed with the discussions between McGregor's intransigent scientist and Waked's pious Muslim. But the overriding thought during these passages is relief that they were not being shared by Bill Travers and Herbert Lom (while Virginia McKenna looked on) somewhere in a 1960s Pinewood variation of the Sudan.