Parky at the Pictures (DVD 29/6/2017)

Life has not been easy for Troy Maxson (Denzel Washington). Leaving home as little more than a boy, he had been jailed for killing a man during a robbery. Yet, while inside, he had befriended Jim Bono (Stephen Henderson) and discovered a talent for baseball that had made him a star player in the professional Negro Leagues. As segregation still applied in the days before Jackie Robinson, Troy never made it to the majors and he had struggled to raise his son Lyons (Russell Hornsby). Then, he met Rose Lee (Viola Davis) and knew right away that this was the woman he was destined to spend his life with. They also had a son, Cory (Jovan Adepo), and Troy landed a job on a Pittsburgh garbage truck with Bono. He even cheated death after contracting pneumonia in 1941 and found himself being made a trustee for his war-wounded brother, Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson), whose $3000 compensation award helped pay for the home that Rose insists will only be complete after Troy erects a fence around the backyard.

As his oft-repeated anecdote about facing down the Grim Reaper proves, Troy is a talker, whether he is bantering with Bono on the back of their wagon or teasing Rose about their sex life. But he often allows his tongue to get the better of him and constantly berates Lyons for wasting his life on a half-baked ambition to become a jazz musician. He is also concerned that Cory might get to top his athletic achievements if he is granted a football scholarship to a leading college. Thus, claiming that he only wishes to spare the boy the disappointment of having his hopes dashed by the institutional racists running professional sport, Troy orders Cory to stop playing for the school team and work in a local store to bring in some much-needed money.

Yet, despite risking the sack by complaining to his superiors that there are no black drivers in the refuse department, Troy is offered the post, even though he is illiterate and doesn't have a licence. Bono jokes about his knack of landing on his feet. But, for all his arrogance, Troy is a decent man and keeps an eye on Gabriel, who carries a bugle around his neck and claims to have been St Peter's assistant at the Pearly Gates while receiving treatment on the head injury that has left him mentally disadvantaged. However, Troy feels guilty that Gabriel no longer lives in the house bought with his remuneration and keeps prevaricating about putting up the fence that he somehow fears will limit his horizons. Although he fails to convince him that Cory would be respected as a college ball player, Bono is one of the few people Troy will listen to. So, when he urges Troy to stop fooling round with a younger woman at their favourite bar, he confesses that he might have let the relationship go too far. However, he also likes the fact that Alberta (who remains off stage) allows him to be himself without reminding him of his responsibilities and shortcomings. Consequently, he continues the affair and reminds Rose that he has a right to some private time after a hard week's work.

Assigned to a different route, Troy grows apart from the genially parsimonious Bono, who has promised to buy his wife Lucille a refrigerator if Troy ever finishes the fence. But, without Bono to rein him in, Troy becomes increasingly tyrannical towards Cory and gives him the first of three behaviour strikes when he throws down his football helmet in fury at being dropped from the team at Troy's insistence. Bono is also unable to help Troy bail Gabriel for disturbing the peace and, thus, Troy fails to realise that he has signed a document granting permission for Gabriel to be placed in a home that is now entitled to a share of his war pension.

But Bono is also unavailable when Troy needs advice on how to break the news to Rose that Alberta is pregnant. As a result, he asserts his right to seek solace outside the marital bed and is taken aback when Rose insists that she no longer recognises the man to whom she has devoted 18 years of unquestioning loyalty. She rushes into the yard in distress and drops the red rose that Gabriel has just given her. Cory arrives home to find his parents bickering and comes to Rose's aid when Troy grabs her arm. Despite being awarded a second strike for pushing his father into the half-completed fence, Cory stands up for his mother, who has no option but to accept the situation and struggle on.

A montage shows Rose being drawn towards the local church community, while Troy continues to see Alberta while adding planks to the fence. Then, during a thunderstorm in the middle of the night, Rose takes a phone call from the hospital announcing that Alberta has died giving birth to a daughter. Shaken by the news that his selfishness has cost his lover her life, Troy challenges the Reaper to another duel before going to claim his child. But he knows his limits and throws himself on Rose's mercy, as he implores her to accept the innocent infant as her own. She agrees to raise the child, but refuses to let Troy back into her bedroom. He gets drunk and takes exception to Cory trying to barge past him on the back steps. When Cory accuses his father of getting old, Troy knocks him to the floor and Cory grabs Troy's baseball bat and squares up to him. They scuffle and Troy presses the bat against his son's throat. But he relents and orders him out of the house. Seizing the bat, Troy squares up to the practice ball hanging by a rope from the tree and invites the Reaper to take his best shot.

Six years later, Troy's luck runs out and Rose sees him buckle under a fatal heart attack while standing on precisely the same spot. She urges Raynell (Saniyya Sidney) to put on a dress for her fathers funeral, while Lyons and Bono wait in the parlour. There's a knock on the door and Raynell is amazed to see Cory in the uniform of a US Marine Corps corporal. Rose welcomes him home for the first time since his skirmish with Troy and insists that he attends the church service, even though Cory wants to stay away in an overdue act of defiance to his father. But he changes his mind after Raynell coaxes him into singing a song about a possum dog that Troy had taught them both. As they are about to leave, Gabriel arrives on day release from his hospice and he blows inexpertly on his bugle to alert St Peter to open the gates. Much to everyone's surprise, the clouds overhead part and the fenced yard is bathed in a ray of warm sunshine.

Few would deny that this is a potent and poignant piece of work that probably deserves its Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. But, despite the best efforts of Denzel Washington and a fine cast, it stubbornly remains a theatre piece whose more melodramatic moments are magnified by the intense gaze of the camera. There's plenty of chat, but too little quotidian conversation, as characters declaim speeches of impossibly precise eloquence that undermine their authenticity. The cosiness of the coda - complete with its cornball cloud sequence - also rings hollow, as do suggestions that the fence has acquired a new symbolic pertinence in the age of the Mexican wall. Yet it comes as no surprise to find August Wilson being posthumously nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, alongside Washington for Best Actor and the always excellent Viola Davis for Best Supporting Actress.

She finally won an Oscar after becoming the first black woman to be cited three times after John Patrick Shanley's Doubt (2008) and Tate Taylor's The Help (2010). Yet, while she might not have much to do for the first two-thirds of the story, she comes into her own after learning of her adored husband's adultery - although it might have been intriguing had Washington permitted the audience a glimpse of Alberta (even at a tantalising distance) to allow it to gauge Rose's competition. But the way Davis passes from dignified devastation to assured autonomy is much more interesting than Washington's shifts from bonhomie to boorishness and bullying, which owe less to the specific situation than the grand stage tradition of flawed American patriarchs.

David Gropman's design and Charlotte Bruus Christensen's cinematography lock the action into a poetic realist time capsule, just as Marcelo Zarvos's score affirms the sense of significance that shrouds the entire production. Yet, while some of the `black lives matter' references to African-American family life and everyday racism have an enduring relevance, they seem to say more about the country under Eisenhower and Reagan than under Obama. During the 1963 segment, Washington lets the camera linger on photographs of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King on the kitchen wall, while he vaguely alludes to the fact that Jovan Adepo will wind up in Vietnam by electing to remain in the military. But such consciously contentious politicking feel less immediate and affecting than Davis's heartfelt lament about hailing from a family of half-siblings and Washington's self-defeating inability to shed his bitterness and commit to the present rather than fulminating about the past and striving to control the future.

The case of Loving vs the Commonwealth of Virginia changed both the American constitution and the make-up of the nation. But there is little sense of what was riding on the verdict in Jeff Nichols's well-meaning, but bloodless drama, Loving, as he is more interested in depicting a man who loved his wife than the prejudice and fear that made interracial marriage a crime in several states. Relegating the Civil Rights movement to a fleeting TV news report, Nichols stays so focused on the everyday travails facing Richard and Mildred Loving that he barely has time to touch upon the seismic societal shifts that transformed the United States between 1958-67. Moreover, he implies that racism was primarily a legislative rather than a commonplace problem by opting not to mention the bigotry that the couple would almost certainly have faced at a time when miscegenation often provoked vicious reprisals. Yet, despite the crucial lack of jeopardy, there is no denying the sincerity of the project or the efficacy of its leads, who, ironically, are Australian and Ethiopian-Irish.

In June 1958, white builder Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) proposes to black girlfriend Mildred Jeter (Ruth Negga) on learning she's pregnant. Drag-racing buddies Raymond Green (Chris Greene), Virgil (Will Dalton) and Percy Fortune (Alano Miller) are delighted by the news. But Mildred's family - parents Theoliver (Christopher Mann) and Musiel (Winter-Lee Holland) and sister Garnet (Terry Abney) - appear better disposed than Richard's midwife mother, Lola (Sharon Blackwood). Indeed, Theoliver accompanies the couple to Washington, DC to witness their nuptials, as existing anti-miscegenation laws in Virginia make it impossible for them to wed in Caroline County.

Richard buys a field and promises to build Mildred a home less than a mile from where she was raised. But someone informs Sheriff Brooks (Marton Csokas) about the marriage and the Lovings are dragged out of bed and placed in separate cells at the police station. Lawyer Frank Beazley (Bill Camp) gets Richard bailed, but Brooks refuses to release Mildred and cautions her husband that would have no qualms about putting him back behind bars if he dares to defy his authority. Judge Leon M. Bazile (David Jensen) also has no difficulty in upholding the Racial Integrity Act when they plead guilty. But Beazley manages to cut a deal suspending their sentence on the proviso that they leave Virginia and stay away for 25 years. Seeking sanctuary in Washington, they move in with Mildred's cousin Laura (Andrene Ward-Hammond) in a black suburban neighbourhood. But, while Richard finds a new job, Mildred is miserable in the city and he agrees to smuggle her home so that his mother can deliver the baby. Garnet is unhappy with Richard for causing her family so much trouble, while Lola echoes Brooks in thinking that he ought to have known better than to get involved with Mildred. Yet she protects the pair until the child is born, although another anonymous tip brings Brooks and Deputy Cole (Michael Abbott, Jr.) to the door and Beazley has to accuse himself of incompetence in court in order to secure their release.

As Sidney (Jevin Crochrell) is joined by Donald (Jordan Williams, Jr.) and Peggy (Georgia Crawford), the homesick Mildred devotes herself to being a mom, while Richard finds work on building sites across the capital. During the March on Washington in August 1963, however, Mildred decides to write to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy for advice and his office puts her in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union. She only tells Richard when lawyer Bernard S. Cohen (Nick Kroll) and he is singularly unimpressed when Cohen suggests they return to Virginia to be re-arrested so he can initiate the legal proceedings that he hopes will take them to the Supreme Court. But academic Chet Antieau (Matt Malloy) introduces Cohen to constitutional law expert Phil Hirschkop (Jon Bass), who devises a strategy to challenge the system.

Daily life continues, however, and Mildred insists on returning to the country after Donald is hit by a car while playing baseball in the street. They find a remote house in King and Queen County and strive to lay low. But Cohen and Hirschkop encourage the Lovings to meet with Life magazine photographer Grey Villet (Michael Shannon), whose profile attracts a good deal of positive publicity. However, Richard finds a brick wrapped in a copy of the article in his car and lives in fear of the cops speeding up the drive. But the wheels of justice move much more slowly and many months pass before Judge Bazile declares that the races should never mingle and that any resulting offspring should be deemed illegitimate.

This ruling enables Cohen and Hirschkop to appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court and, when it backs Bazile, they take the case to the highest court in the land. Richard resents being in the spotlight and refuses to attend the hearing in person. But he urges Cohen to tell the justices that he loves his wife and his simple sincerity helps win the day, as the Supreme Court finds that laws prohibiting interracial marriage are unconstitutional. As the film ends, Richard starts work on the property he had promised Mildred near Central Point. But a caption reveals that he was killed by a motorist in 1975, leaving his widow to live alone in their dream house until her own death in 2008.

Often feeling like a well-funded TV-movie, this may adopt a low-key approach to a landmark decision. But Nichols breaks new ground in viewing events from the perspective of a white man throwing in his lot with the African-American community. The key scene, therefore, takes place not in a courtroom, but in a backwater bar, where one of Richard's buddies accuses him of being a fool for tossing away his privileges for love. Yet Nichols elects not to explore this idea in any depth and this reluctance to tackle contentious issues head on draws the sting from a story that should consistently spark indignation, if not fury.

The absence of a readily identifiable villain also does much to temper the emotional response, as (regardless of their potential opinions) Brooks is merely shown enforcing the law, while Bazile is spared the ignominy of delivering his bileful judgement on screen. With the majority of the secondary characters essentially being ciphers, this shifts the dramatic burden on to Richard and Mildred. But, while Joel Edgerton and the Oscar-nominated Ruth Negga deliver skilful performances as the undeniably engaging couple, Nichols skimps on the character development to the extent that each new development is greeted with little more than a tight-lipped grimace by Edgerton and some wide-eyed dignity by Negga.

Numbering Colin Firth among its producers, this is a picture with its heart in the right place. It also boasts solid contributions from cinematographer Adam Stone, production designer Chad Keith, costumier Erin Benach, editor Julie Monroe and composer David Wingo. But too much of the action occurs in a cosy vacuum that seems to have been created to avoid causing offence and one can imagine that a film-maker like Spike Lee would have had markedly different priorities.

Three years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, another Texan shooting shocked America. On 1 August 1966, 25 year-old engineering major Charles Whitman killed his mother and wife before climbing the clock tower at the University of Texas at Austin and started firing at random at the students milling around the campus. Over the next 90 minutes, the ex-Marine would kill 14 people (and an unborn baby) and wound 32 others before he was shot dead by two young police officers. Peter Bogdanovich based his debut feature, Targets (1968), on the incident, which also inspired Jerry Jameson's 1975 TV-movie, The Deadly Tower. But, in marking the 50th anniversary of this infamous event in Tower, Keith Maitland has returned to ’96 Minutes', an article written by Pamela Colloff for the Texax Monthly magazine that drew on the recollections of eyewitnesses who have been recreated on screen using the rotoscoping animation technique that was memorably employed by Richard Linklater on Waking Life (2002) and A Scanner Darkly (2006). Despite causing the murderous mayhem some 300 feet above the campus, Whitman is almost a marginal figure in this tense and deeply moving recreation that begins with pregnant anthropology student Claire Wilson James (Violett Beane) being hit in the back while walking on the concourse with new boyfriend, Tom Eckman (Cole Bee Wilson). He was fatally shot in the neck as he bent down to check on her and Claire recalls how a tutor admonished her for lounging around on the ground before the next bullet sent him scurrying for cover.

Meanwhile, as The Mamas & The Papas hit `Monday, Monday' plays jauntily on the soundtrack, teenager Aleck Hernandez, Jr. (Aldo Ordoñez) was finishing his paper round with cousin Lee `Junior' Zamora (Anthony Martinez) when the force of a shot to the shoulder knocked him off his bicycle. As cop Houston McCoy (Blair Jackson) skimmed stones in the nearby lake, news of the sniper reached Neal Spelce (Monty Muir) at the KTBC radio/TV station, who decided to drive to the university, where Kent Kirkley (Timothy Lucas) was already recording footage on a handheld camera. While onlookers Margaret C. Berry (Karen Davidson) and Brenda Bell (Vicky Illk) tried to make sense of what they were witnessing, off-duty cop Ramiro `Ray' Martinez (Louie Arnette) heard about the shootings on the KLRN TV network and volunteered to provide back-up. Around the same time, Allen Crum (Chris Doubek) heard the commotion from the campus Co-op store and rushed out to tend to Hernandez. Realising he couldn't cross back to the shop, he decided to take refuge in the tower and call home to reassure his wife that he was in one piece. But laying low was the last thing on the minds of freshmen John `Artly Snuff' Fox (Séamus Bolivar-Ochoa) and James Love (Cole Bresnehen), who abandoned a game of chess to investigate the commotion, only for a stray shot to send them into the nearest building.

A montage follows of clips of the wounded being interviewed in their hospital beds, images of people rushing for cover on the main drag and rotoscoped recollections of the fear and panic that set in before civilians arrived with their own weapons and started firing back. Borrowing a high-powered rifle, McCoy tried to line-up a shot at the tower. But he was distracted by the sight of fellow officer Billy Speed (John Fitch) being killed on the ground below. He recalls chatting to him a few hours earlier on the beat and how he had confided that he was going to quit the force and resume his studies. Yet he was forced to watch helplessly, along with Brenda, who laments the cowardice that prevented her from going to Speed's aid.

While Hernandez was rushed to hospital, Crum flipped the finger at the gunman from behind a pillar and narrowly avoided a reprisal shot before making his way into the tower, where he joined cop Jerry Day (Jeremy Brown) in climbing the main staircase. Back outside, next to the statue of Jefferson Davis, Fox was growing concerned for Claire, who was lying still on the hot concrete in the knowledge that her boyfriend and her baby were dead and that she would also perish if she attempted to move. She was astonished, therefore, when someone with red hair ran towards her through the heat haze and Rita Starpattern (Josephine McAdam) lay down beside her with the express purpose of keeping her conscious until help could arrive.

As a psychedelic montage (to Donovan's `Colours') recalls Claire's all-too-brief romance with Eckman, the tower clock moves round to 1pm. Spelce remembers how his live reports were being broadcast across the country, while Ramirez reflects on the instinctive sense of duty that directed him into the tower building lift. While he hooked up with Day and Crum on the 27th floor, Fox took shelter in the shade of a bush and determined to rescue Claire. As Rita ran for her life, Fox and Love carried Claire to a waiting medical team, while Vietnam veteran Brehan Ellison retrieved Eckman. Ellison is interviewed by the TV news, while the short-sighted Fox ran back into the line of fire to recover his glasses.

On their way to the observation deck, Martinez and Crum find several victims (some still alive) on the steps. Crum asks to be deputised so he can legally shoot the gunman if necessary and he covers Martinez, as he is joined by McCoy and Day. To the accompaniment of Debussy's `Clair de Lune', they creep towards the clock face and open fire, while Crum waves a handkerchief to signal for the shooting from below to cease. As Spelce announces Whitman's death, hundreds of people emerge from their hiding places and walk across the concourse to congregate in silent relief.

Such was the chaos at Brackenridge Hospital that Hernandez's parents were informed their son had died, while veteran newscaster Paul Bolton stopped a colleague from reading a list of the deceased live on air on hearing the name of his grandson, Paul Sonntag. Spelce (who is shown in old age, along with Claire, Brenda, Margaret, Fox, Martinez and Hernandez) breaks down as he recalls this ghastly moment, while Claire recalls her gratitude at Rita bringing a painting she had done to her bedside. She speculates upon the bravery that prompted a stranger to place herself in danger and Fox insists that she is in a special place in heaven.

McCoy and Crum have also passed on and Maitland intercuts extracts from interviews with them with footage of a local TV news special and of Walter Cronkite questioning Whitman's mindset and the extent to which films, comics and television have changed American attitudes to violence. Crum turned a cheque for a day's pay as a full deputy and shunned the limelight as a hero. Cousins Hernandez and Zamora meet up to reminisce, while Claire and Fox are reunited for the first time in five decades. They agree that it has always been easier to forget than confront the emotions they have experienced over the years, with Fox still feeling guilty for not having done more. But Claire reassures him that he did his bit.

Fox fights back the tears as he reveals that the incident taught him about human depravity. But Claire (who later adopted a son, Sirak, from Ethiopia) insists that she has forgiven Whitman and can even empathise with the pain that drove him to kill. However, the final montage of news clips from such mass shootings as Newtown, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Aurora suggests that the United States has yet to reconcile the rights of the individual with the need for tighter gun control.

Some critics complained that this coda message might have been left unsaid, while others have questioned the need to show how life turned out for a handful of the survivors. But Maitland makes his points without undue fuss, even as he and editor Austin Reedy note that Fox and Love's daring dash to rescue Claire was recorded by three different cameras and, thus, anticipated both rolling and citizen news coverage of breaking stories. Some of his song choices might seem a little twee (notably The Lovin' Spoonful's `Daydream'), but Craig Staggs's rotoscoping and the use of actors to deliver the testimony gives the action a terrifying immediacy that is reinforced by the fact that the Texas legislature passed a law giving students the right to carry arms on campus on the 50th anniversary of the UT Tower Massacre. Such staggering insensitivity represents a gross insult to those who lost their lives and more than justifies Maitland's decision to avoid profiling Whitman or ponder his possible motives. But it does leave one wondering how change can ever come about, when neither outrage nor forgiveness seems to have the slightest effect on the gun lobby.

A sizeable seam of pyrite runs through Stephen Gagan's Gold, a film à clefic cross between a macho adventure and a Wall Street saga that is mostly worth watching for the bravura performance of Matthew McConaughey. Sporting snaggled teeth, a wispy comb-over and a pot belly, McConaughey creates a sad sack anti-hero whose antics closely resemble those of David Walsh, the head of the Calgary-based Bre-X Minerals company that claimed to have made a vast gold strike in the Busang area of the Indonesian island of Borneo in the mid-1990s. Screenwriters Patrick Massett and John Zinman (who are best known for Simon West's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, 2001) switch the action to the 1980s to cash-in on the decade's Greed Is Good mantra. They also turn shifty (and seemingly bigamous) Filipino geologist Michael de Guzman into a dashing man of mystery to accommodate the casting of the Venezuelan Édgar Ramírez. But, while this hybrid of John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Ben Younger's Boiler Room (2000) is primarily a ripping yarn, it also passes some acerbic comments on the enduring appeal of the money for nothing mentality.

It's 1981 and Matthew McConaughey makes enough from following in mining titan Craig T. Nelson's footsteps to buy girlfriend Bryce Dallas Howard expensive gifts. Seven years later, however, he has frittered away much of his father's legacy and works out of the Reno, Nevada bar where Howard works as a waitress. Forever seeking the mother lode, he approaches bankers Joshua Harto and Stafford Douglas for investment and is dismissed as a hustler. But, after another heavy night, McConaughey dreams of a mountain towering over an expanse of jungle and wakes convinced that this locale is the answer to his prayers.

As luck would have it, geologist Edgar Ramírez has already stumbled across it and is striving to find backers to conduct a test excavation. Rising to the bait, McConaughey pawns Howard's watch and flies to Indonesia and hangs around the hotel lobby pretending to be a player until he can get a meeting with Ramírez. He claims to sceptical about the value of the so-called `ring of fire', but accepts McConaughey's offer to bankroll his dig and changes his tune when his new partner recognises the jungle landscape from his dream.

Having signed a contract on a napkin, McConaughey returns to Nevada and has loyal lieutenants Macon Blair, Frank Woods and Adam LeFevre cold call potential investors with finessed claims about Ramírez's findings. They scrape together enough for a provisional expedition and McConaughey heads back up river to base camp. However, there is still no sign of gold when the money runs out and McConaughey goes down with malaria soon after the native workers walk out on him. But McConaughey remains confident and is overjoyed when Ramírez reveals that they have enough evidence to convince the movers and shakers in the States that Washoe Mining has hit the jackpot.

Suddenly back in the big time, McConaughey celebrates in Vic Browder's bar and shows Howard the land he has bought to build their dream house. Old stager Stacy Keach welcomes him back into the fold and Harto plays teaboy during their meeting in the hope of being hired as McConaughey's personal banker. A new office is acquired and Washoe stock rises steadily as a split screen sequence shows Ramírez reporting back on lab tests and McConaughey filling the fridge with booze. They also go to New York to meet with investors Bill Camp and Corey Stoll and Ramírez suggests taking potential partners on a junket to the site in order to convince them that Washoe is capable of exploiting the find to the full.

It's at this point that Gaghan springs the surprise that McConaughey is telling his story to FBI agent Toby Kebbell and that he has some serious explaining to do. He admits that Ramírez was behind the fact-finding mission and we are shown how gullible executives Michael Landres, Bhavesh Patel and Timothy Simons are sufficiently duped by the discovery of a large nugget on a panhandling expedition for Camp and Stoll to make such a huge investment in Washoe that it opens on the New York Stock Exchange. McConaughey takes a suite at the Waldorf Astoria and is joined by Ramírez in ringing the bell on the day's trading.

On attending a reception in McConaughey's honour, Howard overhears Stoll mocking him with high-flyer John Pirkis. She also takes exception to her boyfriend playing footsie with blonde hotshot Rachael Taylor and packs her bags when he drunkenly accuses her of trying to keep him on the lower rung because that makes him easier to tame. Undaunted, McConaughey takes a lease on a mansion and flirts with Taylor in the hot tub. But his success brings the unwanted attentions of South African gold tycoon Bruce Greenwood, who tries to take over Washoe in order to protect his own interest. Refusing to take a back seat, McConaughey ignores the advice of Stoll and Harto and plays hardball.

Consequently, he loses his shirt when Indonesian president Suharto sends in the troops to confiscate the mine and expel Ramírez at gunpoint. McConaughey tells Kebbell that he knew he had been stiffed by Greenwood and his cronies and claims that President Gerald Ford (who had been a groomsman at one of Suharto's weddings) was among those pulling strings against him. But Ramírez had refused to allow him to wallow in the self-pity that had prompted a midnight payphone call to Howard. Instead, he had given him a pep talk about his instinctive genius for business and his own bouncebackability and this had resulted in them schmoozing Suharto's partying prodigal son (Jirayu Tantrakul), who is keen to prove his worth to his father and decides to trust McConaughey when he ventures into the cage containing his pet tiger and pats his head.

Overnight, McConaughey is back in the game and Stoll, Camp and Greenwood are left with nothing when Suharto permits Ramírez to return to the mine. Hoping to patch things up with Howard, McConaughey buys her presents and takes them to the furniture superstore where she is now working. On seeing her flirt with a colleague, however, he turns on his heel and heads back to New York to receive the Golden Pickaxe as Prospector of the Year. Ramírez helps with his bow-tie as McConaughey rehearses his speech. But he slips out of the venue by the back door and disappears, just as the news breaks that he had been seeding the samples and that the Indonesian project is utterly worthless.

As experts explain on TV shows how investors were too greedy to check the validity of the samples that Ramírez submitted, McConaughey struggles to keep Washoe afloat as it is suspended from the Stock Exchange. He is offended when LeFevre asks if he knew that Ramírez had lied and stunned when Blair and Harto inform him that his partner had been offloading stock to the tune of $164 million to give him a nest egg for his exile.

This is when the FBI raid the office and we cut to the hotel room where McConaughey is being interviewed by Kebbell. He confides that Ramírez was arrested in Indonesia and threw himself from a police helicopter flying over the jungle. A body was found with its features eaten away by wild boars, but no one can say for sure whether Ramírez survived his plummet. Looking into McConaughey's eyes, Kebbell decides he knew nothing about the deception and lets him go. He drives to see Howard, who seems pleased to see him. She has been keeping his mail and he smiles quietly when he opens an envelope containing the napkin contract he had signed with Ramírez and a cheque from an offshore account for $82 million.

Fresh from snagging a Golden Globe nod for Iggy Pop's theme song, this satirical morality tale was released Stateside to coincide with Donald Trump's inauguration. But, while it's loaded with far from subtle subtext, it says little that has not already been broached with significantly more polish, potency and pizzazz in Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and David O. Russell's American Hustle (2014). The ending is mischievously ambiguous, but too many other pieces slot into place with a familiar clang.

In fairness to Gaghan - the Oscar-winning writer of Steven Soderbergh's Traffic (2000), who has not directed since Syriana (2005) - he ably teams with production designers Maria Djurkovic and Danny Glicker to contrast the jungles of Indonesia and Manhattan. He also gives Matthew McConaughey plenty of room to dominate proceedings with a larger-than-life performance. But Ramírez and Howard have to make do with intriguing, but underwritten roles in a jittery screenplay that Massett and Zinman have overstuffed with ciphers and caricatures. Moreover, too many incidents exist simply to prod the narrative along. Yet, even though the action often lacks the zip of Robert Elswit's camerawork or the dash of Daniel Pemberton's score, this rattles along enjoyably, if predictably and it's hard to avoid feeling a modicum of Lomanesque pity for McConaughey's hapless chancer.

After 12 years working as a second unit director for Joe Wright on Pride and Prejudice (2005), Atonement (2007), The Soloist (2009), Anna Karenina (2012), Pan (2015) and Darkest Hour (2017), Thomas Napper has made the step up to principal director with Jawbone, a London boxing saga that has been written and produced by its star, Johnny Harris. With big-budget Hollywood outings like Rob Marshall's Into the Woods (2014) and Mary Poppins Returns (2018) and Bill Condon's lauded live-action reworking of Disney's Beauty and the Beast (2017) also on his CV, Napper is clearly not ready to give up the day job just yet. But, while this debut may not offer many fresh insights into the fight game, it follows Juho Kuosmanen's The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki and Ludwig and Paul Shammasian's The Pyramid Texts in suggesting that its maker is a talent to watch.

Half a lifetime ago, Johnny Harris was a 16 year-old amateur boxing champion. Now, he faces eviction from the Lambeth flat he shared with his recently deceased mother and spends a night in the cells after he kicks off at Jackie Clune's council housing office. Drinking heavily and fast running out of options, he returns to the Union Street Gym owned by his old friend, Ray Winstone. He is surprised to see Harris skulking in a dark corner and takes him into the changing-room to issue an ultimatum that he will turf him out on his ear if he so much as smells alcohol on his breath. Northern Irish cornerman Michael Smiley is less welcoming, as Harris blows hard at the end of his first training session. But boxing is the sport of redemption and he goes along with Winstone's decision to give the washed-up palooka a second chance.

Returning to find his home boarded up, Harris looks out at the tenement estate that has been earmarked for demolition and fights back the pain of dimmed memories and a sense of being discarded by society as a whole. Needing somewhere to sleep, he climbs on to the roof of the gym south of the Thames and hunkers down for the night. He slips out of a boarded window before Winstrone and Smiley arrive and puts in another day's gruelling training, while watching Winstone put a group of young hopefuls through their paces in the ring.

Needing quick cash, Harris ignores Winstone's warning about getting involved in unlicensed bouts and cadges a pound coin off a passer-by to contact seedy promoter Ian McShane about setting him up with a lucrative payday. At the gym. Winstrone forces Harris to spar with a promising fighter to make him see how out of condition he has become. But, having no other way of making a living, Harris keeps his appointment with McShane at a swanky restaurant. His host orders him a steak and asks Harris how his is coping with the loss of his mum. He remembers his youthful talent and regrets that things didn't quite work out. But McShane also agrees to arrange for Harris to fight an unbeaten northern bruiser in an unsanctioned bout and gives him a few weeks to prepare.

Pathetically grateful, the well-mannered and softly spoken Harris asks for a sub and immediately buys a bottle of vodka. Instead of succumbing to temptation, however, he hides the hooch in a hole in the Embankment wall and goes to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He sits in silence as the charity's rubric is read out and decides against introducing himself to the group. But he has taken the first step and he returns to the gym feeling more positive than he has done in months.

Unfortunately, Winstone catches him breaking in through the window. But, rather than giving him a rollicking, Winstone makes a brew and confides that he only has a few weeks left to live. He plans to spend them with his wife, but wants Harris to know that he has entrusted the gym to Smiley and he hopes that Harris will allow the abrasive Ulsterman to train him for the big fight (which he knows all about because nothing gets past him on the grapevine). Once again, Harris feels deeply indebted and goes for an early morning run to try and clear his head.

On returning to the gym, he finds Smiley opening up. He warns Harris that he wants no nonsense, as his opponent has the punching power to send him to the morgue. Aware he has to focus if he is to avoid serious injury, Harris promises to knuckle down. But Smiley is a tough taskmaster and the pair get into a shouting match after a punishing sparring session and everyone looks on in amazement as the two friends (each one pained by the prospect of losing Winstone) trade playground insults. However, the showdown has the desired effect, as Harris shaves his head and puts himself through an exhausting training montage that leaves him ready by the time he sits in sullen silence with Smiley on the train north.

Determined to honour Winstone's memory, Harris shows no fear as he changes for the bout under the intimidating gaze of opponent Luke J.I. Smith's second. He ignores the howls of the partisan crowd as he makes his way to the ring and is given his final instructions by the referee. As the bell sounds for Round 1, Harris realises that Smith has strength and speed. But he survives the initial onslaught and tries to take in Smiley's instructions, as he works on the cuts and bruises that are already appearing around his eyes. He hits the canvas, but struggles back to his feet and clings on with the baying of Smith's supporters adding to his sense of disorientation.

Smiley assures him that Harris that he is still in the fight and that the kid is so used to winning easily that he will be found wanting when his stamina is tested. Somehow, his words prove prophetic and Harris lands a blow that ends Smith's night. As the referee completes the count, Harris is in such a daze that he almost sleepwalks as Smiley steers him back towards the changing-room. Yet, even though he triumphs, little has changed, as he has only pocketed £2500 for an illegal fight that seems unlikely to put him on the road to a meaningful comeback. However, as he mourns at Winstone's funeral and declares his presence at his next AA meeting, Harris has rediscovered his pride and self-respect and he is on the way to retaking control of his destiny.

Underdog pugs have been a fixture in films since the early silent days and Harris's Skid Row contender evokes memories of Wallace Beery in King Vidor's The Champ (1931) and Robert Ryan in Robert Wise's The Set-Up (1949), as well as more modern anti-heroes like Sylvester Stallone in John G. Avildsen's Rocky (1976) and Mickey Rourke in Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler (2008). But, while the story (which takes its title from the spiritual impetus given to Samson's exploits in the Book of Judges) may lack novelty and opens with a tedious Loachian swipe at the uncaring system, Harris brings a touching integrity to his performance that prompts Winstone, McShane and Smiley to up their game and breathe new life into what are essentially caricatures.

Napper also responds to the challenge of putting a fresh spin on the genre-defining ploys contained in Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull playbook by having cinematographer Tat Radcliffe alter the shutter speed of his low-level, handheld close-ups to allow editor David Charap to bring a bruising viscerality to Barry and Shane McGuigan's fight choreography. Jerome McCann's sound mix adds to the sickening immediacy of the boxing sequences, as does Scarlett O'Connell's effects make-up. Moreover, in composing his first film score, Paul Weller also makes unsettling use of jagged cello and distorted guitar riffs, as well as some pounding percussion, to capture the dislocated nature of Harris's psyche and the unforgiving brutality of a world we've seen before many times, but all too rarely from a perspective of such raw sincerity.

Just as several members of Quentin Tarantino's inner circle began producing their own pictures in the wake of Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), so a number of Ben Wheatley's acolytes have come to the fore since he became an icon of British alternative cinema with Down Terrace (2009) and Kill List (2010). Following Steve Oram's Aaaaaaaah! (2015) and Gareth Tunley's The Ghoul (2016), Alice Lowe makes her own directorial debut with Prevenge, which she also wrote and headlined while seven months pregnant. Owing much to the mood of darkly comic subversion that she generated with co-writer-star Oram in Wheatley's Sightseers (2012), this is less a slice of genre revisionism than a study of prepartum physical and psychological sensations that male directors like Roman Polanski and Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo could not possibly have understood so intuitively when they respectively made Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Inside (2007).

Having gazed down at the sea crashing into the rocks below St Govan's Head on the Pembrokeshire coast, the heavily pregnant Alice Lowe ventures into the specialist pet shop run by Dan Renton Skinner, who is every bit as slimy as the snakes and reptiles he has for sale. Lacing his patter with innuendo, he offers to show Lowe a deadly spider that might make a suitable gift for her ghoulish eight year-old son. But, when Skinner bends down to tap the glass of the container, Lowe slashes his throat with a kitchen knife and calmly walks away to burn her clothing beside a remote cabin in the woods.

Checking into a hotel room, Lowe chomps on crisps while watching the surreal `Three Furies' sequence from Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's 1934 cult chiller, Crime Without Passion. Her lame jape about having similarly bad mascara days rather sets the tone for the hit-and-miss nature of the humour that follows. But there is no mistaking the sharpness of the satire, as Lowe keeps an appointment with simperingly patronising midwife Jo Hartley, who sympathises with Lowe's contention that her foetus has taken over her body, but urges her to follow its dictates because baby knows best.

Hartley's well-rehearsed platitudes temporarily halted when she realises why Lowe has not registered a partner on her file. But nothing is made explicit as Lowe goes on a shopping expedition to find a suitable outfit to wear for a 70s disco night being run at a nondescript pub by DJ Tom Davis. Sporting a ridiculous Afro wig, he is flattered by Lowe's flirtatious attention at the bar and takes her back to his place after two younger women give him the brush-off. Vomiting in his wig between slobbering French kisses in the taxi, Davis eulogises over what he perceives to be the low moral standards of `fat birds'. But his seduction spiel is interrupted by the unscheduled appearance of his dementia-suffering mother, Leila Hoffman. He shepherds her back to her bedroom before unzipping himself on the sofa. But he is sent reeling back on to the hearth rug after Lowe castrates him and he is left to bleed to death as Lowe tucks Hoffman into bed after she emerges to muse on the difficulty of removing blood stains.

Despite the everyday settings (in Cardiff and London), there are no pursuing police officers in this deadpan fantasy. Consequently, Lowe only has to worry about the increasingly strident observations of her unborn daughter, who chooses bathtime to congratulate Lowe on becoming a more proficient killer. Having filled in the latest page of her `Baby's First Steps' book, Lowe keeps an appointment with personnel officer Kate Dickie. She compliments Lowe on her CV, but rejects her job application on the grounds that she would demand maternity leave as soon as she joined up. Brushing aside Dickie's explanation that she has been forced to make some painful cuts, Lowe tuts that there is more to her existence than late nights at the office. She also taunts Dickie about a sad sack social life that relies on adventure weekends for kicks. As Dickie tries to protest, Lowe pitilessly slits her throat and denounces her for being cold hearted, while spinning her round in her desk chair.

Back in her room, Lowe watches a news clip in which climbing instructor Kayvan Novak tells an interviewer about a tragedy that had befallen the team he was leading on a Pembroke cliff face. It comes as no surprise, therefore, when Lowe shows up at the indoor climbing centre where Novak works. However, he refuses to let her start a beginner's course in her condition and is perturbed a short time later when he notices Lowe following him along a suburban street. But Lowe is stricken with her own discomfort when she is forced to her knees by abdominal pains while walking through a dimly lit underpass.

Lowe is also concerned about Hartley's threat to involve social services after she lets slip a loose remark about not being ready to be a mother. Thus, even though she reassures her patient that she is only thinking about what's best for baby. Lowe harbours dark thoughts as she walks the nocturnal streets viewing every passing male as a potential rapist and heeding her child's dire warnings about what will happen unless she makes good on her promise to avenge her lost father. Lowe has misgivings, therefore, when she poses as a flat-seeker in order to wreak her revenge on Tom Meeten and is touched by the solicitous kindness of his roommate, Mike Wozniak. But, as the baby reminds her, Wozniak is a witness to Lowe stabbing Meeten in the eye with a handy ornament and he has to suffer the same fate.

Reviewing her crimes in her baby book, Lowe knows she is nearing the end of her mission. But keep-fit enthusiast Gemma Whelan proves highly unwelcoming when Lowe poses as a chugger and even dons boxing gloves to defend herself when Lowe comes after her with a knife. She repeatedly punches her assailant on the nose and even lands a low blow on her belly. But her remorse at such a cowardly act forces her to drop her guard and Lowe has to escape through the kitchen dog flap before the cops Whelan has summoned can apprehend her.

Feeling low after being ticked off by Hartley for missing a scan, Lowe confides that she would rather have boyfriend Marc Bessant back than become a mother. Needing reassurance, she curls up on Bessant's grave and goes into a deep reverie during Grace Calder's exercise class, during which images of her victims are cross-cut with Margo's leering face from the pre-Code horror. She also sees a fragment of frayed rope and the state of Bessant's skull after it's dashed on the rocks following his fall.

Goaded on by her baby, Lowe applies skeletal mouth make-up before wandering through the streets in a red dress. She arrives at a Halloween party and is mortified to see that Novak's partner is also pregnant. As she tries to compose herself in the bathroom, her waters break and she knows she has to act quickly. Finding Novak alone, she asks why Bessant had to die on the climb and Novak explains that Bessant had agreed to be cut loose in order to save the others. Lowe demands to know why Novak had seven people on a single rope, but he cruelly changes the subject to inform Lowe that Bessant had been planning to dump her because he could no longer bear living with her.

Refusing the bait, Lowe reveals that she found out she was pregnant the day Bessant that died. But she is unable to wield the knife and is rushed to hospital for an emergency caesarian (which is shown in graphic detail). As Lowe looks fondly at her daughter, Hartley reminds her that a cut sometimes has to be made for the best and Lowe realises that she has made some awful mistakes en route to this realisation. Leaving her baby in her crib, Lowe makes her way to St Govan's. She makes a little shrine to Bessant in a room hewn into the rock and thinks she sees him as she wanders along the headland. But it's Novak and he comes towards her in greeting, only for Lowe to throw up her arms and hiss in a menacing manner as the screen abruptly cuts to black.

Forming a quirky companion piece to Jennifer Kent's The Babadook (2014), this is a bold, if not entirely consistent debut from the ever-watchable Lowe. Responding to the dictates of her malevolently sweet foetus, Lowe underplays the overly maternal serial killer with a witty intelligence that informs her insights into the way woman learn to co-habit their bodies during pregnancy. But the slasher set-pieces are less convincing, with the encounters with Skinner, Dickie and Whelan seeming more like comic sketches than themed slayings. The funniest and most disconcerting showdown involves the reprehensible Davis, while the interlude with the genial Wozniak introduces some unexpected poignancy. But the screenplay has largely lost its novelty and momentum by the time Lowe confronts Novak and her struggle to find a suitably grand finale is evident in the lacklustre last frame.

In keeping with her classmates in the Wheatley School, Lowe directs with a deceptive insouciance that is reinforced by the admirable ensemble acting and Ryan Eddleston's cannily casual camerawork. Equally impressive is the synth score composed by the Toydrum duo of Pablo Clements and James Griffith in homage to the sounds that Goblin produced for Dario Argento at the peak of his giallo powers in the 1970s. But this is very much Lowe's picture, whether she is stalking her prey, calling the shots or mischievously ruminating on the bond between an expectant woman and both her body and her baby.