It's taken a while for Edoardo Falcone's comedy, God Willing, to secure a release in this country, as the debuting writer-director earned the prestigious David di Donatello Award for Best New Director back in 2015. It did crop up in the sixth edition of Cinema Made in Italy, but now audiences across the UK can enjoy this latterday commedia all'italiana, as it's one of two VOD offerings available this month from Walk This Way, which can be accessed via such platforms as Sky, iTunes, Google Play, Sony, Microsoft and Amazon Prime.

Tommaso De Luca (Marco Giallini) is one of Rome's leading heart surgeons, but he makes life miserable for assistant Fratta (Alex Cendron) and his portly nurse, Rosa (Giuseppina Cervizzi). He's every bit as dictatorial at home, as he never tires of telling wife Carla (Laura Morante) that he despairs equally of medical student son Andrea (Enrico Oetiker), ditzy daughter Bianca (Ilaria Spada) and estate agent son-in-law Gianni (Edoardo Pesce). However, when he becomes convinced that Andrea is gay, he persuades the family to take the news with good grace. But, when Andrea declares that he has decided to become a priest, the atheist Tommaso is furious and takes out his frustration on Peruvian housekeeper, Xenia (Silvia Munguia).

Convinced that Andrea has been led astray, Tommaso follows him to a prayer meeting, where he and Gianni hear trendy priest Don Pietro Pellegrini (Alessandro Gassmann) preaching to an awed congregation. So, he hires private eye Pizzuti (Carlo De Ruggieri) to dig up some dirt on Don Pietro, while coming to terms with the fact that Carla has lost patience with his egotistical indifference and has moved into Xenia's room. With Andrea away on a fortnight's retreat when a cop pal divulges that Don Pietro has done time, Tommaso poses as Mauro, a homeless man with a drunken wife and a mentally disturbed brother, in the hope of getting the cleric to take pity on him. Yet, when the priest gets him a job at a snack bar, Tommaso walks out at the first opportunity and blames his departure on a domestic emergency.

Keen to meet Mauro's family, Don Pietro invites himself to his home. So, with Carla having returned to her rebellious roots by leading some local students in an occupation protest, Tommaso persuades Rosa to be his short-fused spouse, while Pizzuti plays her brother and Gianni assumes the role of the psychologically scarred sibling. They prove so convincing that Don Pietro is persuaded that Mauro is having a tough time. But the ruse is quickly exposed when Andrea returns from his retreat and introduces Tommaso to his mentor. He keeps the surgeon's secret, but coerces him into spending a month helping him renovate his childhood church and shows him little sympathy when he ricks his back putting up a large wooden crucifix. 

Meanwhile, Bianca has become obsessed with Catholicism after watching Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977), while Carla gets hit over the head by the police while throwing rocks at a demonstration. Consequently, Tommaso and Gianni find themselves dining alone and the former is taken aback when Bianca joins them and gives him a dressing down for refusing to take her or Carla seriously because he has placed all his faith in his own abilities and Andrea's sense of filial duty. When Gianni follows his wife out of the apartment (they live across the corridor), Tommaso is forced to take stock and Don Pietro shows him the place where he goes to think. It's an idyllic spot overlooking a lake and they discuss the existence of God and whether a pear in a nearby tree will eventually fall because of gravity or divine intervention. 

Realising that he has become friends with a man he suspected of brainwashing his son and money laundering (when he was merely holding wages for a parishioner with a gambling problem), Tommaso also begins to notice small details, such as Rosa's new hairstyle. Moreover, he prepares a romantic dinner for Carla and all seems right with his world when he catches Andrea kissing a girl in his bedroom and he informs him that he is going to complete his medical studies. As Tommaso calls Don Pietro to give him an amused piece of his mind, however, the priest is knocked off his scooter by a speeding red van and the doctor only discovers he's been injured when he calls him in the hospital lift and hears his distinctive ringtone from the gurney that's just been wheeled in beside him. 

While Andrea waits in the corridor with others from the congregation, Tommaso goes to Pietro's church to finish cleaning the floor and arranging the pews. He leaves his phone behind when he heads to the priest's lakeside haunt and he smiles when he sees the pear fall from the tree. But, as Tommaso wanders off into the sun-kissed distance we are left in the dark about whether the operation was a success. 

Having forged his writing reputation with the Massimiliano Bruno outings, Escort in Love (2011), Viva l'Italia (2012) and Confusi e felici (2014), Edoardo Falcone had already demonstrated a flair for comedy by the time he made his feature bow. Co-scripting with Marco Martani, he dots this sitcomedic scenario with a series of spendid set-pieces and comes up with some amusing minor characters in the form of the world-weary Xenia, the seedily hopeless Pizzuti and the tolerantly loyal Rosa, who throws herself into the part of Mauro's free-fisted spouse. 

Yet, while there is much to admire and amuse in the byplay between Marco Giallini and Alessandro Gassmann as the self-satisfied surgeon and the priest at ease with his criminous past, the ever-reliable Laura Morante is wasted as the neglected wife trying to rediscover her old spark. Ilaria Spada and Edoardo Pesce also suffer from sketchy characterisation, while Enrico Oetiker is given little to work with as the indulged son who is something of a sincere, but shallow flake. 

Technically, Tommaso Bergstrom's cinematography, Cristina Onori's production design and Carlo Virzi's score are all fit for purpose. But, apart from a witty montage depicting Tommaso's anti-Catholic prejudices when Andrea announces his vocation, there's nothing particularly inspired about Falcone's direction. Nevertheless, this ticks along genially enough and no film with a balcony view of both Castel Sant'Angelo and St Peter's can be all bad.

Having made a mixed start to his directing career with the Ludivine Sagnier-Nicolas Bedos romcom, Love Is in the Air (2013), and the family-oriented fantasy, The Secret of Arkandias (2014), Alexandre Castagnetti turned to the teenpic with Tamara (2016). Adapted from a comic strip created by Zidrou and Christian Darasse, this marked the screen debut of Héloïse Martin, who had to shed five years and gain several pounds to play the part of a 15 year-old whose determination to ride the taunts of her classmates and deal with her mother's latest relationship prompts her to accept a wacky wager.

Imagining herself arriving at her new school as a vision of monochrome chic, chubby teenager Tamara (Héloïse Martin) is roused from her daydream by mother Amandine (Sylvie Testud), who drops her off with a bullish word of encouragement. Feeling small after she and best friend Jelilah (Oulaya Amamra) are snubbed by mean girls Anaïs (Lou Gala), Joy (Laure Nicodème), Fatou (Mélissa Bryon) and Luan (Clara Choï), they dare each other to get a date with the next two boys who enter the classroom. Jelilah had hopes she could land slacker Zak (Zack Groyne), but Diego (Rayane Bensetti) turns every head when he strolls to his desk and Tamara concludes she has no chance of catching his eye, especially as she is so self-conscious about her weight. 

Annoyed to find that Amandine's Brazilian boyfriend, Chico (Cyril Gueï), has moved into their tiny apartment with his eight year-old daughter, Yoli (Ina Castagnetti), Tamara is rude to neighbour Valérie (Blanche Gardin) when she pops in for a nose and a glass of wine. But Yoli has a magazine article about five ways to get a boy and Tamara tries them all over the next couple of days, in the hope of striking up a conversation. But Anaïs has set her sights on the Chilean newcomer and humiliates Tamara when they bump into each other at the swimming baths. Spotty geek Wagner (Jimmy Labeeu) joins in the mockery during a PE lesson. But jaws hit the flaw when Diego gives the struggling Tamara a boost on the climbing wall and she wonders whether she might have a shot after all. 

He befriends her on social media and agrees to meet her at Wagner's Halloween party. Tamara dresses as Amy Winehouse and Chico tells Amandine to cut her some slack. But, when Diego fails to show and with Jelilah grounded by her strict parents, Tamara gets drunk and snogs classmate Babacar (Lamine Cissokho). Wagner posts footage of her behaving badly online and she is convinced her reputation is ruined. However, Diego is impressed by the way Tamara badmouthed Anaïs and her clique and is pleased to see her when Yoli engineers a fight at her school with his younger brother and Tamara has to go to his house so that Yoli can apologise. She makes empanadas and notices Diego looking at her curves when she takes off her cardigan. Indeed, she feels so good about herself that she even calls a truce with Amandine and admits she's glad that Chico and Yoli are living with them.

Tamara persuades her musician father, Philippe-André (Bruno Salomone), to let her have her 16th birthday party at his house. However, the uninvited Wagner sabotages her Facebook page to inform all the guests that she has cancelled through ill health. But Diego doesn't get the message and turns up to find Tamara alone. Their hands touch, as they sit on the sofa, and she imagines them flying through space before they kiss for the first time. Furious that his plan has backfired, Wagner stops filming over the fence and skulks away. 

Waking alone next morning to a note thanking her for a `cool' evening, Tamara worries she's been used and spends the entire day in bed, ignoring the efforts of her family to connect with her. But, on Monday morning, Diego holds hands in the playground to silence the school gossips and a knowing montage follows (complete with a singer in a blue glitz suit singing a cheesy pop tune), in which Tamara helps Diego with his homework and he says he likes her just the shape she is. Moreover, Jalilah is pleased to discover that Zak would rather be a plantonic pal than a proper boyfriend. 

But, this being a movie, things are not allowed to run smoothly and not only does Diego discover he's got a chance of a swimming scholarship in Nantes, but Philippe-André finds a condom wrapper under his sofa and some grim evidence on his CCTV feed. Furious with Tamara for lying to her, Amandine invites Diego to dinner for a grilling. However, she lets slip a nickname the pair only use while messaging and Yoli reveals that Amandine has installed spyware on to Tamara's phone. There's a blazing row and Diego is still feeling embarrassed when the class goes on a field trip to a farm. 

Determined to make things up to him, Tamara sneaks out of her dormitory that night and creeps into Diego's room. However, he is standing in his underwear with the half-dressed Anaïs and they hurl insults at each other during a row in the corridor that occurs at exactly the same moment as Amandine and Chico break up because she is jealous of his young female students and he accuses her of judging him by Philippe-André's low standards. Mother and daughter try to console each other when Tamara returns, but Chico, Diego and Yoli are equally miserable, while Jalilah is surprised to discover that Zak is gay. 

Having stumbled upon Chico and Amandine making up at an outdoor café, Tamara tries to contact Diego. But he doesn't reply and it's only when her French teacher speaks to her that she discovers that his grandmother has died and that he is flying back to Santiago for the funeral. Calling in a favour from Philippe-André, Tamara gets to the airport and runs through the terminal in her bra (after her shirt sets off the scanner) in time for a touching reunion. As the film ends, she is enjoying herself with Jalilah at an end of term party, having finally been accepted by her classmates and herself. 

Refusing to follow the Hollywood lead, the Dutch, Germans and Scandinavians have always been better at kidpix than the British, French, Spanish and Italians and there's nothing in this genial rite of passage that audiences won't have seen before in a dozen high school stories. But Héloïse Martin makes a spirited heroine, whose combination of insecurity and immaturity causes her to misread situations and leap to conclusions with a feisty foolishness she has clearly inherited from her mother. As always, Sylvie Testud is splendid as the cellist rueing her mistakes and missed opportunities, while Cyril Gueï and Ina Castagnetti (who is the director's daughter) provide some much-needed non-Gallic sang froid. Rayane Bensetti makes less impression as the handsome hunk, although Jimmy Labeeu is splendidly malevolent as Martin's pimpled tormentor and Oulaya Amamra is suitably sassy as her trusted confidante.

Castagnetti directs steadily when not launching Martin and Bensetti into outer space or turning the love develops sequence into a kitschy pop promo. So, even though his script lacks a subversive edge in peddling the clichés celebrated in Zidrou and Darasse's source material, it will be interesting to see how the estimable Martin fares in the forthcoming sequel, Tamara: La vie XXL.

The trouble with a brilliant idea is that everyone recognises it when somebody else tries to appropriate it. Consequently, those tempted by 27 year-old Serbian maths graduate Filip Kovacevic's Incarnation are immediately going to spot the similarities to Harold Ramis's Groundhog Day (1993) and Tom Tykwer's Run Lola Run (1998). They are also going to detect the influence of Duncan Jones's Source Code (2011) and Rian Johnson's Looper (2012). Yet, considering that Kovacevic's debut as writer, producer and director has been made on a shoestring, it's possible to applaud his ingenuity, if not his originality. 

Waking on a bench to the sound of children playing in a sunlit Belgrade square, Stojan Djordjevic has no idea who he is or why he is being pursued by four men in black suits and blank white masks. They gun him down before he can flee. But he comes round in the blurred blink of an eye to find himself back on the bench with a mobile phone in his pocket. As he sees the killers coming towards him, he is knocked over by a bag snatcher and he winds up in the same alley as the girl chasing him. Despite diving into an alcove, Djordjevic sees that one his pursuers has taken the girl hostage and he emerges from his hiding place to face his fate.

Once again, he is roused by the shrieks of children dashing past him. But, while he recognises the man and woman who wander past him consulting maps, he is surprised by his own recognition when he washes his face in the fountain. He breaks into a run and watches his reflection in the shop windows. Suddenly, he sees a young boy in a room with the parents who have been shot by a half-seen figure in black. His next vision, however, sees him wired up in a hospital room and he feels dizzy when he tries to escape. Cop Tihomir Stanic and doctor Zarko Stepanov approach him and explain that he appears to be a mystery man with no name or past. But, before he can take in the information, he is gunned down again by one of the masked men. When he wakes again, Djordjevic is angry at being trapped in the cycle. As he bangs on the bench, however, he finds a square piece of rock wrapped in some paper and notices that there are four exits from the square. Thus, when one of the masked assassins gets into an altercation with a passing pedestrian, Djordjevic seizes his chance to flee and takes sanctuary in a building he recognises. 

Following a black-and-white cat through a grand hallway, he tracks along a corridor until he sees a door covered with masking tape. He gains admittance and asks scientist Dejan Cicmilovic to examine the stone. When Djordjevic finds a hyperdermic in a cupboard, he asks Cicmilovic what kind of research he is doing and is surprised to see him bolt out of the door. The hitmen have reached the landing and Djordjevic locks the cat in a cupboard to create a diversion and makes his getaway through a skylight. 

Back on the street, he spots the scientist and chases after him. Having been told by Cicmilovic that he had no choice but to wipe his memory, Djordjevic convinces himself that the pattern of the paving stones is significant. But he runs into the gun-toting quartet again and staggers along with a wounded side before collapsing. He notices a loose stone next to a gap in the pavement and finds a piece of paper with the number 541 written on it. Before he can make any sense of the clue, however, he is murdered again. 

Reviving again, Djordjevic is peeved because games should have rules and he is getting tired of being pinballed around. Looking about him, he sees the people with their maps and a man with a wheelie bin. One of the children asks if he is playing hide and seek and suggests he lays low in the passages below the street. Grateful for the tip, Djordjevic sprints away with the masked men in hot pursuit and ducks underground through a manhole in a churchyard. Naturally, they follow, but he is able to give them the slip and emerges on a wind-blasted heath. Following another flashback to the scene of the cowering young boy whose parents have been shot, Djordjevic finds the torn fragments of white mask in a small fire burning on the parched grass. Yet, before he can fathom the meaning of his discovery, he is blasted from close range. 

On waking again, Djordjevic decides to try the avenue from which the assailants had always approached. They fail to recognise him, as he watches a busking puppeteer and poses for a photograph with a snake. Yet, when he emerges from a hiding place, the third assassin races after him and they fight in a cluttered room off the thoroughfare. With the gun loose on the floor, Djordjevic pounces and orders his foe to call off the mission. However, he doesn't know the full number and when Djordjevic adds `541' at the end, it's his own phone that rings. 

He looks up in horror as the serum begins to wear off and recalls that he had been part of the hit squad and had ripped off his mask after sparing the small boy. Tired of slaughtering people, he had ordered his own execution before paying for his memory to be erased. But he had kept surviving and even blowing his own brains out fails to end Djordjevic's ordeal. He sits up on the bench again and tries to figure out what to do. Aware he had exhausted all his escape routes, he simply sits still and waits. When the fearsome foursome surround him, the leader looks into his eyes and recognises him. He places Djordjevic's pistol between his feet and gives him the option to resume his old life, When he refuses, he is shot by one of his erstwhile comrades and Djordjevic declares over a shot of the empty bench that he is no idea where he is, but he is no longer trapped in his nightmare. 

As is often the case with movies with a grand reveal, many viewers will have sussed the dramatic secret long before the hapless and nameless protagonist. But the pleasure here comes less from the disclosure than from the way in which Kovacevic and co-scribes Masa Senicic and Ivan Stancic keep Stojan Djordjevic in a state of suspended animation, as the full horror of his situation dawns on him. With his baby face and dark eyes, Djordjevic makes an empathetic anti-hero, as he tries to make sense of the scene unfolding around him as the dauntingly impassive cabal of Daca Vidosavljevic, Sten Zendor, Vidan Dojcinovic and Bogdan Petrovic close in on him. His plight might strain plausibility, but he succeeds in piquing our curiosity.

Ultimately, however, logistics matter more than logic and Kovacevic is indebted to Sibin Acimovic and Andrea Miletic's meticulous use of downtown Belgrade, the dexterity of Uros Milutinovic's watchful camerawork and the intricacy of Djordje Stankovic's editing. Indeed, only Drasko Adzic's score risks exploiting audience expectation by ramping up the pounding beat during the chase scenes. So, while it comes close to outstaying its welcome and can't quite avoid a sense of anti-climax in the final reel, this involved and involving thriller represents a decent debut, given its budgetary limitations and the flawed familiarity of its premise. 

In 1983, Jim McBride was pilloried when he updated Jean-Luc Godard's nouvelle vague masterpiece, À bout de souffle (1960), as Breathless. To most critics, the notion of remaking a cinematic landmark was sacrilegious. Yet McBride and co-writer LM Kit Carson had served notice of their intentions in the 1967 cult success, David Holtzman's Diary, in which Carson had played an aspiring film-maker with a penchant for Godardian aphorisms. Moreover, the duo were merely following the lead provided by Godard and his scenarist buddy François Truffaut in paying self-reflexive homage to their cultural heroes. But, while it's possible to defend McBride and Carson's good intentions, it's not always so easy to commend the results. 

Drifter Jesse Lujack (Richard Gere) is obsessed with 50s rocker Jerry Lee Lewis and Silver Surfer comic books. However, he also has criminous tendencies and finds himself on the lam after shooting the cop who pulled him over for speeding in a stolen Porsche. Adopting the alias Jack Burns, he holes up in the Los Angeles apartment of Monica Poiccard (Valérie Kaprisky), the French architecture student with whom he had a fling in Las Vegas. 

Initially, she's not best pleased to see him. But a torrid session in the shower changes her mind and she not only puts up with his sulky jealousy of the rich and powerful men with whom she associates, but she also protects him from cops Parmental (John P. Ryan) and Enright (Robert Dunn). When they put the heat on, Monica agrees to flit to Mexico. But she loses her nerve after seeing her photograph on the front page of a newspaper and makes a fateful phone call that brings things to a head in a teasingly enigmatic freeze frame. 

This closing nod to Truffaut's Les 400 Coups (1959) confirms the extent to which McBride was interested in making a cinematic scrapbook rather than simply rehashing one picture. Almost every scene contains a reference to a classic movie, while the soundtrack is stuffed with yesteryear gems and novel nurdlings by Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. But, while Richard H. Kline's photography and Robert Estrin's editing keep the action shifting along, Richard Sylbert's ultra-chic production design is a self-conscious as McBride's bid to produce something attention-grabbingly significant. 

Sporting a tattoo of a broken heart on his chest, Richard Gere gives a splendidly brittle performance as the charming rascal being buffeted along by his misguided impulses. However, while he does justice to Jean-Paul Belmondo's display as the Bogart-fixated loser in Godard's picture, 19 year-old Valérie Kaprisky fails to emulate Jean Seberg's impish insecurity. It hardly helps that she is so uncomfortable with the often tin-eared English dialogue, but McBride is also guilty of objectifying her, whether she's cavorting in the throes of passion or swimming against the backdrop of a Venice Beach mural. This was very much a fault of the period and, as the action unfolds, it's hard not to remember 80s mores with a shudder. Maybe the time has come for someone to retool McBride's variation on the new wave theme. For now, though, it's well worth revisiting, as it's more fascinating now than it was when it was first released.

Directed by Richard Jukes and narrated by Sir Martyn Lewis, 100 Years of the RAF is a serviceable introduction to Britain's use of air power since the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Services were amalgamated to form the Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918. With its motto, `Per Ardua ad Astra' (`Through Adversity to the Stars'), the RAF has had to learn to adapt to meet the changing challenges of modern warfare. But, while this commemorative documentary strives to pay tribute to all aspects of the service, it rather rattles through the historical section, with the result that this comes close in its later stages to being a recruiting tool. 

During the Great War, planes like the Sopwith Pup and Camel helped transform the nature of combat. Yet, while we see a surviving Pup in a museum and come to appreciate the risks that pilots took in flying such rickety machines, we learn little about the operation use of aeroplanes and the contribution they made to the defeat of the Kaiser. A brief mention is made of the RAF's success in the Schneider Trophy air races and how new technologies were harnessed. But, while Lewis notes that the force had grown to 200,000 by the outbreak of the Second World War, he largely contents himself to name-checking such fighters as the Hawker Hurricane, Supermarine Spitfire, Bristol Beaufighter and De Havilland Mosquito, as well as bombers like the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley, Handley Page Halifax, Avro Lancaster, Bristol Blenheim, Short Stirling and Vickers Wellington.

We meet a number of ex-pilots and Joy Lofthouse of the Air Transport Auxiliary. But nobody speaks of `the Battle of Britain' or so much being owed by so many to so few. Moreover, while the famous Dambusters raid is cited in passing, nothing is said about the much-criticised strategy of bombing civilian targets in cities like Dresden. It might have been useful to discuss how the RAF collaborated with competing manufacturers and how industry responded to the demand for new planes. Indeed, something might also have been said about the age of many of the pilots and the contributions made by airmen from the Empire, as well as Poland, France and Czechoslovakia. 

Instead, we are whisked into the jet age with Frank Whittle's Gloster Meteor and the records achieved by the likes of the De Havilland Vampire and the English Electric Canberra. Next, we hear about the V Force comprising the Vickers Valiant, Avro Vulcan and Handley Page Victor that carried the RAF's first nuclear payloads. As new planes like the Javelin and Lightning came in, old reliables like the Sunderland Flying Boat were retired. But we learn nothing about life on a typical base or, with the exception of a snippet about the tracking station at Fylingdales, how the RAF liaised with the USAF during the Cold War. References to the RAF's role in the Indonesia-Malaysia confrontation and the evacuation of Aden prove equally fleeting, as the focus remains firmly on hardware like the Phantom, Buccaneer, Harrier Jump Jet, Jaguar GR1 and the Puma helicopter. 

Lewis alludes to the Black Buck raids conducted by Vulcan bombers during the Falklands War and notes that the locals considered the noise made by low-flying RAF planes to be `the sound of freedom'. But, once again, there's no time to assess anything in detail, as we are told about multifunctional planes like the Panavia Tornado, which played a crucial role in liberating Kuwait in the First Gulf War. An interesting interlude has John Peters reminiscing about ejecting and being captured in the desert. But we're quickly moved on to the patrolling of no-fly zones over Iraq and Bosnia and the humanitarian missions carried out by Hercules transport planes during the conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia. Interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone are dealt with in a similarly peremptory manner, as are the roles played by Chinook helicopters, Nimrod reconnaissance planes and the Voyager tankers used for mid-air refuelling. 

A lengthier passage highlights the ground support and surveillance work done in Afghanistan and the efforts of the Medical Emergency Response Teams in treating casualties in extreme conditions. But shorter shrift is given to Operations Southern Watch, Desert Fox and Telic before we join some Eurofighter Typhoons in Libya, a monitoring detail in the Baltic States and the units participating in Operation Shader against Islamic State. Mention is also made of the Search and Rescue and Mountain Rescue wings and the iconic yellow Sea King helicopters (which were retired in 2016). We see RAF airlifts in disaster zones in Mozambique, Kashmir and the Philippines, as well as in snowbound regions of North-West England. The Red Arrows get name checked, while a rather tokenist effort is made to explain the expanding role of women within the service. 

Following plaudits for the intelligence-gathering and strike capabilities of the drones employed in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, names like Reaper, Raptor and Zephyr are bandied around, as Lewis attempts to wrap things up on a positive note about the RAF's continued importance. The role of the F35 Lightning on the new Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier is anticipated in the final tub-thumping appeal to patriotism that is typical of the entire presentation. But, a little pride is excusable in such an exercise, as is the decision not to explore any negative episodes. It's just a shame that writers Richard Jukes, Emma Hackwell and Richard Jones felt the need to prioritise hardware over manpower and any wider analysis of the RAF's contribution to national life.

Considering that screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais made their reputation during the Swinging Sixities with The Likely Lads, it's surprising that comedy plays such a minor part in David Batty's documentary, My Generation. Part of an Alf Garnett rant can be heard at one point, while there's a clip of John Cleese and Ronnies Barker and Corbett doing their famous class sketch from The Frost Report. But there's no mention of the `satire boom' sparked by Beyond the Fringe and That Was the Week That Was that did so much to consign deference to the historical scrap heap and allow the long-haired hordes of bright young things to fan the winds of change, 

As one might expect, there's plenty in the chapters labelled `Something in the Air', `I Feel Free' and `All Was Not as It Seemed' about music, fashion and photography, but not as much as one might hope about acting, art and sport. There's an unannotated reference to England winning the World Cup in 1966, but there's nothing about George Best and the emergence of the footballer as a cultural icon. Painting is given similarly short shrift and the discussion of performing on stage and screen is limited to name checks for `angry young men' like Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay (who wasn't really that angry), a sneering appreciation of the accents in David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945) and a couple of Michael Caine anecdotes, including one about Cy Endfield only casting him as an upper-class officer in Zulu (1964) because he was more interested in his mien than his background. 

Curiously, given that he was born in 1933 and was a good decade older than most of the other trendsetters revisiting their high-profiles youths, Caine is the face of the film. He spouts platitudes with admirable conviction and seems unconcerned that Clement and La Frenais have little or no interest in anything other than superficial nostalgia. They certainly don't feel the need to explore the changing racial mix of British society and keep politics to the periphery, even though protest lay at the heart of the counterculture that sprang up in the wake of Beatlemania. Passing reference is made to the impact of the British Invasion on American youth, but there's no time dwell on such the Civil Rights Movement or the Vietnam War. 

Instead, we hear plenty about class from the likes of Paul McCartney, David Bailey, Roger Daltrey, Donovan and Twiggy, who remain unseen to preserve the myth of their heyday beauty. But the likes of Mary Quant, Joan Collins, Penelope Tree. Joanna Lumley and Marianne Faithfull were anything but proletarian, while Biba owner Barbara Hulanicki was a Polish migrant. Sweeping such inconvenient truths under the carpet, Batty and his writers summon the archival spirits of John Lennon, Mick Jagger, Eric Burdon, Pete Townshend, Jean Shrimpton and Vidal Sassoon to fill in the gaps. They even find room for several Cockney codgers and plummy conservatives like Sir Gerald Nabarro fuming about the youthful disregard for traditional values. But there's no Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Vanessa Redgrave, Adrian Mitchell, Peter Blake or Ray Davies, even though the first two songs on the hit-strewn soundtrack are by The Kinks. 

There's also no attempt to explain where the 60s sound came from, as the black rhythm and blues stars who inspired the Fab Four, The Rolling Stones and The Who are ignored and we are left with Daltrey's intriguing revelation that the sight of a gyrating Elvis Presley made him feel free. A few more insights of this sort might have made this a different picture. But these relicts have been waxing lyrical about their glory years for so long that it's difficult to put a fresh spin on familiar tales. 

Caine looks particularly disengaged, even though he gets to tool around London in the Aston Martin DB4 that he drove in Peter Collinson's The Italian Job (1969). He revisits his old neighbourhood in asking who, precicely, were his `betters' and his perambulations are intercut with shots of him pounding the same pavements in the guide of Harry Palmer and Alfie Elkins. Furthermore, he tries hard not to sound too sexist while recalling the escapades of his womanising (and unidentified) flatmate Terence Stamp and looks deep into the lens as he explains why he didn't do the substances that cast an increasingly dark shadow over the decade after a series of rock star drug busts, the death of Rolling Stone Brian Jones and Faithfull's near-fatal overdose. But his recollections lack the spontaneity and personal touch that were so crucial to the 60s vibe.

Therefore, as a feel-good introduction designed to let viewers wallow rather than think, this is perfectly serviceable and always enjoyable. Editor Ben Hilton deserves enormous credit for his often dazzling collages, although he does little to impose any sense of chronological logic. But the entire enterprise smacks of the kind of dumbed-down, kitschy populism that one expects of producer Simon Fuller and the decision to reduce an epochal decade to a series of soundbites and greatest clips in order to appeal to attention-deficit millennials proves a soberingly damning comment on the 60s legacy.