Parky at the Pictures (DVD 15/6/2017)

Adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney's short play, In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, Moonlight is the overdue follow-up to the acclaimed but little-seen Medicine for Melancholy (2008), in which Jenkins celebrated the shabby grandeur of San Francisco in detailing Wyatt Cenac's bid to convince Tracey Heggins that their one-night stand is the start of something big. In many way, this three-act homage to the romantic realism of Hou hsiao-hsien and Wong Kar-wai tells a similar story. But it also challenges the conventions and stereotypes upon which independent and mainstream cinema alike have lazily come to depend in discussing the black experience in post-millennial America.

Opening to the sound of the sea rolling in the distance, Part One (`Little') sees Miami drug dealer Juan (Mahershala Ali) checking up on Terrence (Shariff Earp), one of his street-corner sellers. When he inspects a boarded-up crack den, however, Juan finds nine year-old Chiron (Alex R. Hibbert) cowering in the dark after being chased by homophobic bullies. Persuading the boy (whom everyone calls `Little') that he can be trusted, Juan takes him to a diner to eat and tries to find out something about him. Realising that he is scared to go home, Juan suggests he spends the night at his place and smiles as Chiron tucks away another plateful of food prepared by his kindly girlfriend, Teresa (Janelle Monáe).

Driving home the next morning, Chiron feels the breeze between his fingers as he dangles his hand out of the passenger window. But nurse mother Paula (Naomie Harris) is furious with him for staying out all night and she can barely bring herself to thank Juan. She insists he is big enough to take care of himself, but classmate Kevin (Jaden Piner) wonders why Chiron lets Terrel pick on him and they play-wrestle on the school sports field after his cheek gets cut during a boisterous game of rag football.

Reluctant to go home, Chiron seeks out Juan. They go to the beach and Juan teaches Chiron to float and he feels safe and free in the water. As they sit on the sand, Juan explains how an old woman once told him that black blues look blue while running around in the moonlight. He also warns him that a time will come when he will have to decide who he is and take a stand to protect his identity. But Chiron is too young to understand and is equally puzzled when he gets home to find a stressed Paula ushering a stranger into her bedroom.

The next day at school, Chiron wanders out of a dance class to find Kevin and his pals comparing their penises in a side room. Embarrassed because he is forever being taunted for being gay, he joins in and goes home to boil water in a pan for a bath. Meanwhile, Juan breaks off a chat with Terrence to haul Paula out of a parked car. She snaps at him for his hypocrisy, as he wants her to take better care of her son, yet also needs to keep selling her the crack that lines his pocket. Juan tells Chiron about the encounter the next time they meet and the latter admits that he hates his mother. He sits pensively before asking what a `faggot' is. Teresa nods as Juan tries to explain that it's a cruel term for gay people and reassures Chiron that he has nothing to fear if he likes boys. But, when he asks Juan if he sells drugs to his mother and receives a regretful reply in the affirmative, Chiron gets up and walks out of Juan's life forever.

Seven years later (as Part Two, `Chiron', begins), Chiron (Ashton Sanders) is being harassed by Terrel (Patrick Decile), despite the efforts of Kevin (Jharrel Jerome) to protect him. Juan has died, but Chiron continues to have sleepovers with Teresa, as Paula has now become so hooked on crack that she is always seeing clients and hustling Chiron for the cash Teresa gives him. One night (after Teresa teases him about his bed-making skills), Chiron has a dream about Kevin having sex with classmate Samantha (Herveline Moncion) in the back garden and he wakes with a look of horror on his face as he realises he is jealous.

After being menaced by Terrel on the way back from school and fleeced by the ingratiatingly desperate Paula, Chiron takes a train into the city and dozes at the station to avoid going home. He drifts down to the beach and bumps into Kevin, who has snuck out for a joint. Kevin jokes about the fact that an innocent like Chiron knows how to smoke and they get the giggles. But Chiron is surprised when Kevin says that feeling mellow makes him want to cry and he admits that he often sobs because he is so unhappy. As they josh, their eyes meet and they close in for a kiss. Kevin unbuckles the jeans that Terrel had mocked for being so unfashionable and Chiron scoops a handful of sand as he succumbs to the rare sensation of intimacy.

As they sit together, Chiron apologises and Kevin tells him not to be foolish. He smoothes the sand before sitting in silence on the ride home. They clasp hands as Kevin drops him off and Chiron tiptoes inside to find a blanket to cover the tripping Paula on the sofa. But his happiness barely lasts a day, as Terrel coerces Kevin into participating in a hazing ritual that involves punching Chiron in the face. His eyes stinging with tears, Kevin urges Chiron to stay down. But he gets up after each blow and squares up to his friend until Terrel and his gang start kicking him on the floor.

A security guard intervenes. But, even though he is badly injured, Chiron refuses to squeal to Principal Williams (Tanisha Cidel), as he believes reporting his assailants will solve nothing. Instead, he plunges his swollen face into a sink filled with ice and exacts his own revenge by breaking a chair over Terrel's head. As he is bundled into a waiting police car, Chiron shoots Kevin a look that's at once accusatory, longing and defiant.

In the decade that passes before the opening of Part Three (`Black'), Chiron (Trevante Rhodes) has bulked up in prison and learned how to take care of himself. Now based in Atlanta, Georgia, he still dreams of Paula standing in the neon-lit doorway of her bedroom and buries his face in ice. But Chiron has come up in the world and not only sports a set of gold grillz, but also carries a gun to protect his own network of pushers. He baits Travis (Stephen Bron) by accusing him of falling short with a payment, but cuts him some slack in the way Juan used to with Terrence.

Woken in the night, Chiron answers the phone expecting it to be Paula. But it's Kevin (André Holland), who got his number from Teresa. Since completing his own jail term, Kevin has become a diner chef and thought of his old friend when a familiar song came on the jukebox. He apologises for the trouble he caused him and promises to cook for him the next time he is home.

Having had a wet dream about Kevin leaning against a wall and smoking, Chiron goes to see Paula at the rehab clinic where she helps out while battling her addiction. She begs him to go straight, but he is in no mood to listen to her advice, even though she insists that she loves him. Perhaps recalling Juan's lament about missing his chance to patch things up with his own mother, Chiron lights a cigarette for her and embraces her when she makes a tearful apology.

That night, with the moon high above the sea, Chiron goes to Kevin's diner and sits at the counter while he attends to his customers. Surprised to see him, Kevin jokes that Chiron is as tongue-tied as ever and offers to fix him the chef's special. He brings it to a booth, along with a bottle of wine, and shows Chiron a photograph of his son with Samantha. Smiling, he notes that they get along better now that they live apart and asks what Chiron is doing with himself and makes no attempt to hide his disappointment when he admits he is dealing, as he knows he has the potential to do better.

Chiron asks Kevin why he called him, so he plays the 1963 Barbara Lewis R&B hit `Hello Stranger' on the jukebox and they watch each other without betraying any emotion while listening to the lyrics. Driving to Kevin's apartment, Chiron refuses to reveal why he came to Miami. But, when Kevin concedes that he is content with his lot, Chiron confesses that he has never touched another man since their teenage tryst and he rests his head on his friend's shoulder, as a closing image shows Little looking back at the camera on a moonlit beach.

Providing a ringing endorsement of the slogan `black lives matter', this is perhaps the most important film about the African-American community since the eruption of New Black Cinema in the late 1980s. Eschewing that movement's raw hood fury, Jenkins slows the pace and replaces handheld pugnacity with a Steadicam elegance that enables James Laxton to do widescreen digital justice to Hannah Beachler's glorious production design. Her omission from the Oscar nominations is one of the scandals of the year, along with Joshua Adeniji's sound editing. But Laxton deserves his accolade as much as editors Joi McMillon and Nat Sanders, and composer Nicholas Britell, who blends classical and `chopped and screwed' hip-hop in a score that also finds room for standout tracks like Boris Gardiner's `Every N****r Is a Star', Jidenna's `Classic Man' and Caetano Veloso''s `Cucurrucucú Paloma (Hable con Ella)'.

Nominated for his direction and the screenplay written with McCraney, Jenkins does well to keep sentiment at bay during some of the more emotive moments. But the magnitude of his achievement lies in the fact that he has put an arthouse spin on the ghetto genre, thanks to the meticulous lighting of the close-ups and the nuanced depiction of the commonplace details that punctuate the picture and root it in a reality that ring true despite its lack of obvious urban grit. Much of the veracity, however, comes from the performances, with Alex R. Hibbert, Ashton Sanders and Trevante Rhodes excelling as Little, Chiron and Black, alongside Jaden Piner, Jharrel Jerome and André Holland as Kevin.

Yet much of the attention has been focused on Naomie Harris and Mahershala Ali, who became the first Muslim to win an acting Oscar. He is a worthy recipient, if only for the climactic conversation in which he has to face up to his ethical dilemma. But, while Harris brings a skittish intensity to her role, it comes closest to caricature, beside Janelle Monáe's saintly surrogate and Patrick Decile's dreadlocked bully - although there is a redeeming subtext here about a societal victim channelling his macho rage to ostracise an even more insecure classmate. Such is the extent of poverty, abuse, addiction and despair in America's black neighbourhoods that their discussion on screen has become clichéd. But Jenkins has reclaimed the tragedy and made its shameful agony feel human again.

Picture Barack and Michelle Obama starring in their own version of Richard Linklater's Before Sunrise (1995) and you get a vague idea of what debuting writer-director Richard Tanne is attempting in Southside With You. Chronicling the first date between a future President of the United States and his First Lady, this could easily have descended into propagandist mush. However, with Obama no longer occupying the White House, this affectionate speculation packs less of a political punch than it once might have done and one can only hope that it doesn't spark a copycat saga focusing on Donald and Melania Trump.

Back in 1989, 25 year-old Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpter) was a junior lawyer at the Chicago firm of Sidley Austin. Despite her lively intelligence, she is often patronised for being both black and female and isn't entirely delighted to be asked to mentor summer associate Barack Obama (Parker Sawyers), who is four years her senior. Thus, when he suggests spending Sunday together, she makes it clear that she does not consider their outing to be a date.

With Martha and the Vandellas playing in the home that Michelle shares with father Fraser (Phillip Edward Van Lear) and mother Marian (Vanessa Bell Calloway), Barack shows up in his bean-can yellow Datsun with a hole in the floor blasting Janet Jackson. Aware that her mother considers Barack a `smooth-talking brother', Michelle consents to attending an exhibition by African-American painter Ernie Barnes at the Art Institute.

Keen to find out more about her, Barack asks Michelle about her family and she reveals that she still lives at home with the parents who had set great store by education and had insisted on her learning French and the piano. By contrast, Barack feels hostility towards his father, who had perished in a car crash in Kenya. But, while his childhood in Jakarta and Hawaii had often been tough, he had enjoyed some mellow times in the 50th state and still likes a smoke.

As the conversation switches to their careers, Barack asks Michelle why she no longer does pro bono work and warns her about glory seeking through high-profile cases. Feeling nettled, she asks why he gave up his community programme for Harvard Law and, wishing to avoid a confrontation, he apologises for speaking out of turn. He suggests they go for a picnic lunch and Michelle insists on paying her share. They try to keep things light by discussing whether Innervisions of Talking Book in the better Stevie Wonder album and Michelle wanders off to dance to some African drummers playing in the park.

But the sights and sounds of the neighbourhood keep bringing them back to the problems of being black in modern America. Barack has agreed to speak at a public meeting in the Altgeld Gardens district and takes Michelle to the South Side church, where she is irritated by the congregation identifying her as his girl. However, she is taken by his appeal to keep faith in a project to build a community centre and, even though she suspects that he only brought her to the rally to make a good impression, she is struck by his ability to communicate and the ease with which he enthuses his hearers to remain united and find alternative ways of raising funds.

Amused by Barack's cockiness and the fact that he keeps sloping off to have a cigarette, Michelle agrees to go to a screening of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. However, they bump into senior partner Avery Goodman (James McElory) outside and their charged encounter (which Michelle fears will convince her bosses that she doesn't take her career seriously) results in them debating the depiction of black reality on the screen and how differently even the most liberal white Americans approach such topics as race, equality and justice.

Michelle asks Barack if has considered going into politics, but he merely shrugs. This isn't the time and place. Besides, as they stop off at a Baskin-Robbins ice-cream parlour, he has other things on his mind and, having finally succumbed to his charm, Michelle lets down her guard long enough for a first kiss.

Studded with knowing references to the people Barack and Michelle would become and the offices they would one day hold, Tanne's screenplay does a decent job in treading the fine line between imagination and hindsight. Some of the insights are a little too prescient, but Tanne never allows the socio-political aspects of the conversation to distract entirely from the fact that Barack is clearly trying to make the most of what could be his sole opportunity to flirt with Michelle whenever possible.

Borrowing heavily from Linklater's walk-and-talk technique, Tanne and cinematographer Patrick Scola exploit the Chicago locations to make the backdrop relevant to the dialogue. However, Tanne is also indebted to editor Evan Schiff and composer Stephen James Taylor for making the tonal shifts so smooth, as Barack and Michelle get to know each other better.

Striving to avoid impersonation, Sawyers and Sumpter handle the more expository dialogue with aplomb (it's a `date', after all, and fact finding is a key part of making a connection). His voice is a touch too high pitched and he doesn't have the protruding ears that he jokes about. But Sawyers ably captures Obama's way of gesturing with his hands, while Sumpter combines Michalle's sense of style with her dignity and integrity. They also make a rather sweet couple. But, with racial tensions currently simmering one is left with an overriding sense of frustration that, for all the promise and potential on show in this engagingly calculating picture, the Obama presidency turned out to have been something of a disappointment.

The lid is lifted on an American success story in John Lee Hancock's The Founder, which shows how a struggling travelling salesman muscled into the hamburger business run by a couple of brothers in San Bernardino, California and transformed it into one of the powerhouses of globalisation. Smartly scripted by Robert Siegel, this acerbic study of Ray Kroc's relationship with Mac and Dick McDonald owes more to David Fincher's The Social Network (2010) and Danny Boyle's Steve Jobs (2015) than Hancock's earlier biopics, The Blind Side (2009) and Saving Mr Banks (2013), as by cleaving to the maxim that `business is war', it suggests that there has rarely been room for sentiment in the American Dream.

While his compatriots enjoy the Eisenhowerian consumer boom, fiftysomething Illinois sales rep Ray Kroc (Michael Keaton) is finding it tough to shift Prince Castle's five-pronged milkshake makers. The son of Czech immigrants, he earns enough to provide wife Ethel (Laura Dern) with a comfortable home and they regularly dine with their friends at the golf club. But the polished patter keeps falling on deaf ears and Kroc is surprised, therefore, when bookkeeper June Martino (Kate Kneeland) informs him that a burger bar in San Bernardino requires six machines. Calling to check the order, Kroc is astonished when the owners request two more and he decides to hop into his blue Chevy and take Route 66 across the country to meet Maurice `Mac' McDonald (John Carroll Lynch) and his brother Dick (Nick Offerman) and check out their flourishing operation.

Initially wary of the eager stranger, Dick and Mac accept Kroc's invitation to dinner and regale him with the story of how they invented `the Speedee system' to ensure the quality of their fast food and refined the technique by putting staff through their time-and-motion paces in a layout chalked on to a local tennis court. Suitably impressed by their efficiency, Kroc is also struck by the way the siblings had simplified the menu, replaced car with counter service and had eliminated redundant overheads by using disposable packaging. He is also taken by the family atmosphere at a time when many drive-in eateries were being overrun by the new breed of teenagers.

Following a sleepless motel night, Kroc tries to interest the McDonalds in franchising their idea. But Dick reveals that a previous attempt had failed because it had proved impossible to maintain uniform standards. Moreover, the stress of dealing with absentee owners had exacerbated Mac's diabetes. But, having been seduced by the golden arches at the Phoenix venue, Kroc refuses to relent and, driven by a screening of Eliza Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954) and a self-help record extolling the virtues of positivity and persistence, he persuades the brothers to let him manage the franchise aspect of the business under the auspices of a contract that gives them final approval of all initiatives.

Dick has doubts. But Mac convinces him that Kroc has their best interests at heart and they focus on their own restaurant while Kroc seeks to enlist golfing buddies Jack Horford (David De Vries) and Jerry Cullen (Wilbur Fitzgerald) . He is frustrated, however, when they neglect their premises and start adding items to their menus. Yet Kroc spots the potential of burger flipper Fred Turner (Justin Randell Brooke) and gives him an executive role as he switches his attention to smaller investors like Bible salesman Leonard Rosenblatt (Andrew Benator), who are willing to embrace core McDonald's values. Consequently, new branches begin springing up across the Midwest throughout 1954 and the brothers seem content to rake in their share of the profits, while occasionally being puzzled by Kroc's unconventional methods.

During a trip to Minnesota, Kroc is delighted when chic restaurateur Rollie Smith (Patrick Wilson) joins the team. But he is even more intrigued by his elegant pianist wife, Joan (Linda Cardellini), and Smith is more than a little perturbed by the chemistry between the two when they duet on `Pennies From Heaven'. Ethel is also starting to feel more neglected than ever and is appalled to discover that Kroc has mortgaged their home in order to raise seed money for his project.

Fortunately, Kroc's argument with banker Harvey Peltz (Mike Pniewski) is overheard by Harry Sonneborn (BJ Novak), a financial consultant for Tastee Freeze who peruses his books and realises that Kroc is amassing debts because he is being short-changed by his deals with both the McDonalds and the franchisees. He suggests that Kroc goes into real estate and starts leasing the land earmarked for future branches to his clients. Dick and Mac are furious with what they perceive to be a breach of their agreement. But, while Kroc backs down on Joan's suggestion that they cut costs by using powdered milkshake, he ploughs on with the Franchise Realty Corporation and even blindsides the brothers when he announces the formation of the McDonald Corporation to handle the booming business.

Having divorced Ethel, Kroc makes his move on Joan and seals their romance by ordering all outlets to abandon shakes made with real milk and ice cream and start using the instant vanilla, chocolate and strawberry flavours she had recommended. Dick is outraged and Mac winds up in hospital after suffering a diabetic shock. But, while Kroc visits with a bunch of flowers, he is determined to seize control of the entire company and leaves them with a blank cheque to terminate their original agreement.

The pair agree to a $2.7 million lump sum and a 1% annual royalty in perpetuity. However, Kroc offers only a gentleman's agreement on the latter demand and proceeds to renege on it. Moreover, he denies the McDonalds the use of their own name on their sole remaining restaurant and cynically opens a franchise across the street to ruin them. When they ask why he didn't just steal their ideals and methods and start his own firm, Kroc explains that he needed the name McDonald's because it had the homely American feel that would make the brand so marketable at home and abroad.

As the picture closes in 1970 with Kroc preparing to make a speech in praise of himself and persistence, the audience is left to ponder over archive footage of the `founder' himself whether they have just witnessed a dramatised version of the truth or whether they have been force fed a diet of alternative facts. In many ways, of course, that is the precisely point that Hancock and Siegel have striven to make. But, while it's easy to compare the mythologising tendencies of Ray Kroc and Donald Trump, this is more a general morality tale than a specific captialist-cum-political allegory.

Continuing the recent roll that has seen him excel in Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman (2014) and Tom McCarthy's Spotlight (2015), Michael Keaton is spellbinding as the possessed Lomanesque loser whose gut instinct and reckless tenacity enable him to ace the homespun integrity of the McDonald siblings, who are played as almost sitcomedic rubes by Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch. The cookie-cutter representation of much of the supporting cast is one of the weaknesses of the script. But the dialogue is as wittily acute as Michael Corenblith's production design, Daniel Orlandi's costumes and Carter Burwell's jazzy score.

Cinematographer John Schwartzman reinforces the period feel with the mischievously fetishistic lighting of the glowing arches in the suburban darkness. But, while this Faustian treatise on commercial ethics, heroic villainy and the fine line between talent and success entertains more than it enlightens, Hancock still lags some way behind William Dieterle, who became the King of the Biopic during the Golden Age of Hollywood with such fanciful, but sincere outings as Madame Du Barry (1934), The Story of Louis Pasteur (1935), The Life of Emile Zola (1937), Juarez (1939) and Dr Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940).

The characterisation is just as thin in writer-director Jake Gavin's first feature, Hector, which meanders up and down the country in a well-meaning, but muddled bid to explore the plight facing the homeless at Christmas. As a former photojournalist. Gavin has a good eye for the highways and byways. But his storytelling skills are less well honed and not only does he misjudge the timing of a crucial revelation, but he also comes perilously close to romanticising a punishingly hard way of life that few adopt out of choice.

Sixtysomething Peter Mullan has spent the last 15 years living rough. He may have a pension to spend, but he sleeps under cardboard boxes at motorway service stations and hitches up and down the British Isles in the company of hobo pals like Keith Allen and the inseparable Laurie Ventry and Natalie Gavin. When the latter head to London for Christmas, Mullan takes a detour back to Glasgow to keep a hospital appointment. Having been rescued from some muggers by shopkeeper Hardip Singh Kohli, he learns he needs an operation in the new year and the tidings convince him that the time has come to make things up with his estranged siblings.

Thumbing his way south, Mullan arrives in Newcastle to find sister Gina McKee. However, car-selling brother-in-law Stephen Tompkinson warns him that she wants nothing to do with him and the proud Mullan refuses a well-intended handout. He goes in search of brother Ewan Stewart and detours to Liverpool, where a kindly priest points him in the direction of Christine Tremarco's café, where he is treated to an extra large portion and some convivial conversation. But, no sooner has she offered to give Mullan a lift than Tremarco is accusing him of stealing from the till and driving him off her premises.

This is par for the course in Mullan's world, with each splash from a puddle being followed by the offer of a ride from the next motorist. En route to London, he bumps into Ventry and Gavin and they huddle up for the night behind a service station. The following morning, however, they find that Ventry has frozen to death and Gavin flees in panic. Mullan continues on alone and is delighted to find that Sarah Solemani has saved him a bed at the shelter where he always spends the festive period.

As Mullan settles in, he receives a visit from Stewart, who agrees that time is too short for feuding. Gavin also turns up, exhausted and ailing. But she is welcomed with no questions asked and this sense of acceptance prompts Mullan to tell Solemani that he had been wandering since his wife and daughter were killed by a drunk driver on Christmas Eve 15 years earlier. He wants no sympathy, as the decision to abandon his comfortable life and hit the road was his alone and he doesn't regret it, even though McKee and Stewart find it baffling and hurtful.

In the true spirit of Yuletide, McKee makes the journey from Tyneside to be reconciled with her brother. She accepts that he is too set in his ways to change and leaves him to wend his way back to Glasgow in time for the operation that may or may not prolong his unconventional life.

No one could question the commitment of anyone before or behind David Raedeker's camera, but this is far too docile to work as a piece of social realism and much too sentimental to convince as an accurate reflection of homelessness in Cameron's Britain. Comparisons have been made to Ken Loach's Cathy Come Home (1966), but he would never accept a script containing so much Frank Capra corniness. Tramps have always been used by film-makers to prick the conscience of a complacent society, but this feels closer in tone to Charlie Chaplin's more maudlin comedies than one of William A. Wellman's hard-hitting studies of Depression era vagrancy, such as Beggars of Life (1928), Heroes for Sale and Wild Boys of the Road (both 1933).

Reining in the curmudgeonly excess on display in Terence Davies's Sunset Song, Mullan resembles a shabby Kris Kringle, as he traverses the country in search of a Christmas miracle. It's never in doubt for a second that his wish will be granted, as this is a vagabond who seems to have it sussed. He may not be able to control night-time temperatures, but he has the health and pension services in his back pocket and rarely seems to need to scavenge in desperation or scarper in genuine terror. Gavin tries to atone by making things a bit tougher for his tarmac companions, but there's no political edge to a scenario already short on dramatic grit and fatally enervated by Emily Baker's syrupy acoustic score.

The biggest flaw, however, is the timing of the big reveal about Mullan's erstwhile existence. Clearly something ghastly happened to drive him away from his loved ones. But once it transpires that drink and drug are not to blame, the audience comes to concentrate more on his present and future than his past and Mullan's sudden need to confide in Solemani lacks the deftness of the way Pablo Trapero sprang a similar surprise about Patagonian airport worker Guillermo Pfening in Born and Bred (2006). The scene is ably played, but it comes far too late in proceedings to have the expected emotional impact. Moreover, it doesn't satisfactorily explain why McKee and Stewart felt the need to disown him.

Over the Easter weekend in 2015, a gang of seasoned criminals broke into what was supposed to be one of the most impregnable vaults in London. Two movies have already been made about the caper, with a third in the pipeline being rumoured to have Michael Caine onboard. Few will have had the chance to see Terry Lee Coker's Hatton Garden the Heist (2016), as it failed to secure a theatrical release. But much fuss has been made about Ronnie Thompson's The Hatton Garden Job, as it arrived in cinemas with a paschal promptness that was intended to pique the curiosity of those fancying a bit more codgering criminality after they had enjoyed Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Alan Arkin's antics in Zach Braffs remake of Martin Brest's Going in Style (1979).

Mercifully closer in tone to Roger Donaldson's The Bank Job and Paris Leonti's Daylight Robbery (both 2008) than John Miller's Golden Years (2016), this is a nick above the typical BritCrime offering. But Thompson - who is helming his second solo feature after following Tower Block (2012), which he co-directed with James Nunn, with I Am Soldier (2014) - doesn't stray far from Mockney territory in piecing together the role played by Basil, the anonymous brains behind the operation who is believed to be an ex-cop currently lying low in Panama with his share of the £14 million loot. If he remains at large, we can almost certainly expect a documentary attempting to unmask the mystery man in the manner of Chris Long's Great Train Robbery exposé, A Tale of Two Thieves (2014). But, for now, we shall have to make do with ploddingly perfunctory reconstructions like this.

During an opening monologue about the changing nature of crime and the rise of an undeserving elite, we see XXX (Matthew Goode) being jailed after accomplice Judas-Jack (Jack Doolan) squeals to cops Frank Baskin (Mark Harris) and his assistant, Emma Carter (Sarah-Jane Crawford), about burgling a City banker. During his three-year stretch, however, XXX learns from Hungarian mobster Zoltan (David Goodman) that boss Erzebet Zslondos (Joely Richardson) needs a daring crook to do a job and he seals the deal over a shot to break into a Hatton Garden Safe Deposit vault.

Needing an expert crew, XXX decides to catch up with veteran Danny Jones (Phil Daniels) and he promises to look up some old school pals. Yet, while 76 year-old Brian Reader (Larry Lamb) is protesting during a wander around a cemetery that he's too old to be taking on such an ambitious job, the recently retired Baskin meets up with kingpin Marcus Ford (Stephen Moyer) in an empty Upton Park to discuss rumours that the Hungarians are planning something big. Ford isn't bothered about foreign rivals hitting the jackpot, but he is keen to get hold of one of the boxes inside the vault and he orders Baskin to ensure he gets it.

Nettled by some cocky kids on the top deck of a bus, Reader changes his mind about the blag and meets with XXX and Jones in a quiet pub to suggest bringing in Kenny Collins (Clive Russell) as the lookout/driver and Terry Perkins (David Calder) as the muscleman. They meet up at their lock-up HQ, where Perkins tells a gratuitous joke about a woman in a wheelchair before Reader outlines the plan and XXX describes the layout of 88-90 Hatton Gardens. Posing as a potential client, Lamb get a guided tour of the camera-free basement, while Perkins stakes out the place to scout security staff rotations and Jones - who has joked that the `OAP's XI' is about to pull off `the biggest blingo blag in history' - is dispatched to find some secondhand power tools to cut through the 18 inches of concrete in the vault door.

Armed with the alarm codes provided by Zslondos, XXX sets the raid for the Easter weekend. The gang almost have a run-in at the pub with cocky teenager Isaac (Sam Adewumni) and his noisy pals, while a meeting outside a casino convinces Ford that Zslondos is behind the Hatton Garden job. So, he sends Baskin to make XXX an offer he can't refuse in return for a little insurance down at the police station. Zslondos is unhappy with this development, but he has more to worry about when Reader falls ill and son Paul (David Garlick) refuses to let him leave the house.

Naturally, Reader gives Paul the slip and catches a bus to Central London in time to join the others as they carry their equipment into the building in wheelie bins. XXX uses the alarm codes to get them into the vault, while Collins takes up position in the street outside to maintain walkie-talkie contact. All seems to be going well, as they winch open the grilles and start drilling through a vault door that has been designed to withstand a nuclear explosion. But XXX notices that they have tripped a silent alarm and he has to call in a favour from Baskin to prevent the cops from responding. Perkins overhears the conversation and there is momentary tension between the thieves.

Reader calms them down and they press on until Collins warns them that one of the security guards is snooping around the front door. Luckily, he is getting phone grief from his wife and heads home rather than doing his job and this enables the gang to drill their three holes. As they set up a hydraulic ram to knock over a cabinet pinned to the wall, however, Reader collapses and, on discovering that the compressor cable has burnt out, they decide to get him help rather than complete the mission. All seems doom and gloom as Collins, Perkins and Jones nurse beers at the Railway Tavern and XXX sleeps on the lock-up soda. But Reader calls to urge them to go back and finish what they started and a montage shows XXX and Jones rifling through boxes to amass their ill-gottens.

On the outside, XXX calls Judas-Jack for a lift and rewards him with a large diamond. But, as he surveys the swag, Baskin holds him up at gunpoint and order him to place it all in a bag. However, Zslondos walks in with her armed goons and Baskin backs down. She raises an eyebrow on sneaking a peak at the contents of Box 175 and praises XXX for his expertise before leaving with the jewels. A shrugging Baskin admits defeat and makes his delivery to Ford. He also gives Carter a tip-off so she can arrest Judas-Jack for possession of stolen goods. But, while XXX drops into a travel agency, his cohorts order champagne in the pub and, by living it so conspicuously large, they give the game away, get busted and go down for six years each.

Two decades have passed since Guy Ritchie scored a monumental box-office hit with Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and unintentionally calcified the British crime saga. Notwithstanding the smugly zeitgeisty opening rant about the `lucky elite', this likely laddish romp could have been made by any one of the time-servers who have kept the genre chugging along since 1998. But, while Thompson fails to impose much personality on the project, he does bring an undeniable proficiency to a picture that has been designed, photographed and edited with artisanal adroitness by Jeff Schell, Arthur Mulhern and Emma Gaffney. The score by Lol Hammond and Duncan Forbes and the original songs by Andrew Barnabas and Paul Arnold are less impressive, although there are welcome blasts of Johnny Thunder's `I'm Alive' during the robbery and Beady Eye's `Second Bite of the Apple' over the closing credits.

Changing pace after his stint in Downton Abbey, Matthew Goode just about convinces as an East End villain alongside such dependable old lags as Larry Lamb, Phil Daniels, Clive Russell and David Calder. But Joely Richardson doesn't quite cut it as the fictitious Magyar matriarch who is a front for the real driving force behind the raid. Indeed, Thompson and co-scribes Ray Bogdanovich and Dean Lines are not only guilty of tweaking the truth, but they also turn hardened criminals into genial geezers in the name of sanitised entertainment. Reader, for example, was involved in the 1983 Brink's Mat bullion robbery that claimed the life of a policeman, while John `Goldfinger' Palmer was murdered before he could reveal the identity of `Basil the Ghost', who had seemingly been in cahoots with the bosses of the leading London crime family that had organised the job in order to obtain a deposit box containing evidence that could incriminate them in a murder investigation. No one is suggesting that a film-maker is duty-bound to tell the whole truth and nothing but. However, there is still a sizeable difference between judicious mendacity and what Thompson calls `filmic reality'.

Actor Brady Corbet clearly watched Michael Haneke very carefully while he was working on the 2007 American version of Funny Games, as the influence of the Austrian maestro is evident in every frame of The Childhood of a Leader, an ambitious directorial debut that impresses and infuriates in equal measure. Taking its title from a 1939 short story by Jean-Paul Sartre and its inspiration from Margaret MacMillan's Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, the narrative also owes debts to the memoirs of Robert Lansing, Robert Musil's Young Törless, Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism and John Fowles's The Magus. But, while the 27 year-old Corbet and Norwegian co-scenarist wife Mona Fastvold brandish their literary and historical credentials, they too often allow the slender storyline to be swamped by a mannered pomposity that further manifests itself in the boomingly moody and magnificent score by Scott Walker, which reinforces the suspicion that this feels more like the youth of a comic-book villain than a fascistic European dictator.

Following newsreel footage of President Woodrow Wilson arriving in France to lead the treaty negotiations at the end of the Great War, the action in `The First Tantrum: A Sign of Things to Come' opens in the winter of 1918 with seven year-old Prescott (Tom Sweet) dressed as an angel and struggling with his lines in a church Nativity play. While his mother ((Bérénice Bejo) chats with the parish priest, Fr Laydu (Jacques Boudet), Prescott goes outside and starts throwing stones at the villagers as they make their way home. When he a couple of men chase him, he bolts into the forest and collides with a tree. However, his father (Liam Cunningham) scarcely seems concerned, as his wife takes the boy to his room in their rented chateau for a bath before bedtime.

As an aide to Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, Father is deeply involved with the talks at the Palace of Versailles and has spent the evening discussing the problem of self-determination with British journalist Charles Marker (Robert Pattinson) over a scotch-fuelled game of billiards. Marker recently lost his wife and Mother avoids mentioning his loss, as she bids him goodnight. They briefly converse in German, to the frustration of her monolingual husband, and she laments the fact that her home city of Strasbourg is about to be handed to France as a victor's spoil. Marker asks after Prescott and hopes that he is able to make the most of his time in a foreign country.

Bidding farewell to her guest, Mother settles down to play patience and is irritated to be disturbed by Prescott, who has wet the bed during a nightmare. She changes the linen as he bathes and curses the fact that Mona (Yolande Moreau) always seems to have a night off when she is most needed. The following morning, Mother is happy to turn the boy over to Ada (Stacy Martin), a local girl who is helping Prescott with his French. She recognises that he is not in the mood to study and takes him for a walk across the fields. He sulks about being so far away from home and loses his temper when she teases him about his lengthy page boy hair.

Mother is not so willing to let Prescott call the shots, however, and drags him along to see Fr Laydu to apologise for his appalling behaviour after the rehearsal. She translates as the old curé asks Prescott why he threw stones at strangers. But he is reluctant to respond because he doesn't believe he has caused him personal offence and runs away as soon as he is outside. Despite saying sorry to Mother, however, he is made to stand alongside the priest at the end of mass on Christmas Day to apologise to the entire congregation. Such is his repugnance at this public humiliation that Prescott runs home and Mona consoles him as he vomits on the stone floor of his bedroom.

Sunlight warms the room at the start of the second act, `The Second Tantrum: A New Year', as Ada coaxes Prescott through a French retelling of the Aesop fable about a mouse who gnaws through the rope binding the lion who once spared his life. As she reads, Prescott's gaze is fixed on her bosom. She asks if he has learned the moral that little friends might one day prove to be great friends, but he is bored and sends her to tell Mona to bring him some lunch. After an interminable wait, Prescott goes downstairs to investigate the delay and is surprised to find Ada and his father in close proximity in the study.

At supper that night, he asks Mother if Ada had been teaching Father French when he saw them together and there is an awkward silence. Mother urges Prescott to finish his meal, but he refuses to eat and is dispatched to the kitchen, where Mona is instructed not to let him go to bed until his plate has been cleared. After an hour or so, Mona scrapes the cold food into the bin and Prescott hugs her in gratitude.

The next day, as he sits outside with Ada, Prescott makes a grab for her breast and she slaps his hand. But his apology for making her feel uncomfortable is decidedly half-hearted and he is still sulking when Mother says grace with an Ash Wednesday cross on her forehead. Some weeks later, she breaks away from a Lenten procession because a number of cars have pulled up outside her temporary country home and she is surprised to find that Father has invited a number of diplomats discontented with Wilson's plans for redrafting the frontiers of Europe to discuss alternative strategies. She frets that he is taking a risk by going behind the president's back and that she doesn't have adequate provisions for so many unexpected guests. But he reassures her that Lansing is watching his back and that there is nothing to worry about.

Prescott is curious to know what is going on, as the strangers discuss the threat to the continent of Communism. One of the delegates asks Father about his daughter and Prescott is so nettled by the mistake that he walks away (idly running his hand across a wall map of Europe) and returns wearing a badly tied dress that exposes his torso. Father spots him through the half-open door and chases after him before anyone else notices the spectacle. He orders Mona to keep an eye on him, but Prescott politely refuses to let her enter his room.

Frustrated by his wife's rejection of his sexual advances and the suggestion that they have another child, Father leaves for Paris the next morning. Seizing the moment, Prescott locks himself in his room and tells Ada not to bother him for three days. Mother is galled by his intransigence and tells Mona not to feed him until he is ready to behave properly. But the housekeeper feels sorry for the boy and smuggles him a snack under cover of darkness. Unfortunately, Mother catches her and, even though she has worked at the house for 17 years, she is sacked on the spot. Mona hisses that she will devote the rest of her life to destroying the family, but Mother seems unconcerned, even when Prescott pushes her out of his room and screams with fury on learning that Mona has been dismissed.

Ada returns to the house after three days and accompanies Mother to Prescott's room. He allows them inside and sits at his desk to read the Aesop story in much-improved French. Mother and Ada are pleased with his progress, but he announces that he wishes to study alone and Mother promptly fires Ada and recommends that she devotes her life to teaching rather than motherhood. Less bothered by Ada's departure, Prescott barricades himself in his room and refuses to come out when his father returns. Furious that the household has been so disrupted by a small boy, Father breaks down the door and administers such a ferocious beating that he damages Prescott's shoulder.

The last act, `The Third Tantrum: It's a Dragon...' commences with Pathé newsreel footage of Wilson, David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau and Vittorio Orlando appearing on the steps of Versailles with the accompanying caption, `Their work is done!' Mother supervises the staff at a Parisian townhouse, as she organises a celebration dinner to mark the signing of the treaty. As Prescott dresses in a lacy Little Lord Fauntleroy-style outfit, he winces while exercising his shoulder in front of the mirror. Sporting a black sling, he wanders through rooms filled with formally attired gentlemen and takes his place at the table. Mother orders him to sit somewhere else, but a kindly guests allows him to stay where he is.

Father greets the assembly and announces with considerable relief that the war is finally over. He asks Mother to say grace, but she is keen to show off her son and encourages Prescott to say something. Without looking up from his empty plate, he insists that he no longer believes in prayer and, when Mother tries to cajole him, he clambers on to his chair and begins chanting his lack of faith. Embarrassed by the display, Mother tries to force him down, but he slashes her face with a knife and Father chases after him. The child trips while running up the stairs and lies on the landing, as Marker reassures him that everything will be fine.

A coda, `A New Era, or Prescott the Bastard', opens with printing presses churning out documents with the lion head motif that also adorns the red banners hanging from the walls of a government building in an unnamed state in what must be presumed to be the 1930s. Folders are circulated around a table, as a cabal of politicians approve the contents and file downstairs to greet the leader. Cheering crowds are held back by lines of soldiers in brown uniforms, as the bald, but bearded Prescott (Robert Pattinson) looks through the car window with the same glassy, glacial stare he had as a boy. He tells the driver he will walk the rest of the way and, as he steps outside, the focus switches to a young girl in a blue beret, who looks around her uncomprehendingly. As it follows her gaze, the camera executes a series of swishes and canted plunges to convey the chaos that has been unleashed.

What a curate's egg of a picture this is. In many ways, it is intelligent, provocative and technically accomplished. But, in others, it is simplistic, calculating and pretentious. Given the recent rise of right-wing political mavericks across the world, this will be seen in some quarters as the denunciation of personality cult politicians like Donald Trump. But Corbet and Fastvold are also keen to hold Woodrow Wilson and his cohorts to account for condemning Europe to a century of socio-economic decline, idealistic extremism and ethnic resentment. Few film-makers set themselves such ambitious targets, particularly in their feature debut. So, while much of their thinking is a little muddled and some of their conclusions are as facile as they are specious, Corbet deserves considerable credit for trying to make such bold thematic and artistic statements.

He is ably served in the latter endeavour by cinematographer Lol Crawley and production designer Jean-Vincent Puzos, who make such evocative use of both Buda Castle and the Hungarian National Gallery that it's impossible to detect that Corbet was operating on a $5 million budget. Puzos also adds a darkly mischievous touch in decorating the chateau with trinkets acquired by Prescott's unseen uncle, who is not only a textile merchant, but also a Muslim. Even more striking, however, is the score by onetime pop singer Scott Walker, which combines shrieking avant-garde dissonance with the imposing screen classicism of a Bernard Herrmann. The music often feels anachronistic and is cagily used to counterpoint the visuals. But this would be a very different film without it, in the same way that Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon (1975) would Handel's `Sarabande'.

Speaking of Kubrick, this fictional biopic has a tendency to drift into the kind of sombre ostentation that blighted Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and it's easy to see why so many critics have dismissed it as a monumental bore. Others have been frustrated by the psychoanalytical slenderness of a scenario that often preens in its own presumed cleverness. But the weakest aspect is undoubtedly the acting, with Bérénice Bejo struggling to inhabit a role originally intended for Juliette Binoche and Liam Cunningham concentrating too hard on his excellent American accent to modulate his performance as a neglectful martinet.

The casting of Robert Pattison in a dual role invites speculation that Marker is Prescott's real father. But the roving reporter is too sketchily drawn to make much impact in his limited screen time. Yolande Moreau and Stacy Martin prove more successful as the domestics manipulated by Tom Sweet, who is better at staring sullenly with Midwich eyes than he is at delivering loaded lines. In many ways, he recalls Harvey Stephens as Damien in Richard Donner's adaptation of The Omen (1976) and Corbet leans more heavily on this menacing kind of diplomatic childhood than the one concocted by Graham Greene and Carol Reed in The Fallen Idol (1948) and James Ivory, Ismail Merchant and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala in their take on Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day (1993). Yet, in borrowing heavily from Haneke's The White Ribbon (2009), Corbet also sometimes seems to be retracing his steps over ground already covered in his screenplay for Antonio Campos's Simon Killer (2012).

Despite taking gongs for best debut and first-time direction at the Venice Film Festival, the flaws ultimately outnumber the virtues. But, while his writing betrays plenty of geopolitical naiveté, the confidence of Corbet's direction can only be commended. The same goes for his respect for directors as different as Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Volker Schlöndorff, Kubrick and Haneke, and it will be intriguing to see what he comes up with second time around.