Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 31/8/2017)

Over a sequence depicting a Burgundian vineyard through the seasons, Pio Marmaï explains in voiceover how he used to think the view from his bedroom window changed every day. But, as he grew older, he came to feel stifled by father Éric Caravaca's ambition for him to take over the family domain. So, one day, he hopped on a bus with plans to see the world and he has only returned a decade later because sister Ana Girardot has called to inform him that Caravaca is in hospital. She is delighted to see him and hear about his travels in Australia. But younger brother François Civil is angry that they have heard nothing from Marmaï since their mother died five years ago and he is in the middle of a kitchen rant when vineyard foreman Jean-Marc Roulot interrupts to ask them to help move a destemming machine in the fermentation shed.

The harvest is due and Civil apologises for being on edge because he works for father-in-law Jean-Marie Winling, who has a bigger business and is concerned that Civil lacks what it takes to be his heir. However, he also has duties at the family holding and ventures into the sun-kissed fields with Marmaï and Girardot, as they debate the best day to start picking the grapes. She favours delaying, as their father would do. But Marmaï suggests an earlier date to achieve a wine with greater acidity and Roulot concurs that it might be an intriguing idea. Marmaï is reluctant to impose, as Caravaca has put Girardot in charge. But she bows to his opinion and notes how stressed he seems after a phone call with his girlfriend, María Valverde.

Civil is also having a tough time, as Winling keeps organising blind tastings to improve his olfactory memory and wife Yamée Couture and mother-in-law Florence Pernel try to defend him as he makes silly slips. He thinks back to the childhood sessions with mother Sarah Grappin looking on indulgently as Caravaca passes on the tricks of the trade to his offspring (played as kids by Hugo Soyer, Alice de Germay and Alan Morgoev). Marmaï has a similar dream, as he dozes in his old room and wakes to the news that their father has died. As they walk away from the cemetery, Marmaï reveals that he didn't come home for their mother's funeral because Valverde gave birth to their son on the same day. Returning home, they sample wines made by their father and grandfather and Civil is astonished by the sensitivity of his sister's palate.

A few days later, lawyer Bruno Raffaelli and assistant Marina Tomé explain that Caravaca has made the siblings equal partners in the vineyard. They also disclose that they owe €500,000 in inheritance tax and that they would be better off selling the entire property for around €6 million than in trying to make a go of running the business with all decisions having to be unanimous. But the harvest takes priority and Girardot instructs the pickers how to work in each parcel of land. A montage follows to a jaunty tune, as Marmaï flirts with black worker Karidja Touré and Girardot berates Tewfik Jallab for starting a fruit fight. He accuses her of being a bourgeois prig and throws a banknote at her for exploiting him and lacking a sense of fun. She gets upset, but Marmaï urges her to remember she is a wine-maker rather than a boss.

Civil takes the grapes for testing at a nearby lab and all seems to be going well, even after Marmaï and Girardot have a spat with neighbour Eric Bougnon trying to steal their crop (and Jallab tuts that Girardot is mad when she starts hurling the purloined grapes at him). After Marmaï declares that he won't be hanging around, she has a further crisis of confidence while steering a tractor back to the house and she cries at a memory of Caravaca teaching her to drive. But she sticks to a decision on a 50:50 destemming ratio when questioned by Roulot and Marmaï supports her, as he wants her to feel comfortable in her new role.

Following a day's picking in the rain, the siblings host a candlelit party in the courtyard and Civil misses Winling's own function when he realises that Marmaï and Girardot need cheering up, as Valverde keeps giving his brother grief over the phone, while his sister feels she lacks the common touch. The wine flows and songs are sung, as Marmaï tells Touré about his peregrinations being more about cowardice than courage and Roulot breaks out some vintage bottles. At one point, Marmaï and Civil invent a conversation between Girardot and Jallab and are taken aback when they start kissing passionately. But they keep partying and Civil has to make a drunken apology to Couture when she comes to find him next morning.

While he heads home, Marmaï and Girardot tread the grapes in giant barrels. But Marmaï has made it clear that he plans to return to Australia and needs money to pay off the mortgage debt on his domain. However, Girardot and Civil refuse to sacrifice everything their parents worked for to bail him out of a jam and they discuss selling certain parcels without compromising the integrity of the estate. But, even when they put up the farmhouse for sale and estate agents troop endless prospective buyers through the rooms, they discover that no one is willing to buy without the land. Bougnon tries to make a bid for the adjoining properties, but Girardot wants nothing to do with him.

As the winter closes in and Marmaï delays his return south, he grows to miss his son, while the arguments on the phone with Valverde become more heated. Civil is also finding life with his in-laws a trial, as Winling has decided that he doesn't have the gifts to take over his vineyard and he offers him a chance to manage the spa at a mill conversion that Couture has designed. Winling also proposes buying a couple of parcels to help the siblings meet their tax bill. But, with Girardot showing great promise as a vigneron under Roulot's watchful eye, she is reluctant to break up the estate. Therefore, they press on with the sale of the house and begin going through their belongings. Civil finds Caravaca's old jacket and tries it on. He also finds a letter in the pocket and gives it to Marmaï, as he is complaining that their father never loved him and always blamed him for episodes like Civil falling out of a tree as a boy. Indeed, he went to the hospital to have it out with Caravaca, only to find that he could no longer speak and be began to weep when his father halted his recriminatory rant by squeezing his hand.

When Marmaï drops his phone, Girardot gets Valverde's number and calls her to let her know that her brother still loves her. But she insists that the situation is complicated. Winling is less understanding, however, when Civil turns down the job offer and his siblings refuse to sell him the premier cru plots he wants. Couture suggests her father starts treating them as adults and Pernel tuts at him when he stalks away from the lunch table. Yet, she is the one to drive Civil crazy when she keeps waking them early on Sundays for family breakfasts.

A few days later, as they are toiling in the vineyard, Valverde and son Sean O'Gara-Micol arrive out of the blue. Marmaï is overjoyed to see the boy and they fix a swing to the tree in the garden, while Valverde thanks Girardot for calling her. She says she needed time to think and see whether she could cope on her own. Sleeping either side of O'Gara-Micol, Marmaï and Valverde talk into the night and make lots of accusations and apologies before Girardot takes her nephew swimming and his parents tumble back into bed. Yet, even though it's clear that they desire each other, neither is sure if they work as a couple or where their future will take them.

Girardot is happy to see Marmaï and Valverde being affectionate towards each other. But he gets tipsy at a wine tasting hosted by Winling and states in no uncertain terms that he doesn't want to sell him any land. When Winling summons Civil to the cellar to ask what's going on, he also releases some pent-up emotions in wishing that Winling would stop trying to manipulate everyone into doing his bidding. Returning to the party, he feels good about himself and Couture forgives him for forgetting to mention that they want to move out of the annexe.

While walking in the vineyard, Marmaï tells Valverde that he no longer cares what happens to the domain. But, when he sees Bougnon using artificial pesticide, he berates him and Valverde wonders how ready Marmaï really is to letting go of his family ties. He enjoys seeing O'Gara-Micol playing with his toddler cousin and he jokes that he hopes they turn out to be better fathers than Caravaca and Winling. At bedtime, Marmaï has a flashback to Caravaca tucking him in and father and son exchange a meaningful glance in his imagination.

Valverde and O'Gara-Micol leave the next day, with Marmaï promising to come to Australia as soon as he can. But, as he stands by the window, his younger self asks why he is selling part of the land when it's his home. He tries to explain that he needs his share to move on, but the argument makes little sense. As he reveals in voiceover, he came home to see his father, but rediscovered his brother and sister and realised that his home is with Valverde and O'Gara-Mico. He suggests that he leases his parcels to Girardot and Civil and pay off the taxes with his stock in Australia, so that they can work as a partnership from opposite sides of the globe.

Having discovered she likes knowing her own mind and having her orders obeyed, Girardot agrees and Marmaï sees her welcoming the pickers for the new harvest (with a smiling Jellab being among them). He is also pleased that Civil and Couture have spread their wings. But, as he looks back at the domain as he walks along the dusty winding road, one is left to wonder whether he will ever see his home again.

Once again allying with a youthful ensemble to generate a palpable sense of community, Klapisch tells his tale with conviction and cogency. There's a lot of plot to work through and, considering that much of the action takes place within the same few miles, it does occasionally feel like an extended episode of Les Archers with a pronounced echo of You Will Be My Son reverberating in the background. But Klapisch (who has strayed out of his usual urban milieu) and co-scenarist Santiago Amigorena create some credible, if not always compelling characters for Marmaï, Girardot and Civil, while Couture and Valverde provide some deft support. Adroitly mixing wit and pathos, the writers also do well not to burden Girardot with a romantic subplot to distract from her struggle to be taken seriously as a woman in a man's world. That said, she is the most sketchily drawn of the siblings, while Marmaï not only gets a voiceover, but also gets to interact (somewhat contrivedly) with his younger self.

As one might expect, given the scenery, Alexis Kavyrchine's photography evocatively captures the changing look and feel of the landscape, while production designer Marie Cheminal cannily contrasts the cosily ramshackle farmhouse, Winling's chateau and Civil and Couture's cramped annexe to reaffirm why the siblings would be so reluctant to part with the domain. Loïc Dury and Christophe Minck also contribute a lively pop score inflected with traditional accordion motifs that suggests the flourishing of the younger generation within a culture firmly rooted in its rituals. Yet, despite the quality of the ingredients, this never quite fulfils its sparkling promise and leaves a rather sugary aftertaste.

Having made such an auspicious start to his directorial career with Human Resources (1999) and Time Out (2001), few were surprised when Laurent Cantet won the Palme d'or at Cannes for The Class (2008). However, having made a misstep with his English-language debut, Foxfire (2012), Cantet has stumbled again with the Homerically titled Return to Ithaca (2014), which sees him return to the Caribbean after setting Heading South (2005) on Haiti and contributing the `La Fuente' episode to the 2012 portmanteau picture, 7 Days in Havana. Indeed, it was while filming his vignette that Cantet made the acquaintance of Cuban writer Leonardo Padura and considered making a 15-minute short from a plot strand in his novel, The Palm Tree and the Star. Ultimately, however, he opted to expand the storyline to feature length, although many viewing this slow-burning and talkily Spanish drama that primarily takes place during a dinner party on a Havana roof terrace might think that it is better suited to the stage.

Singing a song from their heyday, middle-aged friends Fernando Hechavarría, Néstor Jiménez, Isabel Santos and Pedro Julio Díaz Ferrán (the sole black member of the cabal) meet up on a rooftop overlooking the sea to reminisce about past parties, midnight dope searches and embarrassing boyfriends. They recall attending a Joan Manuel Serrat concert, but insist they would much rather have listened to deviant capitalist music instead. Hechavarría and Jiménez get into an argument over the merits of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, while Santos teases them about the fact that they are both obsessed with their absent buddy, Jorge Perugorria, who was the rebellious leader of the group with his long hair and tight trousers.

Ferran produces some photographs of the time they spent doing compulsory labour on a sugar plantation and Santos alludes to the fact that Jiménez was always so negative about what Fidel Castro was trying to do for his people and it is implied that he went into a lengthy Spanish exile from which he has only relatively recently returned. They sigh about how young they looked and feel a pang when Perugorria arrives having lost his hair. He teases each in turn, but Santos looks the least pleased to see him and is relieved that a phone call from his boss distracts him from ribbing her about getting religion. However, she channels her annoyance into criticising Jiménez for making no effort to come and see his wife while she was dying.

Jiménez protests that he had it tough when he first arrived in Spain and only avoided freezing after some nuns gave him a coat. He was also helped by a Cuban decorator, who found him work while cheating him out of his wages. But, eventually, he got his papers and became a well-travelled teacher. However, he has lost the creative spark that once made him a writer and he admits to being lonely and bored so far away from home. As an artist who no longer paints, Hechavarría sympathises with Jiménez losing his source of inspiration. But, as a doctor, Santos is less interested in the abandoned novels and his regret at leaving his real life behind for a pale imitation in a country that could never be home, as she is only concerned with the fact he stayed away while cancer killed his wife. He tries to protest that he left to send her the money to buy food and medication, but Santos feels nothing but disgust for what she considers treachery.

The roar of the crowd from a nearby baseball game can't drown the sound of a pig being slaughtered on a rooftop across the barrio, so Santos volunteers to fetch some more ice. Jiménez protests at the way she nags him about his wife when he risked being detained if he returned to see her. He boasts about dating a Catalan woman, but complains that Spanish women are interested in marriage rather than fun. Hechavarría and Perugorria change the subject by recalling the illicit books they had read as students and Santos returns as the latter is reciting Mario Vargas Llosa's `From the Doorway of La Crónica'. She applauds and he rewards her by playing “California Dreamin'” by The Mamas and the Papas and they dance together. But she suddenly breaks away to reveal that Jiménez plans to stay in Cuba and resist any attempts to deport him.

When the others accuse him of being insane for coming back, he insists that he misses his homeland and that nobody can deny him the right to live in the land of his birth. He claims he needs to write again, but Hechavarría warns him that Cuba has changed in 16 years and that he will struggle to find an audience even if someone is willing to publish. When Perugorria tries to defend him, Santos steps in to accuse him of abandoning his journalistic idealism to take a well-paid functionary job that lacks the dignity of Ferrán's work in a battery factory. She suggests he is corrupt with a foreign bank account to provide for his daughters if he ever needs to flee and he is so angry that he accuses them all of having wasted their lives and grown bitter while he has grasped opportunity whenever he could.

He storms downstairs and Farrán's mother, Carmen Solar, comes up to urge them not to throw away 40 years of friendship on petty differences. She cooks them her special beans and everyone is glad that Ferrán still has her to look after him after his wife deserted him for a wealthy Italian. As they chat, Perugorria returns and Ferrán's 20 year-old son, Rone Luis Reinoso, arrives with his girlfriend, Andrea Doimeadios. Jiménez remembers taking him on a beach holiday after he won a literary prize when Reinoso was a toddler and they joke about how tall he has grown. He is pleased with the t-shirt that Jiménez gives him, but Perugorria warns his friend that he will sell it as soon as he leaves. When Jiménez asks Reinoso what he is studying, Ferrán tuts and reveals that his son is a wastrel who takes handouts from his mother.

Back on the roof, Hechavarría, Santos and Perugorria tells Jiménez about Reinoso getting in with a bad crowd and Ferrán concedes he is disappointed with his son when he joins them. He wants to leave Cuba and is prepared to take a raft to get away, as he knows he will have trouble getting a visa, even if Perugorria pulls some strings on his behalf. Having fought in the civil war in Angola because he believed in the cause, Ferrán despairs of the younger generation and their disregard for the achievements of the Special Period. But Perugorria urges him to accept that the great experiment has failed and that the country that has been crumbling around them since the break-up of the Soviet Union.

As if to emphasise the fact, the power goes off. But Perugorria uses the torch on his phone to dazzle them until the lights return. Hechavarría is explaining why he stopped painting when Ferrán brings a large canvas on to the roof. It was painted in 1998, but the authorities refused to give Hechavarría to exhibit in Paris and he found himself having to sacrifice his style to earn a crust painting colourful commercial daubs. He reveals that he started to drink and that his wife left him and that he feels like he prostitutes his talent.

Jiménez is left alone with Santos and they discuss his wife again. He reassures Santos that she didn't want him to come back and Santos admits that part of the reason why she is so angry with him is that her sons have gone to Florida and forgotten her. They are joined by Hechavarría, who thinks he should take Santos home. But Jiménez wants to confess that he stayed in Spain for so long because he was being blackmailed by a woman from the Ministry of Culture, who threatened to prosecute him for an illegal play unless he informed on Hechavarría, who had become a famous artist, but a loudmouth. So, when a chance came to tour Spain, Jiménez promised that he would betray Hechavarría on his return and that is why he stayed away and let down his wife in her hour of need.

Hechavarría is furious that the government could ruin lives so blithely, but Ferrán is more angry that the Castro regime asked people to believe and then oppressed and persecuted them for showing faith. He resents the fear and Jiménez reveals that he stopped being afraid when he bumped into the woman who had tormented him on the Madrid subway. She denied knowing him and he felt nothing but contempt because she had threatened to ruin him and had forgotten all about it while living her own easy life in exile. At that moment, he realised he was free to return and that nothing was going to stop him.

As dawn breaks, Ferrán dozes on the roof, while Perugorria sits alone at the table and Hechavarría gazes into space. Jiménez wanders up and down with his hands in his pockets before standing behind Santos at the balcony rail as she looks out to sea. They had been friends for so long, but had not really known each other at all. But, at least, the future is in their own hands. Exploiting confined spaces and dripping information about strained relationships with measured precision, this lament for Cuba's wasted years contains echoes of Athina Rachel Tsangari's Chevalier (2015) and Xavier Dolan's It's Only the End of the World (2016). But only those entirely au fait with the Castro enterprise will fully appreciate the nuances of a screenplay that is stuffed with throwaway references to specific policies and events that caused those who had supported the 1959 uprising to lose faith in their leaders and their ideology.

All five principals breathe life into their characters and it is only as the run rises that one can fully appreciate how skilful their performances have been, as they have been interiorising so much information that colours their utterances and reactions to anecdotes and revelations shrouded in secrecy and regret. Néstor Jiménez carries the heaviest burden, as he passes from beloved prodigal to cowardly pariah and misunderstood anti-hero over the course of the evening, while impoverished ophthalmologist Isabel Santos remains embittered and judgemental for the worthiest, but most misguided of reasons. But Fernando Hechevarria's self-obsessed recovering alcoholic and Jorge Perugorria's flamboyant wheeler dealer feel broader creations, while too little is said about why these sceptical Hispanic intellectuals would have been so close to such an unswerving (and black) child of the Revolution as Pedro Julio Díaz Ferrán, who fought other peoples battles, lost his wife to a foreigner and each day has his fingers scorched by acid at the battery factory after being denied the right to work as an engineer.

Cantet keeps Diego Dussuel's camera close to his players, while editor Robin Campillo (who has previously been Cantet's writing partner) times his cuts to close-up with psychological precision. But the happenings at the floodlight stadium and in the neighbouring flats fail to generate the desired ambient authenticity. Consequently, while this Cuban Big Chill fitfully intrigues, it rarely involves as either a human drama or a cinematic critique.

Scottish screenwriters Raymond Friel and Derek Boyle hoped to follow up Alex de Rakoff's The Calcium Kid (2004) and Kit Ryan's Botched (2007) by relocating the mythical Highlands musical, Brigadoon, to a crack den in Edinburgh. In Moon Dogs, however, they have had to settle for an island-hopping road movie that provides veteran TV director Philip John with plenty of quirky characters and memorable incidents to mark his feature debut.

Although best known for working on such shows as Sugar Rush (2006), New Tricks (2010-14), Being Human (2011-13) and Downton Abbey (2013-15), the versatile John also has a couple of controversial shorts to his name, including the BAFTA-nominated Suckerfish (1999) and Sister Lulu (2001), as well as the Channel 4 teleplay Wedding Belles (2007), which was co-scripted by Irvine Welsh and Dean Cavanagh. This first venture into cinema may be more conventional, but it has a quick-witted charm that brings to mind Todd Phillips's Road Trip (2000) and Alfonso Cuarón's Y tu mamá también (2001), as well as the Irish trio of Kieron J. Walsh's When Brendan Met Trudy (2001). John Carney's Once (2007) and Peter Foott's The Young Offenders (2016).

Teenagers Jack Parry-Jones and Christy O'Donnell became unlikely stepbrothers when the former's Welsh mother, Claire Cage, married the latter's Scottish father, Jamie Sives, and they set up home in the Shetland Islands. Parry-Jones has one exam left before he can go to Glasgow University with girlfriend Kate Bracken. However, their naked study session is interrupted by O'Donnell clanging on a bell in the neighbouring room while working on an avant-garde composition. Parry-Jones's frustration is compounded when Sives and Cage arrive home and a hastily dressed Bracken leaves him on the landing in his boxer shorts. He is then caught sniffing the mattress by O'Donnell, who asks Parry-Jones to help him set up for a gig at the local pub.

Hoping to see his step-sibling crash and burn, Parry-Jones agrees to operate his laptop. However, while O'Donnell's mother had been a stalwart member of the folk club, bandleader Tam Dean Burn quickly silences his brand of accordion electronica and usher him off the stage. Walking home, O'Donnell takes a running jump off a cliff and Parry-Jones falls in the sea in checking he hasn't killed himself. Consequently, he is a wreck the following morning and passes out during his crucial exam. So, while Bracken heads to the city, Parry-Jones has to get a job at the fish factory while waiting to retake and he fails to see why he has to pay his way while O'Donnell is allowed to stay in his room and compose music for the upcoming Up Helly As festival celebrating the island's Viking heritage.

Parry-Jones''s mood is hardly improved by a Skype conversation that convinces him that Bracken is cheating on him and he decides to travel to Glasgow to save his relationship. He is surprised when O'Donnell readily agrees to accompany him in order to escape Sives's mithering and they steal a wedding booking for Burn's band on Orkney to make some money to pay for train tickets from Aberdeen. Smuggling themselves aboard a fish delivery van, they throw up into carrier bags during the passage before convincing newlyweds Tanya Fricks and Geoffrey Newland that they are Folked Up. However, they need the timely intervention of singing Irish waitress Tara Lee to get them through `A Red, Red Rose' and she also finds them a boat to sail to the mainland after Burn arrives in high dudgeon at being duped and Lee threatens to expose his past infidelities unless he hands over the keys and £50.

During the voyage, Parry-Jones thanks Lee for being their guardian angel. But she insists she doesn't believe in any faith or fate and declares that she thinks all forms of creed and ideology are devised to create the doubts that suppress the spirit of the people. She smiles when Parry-Jones reveals that he is going to save his brainwashed girlfriend and agrees to tag along with them when they land at Wick. Lee is owed some money by thuggish club owner Niall Greig Fulton, but he refuses to pay and causes Parry-Jones to wet himself by threatening him with a claw hammer. However, Lee has a revenge plan and they sneak into Fulton's bedroom during the night and wire up his body piercings so that they will tear when he is awoken with a stein of iced water.

Stealing Fulton's motorbike and sidecar, the fugitives park up when the petrol runs out in the middle of nowhere and O'Donnell has a pink-tinted trip involving a Viking warrior and several puppet versions of himself. Lee kisses Parry-Jones while O'Donnell is sparko and, when he mentions it to his stepbrother the next morning, Lee kisses him to prevent them from falling out over her. However, they both develop a crush when she improvises a song at the organ in a woodland chapel and the tensions between them are exacerbated by a game of truth or dare in which O'Donnell reveals that he is going to Glasgow to find Shauna Macdonald, the mother who abandoned him as a baby. Lee's bid to lure them into a threesome also backfires and Parry-Jones is still sulking so much the next day that he loses them a hitchhiked ride.

They find an unlocked cottage and, while O'Donnell tries out a zither he finds in the lounge, Parry-Jones gets himself into a tizzy over Lee's bath water. She is taken by his reaction and drops her towel, but they are interrupted by O'Donnell, who refuses to play Fuzzy Duck after they shotgun fizzy drinks stolen from a vending machine that Lee destroys with a crowbar. Eventually, however, the trio arrive in Stirling, where they decide to busk to raise the money for bus tickets. Parry-Jones spots a child's keyboard in the window of a charity shop and gets into an argument with the elderly volunteer Sheila Donald over an exchange for his expensive watch. Exasperated, he simply steals the toy and smashes O'Donnell across the face with it when he mocks his efforts. Affronted, O'Donnell goes solo with his accordion and travels south by bus, while Parry-Jones and Lee make out in the cab of an articulated lorry.

Unfortunately, she is not looking for anything long term and tells Parry-Jones to see Bracken while she finds a band to play at the Celtic Connections festival. The reunion goes badly, but O'Donnell has no more luck with Macdonald, who has a new baby with husband Denis Lawson and wants nothing more to do with him. As Parry-Jones knew Macdonald had been returning O'Donnell's letters unopened, the pair get into a fight before the Scot dissolves into sobbing. However, they acknowledge that they are now brothers and arrive in time to provide backing for Lee and they go down a storm. She secures a booking for a second night, but Parry-Jones and O'Donnell opt to return for parental hugs and grand night at the torchlight procession before making the leap off the cliff together to seal their new bond.

Smartly played by its young leads, this may not be the most innovative of odysseys, but it raises plenty of smiles and treats the audience to endless views of glorious scenery. Yet, John never allows Alasdair Walker's sublime cinematography to become a distraction from the feuding between the introspective O'Donnell and the mardy Parry-Jones. Indeed, he often exploits the settings to bolster the sketchy characterisation, particularly after Lee's arrival further complicates matters. But, even though she capably evokes the spirit of Maribel Verdú coming between Diego Luna and Gael García Bernal in Y tu mamá también, she can't prevent the story from running out of steam in Glasgow, in spite of the best efforts of a breezy score by Anton Newcombe of The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Boyle and Friel atone with some sparky dialogue and the set-pieces involving Fulton's body jewellery and the toy piano. With 15 years of small-screen experience to draw upon, John also directs with an empathetic pep. But, as is often the case with road movies, it's what happens on the tarmac that matters more than the tying up of the plot strands at journey's end. Thus, this has to be considered a success and few would complain if Lee's assertion that `this is not over' proves to be the case.

Britain has a decent track record when it comes to comedy horror. Dating back beyond Walter Forde's The Ghost Train and Marcel Varnel's The Ghost of St Michael's (both 1941), the sub-genre has so successfully relied on poking fun at British phlegm that even overseas directors like Roman Polanski (The Fearless Vampire Killers, 1967) and John Landis (An American Werewolf in London, 1981) have jumped on the bandwagon. Once upon a time, the likes of John Gilling's Mother Riley Meets a Vampire (1952), Pat Jackson's What a Carve Up! (1961) and Gerald Thomas's Carry On Screaming! (1966) would have cropped up regularly in TV schedules, while cult items like Freddie Francis's Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly (1970) and Ray Cameron's Bloodbath at the House of Death (1983) would have occupied graveyard slots.

Nothing will ever quite match the Vincent Price trio of The Abominable Dr Phibes (Robert Fuest, 1971), Dr Phibes Rides Again (Fuest, 1972) and Theatre of Blood (Douglas Hickox, 1973). But Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead (2004) and Ben Wheatley's Sightseers (2012) resuscitated the form and actor Jason Flemyng can take heart from the fact that his directorial debut, Eat Locals, is much worthier of consideration than such recent sub-standard offerings as Phil Clayden's Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009), Jonathan Glendening's Strippers vs Werewolves and Matthias Hoene's Cockneys vs Zombies (both 2012).

Charlie Cox is the first to arrive at a summit meeting taking place in the kitchen of a remote farmhouse. But, as Annette Crosbie, Freema Agyeman, Vincent Regan, Tony Curran and Jordan Long take their place at the table, soldier Johnny Palmiero is being chased through an adjoining wood by an unseen presence. Commander Robert Portal orders him to hold his ground, as they are an important mission that is being co-ordinated by Vatican representative Fr Mackenzie Crook. Meanwhile, at the nearby railway station, Essex likely lad Billy Cook banters with a couple of scallies while waiting for a lift from Eve Myles, who arrives the farmhouse which is now being guarded by the reticent and shade-wearing Lukaz Leong.

In the kitchen, a discussion is heating up about quotas and Regan promises to take up the matter with the European Council. However, testy Scot Curran sees no reason why he shouldn't stray into Cox's territory when he doesn't operate in the same manner as the rest of the group. Crosbie and Agyeman josh Curran for being greedy when he declares that immigrants should be fair game, as no one would notice if they disappeared. But Cox insists that they do vital jobs and that the economy would suffer if open season was declared.

However, Regan has called the meeting to discuss a more pressing problem, as someone has been killing children and he refuses to let such reckless behaviour besmirch the reputation of Britain's vampires or endanger them. He confronts Long with a newspaper headline and Curran tries to defend his friend. But Regan has made up his mind and he orders Long to be staked with a chair leg and his ashes are bagged up and tossed downstairs into the cellar. This swift and brutal punishment coincides with the arrival of Myles and Cook, who has been chosen to replace Long, as his blood is pure even though he's a Romany. Having been hoping for some hanky-panky with Myles, Cook is confused why he is suddenly in the middle of a parish meeting. But, when Crosbie's face reveals her true identity when she sneezes and Cook notices the lack of reflections in the mirror, he realises the severity of his situation.

Angry at Long being dispatched without debate, Curran votes against Cook's inclusion, however, and Regan apologises to that he is going to have to die because all decisions require unanimity. Cook promises to say nothing about what he has witnessed, but the die is cast. He tries to make a cross with kitchen utensils to ward them off and even slashes Myles's cheek. But the wound heals instantly and she scowls at Curran, who finds the whole thing hilarious. Cook attempts to scarper, but he is stopped by Leong and Portal, Palmiero and Crook are astonished to see from their heat-seeking equipment that there are several vampires inside the house.

Shortly after 11pm, Portal orders an attack that spares Cook from being bitten by Aygeman. However, Regan is accidentally staked during the one-sided battle that follows and his ashes follow Long's into the basement. Curran's request about Regan's territory is met with disapproving glares, but coven members realise they are in trouble because Portal plans to keep them confined until dawn does its worst. Deciding to keep Cook as a bargaining chip, Cox ties him to a chair alongside Dexter Fletcher and Ruth Jones, the farming couple who own the house and have been bound and gagged in the freezer room.

As Cilla Black's `Love's Just a Broken Heart' plays on the soundtrack, Crosbie and Leong borrow machine-guns from the dead troopers and lead a rearguard against Portal's reinforcements. Curran sits back sneering as Aygeman and Myles enter the fray before Crook orders the soldiers to stop firing, as they are wasting ammunition. Cox proves the point by removing a bullet from his shoulder, as he explains to Cook that he is a turned human who only feeds on animals. But, as the time ticks on to 1:40am, Portal announces to Crook that he intends taking one of the vampires alive, as he has been in touch with the scientists at the Infinity cosmetics company who need skin and blood samples to discover the secret of eternal youth.

While the vampires plan a mass breakout so that one can double back and slaughter Portal's men unhindered, Cook manages to wriggle free and unties Jones, who is taken to the control point in the woods. As she protests her innocence in the entire affair, Cook opens a fridge to find it full of preserved body parts that the cannibalistic Fletcher insists were there when they moved in. When he hears the gunshot that offs Jones, he pleads with Cook to let him go, as he was simply following his demented spouse's orders. However, he is grateful when Cook puts a bucket on his head and it deflects as bullet, as Portal attempts to capture Curran as he flees on a motorbike, Leong as he kung-fus his way out of the barn and Myles as she shushes a couple of noisy cluckers while hiding in the hen house.

One of the birds gets a roasting after a missile is fired through the door and Cox and Aygeman take shelter in the cellar as Portal closes in for the kill. Crosbie plays the dotty old dear card as she shuffles out of the house on a zimmer frame. But she blows her cover by slotting a swords into the neck of a sympathetic trooper, while Leong perishes to a crossbow bolt. Myles is also captured and tethered to a frame in the field. But Curran makes it back to the farmhouse and Cook mocks his outdated bravado when he boasts of having fought alongside Alexander the Great. Instead, he cites Cy Endfield's Zulu (1964) in suggesting that the vampires try to cut a deal, which is precisely what Palmiero predicts they will do. However, Crook is not quite so savvy and winds up being chained to his own frame after Myles bites his hand when he tries to examine her.

Around 3am, Cox and a hooded warm body wander into the field to powwow with Portal. He is in no mood to listen, however, and captures Cox before shooting his companion. Yet, within seconds of them walking away, they receive a radio report of carnage in the woods and the explanation comes in successive shots of Curran baring his bloodied teeth, a bundle of hot water bottles lying on the grass and Cook emerging from a chest freezer. But, with the time moving on to 5:30am, Portal is beginning to lose patience. Thus, he has Crook and Myles staked, with the latter vanishing into a ball of flame to Cox's dismay.

Meanwhile, Cook helps himself to Curran's discarded suit and slips past Palmiero in the woods before he is butchered by the cackling Fletcher. He is dispatched by Aygeman, just as Curran releases Cox and he breaks the habit of an undead lifetime by biting Portal. They are picked up by Cook and Aygeman in an army truck and they drive off into the sunrise (at first) before a trio of white-coated beauticians arrive to take their samples from the rabid Portal and the picture ends on a commercial for Jeunes rejuvenation cream.

Despite ending on one of the few ill-judged japes in a pleasingly knowing parody (another would be the flaming flying chicken), Flemyng and writer Danny King can congratulate themselves on a job well done. The gags about Brexit, paedophiles and anti-ageing creams don't exactly make this a satire, even when Fletcher (whose character is called Thatcher) gets to deliver a line about Mrs Thatcher being to blame for everything. But there are plenty of wisecracks to go round, while few will forget the sight of Annette Crosby wielding a submachine gun like the one she has at home. Indeed, the cast consistently wins the audience over to what are essentially ciphers with fangs. But, while the more familiar faces enjoy themselves, Billy Cook seizes the opportunity to emerge from the shadow of his famous father, David Essex, whose 1973 hit `Hold Me Close' is splendidly employed over the closing scene.

On the technical side, cinematographer Chas Bain and production designer Russell de Rozario establish neat contrasts between the dim interiors and the moonlit woods, while James Seymour Brett's score is consistently catchy. Calling the shots for the first time, veteran actor Flemyng makes intelligent and laudably unflashy use of the camera. He may not entirely explain the significance of the fox prowling around the vicinity, but he resists the temptation to compose his action sequences from diced shakicam segments and keeps the sound (Paul Carter), visual (David Payne and Thierry Nguyen) and make-up effects (Sangeet Prabhaker) satisfyingly simple. Indeed, one is left with a keenish sense of anticipation for Eat Global, which is promised at the end of a credit crawl that includes a fond nod to Dad's Army. The good one, not Oliver Parker's execrable remake, whose sole saving grace was also provided by Annette Crosbie in tandem with the ever-excellent Julia Foster.

It's never a reassuring sign when a book or stage work is adapted to the screen under a different name. The decision to change the title of David Harrower's acclaimed 2005 play from Blackbird to Una clearly doesn't bother the Scottish playwright, as he agreed to produce the screenplay and probably felt that the revision established a certain individuating distance between the two pieces. But, somehow, it implies a surrender of authorial ownership to Benedict Andrews, the admired Australian theatre director making his debut behind the camera, whose decision to open out a story (which he brought to the Berlin stage) that would benefit from a stifling sense of confinement suggests both an understandable desire to impose one's own artistic imprint on the material and a decided lack of cinematic guile Following a flashback to the precocious Una Spencer (Ruby Stokes) wandering past a neighbour repairing his car and appearing with her blouse open in the back garden, the action returns to the present, as Una (Rooney Mara) returns home after a joyless sexual encounter in a nightclub bathroom. She showers and ignores mother Andrea (Tara Fitzgerald) tutting about her needing a decent haircut because she has seen a press cutting that has reopened an old wound. Fibbing about a doctor's appointment, Una sets off from her childhood house, as another flashback reveals her teenage self preparing to give evidence via a video link in the trial of Ray Brooks (Ben Mendelsohn). She looks into the lens and asks Ray why he left her alone. Arriving at a modern factory on an anonymous industrial estate, Una vomits in a flower bed before going inside and asking for Ray. Scott (Riz Ahmed) the foreman shows her to the glass-panelled canteen, where everyone can see her. She is pleased to see Ray for the first time in 15 years. But he is horrified to be reunited with this ghost from his past and accuses her of being a journalist seeking to trap him into revisiting the three months of madness that ruined their lives. He has changed his name to Peter Trevelyan in the hope of making a fresh start after four years inside, but Una mocks his choice before reminding him that they were lovers when she was 13 years old and had planned to run away to Europe together before he had abandoned her. Stung by the accusation, Ray insists that he was not a paedophile, as he had genuinely fallen in love with her, and had only realised his error when it was too late. Una reveals that her father had tried to find Ray to kill him, but he avers that he has done his time and is entitled to his privacy.

A colleague pops their head around the door to ask Ray if everything is okay. But, no sooner have they gone than Una demands to know if he has slept with any other underage girls and he reminds her that he had resisted her attempts to flirt with him at a neighbourhood barbecue. She dismisses his protests and claims that her shrink told her that predators have patterns and wonders if he would also have made a move on her sister Leah (Xanthe Gibson). Before he can counter, Ray is called away to a meeting with his boss, Mark (Tobias Menzies). But Una refuses to leave and they seem to share a recollection about bumping into each other at the local swimming baths and her friends asking questions in the changing room.

Some of the workers enter the canteen for their break and Scott suggests that Una should wait in reception. But she goes for a wander around the premises and peers through a window to see Ray struggling to break the news that six of the staff will be laid off. Hiding in the stationery cupboard, she recalls telling the court how much she loved him and seeing him so ill at ease stirs her feelings for him, especially as Mark has set Scott against him by hinting that he had selected him for redundancy. As the meeting ends, Una finds Ray in his office and picks up a photograph of his wife, Yvonne (Natasha Little). She asks if she knows about his past and he nods before whisking Una away to a storeroom to avoid the furious Scott, as the rest of the workforce heads home.

As they chat, Una reveals that she has envied him the chance to disappear, as she has remained in the same house and knows people still gossip about her. Ray insists she was never a helpless victim, as she had wanted him to make a move on her and he regrets being too weak to resist her. However, he was taken by her headstrong impatience to grow up and they reminisce about the phone signals they had used and how even his car parking had been coded so they could meet in the nearby park. She remembers him bringing a blanket for them to lie on in the trees and he protests that they had mutual romantic feelings for each other than went beyond pure lust.

Mark comes looking for Ray and they take cover in the washroom. He waits outside a cubicle, as Una reminds him of the first time they had sex in a seaside bed and breakfast. But he had failed to return from buying cigarettes and she had searched the shops and pubs in the vicinity before reaching the conclusion that the surrogate father who has become her lover had used and deserted her. Scared at being alone and a long way from home, Una had phoned her parents. But, while she had tried to protect Ray, the police had insisted on her being examined and the test results condemned him.

They are interrupted by Mark barging in, but Una hides Ray in the cubicle and asks him to leave. As soon as they are alone, Ray promises Una that he had come back for her and had been appalled to find the room empty. Indeed, he had also called the cops to report her as missing. However, the enormity of their plight had dawned on him and he had gone to the pub for some Dutch courage, only for his furtive behaviour to arouse suspicion. He swears that his lawyer had forced him to testify that he had run away, as it made him seem remorseful. But he had never meant to jilt her and explains that he had felt more guilt at leaving her to face the music than he had about sleeping with her.

Certain they are now alone, Ray and Una return to the canteen, where they laugh as they sweep the items off the table tops. Admitting that he has said nothing to Yvonne, Ray asks Una if she has a job or a boyfriend. She proves evasive and asks if he ever thinks of her, as she wanders off towards the staff lockers. He concedes that he still fantasises about her and puts up no resistance when she unzips him. They undress and lie on the floor together, but when she urges him to make love to her, Ray rolls away and she asks if he no longer fancies her because she is too old. Dressing hurriedly, Ray flees and runs into Scott, who is still fuming. However, Ray shows him the redundancy list to reassure him that his name isn't on it and suggests that Mark is pitting them against each other. Scott calms down and agrees to take care of Una because Ray has to get home. But Una is not in the mood for leaving and persuades Scott to take her back to his place for a drink. As Ray dozes off after getting things ready for a garden party, Una and Scott make out on his sofa. She bursts into tears and declares that Ray is her father and that she needs to see him before she goes. Borrowing a white dress belonging to Scott's girlfriend, she convinces him to take her to the party.

Scott is puzzled when the elegant Yvonne seems not to recognise Una, but Ray spots her immediately and begs Scott to get rid of her. However, she refuses to leave and wanders into the bedroom belonging to Ray's stepdaughter, Holly (Isobelle Molloy). She lays down on the bed and remembers holding Ray's hand while riding a Ferris wheel and feeling special when he told her he loved her. Holly wakes Una up and they are chatting when Ray finds them. He asks Una to be sensible, but she runs away and Scott and Yvonne watch from the driveway as Ray catches up with Una and pleads with her not to make a scene, as he has paid for his crime and is now trying to be a good father. She hesitates when he promises that his feelings for her were pure and she walks away after he kisses her and strokes her face. As he turns back towards the house, however, it's clear that he has a lot of explaining to do.

It's easy to imagine the mind games between Una and Ray being played out with a raw intensity in front of a live audience. But, by opening out the action and embellishing it with a surfeit of flashbacks and directorial flourishes, Andrews has not only dissipated the tension, but he has also denied Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn the opportunity to give concerted performances. Instead of keeping Thimios Bakatakis's trained on the pair, as they negotiate their reunion, Andrews has allowed editor Nick Fenton to fragment their exchanges and clutter them with cutaways that enervate the serpentine exchanges as much as the pulsating throb of Jed Kurzel's electronic score.

Given that Harrower's one-act play needed expanding in order to bring it to feature length, the introduction of Scott, Mark and Yvonne makes perfect sense. But, by all accounts, Harrower and Andrews have also altered the emphasis of the narrative by making Una seem so unbalanced that one is left feeling something akin to pity for Ray, who similarly appears to have become more reactive than manipulative. Thus, instead of seeking to exploit Una's vulnerability, as Humbert Humbert does in Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Ray comes across as a decent sort of chap being denied his right to a second chance. Indeed, by having Mark turn Scott against him, he is made to seem like a serial victim who is given nowhere to hide in the cavernous and transparent spaces concocted by production designer Fiona Crombie. This may be the intention, this time round, but this approach bowdlerises rather than improves the source material and, more damningly, it ducks the issues raised in leaving viewers to reach their own judgements.

Since making her name as Lisbeth Salander in David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011), Mara has sometimes struggled with nuance and casting her as another damaged soul feels a little lazy after Alison Pill and Michelle Williams had garnered such enthusiastic reviews opposite Jeff Daniels on Broadway. The decision to overlook him in favour of Andrews's compatriot also seems a little eccentric, especially as the rest of the cast are so obviously not straining to maintain an English accent, as is the case with both Mara and Mendelsohn. Nevertheless, the latter does summons sufficient moral ambiguity to keep the audience wondering, while Mara veers between nostalgic and recriminatory impulses to convey something of Una's corrupted appreciation of her self worth and her sexual potency. But Ruby Stokes does a more convincing job of conveying the depth of her unswerving adoration for a man who treated her like an adult when no one else would.

Two decades have passed since Burford's own Simon West made a magnificent impression with his debut feature, Con Air (1997). During this period, he has helmed blockbuster smashes like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and such uncompromising cult items as The Mechanic (2011) and Stolen (2012). He has even tried his hand at franchise entries like The Expendables 2 (2012) and the computer-generated horror, Night of the Dead: Darkest Dawn (2015). However, his bid to return to live-action with a bang proves something of a disappointment, as Stratton lacks the budget to enable it to stand out from its competitors in the crowded Bond-lite sub-genre. Adapted by Duncan Falconer from his own novel, this follows his memoir, First Into Action: A Dramatic Personal Account of Life Inside the SBS, in paying macho homage to the Special Boat Service of the Royal Navy. But it seems unlikely that this undemandingly formulaic actioner has enough about it to launch a series.

Following a caption explaining the wartime origins of the SBS and the influence it had on the formation of the US Navy Seals, the action pitches us somewhere near the Iranian border as ops crew Gemma Chan, Jake Fairbrother and Tom Felton use a computer feed to guide SBS officer Dominic Cooper and Navy Seal Tyler Hoechlin through a water pipe into a large industrial facility. Having nearly run out of air while swimming, the pair find the staff dead in a control room and have to fight a gun battle to get to a vehicle that will take them to a chopper pick-up. As they flee, Hoechlin is hit in the throat and his phone rings inside his body bag back at base, as his wife sends him the first picture of their newborn baby.

Distraught, Cooper returns to London to drown his sorrows with old salt Derek Jacobi, who lives on a neighbouring houseboat. However, boss Connie Nielsen breaks the news that his violation of Iranian air space and slaughter of civilians has caused an international incident. Moreover, the bio-weapons (nicknamed `Satan's Snow') that he had been sent to steal have fallen into enemy hands and, while Cooper apologises, he claims that the mission had been compromised and that his fury is reserved for those who set him up. Having been reprimanded for letting Cooper disregard orders, Chan and Felton give him a frosty reception. But he gets off to a solid start with Seal newcomer Austin Stowell, who once had his life saved by Hoechlin in Afghanistan.

At a debriefing session, Chan presents an image of the man who co-ordinated the attack on Cooper and Hoechlin and Nielsen recognises him as Thomas Kretschmann, a crack Russian agent who has been presumed dead for two decades. She confides that he is a ruthless operator and that they will need their wits about them to outfox him. Shortly afterwards, someone uses Satan's Snow on a small village and the unit wonder whether Kretschmann is taunting them or advertising his wares to a wealthy buyer. They suspect Rome-based weapons maker Igal Naor of making the device and snatch him off the street and threaten to kill his son unless he gives them the name of the person who hired him. This leads (after disposing of Naor) to the backstreet workshop of dental equipment engineer Rinat Khismatouline, which Cooper and Stowell photograph and bug before making their getaway in the nick of time. They watch Kretschmann arrive to collect the dispersal drones, but realises the room has been compromised and kills Khismatouline and his bodyguards. Stowell wants to nab Kretschmann while his goons are loading up the van and disobeys Cooper's order by making a gung-ho, gun-blazing assault on them. Chan rams the van to block its getaway, but Kretschmann speeds off regardless and, following a car chase, smashes into a bar in order to slip away through a back alley.

Back in Blighty, Cooper meets Nielsen in a park beside the Thames and she informs him that Kretschmann was sheltered by Olegar Fedoro, the man who had been sent to assassinate him and who had sheltered him while he rose through the ranks in Moscow. However, when he asked Kretschmann to ambush Cooper in Iran, he was murdered and a state espionage operation became a matter of personal vengeance. But Cooper has seen the files and has twigged that Kretschmann also has it in for Nielsen, as she had duped him into thinking she was going to defect when she was a young agent and then framed him as a double agent after seducing him. She urges Cooper to ignore the idea she might be playing a dishonourable game and he nods in acknowledgement that Kretschmann is the problem.

Needing Stowell on his side, Cooper takes him to meet Jacobi, who reveals that he had plucked him from an orphanage when he was nine and had been something of a mentor ever since. However, not everyone in the team is pulling in the same direction, as Felton is a spy and Kretschmann sends him a letter threatening to expose him unless he steals the drone that was captured in Rome. Somewhat bafflingly, Felton then tells Nielsen that her situation might be helped by negotiating the release of an American journalist being held by Chechen rebels. However, when Cooper and Stowell go to Uzbekistan for the exchange, they spot the hostage is missing his telltale tattoo and shoot the go-betweens and find their man garrotted in the back of a black van. Cooper outs Felton as a traitor, but he vanishes before Nielsen can neutralise him. However, Chan and Fairbrother have tapped into the captured drone and discovered that it contains the target data and that Kretschmann is planning to unleash Satan's Snow on London. Luckily, Fairbrother finds the ship unloading the drones at Canary Wharf and an SBS unit is sent to intercept. But, despite bullets flying everywhere during a high-speed pursuit, Kretschmann manages to escape up river, while a closing bridge enables him to slip into the canal system before Cooper and Stowell can stop him.

Back at HQ, Chan, Nielsen and Fairbrother watch with concerned intensity via a laptop link and tut with frustration when their foe evades them. However, seconds later, Chan is being abducted in her car by Felton, who tries to convince her that he didn't mean for things to go so wrong. While driving, Chan calls Cooper on her phone so he can hear Felton confess and shoot himself in the backseat. In a bid for redemption, however, he had taken Chan to the Camden bus garage and she is able to see Kretschmann and his oppos arrive with their big white parcel.

Trapped on the top deck of a red No.9 bus, Chan uses the flash on her phone to signal her whereabouts to Cooper after she passes Trafalgar Square. They follow on to a quieter park road, where they engage with the enemy. Stowell shoots and steers, while Cooper clambers aboard the bus and takes out Kretschmann's crew, while Chan cowers in the front seat powerless to stop him from preparing the drone and winding back the bus's roof to launch. However, Stowell kills the driver and flips the bus before rolling his own car into a hedge. Although badly injured, Cooper crawls out of the wreckage and tries to stop Kretschmann priming the drones. He enters the password as Stowell hauls Cooper away and a special unit arrives to bazooka the bus and the drones as they are about to take off, with the heat of the explosion destroying the chemical weapon load.

As life goes on as normal in the West End, Cooper hints at a romance with Chan, while he takes Stowell fishing with Jacobi after hearing he has decided to stay in Britain and see what happens next. But few watching this persistently pedestrian picture will hope that it takes place on screen. Falconer might shift books, but he still has a lot to learn about scriptwriting, although he is given precious little assistance by his partner in crime, Warren Davis II. Yet, while the story structure and characterisation are feeble, it's the infuriatingly fussy editing of Andrew MacRitchie that prevents the plot from gaining any momentum. The action sequences are also bereft of pace, as the incessant cutting saps the kinetic energy from Felix Wierdemann's imagery. Nathaniel Méchaly's prosaic score does nothing to raise the pulse rate, either.

As for the performers, Dominic Cooper does what he can with a role that Henry Cavill showed excellent judgement in rejecting. But only so much running around and shouting can make up for the thinness of the character delineation and the miserable reliance on expository dialogue to clunk the plot pieces into place. Derek Jacobi contributes a bluff cameo, while Thomas Kretschmann summons some hissable menace and Worcester College law graduate Gemma Chan rises above the clichéd inscrutability she is asked to convey. However, there's no escaping the transparency of Tom Felton's twitchy treachery, the peculiar inexactitude of Connie Nielsens British accent and the stolidity of Simon West's direction. Yet, he partially redeems himself with the best London bus thrill sequence since young Desmond Tester took a ride with one of Oskar Homolka's film cans in Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage (1936).

Several momentous anniversaries have been celebrated and commemorated in 2017, but the passage of four decades since NASA launched Voyagers 1 and 2 to explore the more remote regions of our solar system might have slipped under many people's radars. Yet, as Emer Reynolds reminds us in The Farthest, this audacious project should rank among humanity's proudest achievements, if only because it alerted any alien life forms out there to the existence of Chuck Berry's `Johnny B. Goode'.

When the two Voyager satellites were launched in 1977, they each carried a `golden record' containing greetings in 55 languages, as well as a variety of animal and human sounds, 115 photographs of our planet and civilisation, and 27 pieces of music from around the world. This was humankind's gift to any extraterrestrials that might intercept the little spacecraft, as well as a last testament, should the unthinkable ever happen, to prove that it once existed. As we see simulations of these durable objects tumbling into interstellar space, the voices of those who worked on the project marvel as how far they have travelled and how distant they now are from any other man-made matter. No wonder they sound relieved, humbled and proud.

A caption informs us that the original mission was to go on a `grand tour' of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Chief scientist Edward Stone, designer/navigator Charley Kohlhase and plasma wave investigator Don Gurnett explain what the NASA team knew about these planets and how to exploit them to project the Voyagers further into space. But imaging scientist Larry Soderblom and low energy charged particles investigator Tom Krimigis concede that expectations weren't high of what were presumed to be icy rocks or gaseous masses, as Pioneer 11 (which had been launched in 1973) had passed Jupiter and Saturn and sent back what was then unparalleled data. Imaging scientist Carolyn Porco notes that the cameras used were pretty primitive, but NASA wanted to know if it was possible to steer a craft through the asteroid belts around the planets and took the images as a pleasing bonus.

According to imaging team leader Brad Smith, Uranus was a blue-green blur and Neptune was little more than a green dot in a telescope and plasma scientist Fran Bagenal confirms that little was known about their make-up and nature. As there was only so much that could be gleaned through a lens and because humans are curious creatures, it was decided to send Voyager to do some snooping on our behalf. Indeed, Porco suggests that our willingness to explore is an evolutionary characteristic that will enable us to learn how to live on other worlds. Image science representative Candy Hansen-Koharcheck concurs that asking questions keeps us going forwards. But the mission also needed a bit of luck, as the four planets were only in alignment every 176 years and the geo-mathematics would have to be exact in order for the gravitational pull of each planet to slingshot the Voyagers into the next phase of their journey.

Lovely overlapping pages of calculations and equations waft across the screen, as one of the speakers notes that they last time the planets were lined up, exploration was being undertaken by wooden sailing ships. President Nixon was amused to learn that Thomas Jefferson was in office at that time, but he only envisaged the mission visiting Jupiter and Saturn when he gave the go ahead for Voyager in July 1972. But the 11 teams involved in the design and construction process exceeded their brief and anticipated that the craft would be able to travel further if needed. They also wanted to do more than just observe.

Project manager John Casani claims the golden record is Voyager's heartbeat and designer Jon Lomberg recalls the role that astronomer Carl Sagan played in deciding upon the disc's content and producing it for a mere $25,000. James F. Bell, the author of The Interstellar Age, calls this a message in a bottle. But it was mathematician Frank Drake who persuaded Sagan to send recordings rather than drawings and/or texts and he chuckles as he lets slip that the NASA bods are jealous that his metal disc gets more attention than their genius. Producer Timothy Ferris reveals that they recorded the sound at half speed to accommodate two hours of material, around 30 minutes of which is non-musical. It's also noted that the cover not only contained instructions on how to play a gramophone record, but also bore a sky map showing Earth's position and Casani remembers some scientists being apoplectic because he had given out position away to potential enemy aliens. Mechanical systems project engineer Frank Locatell applauds the use of a disc to show off our intelligence and entice any recipients into admiring the perspicacity of the sender species.

But is there anyone (or anything) inhabiting the 200 billion stars in the Milky Way and the 200 billion other galaxies in the known universe. Planetary scientist Heidi Hammel says there is a possibility that other life forms exist, but there are no guarantees. Imaging scientist Rick Terrile uses grains of sand on a six-foot table top to convey the enormity of space and Bell avers that aliens would have to be advanced to even notice a tiny craft shooting along at 10 miles per second. Yet it has still taken four decades for Voyager to get this far out into our solar system and Locatell notes that there is a lot of room out there, with the nearest galaxy being Andromeda, some two million light years away. This is on a collision course with our own galaxy and they are due to meet in five billion years time. But, as cosmologist Lawrence Krauss points out, such is the vastness of the surrounding space that they will pass by without serious collateral damage and this realisation makes it possible to posit that Voyager can continue unhindered for possibly billions of years into the future. Current project manager Suzanne Dodd finds such timeframes staggering, yet Bagenal notes that Voyager's journey in cosmic terms is the equivalent to a quick dart around the block.

In order to increase the chances of survival, NASA decided to build two satellites at Pasadena in California in 1972. Bell commends the CalTec crew responsible their design for having the finest `what if' minds imaginable, as they were able to foresee all manner of gremlins and problems and devise solutions for them. Casani recalls how they needed to arrange the 12ft diameter antenna and the propulsion systems in such a way that they wouldn't interfere with each other, while Stone reflects on how primitive these 800kg aluminium and silicon projectiles are by today's standards, as each has only three computers aboard the 10-sided craft hub nicknamed `the bus' with 240,000 times less memory capacity than a smartphone.

Cutting between archive footage of engineers at work and computer modulations of features like the magnetic sensor and the plutonium power supply, Reynolds lets the team explain the construction process and how the ships would work. One member compares it to a small school bus and insists that Voyager has a grace that belies its gangly appearance.

As we see archive footage of men in white hazmat suits tinkering with the craft on the launch pad, we see the golden record fitted into place to the accompaniment of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which was joined on the disc by Zairean pygmy girls singing an initiation song, the Japanese `Crane's Song', the Chinese `Flowing Streams' and the Indonesian gamelan piece, `Kinds of Flowers'. Ferris and Lomberg remember having six weeks to make the choices and being disappointed that The Beatles refused to licence anything. So, after debating whether to include something by Bob Dylan, they plumped for a blast of rock`n'roll, which prompted a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Steve Martin reveals that the first four words sent by the aliens were `Send More Chuck Berry'.

Ironically, Elvis Presley died four days before the launch date in August 1977. Locatell struggles for composure as he recalls seeing the satellites encased in their rockets and knowing that no human eyes would ever see them again. Kohlhase tuts at the press being put out because Voyager 2 was launched first and its sibling followed on a faster trajectory that enabled it to overtake in December. He also despairs that the media was more interested in the record than the science and Ferris recalls hastily convening a press conference at Frank Wolfe's Beachside Motel in a hall that had a thin partition separating the journalists from a Polish wedding.

They were launched on decommissioned Titan missiles, with V2 going on 20 August and V1 on 5 September. Locatell remembers the noise and the vibration, while Ferris and Lomberg were glad that what was essentially a large bomb did its job without a hitch. Infrared science rep Linda Spilker describes the sensation of watching the rocket disappear, while author Nick Sagan (who was seven at the time) muses on the fact that his recording of `Hello from the children of planet Earth' will long outlive him.

But, as Casini and Stone confess, the mission didn't get off to a great start, as the pummelling tumult of the launch confused V2s systems and it began initiating back-up programmes in the belief that it was failing. Reynolds charmingly uses a shot of a dipping kite to illustrate the point, while operations engineer David Linick recalls the newspaper headline `Mutiny in Space', as it appeared that NASA had lost control. But, as Hansen-Koharcheck explains, the craft had been too tightly programmed to allow for wriggle room and the code was tweaked before Voyager 1 took off a few weeks later. However, a leak nearly ruined the event and Stone, Casani and Kohlhase look back at the panic that the second propulsion stage might fail with wry relief, at V1 would have been lost before Jupiter but for three and a half seconds-worth of fuel.

Over a simulation of V1 separating from its boosters and opening out like an origami shape, Locatell holds back another tear as his part in the adventure comes to an end. Now is the time for the scientists to come to the fore. Krauss begins by describing how little they knew a human lifetime ago, when no one knew that space was expanding way beyond our galaxy following a big bang some 13.7 billion years ago. He also declares that space weighs something, but we have no idea what purpose this dominant force in the universe serves. Extreme close-ups of eyeballs suggest the looking and learning that humankind still has to do. But they also serve as a blinking pillow shot to allow two years of travel to pass so that Voyager can approach Jupiter.

After a journey of nearly 400 million miles, V1 got its first glimpse of Jupiter in March 1979, with V2 following behind four months later. A timelapse sequence shows the distant dot become a close-up of a planet 10 times the diameter of Earth, yet with no solid surface because it is primarily made up of hydrogen and helium. Atmospheric scientist Andrew Ingersoll explains how the gas is compressed and is ferociously hot and reveals that the red spot (which could easily swallow two Earths) is a storm that had been blowing for centuries. The images sent back were monochrome because they offered a higher resolution and colour is added by those processing the pictures at NASA. He was instantly excited by the footage, as it challenged existing notions on the turbulence of the gasses and this led to fears that the magnetic forces would destroy Voyager at the first hurdle, as its sensitive systems were only covered by the kind of silver foil that would be used to roast a turkey.

The twinkle in Locatell's eye as he tells this story is delightful and Voyager obviously survived in order to get close enough to make sound recordings of the radiation onslaught being emitted by Jupiter. Gurnett explains that the whooshing sounds denotes the first lightning heard anywhere other than Earth and he says space is a noisy place. Kohlhase and Soderblom, however, were more focused on the moons. They expected Calisto and Ganymede to be full of impact craters, but no one thought Europa would be so icily smooth or that it would be host to the largest salt ocean in the solar system. But the showstopper was Io, whose volcanic eruptions were spotted after Voyager had passed by navigation engineer Linda Morabito, who noticed the movements on observational images.

With new pictures arriving every 48 seconds, the flybys were periods of hectic activity with the NASA team expected to report to the press within three hours of new data becoming available. But a final surprise was in store, as Voyager took the first ever picture of Jupiter's ring. This changed the nature of the mission, as Terrile recalls, as they were now primed to expect equally astonishing returns from Saturn. Porco smiles as she notes the Homeric nature of the odyssey, as there were long periods of travel between intense bursts of activity.

While Voyager presses on, Reynolds returns to the golden disc and the multi-lingual greetings that were recorded by Carl Sagan at Cornell University, where he was Professor of Astronomy. Wife Linda Salzman played a key role and suggested their son joining Amahl Drake and Janet Sternberg in recording messages that the latter compares to pro-Tweets. She spoke Portuguese, while Drake knew Arabic to go along with the salutations in Ancient Greek, Nguni African, Rajasthani, Nepali and Mandarin. As The Carpenters sing `Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft', we see lots of children''s drawings of aliens and Porco and Soderblom debate the existing of intelligent life and our chances of finding these living needles in a cosmic haystack. Casani and Drake have no doubts, with the latter speculating that radio waves we don't yet know how to detect are reaching us all the time. However, Krauss points out that civilisations don't necessarily overlap in historical terms and that aliens who might have been ready to contact other species were too far in evolutionary advance of possible messages. Ingersoll reassuringly states that time and space travel is notoriously difficult and that aliens are unlikely to show up unannounced. Yet, Voyager managed to cross one billion miles of space to rendezvous with Saturn in the autumn of 1980. A timelapse sequence shows the planet getting closer, as Porco and Bagenal recall how rapidly the new discoveries came as data was returned to Mission Control. The excitement is conveyed by the throbbing rock music accompanying a montage showing the colours and texture of Saturn and its rings. However, as Casani interjects, the focus of the mission was on the largest moon, Titan.

Bell explains that many believe Earth shared a similar make-up before life appeared and it was considered worth sacrificing V1 to focus on Titan in order to let V2 (some nine months behind) go on to Uranus and Neptune. However, conditions prevented the cameras from penetrating the debris and scientists had to rely on radio signals. Then, the scan platform froze on V2 when it passed behind Saturn and there was gloomy panic that its mission was over. But the engineers manipulated the gears to restore the flow of lubricant and, after several painstaking hours, the situation was rectified to the relief of all.

Pink Floyd's `Us and Them' plays over the rear view of Saturn retreating into the distance, as Porco opines that the Voyager project enthused her because it showed the rest of the solar system what earthlings could do. Ferris reveals that they included a Back fugue on the record because it has a mathematical structure and that maths and physics could be the common language through which we communicate. But Hansen-Koharcheck thinks we are being arrogant in believing that an alien encounter would be as cosy as an episode of Star Trek. Humanity hasn't figured out how to communicate with dolphins and whales, so to believe it could easily befriend alien races is deluded.

It was also decided that 115 photographs encapsulating life on Earth should be included and Drake and Lomberg recall the problems of selecting sufficiently representative images. They were also keen to include anatomical studies, but NASA had been so stung by the media backlash about line drawings of a naked man and woman being sent up on Pioneer that it rejected a shot of a pregnant woman and her partner for fear of being accused of sending smut into space. Yet such was the sophistication of Voyager 2 that its computers could be reprogrammed to operate in the darker environs of Uranus and Neptune and Bell describes how the cameras were re-calibrated to slower shutter speeds, while the craft itself was taught how to pirouette so that nothing was missed as it hurtled along.

V2 had travelled 1.8 billion miles by the time it arrived at Uranus in January 1986. Brad Smith reflects on this once in a lifetime achievement with a wistful smile, as a caption informs us that the craft flew just 51,000 miles above the planet's clouds. As Bell recalls, a point of light became a world as the images of an aquamarine sphere came back to NASA and he remembers each one making people pause and exclaim. We are shown beautiful colour approximations (as we were with Saturn), as Stone recalls the shock discovery that Uranus had its magnetic pole near the equator. But Smith laments that it was the least photogenic of the planets and Hammel almost feels sorry for it that it missed its chance to shine because parts of the surface virtually shut down as they faced towards the sun.

Luckily, Terrile saves its face by commending its moons, with Miranda being the star turn because its surface was so gashed and pitted. Soderblom describes how the weakness of gravity would impact on a fall from a cliff on Miranda, while a caption reveals that V2 found two new rings and 10 tiny moons during its visitation. But the day of the press conference coincided with the Challenger disaster and Bagenal, Spiker and Dodd recall the shock and sadness felt among the Voyager team at the loss of life, but also at the fact their news would be overshadowed. A news clip shows President Ronald Reagan poignantly connecting exploration with courage, as a split screen contrasts the plumes of smoke following the mid-air explosion with the serene beauty of a crescent shot of Uranus.

While we wait for V2 to reach its next destination, Krauss ruminates on the purpose of science and how it has changed beyond all recognition in a short space of time. As kids we ask `why?', when the key question must always be `how?' and it frustrates Krauss that so many people think science should have a technological end product when its real glory lies in ideas. Yet the more we know, the more insignificant we become in the grander scheme of things, with the multiverse theory being the latest concept to take us further away from the centre of the action. Ironically, V2 needed to be taught some new tricks during its three and a half year voyage to Neptune, in order to function in the colder, darker environment some three billion miles from Earth.

While the onboard computers had to be updated, so did the reception equipment at NASA because it only had one shot at capturing the weakened signal. But the timelapse sequence brings this pale blue planet into focus and Bagenal recalls the thrill of getting up close to an orb that had only previously been photographed as a speck. Hammel was also blown away by the `Great Dark Spot' that nobody had foreseen, while everyone relished the challenge of photographing rings twice as dark as soot against a jet black background. Given these circumstances, the resulting images are phenomenal, as is the fact that the team sent V2 skimming 3000 miles above Neptune's polar clouds in order to get images of its moon, Triton. This required split-second timing and the success of the gambit sums up the audacity and expertise of the entire Voyager unit.

Soderblom was charged with imaging the icy surface of Triton and was confused as to why the images kept refusing to line up. So, he viewed them through red and blue lenses to create a 3-D effect and was astonished to discover geysers erupting on the moon. Linick, Bagenal and Hammel share Soderblom's exhilaration at making a discovery no one had even considered possible this far from the Sun. The last moments of exploring Neptune proved very emotional, as the planetary phase of V2's mission had ended and it now became an interplanetary craft. But the team had a celebratory party and Chuck Berry performed live on the steps of the HQ building.

Meanwhile, V1 had gone 3.7 billion miles from Earth and Carl Sagan suggested turning the camera back to take a unique picture of the solar system pointing towards the Sun. Amazingly, there was opposition to the project, as it had no strict scientific value. But Sagan went to the NASA top brass and the camera was pointed towards home on 14 Febrary 1990 for the greatest `selfie' of all time. Hammel and Porco remember the thrill of seeing Earth caught in a sunbeam and it appears in the shot as a pin prick of light less than the size of a pixel in the image. When he showed the findings to the press, Sagan spoke about human history having played out on that speck and he stressed the responsibility we have to preserve it. Moreover, as Nick Sagan deduces, the picture proved that we are alone and that we are the only ones who can save us from ourselves.

A caption reveals that the cameras were turned off as the Voyagers moved further into space and the operation base was moved out of the JPL complex. But the mission continued, as the craft headed out of the heliosphere and into the galaxy beyond. Bell remembers the day in August 2012 that V1 popped out of the Sun's bubble and became the first man-made object to exit our solar system. Dodd compares it to the Little Engine That Could and Porco is humbled that we were able to take such a giant step in such an understated way. Daily messages are sent home, taking 18 hours to reach Earth, while V2 keeps plugging away in its wake to make its own small pieces of history.

As Soderblom concludes, there will never be another mission like it and the team members take pleasure in the fact that the satellites themselves, as well as the golden discs, will alert anyone who finds them to humanity's advanced intelligence. Bell notes that the craft are expected to survive for an incalculable period of time past the final shutdown of their systems and they will serve as evidence that we sent them. Krauss retains faith in the infinitesimal possibility that one or both of the Voyagers will be found. But, as Dodd avers, we shall long have lost contact with them and she finds that sad because we will never know which signal is goodbye.

Aptly closing on Pinkzebra's `We Won't Stop Dreaming', this is a fitting tribute to everyone involved in this awe-inspiring project. The eight year-old Liverpudlian who placed James Burke second only behind The Beatles in terms of hero worship would have loved this film and it's reassuring that his 56 year-old Oxford-based counterpart feels exactly the same way. From start to finish, Reynolds finds riveting images to complement the dense flow of verbal information and cinematographer Kate McCullough, editor Tony Cranstoun, CGI creator Ian Benjamin Kenny and visual effects designer Enda O'Connor surpass themselves in capturing the enormity and beauty of the information disseminated by Voyagers 1 and 2. They are the stars of the show, but the NASA boffins prove wonderful tour guides on the journey of a lifetime.

Many of us will have favourite adverts, whether they contain cartoon crocodiles eating baked beans under the stairs or donkeys whose sole reply to all questions is `thistles'. But, as Scott Harper demonstrates in You're Soaking In It, the days of the story-led commercial reliant on the power of persuasion may well be numbered, as Madison Avenue finds itself increasingly fighting a losing battle with Silicon Valley. Taking its title from a Palmolive liquid soap campaign, this is the latest presentation from the Dochouse outfit based at the Curzon Bloomsbury in London.

Cannily opening with a trailer for itself that mimics the ads that clutter up the Internet, this timely documentary leaves viewers in no doubt that they are being targeted 24/7 by avaricious capitalist conglomerates. Talking heads warn that every aspect of life is being exploited to elicit responses that inform the personal profiles that enable companies to understand our tastes and interests with the express aim of separating us from our money. A caption reveals that $200 billion was spent on advertising in 2005, while the figure was $600 billion a decade later.

Keith Reinhard of DDB Worldwide admits that no one knows why advertising works, but suggests that humour and emotion have remained constants since the glory days of Mad Men. He is standing in the office of Bill Bernbach, whom he dubs `the Picasso of the advertising business', as he realised that the best ads played on the passions rather than the intellect and he transformed the nature of advertising with the Volkswagen Lemon campaign. A montage of office footage gives way to a string of well-known ads before George Lois recalls how he and Bernbach fostered in a golden age of television commercials.

He is pleased to have been the model for Don Draper (Jon Hamm) in Mad Men, but is much prouder of creating ads that inspired water cooler gossip and slogans that passed into the language. He loved surfing the zeitgeist and being able to spot the next trend and still views this as an instinctive talent. But Reinhard recalls how researchers appeared in the 1960s claiming to know how advertising worked and offered to sell their expertise to gullible clients. Pointing out the variables that can make or break a commercial, David Brandt of Nielsen cracks the old joke about 50% of advertising budgets being wasted, but nobody knows which half. Over old footage of Henry Weaver of General Motors discussing targeting consumers, Brandt explains how Nielsen started out seeking door-to-door feedback on commercials and also used a pupil dilation technique on volunteer watchers. But similar gambits involving voice intonation and sweat levels have become obsolete since life became a marketplace.

Journalist Doc Searls stands beneath the neon billboards in Time Square in New York and suggests that brand advertising took its name from scorching marks into cattle hides. Today's logos operate in much the same way, although such techniques have a certain artistry about them. The Internet, however, doesn't seek mass appeal, it plumps for a direct response. In many ways, this is the electronic version of junk mail and Searls is concerned that we are too naive to understand it. Ethan Zuckerman from the MIT Media Lab also considers online advertising to be the Internet's original sin because it tempts users seeking free content to give up details about the kind of websites they visit and how frequently they do so.

In order to suggest this connectivity, Harper superimposes screeds of data over people going about their business in the street. He also uses what look like motion capture dots to show how everything we do is noted and stored away to help advertisers and sellers understand our minds and our moods. Jason Spero from Google and Steve Irvine from Facebook explain how this works and how vital it is to be able to track our online movements at all times. The latter points out how social media sites persuade us into willingly putting details about our identity and biography into the public domain, while Facebook's spread now means that all time has become primetime as far as advertisers are concerned.

Each connection reveals our geographical location and our interests and with 400 hours of new content being added each minute, advertisers have an unending supply of material to attach themselves to. Kim Larsen from YouTube, Jamie Micaels from Twitter and Jaideep Mukerji from Instagram admit that they seize every piece of data they can from users to make it easier for marketeers to sell to them. But it took them a while to realise that old-style adverts were less effective and it was only with the invention of the banner ad and the pop-up ad that things began to change.

Zuckerman takes the credit/blame for the latter in 1995 and he makes a joking apology while explaining that the Internet fragmented the old TV audience by making their own choices of viewing. Advertisers who could once reach a whole country with a blanket campaign could now be ignored by sizeable numbers of potential consumers and the clients needed them to find a new way of touching base. This meant the small agencies were challenged by the likes of WWP Group, which has become the world's biggest advertising and marketing company with an annual income of $20 billion. CEO Sir Martin Sorrell's reward for changing the rules saw him earn some $70 million in 2015 and he reckons that 80% of the techniques that Don Draper would have used are now redundant.

With companies now spending equal amounts on traditional and online campaigns, the mood has changed at the annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and Andrew Bruce from the French PR group, Publicis, finds it all glamorous and exciting. Pablo Del Campo from Saatchi & Saatchi and Fred Foster from Omnicom share his view, but admit to the fact that brave new worlds always come with risks attached. They also know that the pace of change is terrifying and that it's impossible to predict how things will look in five years. The mantra, therefore, is innovate or die.

According to a caption, ad execs are rapidly being replaced by algorithms that buy, sell and target advertising and that Math Men are the new Mad Men. Jag Duggal from Quantcast says that the trick is to glean information to ensure the relevancy of the ads being aimed at each individual. Paul Rutkowski from Varick Media goes through the process of dropping cookies into browsers while users are browsing online. But he can also detect IP addresses and deduce the location of a potential customer to within a few feet. This enables him to hold an auction of content-associated clients and conduct a brief bidding war to sell them a pop-up spot tagged to the page being viewed.

This shouldn't surprise anyone who uses the Internet, but there is something unsettling about the graphic showing how quickly and extensively connections are formed from the second we click on a link and how much money is involved in the process. Chris Jay Hoofnagle at the University of California at Berkeley uses a programme called Lightbeam to show how a Google search for the US Presidential Election and the selection of a Washington Post article attracts over 70 third-party trackers who will derive data from eavesdropping on our transaction. This number increases dramatically if the link is left open and each party will share information and keep records of your footprints.

Gathering is the first part of the profiling process and Michael Kosinski from Stanford University describes how `behavioural residue' is pulled together to enable advertisers to gauge your personality, likes and moods. The animation showing how pixels of data coalesce to form a crash dummy alter ego is decidedly unnerving, especially when Kosinski concludes that machines are better at judging human emotions than other people because emotions are little more than quantifiable pieces of software being stored in our heads.

Rana el Kaliouby from Affectiva reveals that her company devised a means of reading emotions from any image captured on camera on a phone or laptop. A team in Cairo deciphered a range of facial expressions and taught the Affectiva computer system to recognise them and translate their meaning. Carl Marci from Nielsen confirms that his company have tapped into skin chemistry, eye tracking and brain pulses to get refine their techniques for grabbing reliable information from users.

As huge sums are involved in Big Data, the bright minds that once went to Wall Street are now going to Silicon Valley, where the likes of Mukerji and Duggal started out as `data monkeys' and are now revered as `data scientists'. Most employees are ambitious twentysomethings who were dismissed as nerds at school for finding numbers romantic and magical. We see a group of unnamed employees kitting up for a team-building duelling game, as they explain what drew them to California and most cite the chance to be on the cutting edge of the human experience rather than the salaries. They also find it sexier that hard data wins accounts rather than the cocktail hour charisma of old-school marketeers. But Hoofnagle is concerned about the power these people have at their fingertips in a `non-privacy zone' where the content of unsent and deleted emails can still be monitored. He says such tracking is invasive and curtails our ability to experience the world on our own terms. We see some junior school children discussing their computer use in class and they are very savvy about the surveillance capacity of the sites they visit. Zuckerman and Kosinski are alarmed by how badly protected this data is and how easily it can be traced to named individuals by the unscrupulous on the black market. Indeed, judges often consider data to be a corporate asset and often sanction its transfer during bankruptcy cases. Spero and Irvine insist that Google and Facebook do everything they can to keep customers safe. But this lack of regulation makes every user vulnerable and Ruthowski admits it's like the Wild West because so few of their actions can be deemed criminal.

Gabriel Cubbage from Adblock protests that more needs to be done and we see him approaching strangers on the street to show them how to down load his app to block adverts and tracking scripts, increase security and speed up phones and computers. Naturally, the advertising industry detests such interference and 100 of the 200,000 people working in the business in the US are trying to find ways around ad blockers. Ruthowski boasts that his company helps keep the World Wide Web free and 99 of the top 100 websites are ad supported. But the big players are looking for ways to disguise adverts as desirable content Since 2006, YouTube has become an increasingly important cultural phenomenon and Larsen insists it is a democratising force, as it allows small people to display their talents and get noticed. Among them is Lauren Riihimaki, who set up LaurDIY to give tips on how to make stuff and she now has around three million subscribers, the majority of whom are women. She finds this empowering and enjoys being able to support herself by reaching out to others. Larsen suggests viewers prefer glimpses into real lives than manufactured reality and Riihimaki clearly has made a connection judging by the girls screaming at her at a red carpet event. But she also makes site ads for Starbucks, who exploit her `big sister/best friend' image to make their promo seem like another piece of fun advice. She stresses that her management team reject unsuitable proposals, but Harper lists some big names in her ad CV.

With online advertising spends now exceeding those on television, Clinton Street teachers Gregory Karout and Kristin Jensen explain how important it is to teach children how to evaluate what they are watching. We see them viewing an online tutorial featuring two kids building a Lego model and, while the Clinton class seem shrewd in their analysis, one or two also concede that the video had made them want the kit being `advertised'. The technique seems benign, but it's also sneaky, as even those who can spot the method are still seduced by the product.

Such is the dependency on algorithms, Kosinski predicts a time when the ad industry will become redundant, as computers will be able to respond to or predict a person's wants and needs. He posits that traditional advertising will eventually cease because people will trust the recommendations made by their computers. Moreover, El Kaliouby believes sensors within electrical goods will become so sensitive to user moods that they will know the best time to make a product suggestion, while cameras in public spaces will be able to filter images and send them to the right profiles to store information about everywhere we go and everything we do.

As the Clinton kids make surveillance devices out of plasticine, Lois laments the decline of the traditional advertising business and complains that nowhere is safe from prying lenses. Zuckerman blames old school advertising for being such an imprecise artform when clients want foolproof science. But Big Data knows its current metrics are pretty rudimentary and Seals reassures us that humans are too unpredictable to be worked out so easily. Indeed, Reinhard swears that inspiration from observation is still the way to go, as a leap of faith is still required in a data world. However, the last word goes to Zuckerman, who reminds us that we still have choice and that we still have the power to reject what we oppose.

This reaffirmation of the human element in the commercial sphere is worth making. But most will leave screenings of this provocative study with a sense of despondency and foreboding. Harper provides a summation of existing knowledge rather than offering anything revelatory and, thus, follows in the footsteps of the many eco docs that appeared around the Millennium. In many ways, this presents viewers with similar problems, as their use of an adblocker solves the wider problem to the same degree that their recycling helps counter global warming. But the warnings about sacrificing essential freedoms for deceptive liberties are just as grave, especially as political parties begin to use similar strategies to canvas votes.

Ironically, Harper sometimes risks distracting the audience from what the talking heads are saying by bombarding them with arresting images that have been pugnaciously edited together by Roland Schlimme, who also helped Mark Alberts in producing the animation and special effects. But the audiovisual dynamism works well with the subject matter and keeps the audience scouring the screen for nuggets that help clarify and comment on the expert analysis. Some might bridle at the latitude that companies like Facebook, Google and YouTube are afforded in making a sales pitch. However, without directly editorialising, Harper often presents the testimonials in a way that reminds the audience to keep their guard up. Consequently, whether they go home and instal an adblocker or not, few are going to view online advertisements in quite the same way again.

The pace of urban existence fascinated the Modernists and they saw cinema as the perfect medium for capturing its sights and rhythms. Various artistic movements responded to the dynamism of city living, with the Constructivists and the Futurists very much to the fore in celebrating technological innovation and new modes of transportation, as well as the imposing physicality of skycraping architecture. But, while it was possible to tell the eight million or more stories that unfolded in these concrete jungles in a traditionally melodramatic manner, the visceral sensation of dwelling in a metropolis required something more avant-garde.

By common consensus, the first `city symphony' is Charles Sheeler and Paul Strand's Manhatta (1921), a Cubist snapshot of Lower Manhattan street bustle whose beautifully composed and restlessly edited images are offset by intertitled quotations from Walt Whitman. Whether consciously or not, the style was imitated in two tours of the French capital, René Clair's Paris qui dort (1923) and Alberto Cavalcanti's Rien que les heures (1926), before Walter Ruttmann applied the techniques of juxtaposing, eliding and superimposing images to approximate the speed of daily living to a feature in Berlin, Symphony of a Great City (1927).

Providing an invaluable record of buildings that were destroyed during the Second World War, this meticulously manufactured slice of poetic truth deserves to be as well known as Dziga Vertov's Man With a Movie Camera (1929), which actually cheated in its `day in the life' by filming in three Ukrainian cities: Odessa, Kharkiv and Kiev. But, apart from Jean Vigo's À propos de Nice (1930), few examples that followed in the wake of Vertov's masterpiece have received their critical due, including André Sauvage's Études sur Paris (1928), Anson Dyer's A Day in Liverpool, Adalberto Kemeny and Rudolf Lustig's Sao Paolo - Sinfonia do Metropole, Joris Iven's Rain (all 1929), Akira Iwasaki's Asphalt Road, Hermann Weinberg's City Symphony (both 1930), Jay Leyda's A Bronx Morning and Manoel de Oliveira's study of Oporto, Douro, Faina Fluvial (both 1931).

According to the poet Ezra Pound: `in the city the visual impressions succeed each other, overlap, overcross, they are cinematic'. Yet the form largely died out with the coming of sound and only sporadic instances appeared into the 1960s. But it influence can be seen in the work of Godfrey Reggio, Michael Glawogger and Thomas Schadt, who marked the 75th anniversary of Ruttmann's landmark documentary with Berlin Symphony in 2002. Thus, director Alex Barrett and writer Rahim Moledina are contributing to a rejuvenated artform with London Symphony, which revives the spirit of actuality pioneers John Grierson (who had despised the city symphony format for prioritising the masses over the individual) and Humphrey Jennings and follows the elegiac example of Patrick Keiller's London (1994) and Julien Temple's London: The Modern Babylon (2012) in capturing the changing moods of one of the world's greatest cities.

Divided into four movements that have been adroitly assembled to the music of James McWilliam, this works best if viewers avoid trying to play `spot the landmark' and allow the themes to suggest themselves through the flow of images that have been beautifully photographed in lustrous monochrome by Barrett, Diana Olifirova, Keifer Nyron Taylor, Jackie Teboul and Simon Thorpe. Some are more subtly expressed than others. But there is no shortage of ideas to amuse, entice and provoke in this dexterous montage of some 300 places around a capital that remains vibrant and defiant in the face of terrorist atrocities and catastrophic fires.

Opening on a shot of trees before dawn, the First Movement shows London's different architectural styles at first light, as stone walls, half-timbered facades, thatched roots, elegant gables, Georgian terraces and suburban estates jostle for attention with turrets and windmills. A phalanx of cranes rises above the cityscape, as the buildings of tomorrow take shape under the watchful gaze of statues commemorating past achievement. Modern edifices of stone, glass and steel tower in eclectic shapes and sizes above classical churches and august institutions that were probably just as contentious in their own day.

This diversity extends to the Underground, where commuters scuttle along walkways and down escalators to read books, papers, kindles and phones without making the slightest attempt to make contact with another passenger. On the surface, taxis, buses and trams dominate the roads, while the screen splits into quarters to show some of the surviving pay phones before the camera lingers on `Out of Order', artist David Mach's wonderful row of dominoing red call boxes. Another montage of domiciles follows, with the towerblocks suddenly seeming mournfully vulnerable after Grenfell. We also get a glimpse of some homeless people sleeping rough on the pavements before we are taken on a tour of riverside apartments in the gentrified dockland districts. But it's here that Barrett makes one of his few missteps by gauchely inserting a shot of a Monopoly board, in case we've missed the point of his associational juxtapositions.

Fortunately, he moves on quickly to show people playing chess with giant pavement pieces, cyclists participating in a road race, park cricketers enjoying a game and the statue of Peter Osgood looking down on Chelsea's home ground of Stamford Bridge. Onwards past the Emirates and Wembley, we see a woman sculling down the Thames that provides a safe harbour for historic battleships and state-of-the-art pleasure boats alike. On dry land, cable cars glide through the air over Greenwich, while the London Eye turns slowly on the South Bank. Everything looks small and insignificant from vantage points like these and ArcelorMittal Orbit at the Olympic Park, with those making their way across the roof of the Millennium Dome looking as much like ants as those scurrying along the city streets. They pass war memorials without a second glance, although the camera pauses to pay its respects by the Kindertransport monument at Liverpool Street Station.

The implication here (whether it is true of not) is that London has always opened its arms to those in need of sanctuary and the Second Movement begins with a series of idyllic images of parkland and water. Birds of all kinds flutter between the trees, while ducks and swans make drolly contrasting progress over ponds and lakes. Squirrels nibble, pigeons peck, deer slumber in the sunshine and dogs chase sticks, as joggers amble along footpaths past tennis courts and chip-and-putt courses. Such exertions prove too much for many, however, and they sit on benches and sprawl on blankets to read. Other snooze, feed the birds or chat on their phones, as the more energetic visit the Peace Pagoda in Battersea or take pedaloes for a spin. Close-ups of flowers in bloom prompt diversions to a horticultural show, a craft fair, a jumble sale and a street market. A secondhand record stall catches the eye in an arcade before a montage of exotic foodstuffs (including Kosher and Halal meats) again hints at London's ethnic diversity. But a 15- and then a 32-way split depicting rubbish bins suggests the wasted produce that could help feed those in need before we see a man scrabbling in a wheelie bin. Shots of fast food cooking presage a swift jaunt around Chinatown and a rather abrupt cut to the plaques marking the Kingston Upon Thames residences of moving picture pioneer Eadweard Muybridge. Some naked flesh is briefly glimpsed in one of his zoopraxiscope studies before we are treated to an obvious, but well-made contrast between close-ups of people stuffing their faces in chic riverside eateries and those shopping in foodbanks and being grateful for a hot meal in a soup kitchen.

The switch from scenes of abject poverty to the grandeur inside some of the capital's places of worship gets the Third Movement off to a similarly telegraphed, but justifiably confrontational start. There's something of a son et lumière feel to this segment, as shots of various churches, mosques, synagogues and temples are joined by cuts, dissolves and even an iris before one series of martial arts frescoes at the Shaolin Temple is made to seem almost animated through the accelerated transitions. The high altar and side chapels at Westminster Cathedral are more reverentially depicted, as is the statuary in buildings of both majestic splendour and simple functionality. Steeples, towers, minarets and domes crowd the skyline, while beneath them are ornate columns, pulpits and organ lofts, as well as the paraphernalia of Judaism, Russian Orthodoxy and Islam. But, having tackled this most sensitive of topics with the utmost care, Barrett employs a little Vertovian superimposition to gather clocks from across London to show how interrelated many of the faiths are and what they all share in terms in good.

Following a shot of St Paul's, the action branches out into the City to amusingly contrast traditional business signs with Post-its stuck to a noticeboard. As some people beaver away on computers, others mill around the shopping malls that have become the new temples of commerce. Buskers play as images of the pounding footfall of consumers are superimposed prior to stark shots of gleaming chain stores and slightly poky privately owned high street business. However, a segue into a gift shop initiates a sequence linking views of Leighton House and the Brunel, Imperial War and British museums. Remaining in Bloomsbury, we wander into the School of Oriental and African Studies and pass through various campuses and past the odd public library before we fetch up in The Barbican.

With the score at its most Nymanesque, this leisure and learning section almost turned into a kind of advertorial travelogue and this touristy feel continues into the Fourth Movement, as the Thames Barrier, Tower Bridge and Big Ben appear in a montage of lamp posts and road, rail and foot bridges. The rush of images slows to take in raindrops splashing on paving stones and umbrellas, while streaks form on window panes and reflections in puddles. But, like the Ebbsfleet white horse, Londoners are made of stern stuff and go about their business undaunted and deserve a little relaxation at the end of the working day. Whether they seek out the Riverside Studios or a West End theatre or Foyles book store or a Soho sex shop, the atmosphere crackles under the neon lights that are grouped together in a composite shot that could have come out of EA Dupont's Piccadilly (1929).

From the famous flashing sign of Raymond's Revue Bar, we duck inside a traditional pub before gatecrashing a catered affair. As black cabs swirl around corners, we drop into the Cinema Museum before taking in the statues of Charlie Chaplin and William Shakespeare in Leicester Square. We board a merry-go-round at a funfair, where a chair-o-plane whizzes past bare branches against an inky night sky. These bright lights give way to the searchlights in a nightclub and the blur of cosy domesticity through the windows of the last train home. A whiteout takes us to a quiet suburban street, where a fox prowls undisturbed between the parked cars.

This closing scene of tranquility provides a timely reminder that London isn't quite a city that doesn't sleep. But Barrett and his team certainly capture the mad whirl of life in the greater metropolitan area and should be commended for casting their net so far afield from the expected landmarks. There's no sign of Nelson's Column, The Shard or Buckingham Palace and its royalty-related pageantry. But, then, there aren't that many black faces on show, either, especially among those playing at being ordinary people caught up in a vérité shoot. Indeed, a slight whiff of middle-class complacency recurringly pervades proceedings, as though Barrett and Moledina had opted to put the capital's best foot forward after deciding either not show or not to venture into the no-go housing estates or the rougher areas of the East End.

The pair do offer some socio-political critiques along the way, but the tone is very similar to that of Spare Time (1939), which was produced by Alberto Cavalcanti and directed by Humphrey Jennings, whose distinctive form of trenchant lyricism is a clear influence. But this is more of a celebration than anything more analytical and the 72-minute running time flies by. More importantly, however, it's a Londoner's labour of love and Barrett merits nothing but plaudits for having the imagination and determination to conceive the project in purely visual terms and to see it through to completion on the tightest of budgets.