Parky at the Pictures (DVD 6/8/2015)

Lingering on a street corner in Bad City, Arash Marandi steals a cat from an unlocked house and walks home past the oil derricks grinding away on the outskirts. He lives with his father, Marshall Manesh, a hopeless junkie who injects between his toes and fritters away the pittance Maandi earns as a handyman on gambling and hookers. Indeed, he has run up such a substantial debt that dealer-cum-pimp Dominic Rains comes to the house to demand immediate repayment. He taunts the cat before taking the keys to Marandi's prized 1950s motor car and Marandi is so frustrated at allowing himself to be exploited that he punches a wall and fractures his hand.

Marandi works for wealthy party girl Rome Shadanloo, who summons him from the garden to improve the reception on the television in her bedroom. He pretends that it is unseemly for him to be alone with her in such a private place, but uses her departure to steal a pair of valuable earrings that he hopes Rains will accept in place of his automobile. However, Rains is enjoying cruising his patch in a trendy vehicle and he delights in taunting working girl Mozhan Marno about being past her prime after he orders her into the front seat and forces her into pleasuring him after withholding her cut from the week's takings. As he reclines, however, he catches sight of Sheila Vand in the rear-view mirror. Wearing a chador over a Breton sweatshirt and jeans, she motionlessly fixes her gaze on him and Rains is so disconcerted that he throws Marno out of the car and drives away.

Later that night, Vand and Rains cross paths on a deserted street and he is sufficiently intrigued to chase after her and invite her back to his apartment. Although his taste is somewhat gaudy, Rains has clearly done well from his nefarious enterprises and he snorts cocaine to trendy music while urging Vand to make herself comfortable. She remains impassive as he approaches her and tantalisingly sucks on his finger. But, much to his surprise, she bites it off and smears blood over his lips before feasting on his neck under the cover of her veil.

Having drained her victim, Vand steals his Rolex and other jewellery and gives Marandi a meaningful glare as she passes him at the front gate. He has come to negotiate the return of his car. But, seeing Rains dead on the floor, he takes back the keys and purloins the case containing the dealer's stash and cash to set himself up in business. Wangling an invitation to a fancy dress party, Marandi turns up in a homemade Dracula costume and smiles wryly, as he sells drugs to Shadanloo and her friend, Ana Lily Amirpour. The former teases him about going up in the world and slips an ecstasy tablet on to his tongue. He swallows reluctantly and is soon so deeply under the influence that he makes a clumsy play for Shandaloo, who rejects him with haughty distaste.

Meanwhile, Vand is stalking Manesh, who has pumped himself full of his son's merchandise and is keen to spend some time with Marno. However, Vand keeps him at a distance and unnerves him by mimicking his walk and gestures of frustration. Eventually, she chases him off into the night and turns her attention to street urchin Milad Eghbali, who stops riding his skateboard to unwrap a sweet. He is terrified when Vand suddenly materialises in front of him and starts asking repeatedly whether he has been a good boy. She warns him that she will haunt him forever to ensure he never does anything bad and sends him packing without his skateboard.

Alone in the night, Vand climbs on the board and glides through the empty streets with her chador fluttering on the airless breeze. Straying away from the shabby environs of the oil refinery, Vand finds herself on an unfamiliar row of houses. She spots Marandi slumped on the pavement and he admits sheepishly that he is lost and stoned. Vand wheels him home on the skateboard and he slowly regains his senses on her sofa, as he listens to the soothing sounds she plays him from her record collection. He is curiously smitten by her and she feels sufficiently drawn to him to allow him to leave unharmed and she finds an alternative source of nourishment in a homeless man cowering in an alley.

His corpse is dumped in a ditch outside the city, but no one bothers to investigate the crime. Marandi is certainly unconcerned and makes a date to meet with Vand by the refinery fence after dark. He offers her the earrings he stole from Shadanloo and is disappointed to discover that Vand does not have pierced ears. She offers him a sharp object and asks him to pierce her lobes and she winces with exquisite pain as he makes the bloodless holes and she shows off how much the earrings suit her. Yet, Vand doesn't keep the jewellery she took from Rains and gives it to Marno as back pay. Indeed, she continues to protect Marno and disapproves when Manesh descends on her after Marandi evicts him (and the cat) for stealing from his stockpile. But, when he forces her to shoot up, Vand exacts pitiless retribution and the wide-eyed Eghbali looks on as Vand and Marno dump the old man's body in the street.

Keen to find Vand, Marandi tracks her down to Marno's place. He realises she must have killed his father when the cat slinks into the room. But, instead of being angry, he drives her back to her flat and orders her to pack a bag because they are going to escape Bad City together. Vand gathers some CDs and they speed off in his car with the cat perched on her knee. Outside the city limits, Marandi pulls to the side of the road and gets out to smoke a cigarette and prowl in the headlights. Yet, whatever misgivings he might have had soon subside and he gets back into the car to exchange a knowing look with Vand, as the cat sits between them on the back of the front seat.

This is an exciting time for female Iranian-American film-makers, as Amirpour's impeccably composed critique of the role of women in Islamic society arrives just a few months after Desiree Akhavan's comic take on the same theme, Appropriate Behaviour. This is a much more notable achievement, however, with Amirpour's script being much tauter and her sense of cinematic style being infinitely more assured. The combination of laconic deadpan delivery and glossily chic social realism should work against the grim setting and the gruesome subject matter. But Amirpour uses the moments of droll humour to make the matter-of-fact instances of savage violence all the more unsettling. There are no scares here, as one might expect of a traditional horror film. But the fact that it's impossible to predict what might happen next keeps the audience on the edge of its seats.

Espousing a message of equality rather then female empowerment, Amirpour studs the picture with self-reflexive imagery. Marandi and Vlad are made to resemble James Dean and Anna Karina, while the chubby-cheeked Eghbali forges a link between the streetwise cherubs of both Italian neo-realism and Iranian cinema either side of the Islamic Revolution. In addition to the aforementioned influences, the name of Aki Kaurismäki has to be added, as Amirpour shares his delight in juxtaposing moments of startling drama with throwaway gags. This cine-mischievousness even extends to the soundtrack, which contains diegetic and accompanying songs by such diverse artists as Iranian underground bands Radio Tehran and Kiosk, Arabic fusion outfit Bei Ru and the American combo Federale, whose twanging guitar sound recalls the Spaghetti Western motifs of Ennio Morricone.

Equally evocative is Jay Nierenberg's sound design, which makes the fizzle of each inhaled cigarette sound as dramatic as the clang of the oil drills and pumps and the mournful rumbling of the passing trains. Forever flaring with anamorphic ethereality, Lyle Vincent's velvety photography is also exceptional, as are Alex O'Flynn's steady editing and Sergio de la Vega's atmospheric production design, whose debt to Frank Miller's Sin City is somewhat reinforced by the fact that Amirpour has produced a graphic novel of her own to complement the film. Her direction is bold in its restraint and her shifts in tone are adroitly handled by a fine ensemble.

Seemingly inspired by the Madonna poster on her wall, Vlad stands out for her conflicted mix of impassive malevolence and compassion, but Marandi pouts and preens to good effect (before lapsing into pathetic vulnerability while under the influence) and Rains camps it up splendidly as the hissable chauvinist villain, who has the word `Sex' tattooed across his throat. But the most compelling performance is given by Masuka, the tabby-and-white cat who remains vigilant while frequently acting as the viewer's focal point.

A familiar name makes an unexpected return at the start of Alfonso Gomez-Rejon's The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Fifteen years after it closed for business with Lance Hool's One Man's Hero (1999), Orion Pictures re-emerges as an offshoot of MGM. One suspects this won't be the same rollercoaster ride that the company enjoyed after it was founded by former United Artists chairman Arthur B. Krim and four cohorts in 1978. And, if this remake of Charles B. Pierce's cult 1976 slasher offering is anything to go by, it won't be reliving the glory days when it won the Academy Award for Best Picture for Milos Forman's Amadeus (1984), Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986), Kevin Costner's Dances With Wolves (1990), and Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

The main problem with this grindhouse rehash is that it's far too pleased with itself and simply cannot resist the temptation to flex its metatextual muscles at every opportunity. Fans of the original, which starred Ben Johnson, Dawn Wells and Pierce himself (as the bungling cop nicknamed `Sparkplug'), will either be hacked off by the clumsy pastiches and in-jokes or tickled to see the director of Glee and American Horror Story (working in tandem with ace TV creator Ryan Murphy) taking a valiant stab at recreating the crimes of a real-life serial killer, who was known as The Phantom and remained at large after attacking eight people on the Texas-Arkansas border between February and May 1946.

Although Spencer Treat Clark thought that the best way to spend Halloween in Texarkana was to watch The Town That Dreaded Sundown at the local drive-in, girlfriend Addison Timlin is anything but impressed. Consequently, they drive into the woods and are having a smooch when Timlin announces that she has just seen The Phantom (whom she recognises from the sack over his head) watching them from behind a tree. But, before they can leave, somebody smashes a window and forces the couple to get out of the car at gunpoint. Ordering Timlin to turn around, he forces Clark to remove his trousers before he brutally murders him.

As Timlin tries to flee, The Phantom catches up with her and tells her to inform the townsfolk that he wants them to remember Mary. Having been interviewed by the police while recovering from her trauma in hospital, Timlin attends Clark's funeral and asks grandmother Veronica Cartwright what she remembers of the Phantom assaults of the 1940s. She proves evasive, however, as she is trying to protect Timlin from an incident in her own past that partially explains her psychological flakiness. Nevertheless, Timlin starts making enquiries around the town.

As Thanksgiving approaches, Morganna May meets soldier boyfriend Wes Chatham at the airport and they check into a motel. However, as May waits for Chatham to return with a post-coital snack, The Phantom crashes through the window brandishing his severed head and May breaks both legs in a desperate leap from the bathroom window. However, having crawled to her vehicle, she is butchered and Timlin gets a call from Clark's phone, in which a voice promises to keep massacring folks until they remember.

Timlin is receiving police protection from Joshua Leonard and she tells him about the call, as the zealous Christians among her neighbours (who hate the Pierce film and its glorification of a local tragedy) hold a meeting demanding that sheriff Ed Lauter catches the killer pronto. As a result, Texas Ranger Anthony Anderson is placed in charge of the investigation and he dismisses the evidence that Timlin has amassed with archivist and former classmate Travis Tope. He accompanies her to a memorial service for the victims and together they witness a Marine shoot and kill The Phantom as he lurks on the periphery of the ceremony. But, as the celebrations continue into the night, musicians Jaren Mitchell and Kurt Krause ignore deputy Gary Coles warning to go straight home and perish in a deserted junkyard when the killer attaches a knife to the slide of a trombone.

While Leonard informs Timlin that the vigil victim was a suicidal kid, Anderson and Cole discover that the e-mail she received from the `Texas Phantom' was actually sent from the church by pastor Edward Herrmann. However, they don't suspect him of being a serial killer and Cole goes off duty on Christmas Eve to find himself invited home by a stranger. But, as she is pleasuring him, Cole is shot through the eye and the woman is stalked by The Phantom as she tries to escape across a field.

Meanwhile, Timlin and Tope have discovered that the son of film-maker Charles B. Pierce (played by Denis O'Hare) lives on a boat in Texarkana and he speculates that the killer is the grandson of the sixth victim of the original madman and Timlin is shocked when he reveals that his wife's name was Mary. However, she is about to leave town to start college in California and she sleeps with Tope on her last night. She sets off next morning, however, without knowing that he has been slain while walking home alone. But she finds his corpse on the train tracks after The Phantom ambushes her at the petrol station and shoots Cartwright as she waits in the passenger seat.

Timlin tries to run, but she is wounded by an arrow and collapses. Looking up, she sees two Phantoms approaching her and they turn out to be Leonard and Clark, who had faked his death in the woods. However, Leonard (who is Mary's grandson) no longer has any use for Clark and dispatches him before turning on Timlin. But she has the presence of mind to grab his gun and shoot him, although any hopes she has of starting afresh at university seem to be in jeopardy when the shadow of The Phantom appears on the wall behind her.

Drowning in postmodern smugness, but utterly devoid of wit or suspense, this has misfire written all the way through it. Michael Goi's camera picks its way through the parked cars creepily enough in the opening scene, but Gomez-Rejon and screenwriter Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa never come remotely close to reproducing the scares that Pierce achieved, even though they re-stage many of the murders in a slavish homage that seems wilfully oblivious to post-Scream irony. The trombone episode, for example, is almost risible in comparison with the gruesome attack on Cindy Butler in the 1976 version, while the use of split screens, jolting visuals and blaring music leaves one wondering what Pierce must have been thinking as he cameoed as a customer in the diner. The only possible excuse Gomez-Rejon has is that he was apparently coerced into cutting 15 minutes from the picture and that the logic of the plot and much of its knowingly macabre humour were lost in the process.

Changing the mood only somewhat slightly, Gerard Johnstone's Housebound was one of the undoubted gems of FrightFest 2014 and now arrives on disc just a couple of weeks after its cinematic release. But what makes this raucous haunted house romp all the more impressive is that it marks the New Zealand writer-director-editor's feature debut following his stint on the TV series, The Jaquie Brown Diaries (2008-09). Too many comedy horrors fall between two stools, but this tale of a delinquent heroine giving a ghoul as good as she gets is full of hilarious set-pieces that are studded with unexpected scares. Splendidly designed, photographed and scored, this surpasses all recent mainstream attempts at macabre humour and should, if there is any justice, make a star of its feisty female lead.

Arrested after bungling a sledgehammer raid on a cash machine, Morgana O'Reilly is sentenced to eight months' detention in her childhood home by judge Ian Mune because all previous custodial attempts to reform her have failed so dismally. Psychologist Cameron Rhodes is appointed to conduct regular counselling sessions, while Glen-Paul Waru is dispatched by the security company to maintain O'Reilly's electronic ankle tag. However, what makes her incarceration so unbearable is the fact that mother Rima Te Wiata never stops talking and is hell bent on making a connection with the daughter she feels she has neglected since marrying milquetoast second husband, Ross Harper.

Already seething with fury, O'Reilly becomes even more irate when Te Wiata announces that she thinks the house is haunted. However, a series of whispers, creaks and bumps in the night leads her to suspect that something may indeed be lurking in the basement. She tries to convince Rhodes that paranormal activity would be detrimental to her rehabilitation, but he refuses to take her claims seriously. Waru, however, snaps into action the moment she mentions ghosts and produces a Polaroid camera, a tape recorder and other paraphernalia to catch the malevolent spirit in the act.

In the course of their investigation, however, O'Reilly and Waru learn that her bedroom was the scene of the brutal murder of a teenage girl and they conclude that the dentures worn by oddball neighbour Mick Innes hold the key to the mystery. But the spectre has no intention of going quietly and the intrepid duo have to make unconventional use of a laundry basket, a corkscrew, a xylophone and a cheese grater before they can conquer evil.

Inspired by the 1990s British reality show Ghostbusters and taking its cues from such pictures as John Hough's The Legend of Hell House (1973) and Peter Medak's The Changeling (1980), this is a slick mix of jokes and jolts that suggests Neighbours is incredibly fortunate to have secured the services of the excellent Morgana O'Reilly. Whether kicking against the system, hunting for clues or putting herself at reckless risk, she fizzes with angst and energy. But she is at her most effective when realising that the garrulous Te Wiata is very much on her side and not the cause of all her rebellious rage.

However, for all the poignancy of their rapprochement, the emphasis is placed firmly on the wit and weirdness of a story that throws up endless surprises without once feeling corny or contrived. Waru provides droll support as the amateur spook slayer whose choice of weapon never ceases to amuse. Credit here must go to production designer Jane Bucknell, who fills the cluttered interiors with unlikely objects for Simon Riera's widescreen camera to detect. But it's the sheer ingenuity and tonal control of Johnstone's script that keeps this gleeful deconstruction of old dark house tropes moving briskly along to the accompaniment of Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper's propulsive symphonic score. Maybe Kiwi horror has finally found the longed-for heir to the young Peter Jackson.

Ribbing its target audience by making it clear that this is a picture that has nothing to do with Tyler Perry, Justin Simien's Dear White People is very much a first-time outing that allows its director to flex his cinematic and satirical muscles without him needing to pay to much heed to plot and character development. As is often the case with rookies, influences are brandished with pride, with the result that passing references to Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman and Wes Anderson are bolstered by more specific homages to John Landis's Animal House (1978), Steve Miner's Soul Man (1986) and Spike Lee's School Daze (1988). But the picture this most closely recalls is Kim Chapiron's business school comedy, La Crème de la crème (aka Smart Ass, 2014), as the focus falls not on the usual bevy of slackers, jocks and stoners, but the preppies, activists and hacks who intend making the most of their time at college to rack up the credits and contacts that will stand them in good stead in the big bad world of work.

Although Winchester University has made great strides since the student body became integrated, a number of African-American undergraduates feel marginalised. Among the more vocal is mixed-race talk show host Tessa Thompson, who deeply resents the fact that Armstrong/Parker House is to lose its status as a black hall of residence because of the Randomisation of Housing Act that has recently been passed to ensure students of all races and creeds intermingle. Using her radio spot, `Dear White People', Thompson starts campaigning for sub-cultural solidarity and is persuaded by adoring classmate Marque Richardson to run for student president against her ex-boyfriend, Brandon P. Bell.

Extremely popular and successful in several non-curricular fields of activity, Bell is now dating white girl Brittany Curran, and is confident of winning the election. He also has high hopes of being invited to write for the satirical magazine, Pastiche. However, he has female competition here, too, in the form of Teyonah Parris, who uses her vlog to rally support for her cause and to try and impress Malcolm Barrett, a television producer who is visiting Winchester with a view to basing a reality show in an Ivy League college that can guarantee him a little spice and scandal. However, Bell also has a mano a mano rivalry with cocky white party animal Kyle Gallner that is made all the more intense by the fact that Bell's father is dean Dennis Haysbert, while Gallner's is president, Peter Syversten.

Completing the coterie is Tyler James Williams, a gay nerd with an impressive Afro who hopes his pieces for the main campus newspaper will win him the heart of its white editor, Brandon Alter. Williams finds Thompson fascinating and determines to do a profile after she causes a stir with a short film entitled The Rebirth of a Nation, in which she draws parallels between Obama's America and the Reconstruction era one depicted by DW Griffith in the controversial silent feature, The Birth of a Nation (1915), by insisting that the Tea Party is little more than an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan. But, even though its cast is done up in whiteface, this bold statement turns out not to be the picture's most controversial moment, as Bell, Thompson, Parris and Williams all manage to gain admission to a whites-only Halloween party, at which they are appalled to discover that the guests have responded to the hip-hop theme by stereotyping African-Americans in the broadest and most politically incorrect manner possible. Yet, afterwards, Thompson has to admit that she has been conducting a clandestine affair with white teaching assistant Justin Dobies all along and even has a soft spot for Taylor Swift.

Although his insights into post-racial America are witty and astute, Justin Simien is currently more of a satirist than a cineaste. He dots the meticulously composed action with knowing references to famous films and has his whip-smart actors trade bon mots with the effervescent elegance of a Whit Stillman cast. But Simien struggles to compress his images and ideas into a coherent narrative and, as a result, this ends up feeling a little self-satisfied instead of disconcertingly accusative.

Indeed, this often feels so aware of its own ingenuity that it's tricky to work out who the picture is aimed at. Thompson's amusing radio taunts, her furious debate with Dobies about the racial politics of Joe Dante's Gremlins (1984) and the climactic party suggest the butt of the joke are those white Americans who refuse to accept that the campaign for Civil Rights is now an historical fact and not an ongoing struggle. But there are lots of digs at the Obama-hating elements of the black population, as well as those who think the battle is already won and that the time has come for the formerly meek to inherit. Yet, the most interesting aspects of this scattershot picture involve the crossing points between the black and the white characters and the fact that Williams is both homosexual and aracial, in so far as he feels no obligation to wear his African-Americanism on his sleeve. Even though it is disappointingly contrived, Thompson's climactic confession is similarly worth noting, as for all her pithy pronouncements, she would rather be a hypocrite when it comes to matters of colour than face up to her own truths.

Simien's schematic screenplay is a little glib in places, with too many exchanges sounding like polished pronouncements rather than spontaneous speeches. He also labours the subplot involving Helmut West and his Reality TV show, which will leave some viewers wondering whether the film they are watching is life in the raw or a manipulated (possibly even scripted) version of it. Moreover, while there is much to admire about Topher Osborn's photography and Phillip J. Bartell's editing, everything feels a bit too neat and lacking in everyday energy. The use of classical music to counterpoint the action is a case in point, as it seems chic, but actually comes to feels forced far too quickly. There is also a lack of edginess about the comedy. Yet, Simien coaxes fine performances out of leads asked to make complacently privileged kids seem empathetic and raises enough awkward issues to keep the audience thinking long after the credits roll.

The place of learning in Carol Morley's The Falling is actually the old Carmel College building at Mongewell Park near Wallingford. Perhaps that's why an unusual atmosphere pervades Morley's second dramatic feature after Edge (2010) and her sixth film in all, following the documentaries The Alcohol Years (2000) and Dreams of a Life (2010) and the shorts, Everyday Something (2002) and The Madness of the Dance (2006). The latter study of mass hysteria has the most in common with this disconcerting period piece, which, for many film buffs, will bring to mind such studies of adolescent girls, rituals and folkloric landscapes as Peter Weir's Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975), Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides (1999) and Lucile Hazhihalovic's Innocence (2004). However, while it often feels like a long-lost Joseph Losey slice of social realism, the lingering aura of Gothic doom keeps suggesting the unlikely 1971 duo of Ken Russell's The Devils and John Mackenzie's Unman, Wittering and Zigo, which managed to combine the hysterical and the sinister elements that Morley is clearly striving to attain without teetering into melodrama in the final reel.

Sixteen year-olds Maisie Williams and Florence Pugh are best friends at a cloistered all-girls' school somewhere in rural England in 1969. Pugh is gregarious and rebellious and delights in riling teacher Greta Scacchi during poetry lessons by reading Wordsworth with a touch too much passion. She also revels in wearing skirts that are just a little too short and being the leader of the Alternative Orchestra and thrillingly enjoys the fact that Williams's older brother, Joe Cole, has a crush on her. He tries to teach the girls about Carl Jung and PD Ouspensky and the connection between local ley lines and magick. But Pugh is more intrigued by the fact that he is handsome and available.

Williams and Pugh particularly enjoy clambering over a tree beside a lake, where they read verse and discuss their plans for the future. They agree they don't want to turn out like headmistress Monica Dolan or Williams's mother, Maxine Peake, a beautician who never leaves the house because she suffers from agoraphobia. Despite the slight Sapphic tinge to their relationship, Williams is a good girl and she feels horridly betrayed, therefore, when she discovers that the flagrantly promiscuous Pugh is pregnant with her brother's child. They argue in class and Pugh has a seizure and dies before anyone can help her.

The whole school goes into mourning and Williams faints, seemingly out of sheer grief at the loss of her friend. But, soon, other girls like Anna Burnett, Rose Caton, Lauren McCrostie, Katie Ann Knight and Evie Hooton start passing out as well and Dolan and Scacchi are at a loss to explain what is going on. Even art teacher Morfydd Clark swoons away and the school is threatened with closure unless an explanation can be found for the epidemic. Things come to a head during an assembly when almost the entire school faints during a reading from Scripture and even Dolan has to grip the lectern to steady herself.

Called in to see the doctor, Williams admits that she faked her faints and there is bemusement throughout the school, as all of the other girls genuinely lost consciousness for no apparent reason. Williams gets home to find Cole snooping in her bedroom and the tension crackles as they bicker with each other and they wind up in bed. Peake finds them together and orders Cole out of the house and, in trying to defend him, Williams demands to know why Peake is so distant and cold towards her. Peake confesses that Williams was born as the result of a rape and that she has never really forgiven her for reminding her of the moment that ruined her life.

Distraught, Williams rushes out of the house and heads for the tree where she used to play with Pugh. She climbs into the branches by the full moon and throws herself into the lake. However, she is rescued by Peake, who sensed that Williams would do something reckless and ventured outside for the first time in ages to save her life.

Opening with Mary Hopkin's version of the Donovan song, `Voyages to the Moon', this investigation into psychogenic illness works very hard to convey the unique generational clash that occurred at the end of the 1960s, when teachers and parents who had come through the Second World War and the Age of Austerity suddenly found they had little in common with daughters and pupils who had become aware of new social, cultural and sexual horizons during the Swinging Sixties. Yet, for all the adroitly chosen pop songs (which are supplemented by a score by Everything But the Girl's Tracey Thorn), Morley never quite seems to know what to do with this distinctive atmosphere and confuses the issue of girls in a permissive society not feeling entirely comfortable in their own skin by introducing a whiff of Crowleyesque mysticism through the aegis of the trendy brother that strains overly hard to make the landscape as significant to the action as it was in Picnic At Hanging Rock.

The mass response during the school assembly is much more striking and editor Chris Wyatt nimbly constructs a scene of pseudo-Suspiria-like chaos from Agnès Godard's alert images. But, even here. Morley prevaricates over whether celestial, contagious, supernatural, sisterly or simply hysterically imitative forces are at work and, as a consequence, this hovers between a folk horror story about a demon child and a psycho-sexual allegory before it descends self-consciously into gauche soap operatics, as Peake reveals her dreadful secret and redeems herself by saving the life she had so long blamed for her ills.

With Peake, Dolan and Scacchi being required to do little more than be starchy and disapproving, the real acting is done by the younger members of the cast. Oxford audiences will be particularly keen to see Pugh, who was studying at St Edward's School in Summertown when Morley leafleted Oxford to find a best friend for Game of Thrones star Williams. She acquits herself admirably in a young Kate Winslet sort of way and is clearly destined for great things (if she so wishes) - as, perhaps, is her sister Rafaela, who plays her younger sibling, and her brother Toby Sebastian, who co-starred with another GoT alumna, Sophie Turner, in Kyle Newman's teen spy comedy, Barely Lethal.

Rumours are that Queen and Country will be 82 year-old John Boorman's final feature. In some ways, it's apt to end with the moment that he (or, at lease, his alter ego) becomes a film-maker. But this long-delayed sequel to Hope and Glory (1987) will disappoint those who revelled in this idealised memoir of London life during the Blitz. Moreover, it will seem a rather tame way for one of British cinema's few genuine iconoclasts to bow out after such bold early ventures as Catch Us If You Can (1965), Point Blank (1967), Hell in the Pacific (1968), Leo the Last (1970) and Deliverance (1972).

First seen in flashback as a nine year-old thanking Hitler for bombing his school, Bill Rohan (Callum Turner) has reached the age of 18 by 1952. He still lives beside the Thames at Twickenham with his mother Grace (Sinead Cusack), father Clive (David Hayman) and grandfather George (John Standing), and delights in the fact that crews from the nearby Shepperton Studios frequently use the area for location shooting. However, just as he is planning his future, Bill is called up for National Service and finds himself sharing a barrack with wideboy Percy Hapgood (Caleb Landry Jones) and Redmond (Pat Shortt), a skiver who likes nothing more than winding up Sergeant Major Bradley (David Thewlis) and Major Cross (Richard E. Grant).

Despite the fact that Britain is involved in the Korean War, Bill and Percy are spared an overseas posting and wind up teaching typing to the recruits destined to be shipped to Asia. Having mugged up on the conflict, Bill discovers his sympathies lie with the Communist forces to the north and, when he shares his misgivings with his class and one conscript refuses to fight, he is charged with `seducing a soldier from the course of his duty'. By contrast, Percy opts to flout authority by stealing a prized antique clock from the officers' mess and mailing it off the camp before anyone can find the culprit.

Percy also fancies himself as a ladies' man when the rookies are allowed to explore the local town. However, nurses Sophie (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) and Peggy (Miriam Rizea) are resistant to his charms, with the former quickly developing a crush on the reserved Bill. But he has lost his heart to a college student (Tamsin Egerton), who makes it clear that she isn't interested in romance by not revealing her real name. Bill calls her Ophelia and is amazed to see her in a prominent place during the Coronation of Elizabeth II, which he watches with Percy and his family on a television set purchased especially for the occasion.

Adding to the excitement of this furlough is the return from Canada of Bill's older sister, Dawn (Vanessa Kirby), who had been swept off her feet by a Quebecois soldier at the end of the war. However, she has now landed back in Blighty with her marriage in tatters and two kids in tow. Sensing her vulnerability, Percy makes a play for her and is pleased to find that his advances are not entirely unwelcome. But, with Grace and Clive also spatting on a regular basis, the old house no longer seems the sanctuary it had once been and, on being demobbed, Bill takes his first tentative steps to realising his ambition to make movies.

Forced for budgetary reasons to shoot much of the action in Romania, Boorman turns the modest production values to his advantage in order to convey the bleakness of the period of postwar austerity that saw rationing remain in place until 1954. Designer Anthony Pratt and costumier Maeve Patterson deserve particular credit for recreating the look and feel of the period, while cinematographer Seamus Deasy laudably avoids casting too nostalgic a glow over the visuals. Stephen McKeon's score also fits the bill nicely. But Boorman's script is little more than an accumulation of vignettes, with the subplot involving the enigmatic Ophelia failing to ignite, while many of the comic escapades feeling like discards from Norman Hudis's sharp screenplay for Gerald Thomas's Carry On Sergeant (1958).

The performance are also frustratingly scattershot, with Caleb Landry Jones and Richard E. Grant contributing pantomimic turns alongside the more astutely caricatured David Thewlis and Pat Shortt, as the martinet RSM and anarchic rebel. Moreover, newcomer Callum Turner struggles to convince that he is an older version of the exuberant kid played by Sebastian Rice-Edwards in Hope and Glory, while his lack of chemistry with either Aimee-Ffion Edwards or the miscast Tamsin Egerton deprives the picture of some much-needed romantic heart. Vanessa Kirby adds a little spark in the latter stages, as Boorman shrewdly dissects the middle-class mindset, as the nation becomes used to the fact that its imperial heyday is over and that they would have to wait a little while longer for the love, laughter and peace promised in Vera Lynn's wartime anthem, `(There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover'.

Finally, Andrew Niccol dramatises the moral considerations that arise from the lack of accountability inherent in drone warfare in Good Kill, a fact-based thriller set in 2010. Yet what comes across loud and clear is that the ruling élite in the United States has convinced itself and its citizens that remote control conflict is the ideal way to retain control over world affairs without committing boots to the ground. However, the practicality, efficacy and legitimacy of such a tactic is called into question in starkly contrasting ways.

Although Ethan Hawke still dresses like a USAF pilot in his leather bomber jacket, several years have passed since he flew his last F-16 mission over Iraq. Now, he is based in a facility in the Nevada Desert, where he spends 12-hour shifts on a surveillance, stalk and destroy detail monitoring Taliban activity in Afghanistan and taking out targets with armed drones. Commanding officer Bruce Greenwood is hawkish in the extreme and keeps his crew motivated with glib phrases about warheads and foreheads. But, while new recruit Zoë Kravitz has qualms about the long-distance slaughter, Hawke and technical sidekicks Jake Abel and Dylan Kenin dub her `Jane Fonda' for fretting about collateral damage and the innocent women and children who are killed and maimed by missiles that are rarely as precise in their pinpointing as the White House, the top brass and the compliant media would have ordinary Americans believe.

After a day at his console, Hawke hops into his sports car and zooms across the parched wasteland to the outskirts of Las Vegas, where he lives with onetime dancer wife January Jones and their two children, Zion Leyba and Sachie Capitani. Jones is happy to have her husband home and out of harm's way. But his permanent proximity has opened up the cracks in their marriage that had remained papered over when he was on six tours of duty. Thus, while Hawke hosts barbecues, helps the kids with their homework and does his chores around the house, he refuses to discuss his work and his growing sense of frustration and unease only makes Jones feel more querulous and isolated.

Despite missing the adrenaline rush of being a warrior, Hawke has always managed to reconcile himself to the fact that he is killing without conscience and personal risk from inside his air-conditioned cubicle. But, when CIA operative Peter Coyote starts ordering attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen on softer targets on flimsier evidence, Hawke begins to share Kravitz's concern that they are little more than state-sponsored geeks playing a deadly video game. As the missions are anonymously relayed via speakerphone, Hawke becomes more acutely aware of the clarify of the images the drones beam back. He becomes concerned about a safety of a Muslim woman living on their flight path and wonders whether to make a stand in the name of military honour and human decency, even if it costs him his record and reputation.

The close-ups of Hawke's face as the dust clears from the latest explosion and he gets to see the carnage he has caused show him becoming increasingly despondent and he drops the trademark triumphalist declaration of `good kill' each time a foe is vanquished. In the process, both his brittle machismo and his faith in the Obama administration to conduct a clean war are decimated and his decision to bungle a strike on a CIA-designated white truck leaves him facing a charge of dereliction that is compounded when he launches a rogue attack on an armed figure outside the home of the woman he has been sheltering.

The dilemma Hawke faces will be familiar to anyone who caught Rick Rosenthal's Drones (2013), in which Matt O'Leary is joined in another Nevada bunker by general's daughter Eloise Mumford and a difference of opinion arises when they are ordered to target an unarmed terrorist suspect in remote Afghan village. Like Rosenthal, Niccol makes evocative use of the CCTV footage flickering on tiny monitors surrounded by flashing lights, pulsing dials and state-of-the-art joysticks that look so like those used by video gamers. But production designer Guy Barnes not only makes this claustrophobic inner sanctum so disconcertingly atmospheric, but he also captures the chilly functionality of the briefing room and the bland cosiness of the home that offers Hawke so little respite from his crisis. Moreover, cinematographer Amir Mokri boldly contrasts the dusty sepia tones of the surveillance footage with the dazzling sunlight throwing the Nevada landscape into harsh relief.

The closing chopper shot of Hawke driving along the highway reinforces the sombre message that Big Brother is watching our every move, while also implying that there will come a time that a motorist on an American road will be just as vulnerable to drone attack as an Afghan smuggling arms or attending a funeral. Niccol has already broached the first issue in his screenplay for Peter Weir's masterpiece, The Truman Show (1998), while he also explored the seedy side of the arms race in his own Victor Bout-inspired actioner, Lords of War (2005). Indeed, he has also tackled the concept of an individual bucking the stringently controlled system in Gattaca (1997), in which Hawke excelled alongside Jude Law and Uma Thurman. But, while this slickly mounted ethical thriller is timely in the extreme, it keeps missing the suspense and intensity that would make it as compelling as it is committed.

Although the script is long-winded in places, Niccol has interesting and intelligent things to say about the scouting of recruits in shopping malls on the strength of their gaming skill and the extent to which women can now become killing machines without exposing themselves to undue risk. Indeed, by coercing the audience into envisaging the heroes of Top Gun as middle-aged has-beens taking out the possible enemies from 7000 miles, Niccol puts a potent revisionist spin on the gung-ho Hollywood war movie. He is admirably abetted by the underrated Hawke, although his domestic ennui and his greater concern for a defenceless family on the other side of the world feel unnecessarily melodramatic. Greenwood's sloganising brass hat also comes perilously close to caricature. Nevertheless, this treatise on terror and technology is likely to provoke debate.