Parky At the Pictures (20/3/2026)

(Reviews of Trains; Dead Man's Wire; Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't; Dead Lover; Abode; Apnas; The Land of Sometimes; and The Last Supper)

TRAINS.

Among the first images ever projected on to a cinema screen was the arrival of a steam locomotive at a station on the Mediterranean coast. Auguste and Louis Lumière's L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1895) falls outside the purview of Maciej J. Drygas's Trains, an archival documentary about 20th-century steam travel that had taken 10 years to produce and meticulously pieces together images from 46 archives around the world.

It opens ominously, with a quotation from Franz Kafka: `There is plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope - but not for us.' But the sense of a brave new world is evident in the first sequence, which shows a steam train being built at a large factory with room to accommodate 11 engines in various states of construction. The precision of the riveting is matched by the care with which the heavy structure is lowered on to wheel sets that are joined to the piston by connecting rods. The work is skilled, but hard and poorly paid and it's unlikely that many of those toiling for long hours will ever get to ride in the carriages that are rolled through the workshop to be coupled to engines by shunters who are down the hierarchical pecking order of the station staff making it possible for men, women, and children dressed in their Sunday best to reach the destinations to which they are heading for either business or pleasure.

We see a sleek locomotive being tugged by a stubby shunter in the marshalling yards before stepping on to the footplate for a point-of-view excursion past a signal box and into a station. The sense of anticipation among the passengers on the platform is palpable, as they edge towards the doors and the prospect of speed, excitement, and escape. Everyone is in their fin-de-siècle finery, as the magnificent engines glide into the platform, with their carriages awaiting. Following a spine-tingling shot from a window of a train passing over a towering viaduct, we duck inside, where a conductor is collecting tickets and waiters are serving lunch to passengers who point at the scenery through the window.

The countryside becomes the town, as a train arrives at a station, where a stationmaster in a shiny top hat shares the platform with a porter with a trolley and a small boy with a tray, perhaps hoping to sell matches or shoelaces to the disembarking. More children bustle along with their black-clad mothers, as people spill out into the street, in a top shot that picks out a horse and cart and a motor car.

But, even before we can fully savour the Belle Époque ambience, men in uniform can be seen at the street cafés and soon dignitaries disembark to greet reception committees of army officers. Troops march through towns in boot-thudding ranks to take trains to camps and embarkation points. A British Tommy chuckles, as he leans through a compartment window and a pal tickles him under the strap of his shiny new helmet. There's a sense of optimism in the summer air, as everyone expects the war to be over by Christmas.

As Canadians dock to do their bit, we see recruits going through a basic training that involves physical exercise, learning the parts of a gun and how to lob a grenade, and practicing with gas masks. Flatbeds carry the soldiers to the trenches, with the simplicity of the trucks underlining how exposed they are now they don't have a full carriage to shelter them. There's no waving to the camera now, as they all know what awaits them on the Western Front.

Trains also brought munitions to the frontline and we get a brief glimpse of women working in the factories, pouring molten explosives into shells that are then loaded and unloaded at the docks and the supply camps before trundling through scarred terrain to the advance forces. A large shell is lifted by chain hoists to be loaded into a giant howitzer that sits on a rail bogie so that it can recoil along a track before being reloaded. Cross-cuts show this guns pounding in all directions and it's no surprise to see white crosses along the track, as a supply train chugs through a No Man's Land of destruction.

Blinded men walk in single file with a hand on the shoulder of the one in front, while we see men trembling as the result of shell shock. Casualties with missing limbs struggle along on crutches, while those with disfigured faces are fitted with false ears and noses. There are waving hands at the window of a Red Cross train, but there's little enthusiasm, even among those being invalided home. Women repair the rails, while trains approach largely empty platforms and there's markedly less bustle in the city streets.

But peace comes and the railways helped life get back to normal. Commuters bundled along platforms to get a seat in order to read the paper or doze. A man is seen being shaved by the train barber, while a select group of women attend an onboard fashion show. Mothers dandle infants, while couples go cheek to cheek in a special dance car, complete with its own tuxedoed chamber orchestra. Fine dining returns and gentlemen play cards over coffee, while Sergei Eisenstein can be seen peeking out from behind a newspaper. The Soviets, of course, spread the revolution through agit-prop trains, but the bijou cinema shown aboard a passenger service would appear to be showing something more mainstream. Perhaps it's Edna Purviance arriving at a station in the latest fashions, as the Little Tramp emerges from a luggage compartment beneath a Pullman carriage in The Idle Class (1921)? This was released in the same year that Charlie Chaplin was greeted by adoring crowds during his first return to London after taking Hollywood by storm.

He only sported his toothbrush moustache when acting the clown, but the look was copied by Adolf Hitler, who is shown arriving by train to be feted by saluting citizens who believe he will restore Germany's fortunes after the dual humiliation of the Great War and the Treaty of Versailles. He accepts a basket from a blonde girl and pats the cheeks of a Hitler Youth before standing in the corridor to watch the passing scene and joining his inner circle for a joke in transit. We see Nazi dignitaries milling on a platform, with men of all ages in uniform and waving to the camera.

Meanwhile, small children are being loaded into trains to take them out of the firing line. Most seem to be evacuees, but it's possible some of the shots depict Jewish children being brought to Britain by the Kindertransport. Siblings sit together and tuck into their packed lunches, while other children on other trains tentatively spoon soup and struggle to return the camera's gaze. A German officer eats more heartily in a contrast shot that is chilling in its simplicity. Armies march on their stomachs and the soldiers who are eating will soon be supervising the loading of cattle trucks, with the Jews who have been rounded up in the nearby town and marched to the railway station. There's a touching solicitousness about the way in which women and the elderly are helped aboard and people find somewhere to sit before the doors are slid shut and bolted.

A German officer films his comrades with a wind-up camera, with some reacting and others kipping in a comfort that has been denied those in the rear trucks. As we have seen transport services loaded with staff cars, tanks, and ordnance, trains became

legitimate targets for air attack and we see fighters swooping into action and plumes of smoke rising from strikes. One train slows to observe the damage to carriages that have burned to their bogies, with no sign of life. But destruction is everywhere and worse is to come, as American troops liberate the death camps and find bodies piled inside cattle trucks, as well as the emaciated survivors. Displaced persons sit beside the tracks eating meagre fare and waiting to be returned to their homes (if they still exist). A little girl in a white bonnet sobs and has to be lifted up by her mother. One wonders how her life panned out, as one does for those who are shortly to find themselves on either side of the Iron Curtain,

Some ardent Communists attach a red star to the front of their train and load large portraits of Stalin on board. Elsewhere, displaced persons clamber into cattle trucks for their journey home. But the doors remain open and people sit on the edge, while others cling to the running board in their eagerness to return to a form of normality. Loved ones wait on platforms for demobbed service personnel and there's an outpouring of relief that the conflict is over, even though the world scarcely feels safer, as the Cold War begins. But who can resist dancing, with the couples shuffling across a vast palais floor contrast with those cramped in a train compartment just a few years earlier. How many of them made it through?

Another parallel sequence shows bombed trains being dismantled so that the lines can re-open without people being reminded of the horrors of air raids. The glazed gable end of a station canopy is detonated and it crashes down, as tracks are relaid and welded into place. One stretch of track seems to hover in the air above a river, as the train rumbles across. Passengers queue and crowd on to platforms, as the daily routine returns. Cooks return to their galleys, waiters balance bottles on trays, and meals are heartily consumed, just as they had been before the lights had gone out.

We're back on the footplate, as an engineer looks out of the cab in the way Jean Gabin had done in Jean Renoir's La Bête humaine (1938). A woman writes a letter and postmen sort mail as they had done in Harry Watt and Basil Wright's Night Mail (1936). Indeed, there is something of a feel of British Transport Film Unit offering about the footage in this section, which is apt because the views of Waterloo Station would appear to have been culled from John Schlesinger's Terminus (1961). In the madding crowd, we see the first Black person in the entire film ( woman on the escalator, who sees the camera), and the latest men in uniform, who sit quietly munching on some fruit. The fashions have changed and people are individuals again (rather than groups being transported unceremoniously), as they stare up at destination board that flicker place names until the last train has departed. A long mail cart slinks along the concourse, as those who missed their service snore on the wooden benches in the waiting room.

Another day dawns in another place and people crowd into compartments, with the clink-clank of the wheels over the points echoing back from the past - as the shot of a young lad sleeping face down on a table reminds us that it's only 15 years or so since a dead Jewish boy had assumed the same pose on the floor of a cattle truck. As if to reinforce the fact that the world is in the grips of the Cold War, a trailer train carrying tanks passes by, while the view out of the window is limited by thick ice. Snow covers the countryside, while anxious older faces are juxtaposed with those of innocent youth, who might be spared the fear and trauma that their elders had experienced.

A shot from the cab shows the track stretching out ahead, while the points create intersections that lead elsewhere. An aerial view of the rails makes them blur like malleable shapes in an abstract film such as Bruce Baillie's Castro Street (1966). The tracks would remain in situ, but the trains running on them were about to change. The age of steam was passing and diesel and electric would become the norm across Europe and the rest of the world. Yet, while the film closes with the end of an era, the future stretches into the distance and heads off in new directions, probably in colour, too!

Trains made Europe smaller. Yet, instead of bringing people closer together to see how alike they were, they made them suspicious and protective of their own space and covetous of that belonging to others. Twice during the 20th century, the continent's great powers came close to calamity and, sadly, trains played their part. They moved troops at new speeds that made surprise attacks possible and enabled supply lines to be maintained over long distances. The mobilised armies got bogged down in the Great War, but blitzkrieg saw the Third Reich take control of vast swathes of territory before trains were made to play a hideous part in the Holocaust.

Maciej J. Drygas's exceptional documentary brings home the horror of the base acts that humanity committed between 1914-45. Yet, it also celebrates the freedom that rail travel brought to so many, as well as the ingenuity of steam locomotion and the beauty of the engines that criss-crossed countries of very different temperaments and perspectives. But Drygas, who trained at the famous VGIK film school in Moscow and served his apprenticeship as an assistant to Krzysztof Zanussi and Krzysztof Kieślowski, is also aware of the relationship between rail and film, and Trains is as much a paean to the moving image as it is to moving metal.

Lithuanian producer Vita Żelakeviciute (who is married to Drygas and a fine film-maker in her own right) has viewed this `found footage' documentary in several different countries and contexts. Yet, just as she thinks she has a hold on the material, her perception is altered by the next screening. Having watched the film twice, it's true that one notices details and spots connections that were missed first time. As she concluded: `What I have come to recognise is that the film does not stabilise into a single meaning. It resists closure. Instead, it continues to reveal how fragile and contingent any reading of the past can be.'

What a wonderful thing for a work of art to be able to do. Editor Rafal Listopad merits enormous credit for the linkage and occasional collision of the clips that were unearthed by a team of 18 researchers. They are made all the more immediate and atmospheric by Saulius Urbanavičius's deft sound design and by the samplings from Polish composer Pawel Szymanski's `Compartment 2, Car 7'. But what makes this so effective is the way in which Drygas keeps placing us in carriages with ordinary people like ourselves, so that we can recall treasured train journeys of our own and can reflect on the fact that fate could easily have placed us in one of those seats all those decades ago and that it is now our responsibility to ensure that such turbulent and tragic events never happen again.

DEAD MAN'S WIRE.

Screen history is littered with `what ifs', but the spectre of Werner Herzog directing Nicolas Cage hovers over Gus Van Sant's Dead Man's Wire, even though he makes a solid job of it. An eight-part Jon Hamm podcast alerted screenwriter Austin Kolodney to the story of Tony Kiritsis and he enlisted the help of Alan Berry and Mark Enochs to delve deeper than their 2018 documentary, Dead Man's Line, to get the full facts about an Indianapolis hostage situation that made national headlines for interrupting a televised awards speech by John Wayne.

On Tuesday 8 February 1977, Tony Kiritsis (Bill Skarsgård) enters the offices of the Meridian Mortgage Company in Indianapolis for an appointment with the manager, M.L. Hall (Al Pacino). As he is on vacation in Florida, son Richard Hall (Dacre Montgomery) asks if he can help and is promptly taken hostage and fitted with a wire that stretches from the trigger of a sawn-off 12-gauge Winchester shotgun to the back of his head. As the noose at the trigger end is round Kiritsis's neck, this means that any undue movement or attempt by the police to take a sniper shot at Kiritsis will result in Hall having his head blown off.

Calling the cops, Kiritsis explains that he has put up with the Halls stringing him along for four years over a property deal, but the time has come to act. He informs them that he is going to drive to his apartment and barricade himself inside with his hostage until his father is ready to negotiate for the cancellation of his $130,000 arrears and $5 million in compensation for the rents he has lost as a result of their crookedness. Cops arrive on the scene, including Detective Michael Grable (Cary Elwes), who knows Kiritsis from the police bar where he drinks, and he tries to keep him calm, as he's approached on the snowy street by a priest trying to mediate and a gung-ho cop, who pulls a gun. Demanding the officer's squad car, Kiritsis drives off, with a terrified Hall in the passenger seat.

The getaway is filmed by local TV news reporter, Linda Page (Myha'la), and her cameraman, John (John Robinson), and they follow the convoy of cop cars heading to Kiritsis's address. When she calls the station to break the story, news editor (Dean Coutris) tells her to let a more experienced reporter take over, but she is determined not to share her scoop and gives some other hacks the slip, as they follow the car, with Hall driving and Kiritsis tuning into Radio WCYD to listen to his favourite DJ, Fred Temple (Colman Domingo).

Ushering Hall inside, Kiritsis sits Hall at a table and places the shotgun on a piles of books, so that he can move around while keeping his guest imperilled. He helps him drink some milk and lets him speak to his wife on the phone. But he is less than impressed when Chief Eugene Gallagher (Todd Gable) arrives with the deputy prosecutor to say that the debt has been waived because the person who gives the apology on behalf of Meridian is an underling and not M.L. himself. Kiritsis explains that he had found a piece of land on which to build a supermarket for the local community. However, the Halls had realised what a sweet deal he had struck and decided to dissuades stores from renting space with Kiritsis so that he would be so saddled with interest debts that they could get the land back by forfeit.

When producer James (Vinh Nguyen) brings the story to the attention of Fred Temple, he spies an opportunity to make a name for himself because Kiritsis has let slip that he's his hero. They speak off-air, but Temple tapes the call and promises to broadcast it next morning and the cops ask if he will act as an unofficial hostage negotiator while they try to find a way of getting Kiritsis to end the siege without detonating the explosives he's wired to Creswood Apartments. With dozens of white male reporters now relaying the story, Kiritsis arranges Hall in the bathtub so he can sleep without the shotgun going off.

On Wednesday's breakfast show, Temple plays the tape and listeners start to identify with Kiritsis as the little guy who's been cheated by the rich and unscrupulous. FBI profiler Patrick Mullaney (Neil Mulac) arrives to co-ordinate the situation and his bemused because Kiritsis will only talk to Temple rather than the cops or prosecutor George Martz (Michael Ashcraft). Angry with the bomb squad for trying to find a way to neutralise the booby-traps, Kiritsis demands a television slot so he can address his fellow citizens and inform them about Meridian seeking to ruin him while exploiting his plight for their own gain.

Mullaney reckons that showing Kiritsis some respect will blindside him and allow them to get under his skin. So, he arranges for M.L. to call to speak to his son, so Kiritsis takes the bait that he is engaged with the process (even though he would rather be left alone to enjoy his holiday). Knowing the call is being taped, M.L. refuses to admit to anything that would incriminate him and Hall realises his father puts profit before his safety. Although furious, Kiritsis recognises how he must feel and doesn't blame him for his frustration. They discuss their mothers, as Hall claims it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows growing up. He asks Kiritsis if he had plans to be a father, but he insists his businesses are his children. Hall smiles when Kiritsis puts on some music to show him the dance moves that he swears wow the ladies. But the gun remains at his throat, as they wait for news of a climbdown.

As Temple takes calls proclaiming Kiritsis a hero for sticking it to the man, Page bumps into his brother, Jimmy (Daniel L. Hill), who has been brought to the scene to help out. She offers him the chance to put Tony's side of the story and say a little about his character. But her editor cuts her out of the package and gets a white male colleague to front the piece instead. Meanwhile, Mullaney tells Gallagher and Grable how they are going to overpower Kiritsis during the TV spot they have agreed to let him have. It cuts into the 3rd People's Choice Awards, as John Wayne is being presented with the Favourite Motion Picture Actor Award by Maureen O'Hara. He checks Temple and Jimmy are present and compliments cop Frank Love (Mark Helms) for being a good friend. Snatching the waiver document off Hall, Kiritsis reads the terms and feels vindicated, while M.L. boasts to a valet that his son had duked it out like a true Hall. At the TV station, a female manager asks Page's editor what he would do if shooting broke out live on air and he smirks in declaring he would pay the fine while luxuriating in the ratings.

He shafts Page again when she reports from the courthouse when Kiritsis is found not guilty by reason of insanity. He pushes to his car feeling like justice has been served, while Hall tells Page that his company will continue to abide by the morals people expect, even if the jury has chosen not to. Temple ends the tale (as he began it) on air to recall how kidnapper and hostage bumped into each other years later in a small bakery, but exchanged glances rather than words. Closing captions reveal that Kiritsis was sentenced to a mental facility, but refused to sign papers when he came up for early release because he didn't believe he needed the voluntary therapy that was part of the deal. While he spent another eight years in custody, Hall succumbed to alcoholism after Meridian went bankrupt and remained haunted by his experience beyond Kiritsis's death in 2005.

As Gil Scott Heron's `The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' plays over the credits (which include actual clips of the incident), one is left to regret the fact that Kolodney and Van Sant opted to stress that Meridian leant on Kiritsis's potential tenants to ruin his scheme, as there is no evidence that this was actually the case. The film already makes its case that the connection between wealth and power that has so distorted modern society was in effect five decades ago (indeed, it was ever thus). So why undermine the trenchancy of this point by tilting the table?

It's one of the few missteps Van Sant makes, as he seeks to recreate the cinematic vibe of the period by tapping into the New Hollywood realism favoured by the likes of Alan J. Pakula, Sydney Pollack, and Sidney Lumet, whose Dog Day Afternoon (1975) is an obvious influence, right down to the sly casting of Al Pacino as the scurrilous father, who would rather kvetch about being served the wrong breakfast burrito than admit fault to save his son - not that Richard's mother (Kelly Lynch) is exactly climbing the walls, either. The Florida cutaways are played for sardonic laughs, but they don't add much to the central thesis about the graspingly greedy fat cats dominating the entitled 1%, as Pacino's playing is too mannered for its edge to cut deep.

Bill Skarsgård makes the stronger impression, as he keeps apologising for his cussing while trying to play the Lone Ranger on behalf of the millions of other little people who are just as mad as hell and can't take it anymore. Yet, he never wins the viewer over to his cause in the same way Sonny did in Dog Day Afternoon. Nor you do believe he becomes a `national treasure', as one of the callers to WCYD reckons. As the fall guy, Australian Dacre Montgomery is deftly effective as the hostage who knows his firm had swindled Kiritsis and is even more aware that his father doesn't care a hang about his plight. Similarly, Myha'la Herrold makes her mark as the Black female reporter who is excised out of her scoops by a smug editor who knows his viewers won't respond in the same way to the sensational story without a familiar male face behind the microphone. Plus ça change, but it's a pity that the same restraint in drawing contemporary parallels isn't shown elsewhere.

Cast late in the day, Colman Domingo oozes blaxploitation charisma as the DJ playing classy hits by Roberta Flack, Barry White, Deodato, Donna Summer, and Labi Siffre, whose `Cannock Chase' is a curious choice for the scene of the cop cars following Kiritsis back to his digs. But, while he bookends the storyline and is clearly key in earning Kiritsis's trust and in spreading his legend, he's allowed to slip out of the action after he takes a call at home in his dressing-gown, with a wife who seems to find the whole business bizarre. He pops up briefly at the denouement, but he's only as passingly essential as Cary Elwes's exasperated cop, who considers the seige to be a `shitshow'.

As this treatise on the elusive nature of the American Dream employed a `quilted' financing model, 80 executive producers are credited, with a further 13 more being listed for actually performing the various producorial duties. There's only person credited for the cinematography (Arnaud Poitier), production design (Stefan Dechant), editing (Saar Klein), and score (Danny Elfman). But Peggy Schnitzer merits credit for finding Kiritsis's lime green polyester shirt, while music supervisor Dina Juntila should take a bow for the splendid needle drops. As for Van Sant, who was making his first feature since Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot (2018), he maintains a steady hand without quite nailing the post-Watergate mindset or getting inside the minds of the men at opposite ends of the wire. Consequently, it's hard to resist wondering how differently Herzog and Cage might have done thing.

DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON'T.

After a career in theatre and a stint as a screenwriter, Gianni Di Gregorio didn't start directing until he was 60. Having delighted on debut with Mid-August Lunch (2008), he settled into a cosy style of slow-burning situation comedy in which he plays variations on a cultured late-life Roman who finds himself having to deal with the vagaries of modern life. In a shrewdly frugal move, he has taken elements from The Salt of Life (2011), Good For Nothing (2014), Citizens of the World (2019), and Never Too Late For Love (2022) and repurposed them in his sixth feature, Come ti muovi, sbagli/Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't, which is the latest presentation by CinemaItaliaUK.

Living in a large apartment close to his favourite bar, The Professor (Gianni Di Gregorio) has a nice life in the Trastevere district of Rome. He is working on an essay about the Lombards and is delighted when Giovanna (Iaia Forte) gives him a book to help with his research. However, his idyll is shattered when German son-in-law, Helmut (Tom Wlashiha), has a fling with one of his Dante students, Ursula (Hildegard De Stefano), and wife Sofia (Greta Scarano) leaves Heidelberg with pre-teen children, Olga (Anna Losano) and Tommaso (Pietro Serpi), and moves in with her father.

Having commandeered the master bedroom, she leaves the Professor to make up beds for his grandchildren, while he occupies the sofa. Valet Rishad (Rishad Noorani) is far from amused by the intrusion, as Tommaso is a bit of a handful and is forever bickering with his sister. Moreover, Sofia is so intent on resuming her thesis that she is content to leave the kids with their grandfather, who is soon exhausted by Tommaso's boundless energy and refusal to do what he's told.

He takes them to the bar run by Calogero (Gugliemo Rubino) and his youthful assistant,

Antonio (Alessandro Bedetti), on whom Olga gets an instant crush. As they tuck into rice balls, Rishad appears to admonish the Professor for letting an asparagus risotto go to waste and hints that there are other gentlemen interested in hiring him. He tries to talk to Sofia, but she is too busy with her books to be disturbed and she chides her father for arguing Helmut's cause by declaring that everyone makes mistakes.

Although relieved to get the kids enrolled at a local school after Tommaso smashes a valuable porcelain soldier, the Professor has to decline Giovanna's invitation to join her at her country retreat because Sofia is relying on him to childmind, while she locks herself away in his study. His task is not made an easier when Rishad quits after Tommaso knocks a mop bucket over while playing football in the corridor and the Professor is delighted when Sofia announces that she's going to Leghorn for a few days, as she needs a break, as he can bundle the grandkids in the car and spend the weekend with Giovanna.

Meanwhile, Helmut notices a homeless man with his belongings on his back during a late-night drinking binge and decides to walk the 1155km to Rome in order to prove to his wife how sorry he is and how much he loves her. She couldn't care less, however, as she has hooked up with old flame, Enrico (Giovanni Onorato), only to be appalled when he spends lunch discussing his mother's health and showing her test results. Giovanna is similarly underwhelmed when she proposes a moonlight walk to a romantic oak tree, only for the Professor to fall asleep in his chair after another long day.

Surprised at being turfed out the next morning, the Professor is dismayed to see Giovanna canoodling with another man in the park and promptly gets into a fight outside the school with the parent of a boy whom Tommaso had punched. Olga, meanwhile, has left Antonio a love letter at the bar and he asks the Professor for advice on how to respond. He sends her a box of artichokes, which she finds hugely romantic and she is livid with Tommaso when he eats them. Sofia also discovers that dating has become a precarious business, when she dines with a dashing classmate (Marco Lo Chiatto) and learns that he is still sleeping with his wife while planning to divorce her.

While crossing the mountains, Helmut is adopted by a wolf. He names him Stern and tosses him titbits while lamenting that people shouldn't be condemned for an error of judgement. He stops off to see Piero della Francesca's `Resurrezione' (1465) - which Sofia had earlier ignored while driving to Rome after her father's recommendation - and this spurs him on to make amends. Unfortunately, his feet are so badly swollen that he has to call the Professor to ask him for a lift. He finds him in the woods in the middle of the night and has misgivings about letting Stern into the car because he's started to shed. As they drive, Helmut confides that Ursula was an irresistible temptation, although he regrets the pain he has caused Sofia. The Professor shrugs, as the German declares that it was inevitable that he would be damned if he did and damned if he didn't sleep with his student.

Such logic doesn't go down well with Sofia when Helmut tries to explain that he has performed a romantic gesture right out of his beloved Dante. As they argue, the Professor watches TV with the kids, while Stern finds himself a comfortable chair. After a while, silence descends and the Professor creeps into the study to find Sofia and Helmut curled up on the sofa.

The next day, the family piles into the car that has been guzzling coins at a parking meter. The Professor agrees to keep Stern, although he hands him over to Antonio after he breaks his arm in a fall when the wolf chases some pigeons in the park. This earns him the sympathy of Giovanna, who invites him to her country house. Hoping for some peace and quiet, the Professor finds her large family in residence and the film ends with him sharing a post-prandial cigarette with her wheelchair-bound father, who urges him to call him `dad'.

From the moment we learn that the Professor is writing about the Lombards (or Longobards), it's clear that he is going to face a German invasion. It has to be said, there's very little to like about Sofia and her offspring. Clearly bruised by Helmut's infidelity, she becomes protectively self-obsessed and almost regresses to singlehood in depositing the kids with the grandfather, who seemingly hadn't been a particularly hands-on parent. While Sofia seeks to recover some confidence and self-respect by flirting with old beaux, Olga develops a sweet crush on the hunky Antonio, while Tommaso behaves like a spoilt brat at every opportunity.

Di Gregario and co-scenarist Marco Pettenello seem to have a shaky grasp on modern children and their preoccupations. But they are even less successful in getting inside Sofia's head and Greta Scarano's flinty performance makes her markedly less empathetic than Tom Wlaschiha errant spouse. Although one suspects that Di Gregario is satirising male emotional immaturity by making Sofia and Giovanna so certain of their wants and needs, the female characters come across as rather strident, while the menfolk (as they tend to do in all Di Gregario's films) stumble towards what's expected of them like amiable bumblers.

As ever, Di Gregario makes measured use of Maurizio Calvesi's camera to capture the ambience of Trastavere, although it's also alert to small details inside the Professor's apartment, which has been knowingly designed Isabella Angelini. The score by Stefano Ratchev and Mattia Carratello is also a gem, as it reinforces the mischievous nature of the action, while also reminding us that it's never too late to start enjoying life. Not every piece slots into place, with the emotional avoirdupois sometimes feeling unearned. Yet, while this isn't Di Gregorio's best work, spending time in his company is always a treat.

DEAD LOVER.

Having made her directorial debut with the ambitiously stylised Tito (2017), Canadian actress Grace Glowicki makes a much stronger impression with her sophomore feature, Dead Lover. As indebted to Guy Maddin as it is to Mary Shelley, this variation on the Frankenstein theme comes with a Stink-O-Vision scratch`n'sniff card that adds a little odoriferous extra to a tale of star-crossed passion, graverobbing, reanimation, and bizarre botany that brings a whole new meaning to the term `green-fingered'.

Following a spiel about the whiff card and a series of on-screen numbers, a quote from Mary Shelley reads, `There is something at work in my soul which I do not understand.' The last four words are left to linger before we meet Gravedigger (Grace Glowicki), who confides to the moon that the combination of body odour from her exertions and the stench of the dead is preventing her from finding a soulmate. She attempts to concoct a perfume to mask her musk and tries it out on the Priest (Leah Doz), who spurns her advances and wishes he didn't have to put up with her in his graveyard.

Having lain in the earth to keep a dead woman (Lowen Morrow) company after no one had attended her funeral, Gravedigger finds herself being discussed by three gossips (Doz, Morrow, and Ben Petrie), who cackle while crocheting and casting aspersions. At the next funeral, Gravedigger notices Widower (Morrow) grieving the loss of his opera singer wife (Doz). However, she is even more taken with the deceased's poet brother (Petrie) and follows when he runs into the woods in grief. Wielding her trusty shovel, Gravedigger saves Poet from a wolf and he is so enchanted by her scent that he suggests bathing in the sea. They repair to her cottage, where she is taken aback when he expresses his desire for her. Passionate love-making follows, although Gravedigger mistakes Poet putting on her see-through dressing-gown for him trying to love and leave her.

They become inseparable and Gravedigger gives him an heirloom ring, which she puts on the third finger of his left hand, as this is supposed to contain veins that lead directly to the heart. Poet is so moved by Gravedigger's dream of having lots of children that he suddenly ups sticks, leaving only a note to inform her that he has gone to Europe to see a doctor who might make him fertile so he can fulfil her heart's desire. As the gossips ridicule her and Gravedigger comes to fear that Poet has abandoned her, she starts receiving postcards that update her on his treatment and remind her to keep tending the rose he left her. While returning home, however, Poet is lost overboard during a storm and three sailors (Petrie, Doz, and Morrow) find his severed ring finger and return it to Gravedigger in a bag.

While Gravedigger tries to come to terms with the loss of her beloved, Widower smokes opium and curses himself for failing to ensure that his spouse lived forever. While mourning, Gravedigger accidentally chops the tail off a lizard and notices that it keeps moving after being severed. This gives her the idea to conduct a series of experiments to use the lizard tail to try and regrow Poet from his finger. She plants it in a pot with special fertilizer and grows impatient for it to respond after zapping it with electricity during a storm. Eventually, however, the finger has a growing spurt and Gravedigger is overjoyed at having reanimated her lover (although she does get cross with him for repeatedly pointing at her). The finger writes `Body' in the condensation on the window and Gravedigger realises that Poet wants her to exhume his opera-singing sister and attach his finger to her corpse.

Finally twigging his meaning, Gravegigger chops off the cadaver's ring finger and attaches the outsized digit in its place. She is delighted with Creature, although she's not amused when it tips the ice-cream sundae she has made for it on the floor. The sight of it mating with a lizard further vexes Gravedigger, who complains that Poet had promised to love her exclusively. However, the gossips have informed Widower about his wife's exhumation and he comes to the graveyard cottage to see Creature having multiple orgasms with a reptile. He confronts Gravedigger and they fight, only for her to knock him out and hare off into the woods after her wayward lover.

Having disturbed some inflagrante lesbian nuns (Petrie and Morrow), Creature makes her way to the sea, where she finds a blind man swimming. She is immediately attracted to him and seduces him in the water. However, she squeezes him to tightly after copulation that she kills him. Meanwhile, Widower has come round and followed Gravedigger. He tells her that he has heard that Poet had lied to her and had employed the same chat-up line he had used on her to get 12 women pregnant during the time he was supposedly having his testicles treated. She is crushed and agrees to help Widower find Creature. They also come across the nuns and exchange awkward pleasantries before riding off into the night. When the stop to rest, however, Gravedigger spots her notebook in Widower's pocket and realises that he had seen Poet's postcards and had fabricated a story so that she would give up her claim to Creature and Poet's finger. Escaping from the ropes with which Widower had tied her, Gravedigger returns to the cottage in the hope that Creature had a homing instinct.

Meanwhile, the gossips had informed the Priest about the going-on in his graveyard and he vows to put an end to things. Gravedigger is not to be stopped, however, and she swings her shovel to bloody effect before charging inside to discover that Creature has brought Swimmer home with the intention of using the finger revival technique to bring him back to life. Gravedigger protests, but Creatures forces her long finger down her throat and chokes her. She chops off Gravedigger's ring finger and attaches it to her beau, not noticing that Widower has crept into the cottage and found his wife's ring finger in a jar and made off with it with reanimating plans of his own. As the story ends, Creature extends her finger to touch Swimmer in a parody of `The Creation of Adam' from the Sistine Chapel and she cradles him in the graveyard, in a haze of pinkinsh candlelight, as U.S. Girls play on the soundtrack.

Where to start? Perhaps with the wonderful silent movie pastiches that make amusing and atmospheric use of gel-coated lighting, canted angles, Caligari-esque make-up, and low-tech visual and physical effects? Maybe with the tones and textures of Rhayne Vermette 16mm photography, the evocative deftness of Becca Morin's production design, Michael Harmon's use of miniatures and stop-motion animation, or the witty timing of Lev Lewis's editing? And what about the inventiveness of Courtney Mitchell's costumes and the hair and make-up creations of Samantha Breault, Joseph Hinds, and Andi Clifford that enable Ben Petrie, Leah Doz, and Lowen Morrow to play so many different roles with such wit and flair? Doz updates Elsa Lanchester's Bride of Frankenstein with a some melancholic lust and operatic élan, while Morrow's Widower brings to mind Helena Bonham Carter doing an impression of Johnny Depp, or vice versa.

But there can only be one place to begin and that is with Grace Glowicki, who wrote, directed, and starred in a film that fizzes with comic imagination, experimental audacity, and audiovisual ingenuity. Somehow, she managed all this on a budget of just $350,000, while also delivering a performance that has as many facets as it does shifts in accent. Peeing out from under a blonde plaited barnet, Glowicki the actor succeeds in making Gravedigger an outsider, a solutionist, a romantic, and a maniac without once alienating the audience. As co-writer with partner Ben Petrie, she has concocted a wildly novel spin on the Modern Prometheus narrative, which melds Mary Shelley with William Castle, Monty Python, Mel Brooks, and Kenneth Anger. She has also cited Saturday Night Live, exploitation movies, and socko cartoons as her inspirations. In striving to emulate DIY experimental theatre, however, she seems most indebted to Guy Maddin masterpieces like Tales From the Gimli Hospital (1988), Archangel (1990), and Careful (1992) for both the look and the feel of the action. It doesn't all come off, but it will be fascinating to see what she does next, but, in the meantime, maybe someone can put out some of her other acting assignments, such as Strawberry Mansion (2021) and Honey Bunch (2025).

ABODE.

Hailing from Limerick, Liam Ó Móchain has bedded down in places across Ireland while pursuing his career as an actor, reporter, writer, and director. Having also known what it's like to be homeless, he explores the theme of having somewhere to call home in Abobe, a collection of five vignettes that has more in common with the delightful Lost & Found (2017) than his first two linear features, The Book That Wrote Itself (1999) and W.C. (2007).

In the first tale, Benedict (Liam Ó Móchain) decides to leave clearing up his Italian restaurant until St Stephen's Day. Seeing Carol (Marion O'Dwyer) sitting outside, he gives her a few euros on the proviso she checks into a hostel. However, she discovers he's left the back door open and celebrates Christmas Day with a slap-up lunch with homeless friends, Casper (Anthony Morris), Keano (Jed Murphy), Tomo (Ryan Lincoln), and Tayto (Mary Murray). She's taken aback when the latter tells her that missing her late husband will eventually ease, even though it's been two years and she listens to his voicemail message all the time. When the others leave, Carol stays behind to tidy up and Benedict shows his gratitude the next morning by inviting her in from the cold.

Peggy (Mary McEvoy) runs a corner shop with her son, Gerry (Liam Ó Móchain). He dislikes his mother seeing the dapper Red (Brendan Conroy) and tries to order him out of the shop. But they go back to Peggy's house, where they do a bit of gardening before she cooks a lasagne and he changes into a maroon suit that she finds fetching. Gerry barges in to order Red out, but Peggy refuses to budge and they sashay to the local pub, where they get gently sloshed and return home to bed joking about crisps and peanuts. Next morning, Red changes into his blue suit and lifts a few notes from Peggy's purse. But she smiles to herself, as she stays under the covers and tells Red she's see him again same time next month.

Molly (Rosemary Henderson) is fussing and husband Francis (Donncha Crowley) and grown children, Frank, Jr. (Karl Argue) and Patricia (Lynette Callaghan), strive to calm her down. She is eager to get to the church on time and is frustrated when the others insist on letting her go alone, while they wait for her at the restaurant. Eventually, Francis sits her down and says that it would be better if she went alone to meet the son she had been forced to give up for adoption 47 years earlier. He reassures her that he will be happy to see her and that he will understand that she would have had no choice when it came to keeping him. Walking along the footpath, Molly smiles at a middle-aged man, but he's not the one. She knows instinctively when her son (Liam Ó Móchain) approaches, however, and they sit down for tea at the outdoor café to get to know one another, as he explains that he has spent his life in her native Galway, after she had moved to Dublin because that's where she had been told he was living.

Skyler (Gail Brady) and Sam (Matthew O'Brien) went out to buy a television, but ended up with a voice-activated oven. Ignoring the warning of installer Mike (Liam Ó Móchain), they decide to name the appliance `Skylar' and Sam gets mocked when the cooker fails to recognise his voice. Despite a near miss, after Skylar had switched herself on after hearing her name being called out during a vigorous sex session upstairs, the pair neglect to re-record the voice control. Thus, when Skylar hides in the oven during a kinky game of hide-and-seek, Sam is powerless to prevent it from heating up and locking into slow cook mode.

Finally, Conor (Stephen Jones) and Maria (Mary Murray) treat themselves to a weekend by the sea without the children. As their room isn't ready, they go for a walk. But it's been so long since they were alone together that they feel at a loose end. They tell Sadie (Sinead O'Riordan) that it's their 10th wedding anniversary and they get a bottle of wine on the house. Barman Jim (Liam Ó Móchain) also gives them free drinks and they over-indulge. While Maria is lying in, Conor drives home and gets their sons and they are sleeping in the room when Conor gets a call to say they have won a house in a football club raffle.

Taking inspiration from true stories (including some of his own), Ó Móchain examines the notions of home and having somewhere to belong with a deft mix of wit and poignancy. Having been homeless for the first 18 months of his life and part of a foster family until he was 15, he has particular insights into the emotions experienced by Molly, as she prepares to meet the son she has not seen since he was born, and Conor and Maria, who feel more complete as a family than as a couple.

Having made five shorts during the 2010s, Ó Móchain is clearly comfortable with the vignette format and each one has its own tone and character. Indeed, another five storylines failed to make the cut and one of these might have been chosen over the slightly misfiring tale of the voice-activated oven, whose satirical punch fails to land. Shooting over three years in various parts of Dublin, the anthology was evidently a labour of love, hence Ó Móchain appearing in all five storylines, albeit as a secondary character (with amusingly different hairstyles). He elicits lovely performances from Marion O'Dwyer and Rosemary Henderson, while there's an irresistible divilment about Brendan Conroy's rakish rogue.

On the production side, Joshua Burke's photography and Martin Cahill's production design are as astute as Richie Buckley and Daniel Horn's nimble score. But the editing of the final phase of the last story feels a bit rushed and confused. Some have criticised the film for reinforcing Irish stereotypes and condoning boozing and gambling. But the writer-director takes such everyday realities in his stride in adopting a live and let live approach to how people make a home and find their happiness. He may not be O. Henry when it comes to plot twists, but Ó Móchain is still a thoughtful and empathetic storyteller and it would be nice to see the off-cuts gathered into a sequel.

APNAS.

Actor-rapper Ashley Chin and writer-director Darren R.L. Gordon team up to direct Apnas, a crime drama set amidst Manchester's Asian community that has been scripted by Adrian Scott, who first hooked up with Chin when they helped co-script Alex Pillai's Victim (2011), in which Chin starred. He cameos here as Imam Hamood, but the Muslim- and Pakistan-related aspects of the story are overshadowed by tried-and-trusted BritCrime tropes and stereotypes.

As a boy in Manchester, Awais Khan (James Greaney) had once won a toy Lamborghini in a cricket challenge with his cousin, Majid (Asim Ashraf). However, their fathers had fallen out over their mother's Islamabad home and they didn't see each other again for 15 years, by which time Awais has become an accountant. At a family wedding, Awais had chatted with M.K. (as he now insists on being called) and learned that he is now making big bucks from his business enterprises with his politician father, Zafar (Rehan Sheikh). Sister Sanaya (Haiesha Mistry) notes all this in her diary, while serving as the narrator for a story that is about to take a dark turn.

Out of the blue, Awais loses the job that helps keep the family going, as father Aslam (Nitin Ganatra) drives a taxi, while sister Sara (Aisha Osman) fools her parents into thinking she's studying to be a pharmacist, when she's actually dancing. Sanaya has to stay home to look after mother Gulshan (Bitu Thomas), who has diabetes and receives regular visits from Elenor Elmsley (Mollie Winnard), who is having a secret fling with Awais, as the family would not approve, as they want him to find a Muslim girl. Similarly, they are trying to arrange a match for Sanaya back in Pakistan and she is forced to do all the housework, as training for taking over her own household.

Humiliated when Gulshan orders her to buy face-lightening cream to make her more appealing to prospective in-laws, Sanaya records her resentments in her journal. But she knows nothing of Awais's struggle to find work until her father's car is repossessed and they fall behind with the rent. Desperate, Aswais calls M.K., who is in disgrace with his father for killing a man who owed them money. As he needs £100,000 sending covertly to Pakistan, he hires Awais to use his accounting skills to bypass official channels. However, he becomes so valuable that M.K. gets jealous and fails to listen to his father's warning not to embarrass him (as he is a respected politician back home).

When the dead dealer's body is found, Yasir Abbas (Ijaz Rana) joins the team led by Detective Inspector Ali Javid (Ash Tandon), only for trusted underlings, DS Ray Yeardely (Mark Smalley) and DS Victor Simms (Nick Pearse), to take a dislike to him. He is tired of crimes involving young Pakistani men going unsolved, but even his new boss accepts that bringing charges is tricky. Javid also confides that he is going to retire soon and urges Abbas not to do anything reckless that would ruin his spotless record.

Meanwhile, Awais tells the family he's got a new job and has been promoted to explain the wads of cash that buy a new house and fancy clothes. Elenor is taken on shopping sprees, but Sanaya notices that the smile has dimmed in her brother's eyes. However, she's disgusted when pal Chico (Reuben J. Virdee) brings him to her flat after he gets wasted out clubbing with M.K., who picks a fight with the Masood brothers from Bradford. They have a huge row and she accuses him of becoming like M.K. and being a bad Muslim. This stings and he is also reminded of the need for humility by his father, who notes that he has stopped going to the mosque.

Elenor warns Awais that M.K. is going to get him into trouble and he tries to remind his cousin not to overreach and spend money that belongs to his father. Missing Sara's dance showcase, Awais goes to Bradford, where M.K. tries to swindle the Masoods. They chase the Khans and one brother is about to shoot M.K. when Awais guns him down and they escape. As Sanaya writes, however, taking a life is the gravest sin in Islam, as killing one is like killing the whole of humanity and she knows that the burden of the crime will weigh heavily on her brother's shoulders.

He tries to confess to Elenor, who happens to be tending Abbas's mother and he almost catches him in his house. Although Abbas wants Javid to act, he refuses because of a lack of evidence. But Abbas goes snooping at the Khan lock-up, where Awais had just put M.K. in a bad mood by announcing that he quitting. Javid witnesses the incident and decides to act, as he is on the Khan payroll and he warns Abbas at gunpoint to keep his nose out.

However, the Masoods have come to Manchester seeking revenge and M.K. is abducted and badly beaten. He betrays his cousin and Awais sees one of the brothers sneaking through the garden. He bundles his mother, Sara, and Elenor into an upstairs room, while Javid arrives outside to squirrel M.K. away. Chico arrives at that moment to see Awais (leaving his pregnant girlfriend at the takeaway where she works) and sneaks in through a side door after seeing the Masood van outside. As Gulshan had found Sanaya's notebook and read unflattering passages about herself, she had gone to hide in the bathroom. But she hears the screams downstairs and throws something at the gunman as he tries to force Awais into the open and a shot rings out and Chico dies.

Three months later, Awais tells his uncle that he wants to leave the business. He takes revenge by taking back the house the family had been renting and Aslam has the quiet satisfaction of telling his brother what a disappointment he would be to their mother. Sara admits to taking dance classes, which pleases Gulshan, as she had once been a fine dancer. She also commends Sanaya on the quality of her writing and welcomes Elenor to the family (after five years of secrecy). Aslam is amused by how many truths have been hidden, but he is proud of his family and says wherever they live will be home.

Time passes and Awais agrees to meet M.K. He apologises for landing him in hot water by allowing himself to spiral out of control. Moreover, he wants Awais to keep his Lamborghini. But he refuses and M.K. hurls abuse at him for disrespecting him, when he's so powerful. However, he's still a marked man and an assassin on a push bike shoots him through the car window and Javid has to call his paymaster, Zafar, with the news his son is dead. As for Awais, he heads home in time to see Sanaya open a box containing the first copies of her book, Apnas/Our Own, and he bursts with pride and, presumably, relief, as he has not only got away with murder, but also dodged a bullet.

Raising a number of potent socio-religious issues along the way, Chin and Gordon have created a slick piece of fact-based underworld entertainment that borrows the old Cecil B. DeMille gambit of revelling in sin before punishing it in the final reel. It's a shame that there isn't more British Asian input behind the scenes, beside producer Fiaz Ashraf. Scott's screenplay puts all the blocks in place, but the family scenes feel clichéd and stuck in the realm of Damien O'Donnell's East Is East (1999). A quarter of a century has passed since then. Surely, things have moved on a little since then, even though tradition is a key part of the family make-up.

Cinematographer Mat Johns give the visuals some polish, but Chin and Gordon fail to make much of the Mancunian setting. Accents apart, this could have taken place in any major city with an Asian diaspora and it feels like a wasted opportunity not to have explored the gangland rivalries between Manchester and Bradford in a less schematic manner.

That said, the performance are solid enough, with James Greaney playing the greenhorn who is seduced by the trappings of wealth and power, while Asim Ashraf is splendidly obnoxious as his viciously cocky cousin. However, the less showy turns make more impact, with Nitin Ganatra and Rehan Sheikh conveying the pride and the pain of estranged siblings, while Ash Tandon is splendidly guarded as the senior cop, even though his corrupt nature is evident from the moment we clap eyes on him. Frustratingly, however, the female parts trade in platitudes and are poorly written, which is unforgiveable considering the action is supposedly being presented from Sanaya's perspective (although it's never made clear how she knows so much about things she could never possibly have witnessed or learned about from her brother). Nevertheless, Haiesha Mistry's quiet desperation is achingly poignant, with the scene in which she sits on her bed with a tub of skin-lightening cream leaving a more telling impression than any of the strictly formulaic crime and culture-clash elements. It's just a shame that her character is so thinly developed, even though she's the narrator. At least Sara got a dance routine. All Sanaya gets to do is scribble and serve.

THE LAND OF SOMETIMES.

Having introduced us to the family who live in an out-of-the-way house, the Postman (Mel Brooks) delivers a letter calling Father (Calum Callaghan) back to his ship on Christmas Day. Before leaving 12 year-old twins, Elise (Alisha Weir) and Alfie (Andrei Shen), with their Mother (Jessica Henwick), Father hides a magical watch behind a family picture and Mother finds it on Christmas Eve the following year, after she and Elise had become increasingly estranged and Alfie withdrawn following the receipt of news that Father is missing in action.

Mother explains that Father had told her that the Wish Watch (Terry Jones) has the power to summon the Wish Collector (Ewan McGregor), who lives in the Land of Sometimes, where all four seasons happen in one day. The kids are sceptical, but the Wish Collector arrives that night in a flying fish boat and (amidst a sudden flurry of songs), he whisks them away across the night to the fantastical land, where they have six wishes to use wisely before the end of winter - or they become permanent citizens. The cautious Alfie has misgivings, but the spirited Elise can't wait to explore because she has felt so cooped up in the house on the promontory. She throws a gigglenut at the green-haired Lad With the Flying Feet (Asa Butterfield), only for it to hit The Guardian (Stefan Ashton Frank), a spider-crab-like creature who wants to possess the Wish Watch. However, Elise uses a wish to catapult him to the top of a snowy mountain and the Wish Collector worries that this might not have been the best idea.

She disapproves of Alfie wishing for a feast, especially as the dishes make people `toot' and she loses the only edible looking cake to a pink, furry, pleading-eyed Fliggle, who attaches itself to her as a friend for life. They also meet the River Slouch Sling (Trevor Dion Nicholas), who sings a song with his underwater jazz band. However, Elise doesn't like his orange scales and bouncy belly and he is disappointed with her for upsetting The Guardian and depositing him on a volcano that can send down lava. Undaunted, Elise grabs the watch and decides to wish for excitement and an end to rules. Alfie can't believe she's been so reckless and spring passes into summer in a trice - all under the careful eye of an eight-ball on legs with a recording eye, who is clearly working for their nemesis.

Rushing off through verdant countryside, Elise comes to a white tower and she ventures inside to meet Mediocris (Helena Bonham Carter), a fairy who dislikes her dress sense and transforms her into a fairy for a dance full of Busby Berkeleyesque kaleidscopic designs and whirling butterfly dances. Alfie and the Wish Collector earn Mediocris's displeasure and she banishes them from her palace. But Elsie doesn't like this kind of excitement and is grateful to the Fliggle for scampering down the staircase that turns into a giant helter skelter slide to dump the siblings in the woods.

The Wish Watch confides in the Wish Collector that he's not sure the twins have got the hang of responsible wish-making and his reservations are promptly justified when the pair get into a raging argument that ends with Alfie wishing the Elsie was somewhere else and they are flung apart across the fields, much to the Wish Collector's amusement, as he purrs that his plan is going like clockwork. Alfie is persuaded by a taking gate to enter a circular citadel, with talking doors that lead right back to where he enters. He sits against a wall in frustration, unaware that Elise is on the other side singing the same lullaby that Mother had taught them.

They can't hear each other, however, and Elise's impatience drives away the Lad With Flying Feet before she has realised that he could have carried her over the wall to Alfie. Instead, she disregards Fliggle's warning and heads into some dark woods, where she finds a wishing well. She flips a coin that Alfie had dropped into the water in the hope the family can be reunited, only for the slime green Mrs Blip (Ruby Turner) to emerge from the depths and inform her that is a memory well. She warns Elise that the Wish Collector is a trouble-maker and sends her cascading away on a river of green bubbles (which the Fliggle rather enjoys, as it turns back to look into the camera, as if to say, `This is fun, isn't it?').

Meanwhile, a paper plant that can fly shows Alfie a portal in the citadel's stonework and he steps through into a village in which every building is a fake. They can all talk and they taunt him every time he makes a mistake or turns into another dead end. Having seen the skeleton of the last boy to ger trapped in this bizarre labyrinth, Alfie climbs up the face of a house and is swept up and away by the paper flower-bird. Just as he thinks he is making progress, however, he is dumped into the canopy of some scarlet trees.

He's in better fettle than Elise, however, as she has been put in a bird cage by Mrs Blip, who demands the Wish Watch. While she plots with Mr Smaller Than Small (Gregory Gudgeon), Elise and Fliggle manage to escape and go in search of Alfie before he can be delivered to The Guardian by Smaller. Alfie, meanwhile, has befriended a purple sheep that had grown on a bush and which takes him to a lookout tree. At the summit, he's surprised to find the Wish Collector sipping tea. He reminds him that they only have one wish left, as Elise was holding the watch when she wished for an adventure back in their bedroom. As they chat, Smaller appears in his flying machine and fibs that Elise is on the volcano. Alfie wishes her safe, but the wish doesn't work because Elise isn't on the volcano and the Wish Watch can only work when something is possible.

Smaller denies lying, but the Wish Collector says that it wouldn't suddenly have become autumn unless a rule had been broken. Nevertheless, Alfie insists on climbing the volcano to rescue his sister, just as she goes in search of her brother, with the help of the flying boy. Once inside, Alfie plucks Elise from a ledge and they discover that The Guardian is actually Smaller inside a robotic construction. He explains in song that he was once a child who was denied his final wish and became trapped on the island. So, Elise wishes him a safe return to his home, not realising that this was her last wish.

Honeycomb lava starts pouring down and they ride down the volcano on a makeshift boat. They thing they are trapped, but Elise's green-haired guardian angel arrives at the helm of the Wish Collector's flying boat and they all rush aboard before winter ends and the Land of Sometimes vanishes. The Lad With Flying Feet takes Fliggle back to the island, as it prepares for another day, and the Wish Collector sets sail, explaining that Elise and Alfie never really needed wishes, just each other. He also avers that children make wishes every day without realising that it's the little things in life that really matter.

Back in their home for Christmas Day, Elise and Alfie wake to find the tree trimmed and presents piled high. The Wish Collector claims to have planned this all along, but Smaller and the Wish Watch tick him off for forgetting his last wish. This brings Father home to complete the family and the Wish Collector turns the ship to take Smaller home. He turns out to be the postman, who warns everyone to be careful if they ever get a watch in the mail.

Although dismissed by some as just another cookie-cutter CGI confection with Disneyfied aspirations, this is superior to the majority to recent releases that prioritise video-game visuals over storytelling and world-building - as one might expect, as Bonnie Arnold, one of the numerous executive producers, worked on Toy Story (1995) and How to Train Your Dragon (2010).

Based on a 2012 audiobook by Reading-born actress-cum-songwriter, Francesca Longrigg, the screenplay by Martin Casella and Tony Nottage adheres to the classic quest format, while borrowing liberally from the likes of Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, and The Chronicles of Narnia, while also invoking the spirit of Studio Ghibli. The characters encountered by the twins pose them problems, while also teaching them lessons that they need to carry forward in order to attain their goal of getting home. The Lad With Flying Feet and Fliggle also stress the value of friendship and the importance of trust. But there's nothing sappy about a film that trusts the intelligence of the audience and resists patronising and cosseting. It also tweaks sibling expectations by making Elise headstrong and impetuous (to the point of recklessness and rudeness to her mother), while Alfie (whom she dubs `dung beetle') circumspectly follows in her wake before learning to stand up for himself.

The stellar vocal cast helps considerably, with Ewan McGregor, Helena Bonham Carter, and Mel Brooks all entering into the scheme of things. The Guardian was to have been played by David Walliams, but he was replaced at the eleventh hour by Stefan Ashton Frank, who brings a suitable sense of menace. The songs by Tim Rice and Peter Hobbs are hardly ear-worms, while some of the rhymes are rather strained. But they reinforce the sense of fantasy, because nobody pauses to burst into song in daily life, and they are performed with pizzazz (especially by Ruby Turner). Moreover, the numbers also afford the animators the opportunity to come up with some splendid set-pieces, with the fairy flutterings being genuinely dazzling.

A closing caption poignantly remembers executive producer Alan Yentob and ex-Python Terry Jones, who recorded his Wish Watch dialogue shortly before his dementia diagnosis in 2016. The fact that The Land of Sometimes has finally reached screens a decade later is testament to the determination of the director and his team and, while the film has its flaws, they deserve a little more credit than some critics have given them for seeing the project through.

THE LAST SUPPER.

Taking the same Holy Week span that provided the basis for Norman Jewison's Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), Mauro Borelli's The Last Supper is the latest Godlywood offering to reach the UK. Christian movies have become big business Stateside and play well with the MAGA constituency. However, those of a more secularly cynical persuasion will struggle to find much to commend here, in spite of an earnest effort to emphasise the Jewishness of Jesus Christ and his apostles.

Having crammed the Sermon on the Mount and the Feeding of the Five Thousand into a prologue that shows apostles Simon Peter (James Oliver Wheatley) and Judas Iscariot (Robert Knepper) having very different expectations of Jesus Christ (Jamie Ward), the scene lurches forward a year so that Palm Sunday and the Cleansing of the Temple can convince High Priest Caiaphas (James Faulkner) that Jesus needs to be stopped before He turns the heads of the people and brings the might of Rome down upon them all. Luckily, scheming servant Malchus (Ben Dilloway) knows someone inside Jesus's camp who can be persuaded to keep them informed of His movements over the Passover weekend.

Judas refuses the initial offer of 30 pieces of silver. But Satan (Ahmed Hammoud) slivers through the sheep pen in which he is sleeping and forces him to take sides. Meanwhile, Peter and John (Charlie MacGechan) have gone to the house of Joseph of Aramathea (Daniel Fathers) to make preparations for the Passover supper. Peter fears an ambush and looks for ways in which he can smuggle Jesus away if guards come for him. As the other apostles gather, Peter shares his misgivings with Thomas (Billy Rayner), as Joseph's wife, Rachel (Marie-Batoul Prenant) explains the ingredients in the dishes she is preparing to her daughter, while Grandfather Ezequiel (Ismael Kanater) informs the younger children of the reasons for this solemn celebration.

Greeted with reverence by the members of the household, as well as Mary Magdalene (Nathalie Rapti Gomez), Jesus thanks Rachel for her efforts and leads His followers to the upper room. He strips to wash the feet of each apostle, with Peter being warned that any refusal would preclude him from joining Jesus in paradise. The late-arriving Judas stands aside from the others and sees Satan in the depths of the fire, urging him not to make the wrong choice. Sensing his discomfort, Jesus reminds him of the stain that can never be washed away, as He bathes his feet and Judas struggles with the thoughts racing through his head.

Matzah bread is followed by bitter herbs before the apostles greedily tuck into a roasted lamb. However, Jesus feels the pain the animal must have suffered and anticipates the nails that will pierce His hands and the thorns that will cut into His head. Peter notices the Master's distress, but He regains his composure to break the bread that He informs the apostles is His body. He shares it out and reveals that the man dipping bread in the same dish will betray Him. Judas is confused, but Jesus urges him to act quickly, even though he will deeply regret what he is about to do. The others can't fathom why Judas leaves the table (even though they have just been told why) and watch, as he wrestles with his conscience before Satan scares him into treachery by describing how much he will suffer if he remains with his friends.

Once Judas has departed, Jesus takes a cup of Canaan wine and tells the apostles to drink the blood that will be shed for them and for all humankind. He urges his closest confidantes to perform this ritual in His memory and they are puzzled by what He is trying to tell them.

Wondering where Judas has gone, Peter finds him praying in a chicken coop. Although he has been cursing Jesus for not taking advantage of the political opportunities opening up before Him, Judas claims he is following what Jesus had said about praying in private rather than ostentatiously in public. But he suddenly bolts and goes to see Caiaphas, who is busy lamenting the fact that he had not been given the gifts bestowed upon Jesus. He refuses to deny the miracles and tells Caiaphas about Jesus walking on water to quell a storm. But he admits to having a weakness for money and he gathers up the coins tossed at his feet.

Back at Joseph's house, Peter is dismayed when Jesus informs him that he will betray Him three times before the cock crows. Seizing a sword, Peter joins the others after Jesus goes to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. The apostles ponder the significance of the business with the bread and wine and how it ties into their Passover tradition. But they doze off and Jesus is disappointed to find them sleeping after He has been asking His Father for the cup of suffering to be taken away. By the time He returns a second time, Judas betrays Him with a kiss and He restores the ear of the High Priest's servant after Peter cuts it off in a vain attempt to defend his master.

Jesus asks Caiaphas why he hadn't seized Him before, when he was at large in the city. But He allows Himself to be taken, as Joseph and Mary Magdalene watch from a distance and a distraught Judas flees with his tormenting guilt being exacerbated by Satan's cynical cackling in the guise of a street beggar. Peter and Mary Magdalene follow, as Jesus is brought before Caiaphas. Despite the brutality meted out by the guards, he insists he wants a conversation not a trial and urges the Pharisees to keep silent, while he asks about the teachings that have brought confusion to the people. But he suddenly demands to know whether Jesus thinks He is the Son of God and sends him to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, on hearing His response.

Having already denied Jesus twice, Peter is crushed when he is thrown to the ground near where Jesus is being whipped and their eyes meet when they hear the cock crow after his third protestation. Meanwhile, Judas has hanged himself and Satan tries to tempt Peter to do the same when he comes across his dangling corpse in a downpour. However, Peter remembers Jesus telling him that He has faith in his strength to lead his brothers and he staggers off into the night.

By the time Peter finds the other apostles, Pilate has washed his hands off screen and Jesus been crucified. John describes His last moments to Peter and we cut to Christ on the cross in darkness, as Caiaphas backs away in the rain. Heeding John's words that Jesus has done this for us all, Peter gains new strength and his resolve is reinforced by news that the tomb is empty. A week later, as the apostles are fishing, Peter recognises Jesus on the shore. He wades through the water to fall at His feet, as his companions haul in a mighty catch from the shallows. As they eat, Jesus asks Peter if he loves Him and entrusts him with the mission of spreading the Good News to every corner of the earth.

There's no doubting the sincerity of this picture or the proficiency of its visuals. Cinematographer Vladislav Opelyants makes evocative use of the Moroccan locations, while Aziz Mhand's sets add an authenticity that is complemented by Nezha Dakil's costume team. Even Leonardo De Bernardini's bathetic score reinforces the sense of reverence that the producers are keen to convey. But the writing and acting are nowhere near the same standard.

Clearly, Mauro Borrelli was operating on a limited budget, hence the small-scale of scenes like Palm Sunday and the Cleansing of the Temple, the paucity of the extras around Caiaphas's palace after Jesus is arrested, and the omission of His visit to Pilate and much of what occurred at Calvary. But he turns this to his advantage with the intimate depiction of events at Joseph's house in both the lower and upper rooms. By lingering on the meaning of the Passover ritual, Borrelli and co-scenarist John Collins capably link Jesus (and, therefore, Christianity) to Jewish tradition. But they make too little of Jesus's repeated allusions to fulfilling the words of the prophets, while the tensions within Sanhedrin between the Sadducees and the Pharisees are referred to only in passing during Caiaphas's interrogation.

Considering the film's evangelising brief, far too little attention is paid to Christ's teaching. Even the significance of the Last Supper is fudged because of the need to follow Judas on his path to perdition. Robert Knepper does what he can to create a conflicted character whose admiration for Jesus is compromised by his frustration at his apolitical stance. But Borrelli and Collins singularly fail to explain the reasons for his treachery or why he was convinced to act only during the Last Supper itself. James Oliver Wheatley also works hard to present Peter as a simple man whose trust in his teacher prompts him to resist the despair he feels after his moment of weakness. James Faulkner also brings an air of gravitas to the high priest. But the idea that he was driven more by envy of Jesus's status and talents than by fear of being deposed by the Romans (as his father-in-law Annas had been) is highly unpersuasive.

As is the performance of Jamie Ward, whose petulant Jesus lacks charisma, authority, or presence. He's not helped by the fact that the screenplay fails to establish any sense of bond between Jesus and the apostles (the majority of whom feel like extras with stick-on beards they are so poorly delineated). He feels aloof when surrounded by the crowd at Bethesda and maladroit in the kitchen with Joseph of Arimathea's family. Most injuriously, he fails to generate any sense of divine inspiration during the Eucharistic part of the Last Supper. He looks the part in a close-up in the garden that has been lit to resemble a piece of Late Renaissance devotional art. But Michael Medved might be persuaded to relieve Ted Neeley of the title `Worst Performance by an Actor as Jesus Christ' if he ever updated his 1980 tome, The Golden Turkey Awards.