Donald Clarke

The gags are plentiful. Old pals are still upright. But the sense of a finger wagging throughout can’t help but temper some of the fun.

At its best, this classy production reminds us why any film by this director deserves to be treated as a major event.

Unfortunately, the film takes too long to get to a destination – a festering hive of human corruption – that’s inevitable given the first 20 minutes of boozing, humping and double dealing. The dialogue feels inauthentic. The decadence is forced. Nothing about this is very much fun. Mr Barry Lyndon need not beware.

All solid good fun. All professionally honed. A minor miracle.

For all the unfortunate messiness of the film’s later stages, Tuner, shot energetically by Lowell A Meyer, remains engaging throughout thanks to consistently original performances and notably witty dialogue.

What keeps Power Ballad flowing is the juice of the dialogue, the comic humanity of the plotting and, above anything else, that charmingly ingenuous belief in pop music as something that truly matters. Good work.

The actors are unlikely to be confused with Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur from the Capra flick, but they have a spring-fresh charm that remains pleasing throughout.

The film ultimately amounts to not much more than an empty distraction of the old school. That is not altogether a bad thing. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away we were happy with that on a rainy afternoon.

This picture is, in part, an attempt to assuage guilt at enjoying the teen-camp slasher at its most misogynistic and transphobic. It is also, as the director would admit, an amusing send-up of where they now find themselves.

Shot in chiselled light by Lukasz Zal, who was behind the camera for the first two films in the trilogy, Fatherland also becomes, as the car moves eastwards, increasingly taken up with the ravages of grief and the responsibility of the artist. Those themes come together in a beautiful, sad epiphany that closes out a terse film with divine economy.