Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 13/8/2015)

When teenage sisters Cyntia Suano and Laura López go missing near the small town of Villa-Franco in September 1980, Madrid cops Javier Gutiérrez and Raúl Arévalo are sent to the Guadalquivir delta to investigate. Their car breaks down en route and they pick their way through a nocturnal funfair to their hotel, where they discover one of their rooms has been reallocated. The younger and more progressive of the pair, Arévalo is dismayed to find a crucifix decorated with images of Franco, Hitler and Mussolini on the wall and he slips it into a drawer. He feels no better about the state of the nation, as he watches the TV news reports on a demonstration by the far-right Fuerza Nueva group.

Gutiérrez is an old-school cop, who is not above getting suspects drunk or beating confessions out of them. He also has a reputation for extortion and they argue at the fairground shooting range over the fact that Arévalo has been given this assignment as punishment for writing a letter to a newspaper criticising the conduct of an army general. Yet, while he likes to think of himself as an upstanding representative of the restored monarchy and the democracy it protects, Arévalo (whose wife back in the capital is expecting their first child) has also been known to use strongarm tactics if they can get results.

Having received little support from their local colleagues, Gutiérrez and Arévalo pay a call on Suano and López's parents. Father Antonio de la Torre is reluctant to speak to them. But, despite being terrified of her husband, mother Nerea Barros slips the cops a strip of photographic negative showing her topless daughters with an unidentified man. The local cops had already intimated that Suano and López were regarded as sleazy, but their classmates cover up for them, while joking that they wouldn't be surprised if they had left town because it is such a dead end.

Gutiérrez and Arévalo are taken by boat to meet psychic fishwife Ángela Vega, who seems to recognise the former, as she tells them that she has had visions of an abandoned farmhouse. When they visit under cover of darkness, Arévalo spots pro-Franco graffiti on a wall. But they also find a purse and, during a full-scale search of the marsh the next day, the pair apprehend poacher Salvador Reina after a chase across the parched mud. They let him go, but soon find the mutilated bodies of the abused girls and Gutiérrez breaks the news to De la Torre and Barros. Back at the hotel, they are woken in the middle of the night by the distraught, gun-wielding Miguel Ángel Díaz, who reveals that they are not the first girls to disappear from the neighbourhood.

As they make inquiries around the town, they learn more about the missing girls. They also see a photograph of some of them in the company of Jesús Castro, a cocky gigolo who is dating Ana Tomeno, a close friend of the dead sisters. He tries to sneak up on Gutiérrez and Arévalo in their car, as takes Tomeno to a remote hunting lodge. But they slap him around and are less than convinced when he claims he doesn't know all of the girls in the snapshot. Yet, when they have his blood tested to see if it matches semen samples found on the underwear of one of the deceased siblings, he fails to provide a match. However, Gutiérrez spots a man with a ten gallon hat following Castro and Tomeno into the lodge, while Arévalo enlists the help of local journalist Manolo Solo in return for a few choice titbits for his paper.

At the funeral, Barros tells Gutiérrez and Arévalo that she found bankbooks belonging to her daughters in De la Torre's car. He breaks down under pressure from Gutiérrez and confesses that he stole a kilo of heroin from a drug baron so that he could take his family away from this hellhole. But he was rumbled and has since had most of his possessions confiscated in recompense. Mayor Juan Carlos Villenueva is keen to get the case wrapped up, as the rice harvest is late (the area produces 40% of the national crop) and he is concerned that the workforce will start to get agitated. However, it is also clear that he is protecting someone and that the civil guards are in cahoots with the drug peddlers.

Following a return visit to the lodge, Gutiérrez and Arévalo are escorted to Vega's boat, where Juan Carlos Montilla accepts that he has been leaning on De la Torre, but denies having anything to do with killing his offspring. As they leave, Vega hisses to Gutiérrez that restless souls will catch up with him. That night, he receives a note under the door inviting him to a rendezvous. Meanwhile, Solo confirms to Arévalo that Castro took the photos of the dead girls and lets slip that Gutiérrez was a member of the feared Brigada Politico-Social and, in 1971, killed a girl on an anti-Franco demonstration.

While Arévalo follows up a clue linking Castro's friend Manuel Salas to a hotel in a nearby town (that sells souvenir tourist viewers like the one he found in the victims' bedroom), Gutiérrez meets with Barros, who has been told by Tomeno that she was with Castro the entire night that Suano and López were murdered. He believes her and feels a sudden pang that causes him to swallow a pill. However, he is well enough to attend a heated rice sale and makes the acquaintance of landowner Alberto González, who is sporting a hat similar to the one Gutiérrez saw at the ranch.

As Arévalo drives back to Villa-Franco on an unlit road, he spots a white Citroën Dyane with a bumper sticker similar to the one several witnesses have mentioned in relation to the missing girls. He tries to give chase through the marshland roads, but the driver gets on to a parallel road and he is forced to watch his tail-lights recede into the distance. They are incensed when Villenueva refuses to order a blood test for González and Gutiérrez accuses him of protecting the rich. Arévalo is equally furious, but Gutiérrez warns him to stay away from Solo, as his information is flawed because it was his partner who shot the girl by accident on the march.

Gutiérrez has tapped Tomeno's phone and hears her making arrangements to meet someone at the lodge. They threaten housekeeper Mercedes Léon by detailing the hideous suffering that had been inflicted upon the missing girls and she reveals that Salas is the lodge watchman and that he has been hiding in an abandoned house. They find documents promising jobs on the Costa del Sol and jewellery linking him to the crimes and Reina alerts them to the fact he is making his getaway in the Dayane. A rainstorm makes the roads impassable and the trio chase Salas on foot through the reeds. Reina and Arévalo are wounded, but Gutiérrez ploughs on and stabs Salas to death with Castro's confiscated knife. He goes to the car and finds Tomeno trussed in the boot and she clings to him as he helps her out.

Castro is also arrested and the townsfolk give Gutiérrez and Arévalo a rousing send-off. However, when Arévalo ticks off Solo for getting his facts wrong about Gutiérrez, he shows him photographs of his partner actively engaged in acts of violence against opponents of the Franco regime and insists that he not only killed the girl, but also tortured well over 100 others. Having heard from his wife that he had been given a transfer, Arévalo decides to destroy the pictures in the spirit of the amnesty that had been declared in October 1977. As they leave the next morning, Gutiérrez asks if everything is okay, but the grim-faced Arévalo doesn't have an answer.

As is becoming the norm in modern crime thrillers, this is less a whodunit than a police procedural that explores the flaws of the detectives as much as the facts of the case and the motives of the killers. Consequently, Rodríguez and co-scenarist Rafael Cobos devote less time to the sordid secrets of a sleepy rice paddy community than to Arévalo's political idealism and concerns for his pregnant wife and the psychological scars left by Gutiérrez's guilty past. They are well served by their leads, while the supporting cast make the best of some rather sketchy roles. The local cops are caricatures, while the likes of the psychic fish gutter and the stew-making poacher seem to have been added to provide a little offbeat colour.

But, while the Southern Gothic storyline may keep the viewer at a distance before it reaches its disappointing denouement, Rodríguez conveys the ambience of his exceptional location with great skill. In addition to Catalán, he is also indebted to production designer Pepe Dominguez del Olmo and to Daniel de Zayas, Pelayo Gutiérrez and Nacho Royo-Villanova, whose sound mix evocatively contrasts the hubbub of the fairground with the chirrup of cicadas, the rustling of the reeds and the lashing of rainwater on to the sodden ground. The oppressive locale and the dark deeds involving naive young women naturally invites comparisons with David Lynch and Mark Frost's Twin Peaks (1990-91). But there is little room for even gallows humour in this lowering reflection on Spanish life at either end of the reign of King Juan Carlos, for, as Rodríguez rightly implies, there is very little to smile about.

There's something reassuringly old-fashioned about Oxford-born debutant Naji Abu Nowar's Theeb, a wartime adventure story that feels as though it has been adapted from a much-loved childhood novel. Taking its title from the Arabic word for `wolf' and made in the same Wadi Arabeh and Wadi Rum regions of Jordan where David Lean filmed key scenes for Lawrence of Arabia (1962), this is a remarkably mature picture that bears the hallmarks of such screen masters as John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah. But, while this has been described as a `Bedouin Western', it is also a thoughtful character study that explores such weighty themes as imperialism, honour, duty and passing traditions with an accessible intelligence that suggests that the Orizzonti award for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival will be the first of many.

Although its 1916 and the Great War is raging across Europe and the Middle East, young Jacir Eid is solely concerned with the fact that his oldest brother has just replaced his late father as the sheikh of a Bedouin tribe that ekes out an existence in the Hejaz region of Arabia. His middle sibling, Hussein Salameh, is teaching him to shoot. But most days are alike in this remote part of the Ottoman Empire, until British officer James Fox and guide Marji Audeh arrive at the camp and ask for shelter.

According to tribal law, any stranger is entitled to hospitality and Salameh and Eid quickly become intrigued by the irritable Englishman. Audeh explains that he needs to locate a Roman well and Salameh agrees to escort the pair across the desert. However, Eid cannot resist following on his donkey and is relieved when Salameh allows him to stay, in spite of Fox's complaints that the boy will be a burden.

His mood is not improved by the discovery that the men he was supposed to be meeting at the well have been killed, as they were going to lead him to the railway line that he planned to sabotage. At the next wadi, however, the party is attacked by six bandits and both Fox and Audeh are killed. Eid and Salameh hide in the rocks, but the latter perishes in the night after trying to shoot the brigand leader, Hassan Mutlag.

The following morning, Eid awakes to find himself alone. He climbs out of the well and buries his brother before noticing a camel approaching across the sand, with a man slumped across its back. On closer inspection, he realises the stranger is Mutlag and he takes his gun before reluctantly nursing him back to health.

Once Mutlag is well enough to travel, the pair strike out for the train tracks and encounter a band of anti-Turkish Bedouins. Mutlag explains that many desert dwellers resent the railroad, as it took away their livelihood as guides for pilgrims heading to Mecca. Eid begins to trust his companion and admires his resourcefulness, while also being grateful for his paternal protection. But, when they arrive at a Turkish fort, Eid is dismayed to see Mutlag sell Fox's notebook and watch, as well as a detonator, to an Ottoman lieutenant. Furious that this tawdry transaction cost his sibling his life, Eid kills Mutlag with his own gun. Looking on, the soldier tells Eid to return to his tribe and get on with his life.

Prepared to trust both his visuals and the intelligence of his audience, Nowar tells his tale with economical assurance. The scenario co-scripted with Bassel Ghandour places little reliance on exposition or dialogue, as it neatly unfolds events from Eid's unworldly perspective. Consequently, viewers are never allowed the luxury of passive observation and this forces them to relate the child's rite of passage to the current crises in the Islamic world. But Nowar avoids making obvious comparisons or moralising about the rights and wrongs of a tragic situation. Moreover, he avoids the obvious divisions of good and evil found in the Western and samurai genres he so clearly admires.

He is wonderfully served by his non-professional cast, with off-screen cousins Eid and Salameh particularly impressive as the devoted siblings. Eid proves more eloquent with the widening of an eye or the twitch of his mouth than any polished speeches could hope to be, while Mutlag also leaves an impression, as the enigmatic stranger whose motives are never entirely fathomable. Even Fox (who is the son of James Fox) manages to make his slicker acting style reinforce his outsider status in this far-flung outpost of empire, which is captured in all its forbidding majesty with anamorphic lenses on Super 16 stock by the ace Austrian cinematographer Wolfgang Thaler, whose work with documentarist Michael Glawogger particularly suits him for not only conveying the physical reality of a place, but also its changing personality. Only Jerry Lane's score strikes the odd discordant note, as it struggles to blend conflicting styles. But the melancholic string air that plays as Eid buries his brother is genuinely affecting.

The music by the acclaimed indie band British Sea Power is often at odds with the period setting in Justin Hardy's Captain Webb. But such nuances appear low on the list of priorities of this low-budget biopic, which plays so fast and loose with historical fact that its title is almost a misnomer. Adapted by Jemma Kennedy from Kathy Watson's admired book, The Crossing: The Extraordinary Story of the First Man to Swim the English Channel, this often jovial romp makes for undemanding viewing. However, anyone familiar with the facts will be sorely troubled that a Victorian hero of this distinction has been so shoddily misrepresented.

One of eight children born to a doctor from Dawley in Shropshire, Matthew Webb left home at 12 years old and first sailed with the merchant navy two years later. While serving as a second mate aboard the Cunard Atlantic vessel, Russia, he tried unsuccessfully to save a shipmate who had fallen overboard and received the Stanhope Medal and the princely sum of £100 for his efforts. A few years later, Webb quit his position as captain of The Emerald and vowed to swim the 21 miles across the English Channel after learning that JB Johnson had been thwarted in his attempt after just one hour and three minutes.

Seeking patronage and coaching, the 26 year-old Webb approached Robert Patrick Watson of The Swimming Record, who introduced him to Frederick Beckwith, who taught swimming at Lambeth Baths. Following a demonstration swim from Westminster Bridge to Regent's Canal Dock in September 1874, Beckwith agreed to mentor Webb and invited bets that no one could swim further along the Thames. He also boasted that his protégé would one day swim the Channel and continued to place the emphasis on unassisted swimming after Paul Boynton (an American known as `The Fearless Frogman') floated across from France in April 1875 in an inflatable suit that allowed him to use a paddle and hoist a small sail.

It wasn't until the summer of 1875, however, that Beckwith announced that Webb was going to make the epic 20-mile swim from Brunswick Pier at Blackwall to Gravesend. Beckwith hired a steamer so that the curious could follow Webb's progress. But inclement weather kept the expected crowds away and Webb and Beckwith fell out over the former's cut of the proposed takings and Webb threw in his lot with Arthur Payne, the sports editor of The Standard and the proprietor of the weekly journal, Land and Water.

Thus, Beckwith was notable by his absence when Webb struck out for Calais on both 12 and 24 August. Moreover, there was no sign on either occasion of Beckwith's daughter Agnes, as she was preparing a daredevil swim of her own from London Bridge to Greenwich. Clearly, film-makers are allowed a degree of dramatic licence in recreating actual events for the screen. But Hardy and Kennedy take so many liberties that this feels stranded somewhere between badly researched fact and Munchausen-like fantasy. It doesn't matter that Webb actually dived off Admiralty Pier at the start of his second attempt or that he was followed by three support boats. But it seems invidious to invent incidents, while ignoring the fact that, following the jellyfish attack, Webb had to fight the tides off Cap Gris Nez and spent five hours swimming along the coast waiting for an opportunity to come ashore. This additional exertion, in conjunction with the zig-zagging nature of his progress meant that he had swum 39 miles in less than 22 hours.

Hardy and Kennedy open their fragmented narrative by having Matthew Webb (Warren Brown) explain how the navy teach sailors the best way to drown rather than how to save a life in the water. They then include a dinner table scene, in which Webb's physician brother Thomas (Charles Reston) tries to defend his life choices against their disapproving doctor father (Rupert Goodale). Ruffled by the latter's indifference, Webb walks from Shropshire to London, where he is introduced to Frederick Beckwith (Steve Oram), who makes a living giving swimming lessons and staging galas for the thrill-seeking Victorian public.

Beckwith is less than impressed with Webb's breaststroking style. But his swimmer daughter Agnes (Georgia Maguire) develops an instant crush on the strapping sailor and persuades her father to accept him as a student. Fortunately, Webb has also made the acquaintance of JB Johnson (Tom Stourton), who is all in favour of an Englishman attempting to succeed when her had failed in swimming the Channel, especially if it means it prevents the insufferable Paul Boynton (Terry Mynott) from entering the record books in his inflatable suit.

The cabal attend one of Boynton's public lectures and Beckwith and Johnson renew their efforts to make Webb fit for purpose. He struggles to learn the crawl stroke from Agnes, so they teach him to kick like a frog to increase his power and efficiency and encourage him to smoke to improve his lung capacity. The montage of Webb stuffing himself with food and ale and vomiting after drinking a pint of saltwater are effectively amusing. But the taunting of Boynton and his companion, Madeline Chaddock (Hannah Tointon), soon becomes tiresome and it is a relief when Webb embarks upon his first attempt on 12 August 1875.

According to Kennedy, Beckwith (sporting a Union Jack waistcoat) was joined in the sole support boat by Agnes and an oarsman. But the sources available to this critic make no mention of their presence and, thus, there seems to be no chance that Webb could have been saved from drowning by the plucky Agnes. It's also highly unlikely that Webb would have been able to consult Thomas over the state of a damaged knee in the short space of time before the second attempt. Whether he gave his Stanhope Medal to a prostitute named Meg (Keira Jane Malik), was beaten up on the night before his triumphal swim or turned down Boynton's offer to join him in an aqua circus in the States is open to debate. But, while it's easy to forgive the massaging of such small details, it's harder to overlook blatant fabrications being presented as facts.

Moreover, by structuring the film around Webb's thoughts as he makes the second crossing 12 days later, the action becomes frustratingly fractured and falls into the old trap of having the pivotal character remember events they cannot possibly have witnessed (such as Agnes offering her chastity to Boynton to prevent him from upstaging Webb's 24 August attempt - which never happened anyway). This tactic also deprives the landmark swim of any sense of moment and momentum. Additionally, the audience is also given no idea how Webb is doing. The need to warm him up with some whisky fed through a plastic tube gives them an inkling that he is struggling. But how far has he come by this time and how much further does he have to go?

A couple of exchanges between the Beckwiths in the boat could have served as running commentary without seeming too intrusive. Similarly, a few aerial shots to suggest Webb's vulnerability in this vast and often treacherous expanse of sea would also have done much to increase the sense of spectacle and suspense. Instead, Hardy shows Webb starting to hallucinate that Boynton floating beside him and mocking his weakness, while Chaddock and his father speak to him from the boat.

At regular intervals, Webb relives the failed rescue attempt in the mid-Atlantic. But, the closer he gets to France, he also imagines that Agnes similarly eludes his underwater grasp. For some reason, he even imagines Meg watching helplessly as her younger brother slips away. Yet, he eventually staggers on to land to be slapped on the back by Beckwith and embraced by Agnes before a caption informs us that his feat would not be matched for another 36 years, by which time he had drowned while trying to swim across Niagara Falls.

Such an endeavour deserves a better commemoration than this. The performances are bullish, with Brown strutting purposefully as the muscular 5ft 8in Webb and Maguire being intrepidly demure. But Oram and Mynott overdo the blithe showmanship to the extent that the picture sometimes takes on a regrettably patronising tone. Given the obvious budgetary restrictions, the period trappings are fine, while Matthew Wicks's photography is admirable. If only the same care had been taken over the script and the score.

The seaside also has a crucial role to play in Mike Doxford's Pleasure Island, a run-of-the-mill crime thriller that fails to make the most of its atmospheric Cleethorpes setting. Given how rarely this part of the coast makes it to the screen, Doxford has wasted an opportunity to explore the sombre realities of living in a rundown resort by concentrating on cookie-cutter characters and hackneyed plot developments. It's a perfectly proficient piece of work, but lacks the sense of place that put Sussex back on the movie map, courtesy of John Boulting's Brighton Rock (1947), Val Guest's Jigsaw (1962) and Ben Wheatley's Down Terrace (2009).

Squaddie Ian Sharp returns to his Cleethorpes home grieving for the childhood pal who has been killed on their last tour of duty. He calls on father Nicholas Day in a shabby neighbourhood and receives a chilly reception, as several of Day's prized racing pigeons have been found dead on the beach. Clearly, something happened long ago to drive a wedge between the pair, but it is not discussed as Sharp dumps his bag in his old room and looks through some treasured photos.

He heads to the seafront, where buddy Samuel Anderson runs an amusement arcade. Cocky teen Connor Chapman mocks Sharp's military background, as he plays on the Penny Falls. Being the stony-faced silent type, Sharp ignores the taunt and asks Anderson where he can find Gina Bramhill, who is the mother of his fallen friend's young son. She is pole-dancing at The Unicorn, a seedy club run by Rick Warden, who is used to being obeyed and is most put out by Bramhill fleeing the stage in surprise on seeing Sharp.

Despite her protestations that she wants nothing to do with him, Bramhill pays Sharp a call and they walk on the beach, as she explains how tough it has been raising Zachary Ward alone. They are spotted by Warden at the Pleasure Island rifle range, as he makes arrangements with owner Neil McCaul to supply girls for a party he is hosting that evening. While Sharp presents Ward with the cuddly gonk he won with his sharpshooting, Day receives a visit from Michael J. Jackson, a mobster who sits between McCaul and Warden in the chain of command. He has discovered that Day has been stealing some of the drugs he has been smuggling from Amsterdam in the stomachs of his pigeons and he damages a hand as a warning as to what will follow unless the debt is repaid.

Across town, Sharp agrees to babysit Ward when Warden calls Bramhill with an important job. She is reluctant to go to McCaul's soirée, as, despite her drug problem, she doesn't want to make the sordid transition from dancer to escort. Jackson urges her not to let them down, as he works the room. But, the moment McCaul lays hands on her in a back room, Bramhill pushes him away and flees home, where she locks herself away from Sharp's concerned gaze.

Next morning, however, Bramhill cannot hide the cuts and bruises left by the furious Warden. But Ward has scribbled a handy drawing of Warden in his lurid shirt on the wall outside the bathroom and Sharp pays him a visit at the club and offers his services in return for laying off Bramhill. On his first mission to Grimsby docks, however, Sharp is forced to save Day from a couple of menacing sidekicks onboard a ship and Day admits that he has fallen foul of Jackson in exhorting Sharp to leave and never come back.

Taking the villains' car, Sharp drops Day at home before entrusting Bramhill and Ward to Anderson's safekeeping in the flat above the arcade. However, Jackson pays a call on Day in his loft and kills him. Having found the body, Sharp betrays little sorrow as he mooches around the house and discovers that Day has been hiding the drugs stolen from Jackson in some hand-carved wooden pigeons on his mantelpiece. Sharp interrupts the birthday party Jackson is throwing for his son and wife Cordelia Bugeja is less than amused with Jackson for bringing his dirty business into the family home.

Nevertheless, she provides her husband with a shotgun with which to guide Sharp to an outbuilding, where Jackson seethingly explains that, despite the return of Day's drugs, Bramhill will remain in his employment. Sharp makes a lunge and is shot in the side. But he also wounds Jackson and only opts against finishing him off when Bugeja pleads for his life. However, he realises that Chapman has informed Warden that Bramhill is hiding at the arcade and Sharp has to speed to the front to protect her. Fortunately, she and Ward have already managed to escape and Sharp clutches a note and drawing they left behind, as he starts to slip away after blasting Warden to kingdom come.

The closing aerial shot of the glorious expanse of soft sand suggests how easily Doxford could have improved this picture, by making the most of his biggest asset - the locale. Look at the way Bryn Higgins used the ambience of Saltburn in Electricity (2014). Similarly, when Doxford and cinematographers Sam Goldie, Shaun Cobley and Tom Wade take their time to survey the Grimsby docks, the Cleethorpes shoreline or the souvenir and fast food kiosks abutting Anderson's arcade, this becomes a completely different picture. But, when the action is not rooted in these authentic backdrops, it simply becomes another BritCrime flick, with Humber instead of Mockney accents.

Moreover, these are not always put to optimum use, as the villainous trio of McCaul, Jackson and Warden often overplay their hand, even when trying to be menacingly low key. Day also has a tendency to bark out his lines, while the largely impassive Sharp struggles to imply the emotions he is clearly striving to suppress. Part of the problem here is the shortage of backstory in Doxford and Simon Richardson's screenplay. Yet Bramhill is scarcely given more to work with and she manages to create a much more rounded character than her male co-stars. Her safe deliverance with Ward is somewhat inevitable, but it's the ideal denouement for a first feature that especially shows promise when Doxford escapes the confines of a bankrupt genre.