Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 25/2/2016)

Ever since his father left home, 15 year-old Charlie Plummer has been getting grief from older brother, Christian Madsen. Mother Erin Davie is too busy working to devote much time to her sons and she teases Plummer that he is old enough to stand on his own two feet. He is certainly not a nerdy type, as he is first seen daubing the walls of school bully Danny Flaherty's home with obscene graffiti. But he is emotionally immature and moons over mean girl Scarlet Lizbeth, while not realising that classmate Yainis Ynoa has a soft spot for him.

As the summer wears on, Plummer is too wrapped up in his own troubles to spare a thought for younger cousin Cory Nichols, who has been sent to stay with Davie while his mother recovers from a mental breakdown. Feeling fragile, Nichols isn't in the mood for communicating, but he looks up to Plummer and is pleased when he is impressed by his baseball prowess. He also tags along cheerfully when Plummer suggests they take a tour of the neighbourhood and throw stones at an abandoned car.

Moreover, the 12 year-old is intrigued when Ynoa invites them to play a game of truth or dare in her bedroom with her best friend, Chloe Levine. Between giggles and blushes, it emerges that Plummer has never been kissed and Ynoa obliges with a soft sweetness that prompts him to wonder whether they could possibly be more than pals. His thoughts are interrupted on the way home, however, when he is ambushed by Flaherty and his cohorts and Plummer opts to run away rather than protect Nichols, who is taken prisoner.

Following at a discreet distance, Plummer looks through the garden fence and sees Flaherty pelting the trussed Nichols with a paint gun. Too afraid to attempt anything heroic, he rushes off to the garage where Madsen works and pleads with him to help rescue their cousin. Brandishing a tyre spanner, Madsen puts the wind up Flaherty and Plummer is relieved to get out in one piece. But Nichols feels betrayed by his cowardice and refuses to speak to him during the car ride home. Indeed, he continues to spurn Plummer, as he attempts to explain that he hasn't had an easy life because Madsen has never forgiven him for the fact that he was their father's favourite.

Tired of trying to make amends, Plummer decides to go to the party Lizbeth is hosting. He is surprised that she is so pleased to see him and follows meekly as she leads him into her bedroom. However, the seduction is merely a ruse to leave Plummer disarmed for Flaherty to exact his revenge for the afternoon's humiliation. His assault is temporarily halted when Nichols comes to his cousin's defence with a baseball bat. But Flaherty shakes off the blow to the head and kicks Plummer to a state of near unconsciousness with the other guests looking on with a mix of grim fascination and terror.

The following day, Plummer refuses to press charges against Flaherty when cop Keith Leonard comes to call. He is grateful to Nichols for not abandoning him, however, and is touched when Ynoa and Levine bring him a paper crown. As the picture ends, Nichols has returned home and Plummer has recovered sufficiently to cycle in the sunshine with Ynoa and Levine. He still has battles to fight and plenty more growing up to do, but he has taken a tentative step forward.

Lyrically photographed by Brandon Roots in a Hudson Valley suburbia that feels both mundane and magical, this is a witty, affectionate and unflinching snapshot of modern youth that knows the rules of the game but keeps refusing to conform to type. At times, the imagery is a touch too dappled or insistently twitchy, while Bryan Senti's guitar score keeps threatening to become a touch too twee. But Thompson has a splendid sense of place and pace and the story unfolds without undue contrivance.

The performances are admirably natural, with the scenes in which Plummer and Nichols bond being particularly well done. The Lizbeth/Ynoa subplot contains echoes of the triangle involving Craig Roberts, Carlson Young and Katie Findlay in Dan Beers's Premature (2014), but the affection is much less calculating. Indeed, there is nothing condescending about the screenplay or direction, as Thompson seems able to find a new angle on most stock situations. Thus, there is plenty here to suggest he is a talent to watch.

Richard Gere has clearly reached the time in his career when the romantic leads have dried up and (at 66) he isn't quite ready to start playing grandpas. He gave notice of his decision to seek more antic roles by playing a crooked hedge fund manager in Nicholas Jarecki's Arbitrage (2012) and a homeless man in Oren Moverman's Time Out of Mind (2012). But nothing can prepare fans of the onetime heartthrob for his performance in Andrew Renzi's debut feature, The Benefactor. Raging from beneath a snowy mane like a latterday Lear, Gere can't be accused of not committing to the role. However, this is such a sloppily scripted rehash of the John du Pont/Mark Schultz relationship that was essayed by Steve Carrell and Channing Tatum in Bennett Miller's Foxcatcher (2014) that it is discomfiting to watch on more than one level.

Eccentric Philadelphia philanthropist Richard Gere has been close friends with married couple Dylan Baker and Cheryl Hines since their college days. He is keen to share with them his vision for a new children's hospital. But, while smoking marijuana on the backseat of their car, he hugs Baker so enthusiastically that he takes his eyes off the oncoming traffic and perishes in the resulting crash, along with his wife.

Five years later, the long-haired, bearded Gere still misses his friends and mooches around the city with the aid of a cane. He has dedicated to hospital to Baker and Hines and regularly tours the wards and boost the morale of frightened kids like Michael Daiser. So, when he receives a request for help from their daughter, Gere is only too willing to oblige. Although she once adored him, Dakota Fanning has barely spoken to Gere since the accident. But she is struggling to find her feet after getting pregnant and rushing into a marriage to newly qualified doctor, Theo James.

Delighted to help (out of a mixture of guilt and affection), Gere finds James a job at his hospital. Moreover, he pays off his six-figure student loan and buys Fanning's childhood home, so she can bring up her own baby in familiar circumstances. He even serenades them with a rendition of `My Gir' at a welcome party outside the Museum of Art.

However, Gere's charity comes at a price. He takes a shine to James, but doesn't have any qualms about showing up unannounced and demanding his attention. He coaxes him into taking Ecstasy following a hospital fundraiser and the pair hang out of the windows of their cab to savour the night air before crashing into bed together at the townhouse Gere keeps a closely guarded secret.

Feeling remorse for leaving Gere to deal with his grief, Fanning initially voices no objection to her husband spending so much time with the man who killed her folks. But the fun stops when Gere asks James to fill in a prescription for morphine and is exposed as a hopeless addict who can be something of a monster when crossed, as when senior physician Tibor Feldman refuses to supply him with any more morphine. Yet, even when Gere runs amok on the ward after slashing his hand to get medication from a downtown emergency room, Fanning can't bring herself to sever all ties and she is grateful when Gere rushes her to the hospital when she goes into labour.

Gere has long been a decent actor whose good looks have often distracted from the quality of his performance. But he pitches to the rear stalls in this frequently crass melodrama and Renzi, who graduated to features after completing the 2014 documentary, Fishtail, simply lacks the experience or the gumption to rein him in. As a consequence, Gere upstages James and the woefully underused Fanning (whose character is saddled with the ridiculous nickname of `Poodles') in every scene without convincing in any of them that he is anything more than a far-fetched fictional construct.

There is a germ of an idea here, but screen history is strewn with lonely rich men seeking to exchange largess for affection in a misguided attempt to atone for a past indiscretion. Of course, there's an irony in staging such a story in the City of Brotherly Love and cinematographer Joe Anderson casts a moody pall once the sun goes down. But, with Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans's score consistently striving to manipulate the audience's emotional response as much as Renzi's infuriating use of slow inward tracking shots, this shaggy addict story becomes increasingly tiresome and ends predictably with Gere on his way to rehab without really explaining what all the fuss was about.

With the dust still settling on Stephen Fry's fashion faux pas, BAFTA releases its annual selection of nominated shorts. A rights issues means that Nick Helm's Elephant can only be seen on the BBC iPlayer. But this is still an engaging mix of factual, fictional and animated shorts that give cinemagoers a peak at the talent waiting in the mainstream wings. Indeed, this year, there is also a chance to see the latest work of a master craftsman, who has also earned an Oscar nomination for this trouble.

Leading the way is Nina Gantz's Animation winner, Edmond. Made with felt puppets dressed in woollen costumes, this stop-motion chronicle is a melancholic delight that flashes back to show why its eponymous anti-hero has lugged a heavy stone through the woods to the edge of a jetty. At first, he is seen hiding from his mother on his birthday. But, as Gantz goes back in time, she shows Edmond getting so carried away with foreplay that he tries to bite off his lover's foot. Moreover, he sinks his teeth into his best friend's neck during a school play and even devours his twin in the womb. The blend of cuddly creations and quaint cannibalism is disconcerting in the extreme, while the skewed way in which Gantz shifts between scene is very neat, indeed.

Psychological problems also beset the central character in Billy Lumby's live-action offering, Samuel-613, which has the distinction of being the first fictional film to be made within Britain's Hasidic community. Executive produced by Josh Appignanesi and based on extensive research within the Stamford Hill Haredi enclave, the story follows Theo Barklem-Biggs on his journey `off the derech' to find his real self. Accused by his ultra-orthodox father of being worse than Hitler for cutting off his payot, Barklem-Biggs leaves home and gets a flat in a faceless high-rise complex. Experimenting with bacon and booze, he joins an online dating site and meets up with Letty Butler, who quickly realises that he is struggling to cope with his new freedoms. But, even though it appears as though he is preparing to jump from his balcony after a late-night encounter with some black bullies, a wedding photograph implies that all might not be lost after all.

Jerkily photographed by Paul Ozgur and edited with twitchy intensity by Michael Aaglund, this is a touch too fussy in its presentation, as Lumby tries out every expressionist trick in the book to convey the alienating callousness of modern urban living from the perspective of an insecure outsider. With its reliance on non-professional performers and bursts of Yiddish dialogue, it certainly makes an impact. But it's not entirely clear what Lumby is trying to say about Judaism and/or anti-Semitism in 21st-century London.

Much less visually flamboyant, but considerably more dramatically arresting is 29 year-old Caroline Bartleets Live-Action winner, Operator. Following a cursory glide through a fire service control room, Vanessa Whyte's camera comes to rest on operator Kate Dickie, as she takes a call from frightened single mum, Vicky McClure. Defying advice not to go upstairs in search of her three year-old son, McClure barricades herself in a front bedroom and follows Dickie's instructions about opening windows and sealing the gap under the door to prevent smoke from seeping inside. Lisa-Marie McStay's inspired sound mix allows the audience to share Dickie's perspective as McClure tries to keep calm and the fire brigade break in to rescue her. But the most affecting moment of this impressive vignette comes when the line goes dead and Dickie pauses briefly to regain her composure before taking her next call.

Equally short and to the point is Prologue, a six-minute Oscar and BAFTA-nominated gem from 83 year-old Richard Williams, whose career highlights include contributions to such features as Tony Richardson's The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) and Robert Zemeckis's Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1968), as well as self-produced items like The Little Island (1958) and The Thief and the Cobbler (1993). Following a live-action sequence of Williams sharpening coloured pencils for his titles, the action follows a bee gathering pollen and a fluttering butterfly to a field in which foes from Athens and Sparta face off using swords, axes, spears and arrows. All end up slain, with their death throes being captured in line-drawn close-up and witnessed by a young girl, who goes running through the breeze-blown grass to seek the solace of her mother. It's very much a sketch, but its point is well made and the quality of the computer-assisted artistry is unquestioned.

Callum Rice goes down the documentary route in Mining Poems or Odes, which profiles former shipyard welder Robert Fullerton, as he recalls how a Govan outhouse named Archie persuaded him to read Robert Tressell's The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists when he was 17 years old and how it opened his eyes to an unimagined world of words. Alternating monochrome close-ups that recall the faces in Richard Jobson's The Somnambulists (2011) with shots of welding masks, Clydescapes and cavernous workshops, this is a scraped-knuckle tribute to the sweat, wit and wisdom of the labouring class and a heartfelt celebration of colloquial eloquence.

Easily the most divisive submission is Simon Cartwright's Manoman, a bleak puppet saga that delves into the dark recesses of a balding chap named Glen. Timid and emasculated, he cowers in the corner of a primal scream session and allows himself to be intimidated by an alpha brute who bellows at him in the therapy room and in the toilets. But, in retching up his misery, Glen unleashes his id and this naked, wild-maned alter ego leads him on a merry dance through the town. They ogle ladies on the train, smash car windows and start fires. After a wild night, Glen is even prompted into pushing a commuter under an oncoming tube. But, in the cold light of day, he feels crushing guilt and jumps from a tall building. As they look up, the witnesses see the id creature and begin chanting to him, as he urinates on them from on high.

Puppets have probably found themselves in stranger scenarios, but not many as provocative and pessimistic as this dissertation on the decline and fall of the modern white male. With the operating rods clearly visible for much of the time (and often amusingly incorporated into the action), this has a deceptively old-fashioned feel to it. But Cartwright's parable on restraint in an age of uncensored self-expression is depressingly of its time.

Concluding the programme is Jörn Threlfall's Over, a measured, but devastating recreation of an actual event that is told in reverse through a series of detached tableaux. Captions count down the hours from near midnight to around dawn the same September morning, as Richard Mott's camera lingers on the edge of the grass verge in Phillmore Gardens to watch the various comings and goings. The first arrivals leave a small bunch of flowers at the kerbside before a tow truck comes to remove a car parked on the other side of the road. A few hours earlier, the police had cordoned off the area and Threlfall cuts away from the scene to show found items sealed in evidence bags. But, just as the audience begins to wonder what sort of crime has been committed in such a quiet Mock Tudor street, the reason for a body being discovered by a man walking his dog is shockingly revealed.

Apparently, there is nothing to mark the Twickenham burial place of the near-frozen Angolan who fell from the wheel bay of BA Flight 76 after travelling 4000 miles the day after his 27th birthday. Coming three years after the event, this makes a poignant tribute. But the chilling indifference to the plight of the desperate migrant pervades this series of nine long takes, whose climactic impact is made all the more shattering by Patch Rowland's visceral sound mix.

Finally, this week, Spanish documentarist Alvaro Longoria ventures into North Korea to examine in The Propaganda Game the extent to which Pyongyang and its antagonists are locked in a never-ending war of words that each knows to be strewn with lies, half-truths and official and unofficial facts. Ultimately, Longoria winds up paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld's speech about knowing what we know we don't know and it's this sense that what has been suppressed is far more terrifying than anything that has been revealed that makes this such a troubling, if frustrating watch. Following in the footsteps of Raymond Feddema and Peter Tetteroo's Welcome to North Korea (2001) and Mads Brügger's The Red Chapel (2009), this contains plentiful footage filmed inside the Democratic People's Republic. But, even though no topic appears to be off limits, the looming presence of state guides suggests that Longoria only gets to see and hear exactly what suits his hosts.

The picture opens with a barrage of ABC, NBC and Fox News clips peddling scare stories about North Korea and the threat it poses to global security. From the outset, therefore, Longoria establishes the absence of objectivity in reporting on a country of 24 million supposedly brainwashed souls. Concluding the montage is footage of President Barack Obama discussing the fallout from the cyber attack on Sony Pictures prior to the release of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's dismally unfunny comedy, The Interview (2014). `We cannot have a society in which some dictator can start imposing censorship in the United States,' Obama proclaims before positing: `imagine what they start doing once they see a documentary that they don't like'. But Longoria omits to mention that many experts believe that Pyongyang had nothing to do with the so-called Guardians of Peace strike and his failure to comment on the ease with which FBI speculation has became incontrovertible fact casts a long shadow over his own film.

Indeed, alarm bells sound throughout a tract that clearly has its own agenda. One only has to note the shifting depiction of its central figure to question the extent to which Longoria kept an open mind during his sojourn. As the only foreigner currently on Kim Jong-un's payroll, 40 year-old Spaniard Alejandro Cao de Benós welcomes his compatriot with beaming delight. But the responsibility of being a special delegate on the Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (as well as the founder of the Korean Friendship Association) gradually erodes his bonhomie and editors Alex Marquez and Victoria Lammers are only too eager to notice how sombre he has become by the time of Longoria's departure.

In between times, the film-maker is treated like an honoured guest. He is taken to landmarks like the cavernous and largely empty War Museum, an isolated Christian church and the Demilitarised Zone, where he witnesses a wedding. Moreover, he is allowed to talk to ordinary North Koreans about a range of pressing issues, including the free housing, health and education systems, the myth that there is an approved list of hairstyles and the debts that ordinary citizens owe to the founder of the state, Kim Il-sung, and his son, Kim Jong-il. But no verdict is reached about the sincerity of the opinions or the authenticity of the tears shed for the memory of the Dear Leader.

Naturally, Longoria seeks to balance such platitudes with the informed opinions of UN delegates, Amnesty International reps and CNN journalists. He also seeks out two noted experts in the field, Barbara Demick and Andrei Lankov, the respective authors of Nothing to Envy (2009) and The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalnist Utopia (2013). The former is particularly dismissive of Western attempts to paint North Korea in a bad light and blames a Chinese blogger for starting the rumour that the newly installed Kim Jong-un had uncle Jang Song-thaek torn apart by wild dogs after dragging him from the Politburo for a gruesome show trial.

Yet, while he seizes opportunities to speak directly to camera during the rare moments when he is able to slip his chaperones, Longoria often has to settle for opinion rather than certifiable facts. References to the Korean War, the famines of the 1990s, concentration camps, the self-reliance philosophy of juche, the songbun class system (with its `core', `wavering' and `hostile' strands) and the recent nuclear tests are oblique to say the least. But one has to be sceptical about how forthright people are being when Longoria is even prevented from filming the contents of an average Korean fridge.

Any film-maker would have to be whoppingly naive to think that they had circumvented the stage management and attained an unvarnished snapshot of life north of the 38th Parallel. Longoria is less snug than Mads Brügger, who sought to subvert situations throughout his supervised visit. But this follow-up to The Sons of the Clouds - Longoria's 2012 study of the harsh realities facing Western Saraha - similarly conveys the misguided sense of having got one over on the Hermit Kingdom when this seems to be very far from the case.