At the core of many a good drama is the relationship between protagonist and antagonist. This being 2008, we’re living in a world that’s way beyond the white hat/black hat days of yore, when a scowl or choice of headgear would identify which side you were on. No, things are way more complex now, and that complexity is at the heart of The Dark Knight, and makes it a very special film indeed.

Christopher Nolan’s first outing with Batman was largely successful, but the story became more of a generic action thriller towards the end. This time round, the story is firmly rooted in the psyches of two characters who are poles apart: Batman and The Joker. Batman lives in a world of absolutes, hoping that his example can help turn the tide of evil in Gotham, and seeing in legal crusader Harvey Dent a populist whose success within the justice system may allow Batman to hang up his cape.

That analysis only works if you believe Batman really is capable of relinquishing his identity though, and one person who’s sceptical about that is The Joker. A poster child for the post-Columbine generation, The Joker has chosen to embrace chaos as the best response to the world he’s been brought up in. Every time he gets the chance to talk about his past, a different ‘origin’ story emerges from his mouth, empty as the tales of suffering and rebirth on Oprah that he’s grown up watching. Never mind what people tell you they’re like: what interests The Joker is how they really are, and to that end he sets up a series of deadly scenarios around Gotham that test its citizens, its police, and its caped crusader. There’s no winning any of The Joker’s games: they’re pretty much guaranteed to cause death and destruction, the only distinction being exactly how the situations play out, and what that tells him about human nature.

This being Gotham, human nature tends towards the bleak. Even love is no guarantee of freeing yourself from the all-pervading corruption of the city, as the fate of Harvey Dent and his love Rachel - also involved in a triangle with Bruce Wayne, Batman’s alter ego - demonstrates. And if Venus will not win through, it’s left to the forces of warlike Mars and stern Jupiter to fight it out in the streets of the city.

And if all of that sounds epic and dark, you’d be right. This is cinema for adults who are willing to tackle big questions about ethics and morality. Sure, it also delivers astonishing action sequences, fabulous gadgets, and world class acting, but really this is a film that should leave you feeling uncomfortable by the time it finishes. If all you’re left with is adrenaline, then you got the booby prize basically.

All the actors deliver the goods, though I’m still not convinced by Christian Bale’s impossibly deep Batman voice, but towering above them all is Heath Ledger’s take on The Joker. Previously a part owned by Jack Nicholson, Ledger indelibly stamps his mark on the role in the same way that Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit trumped Led Zeppelin’s take on rock and roll: both classic performances, and each attuned to their times.

While Marvel’s slate of superhero films could have been made pretty much anywhen, the only contemporary aspect being the CGI, The Dark Knight is absolutely a product of its times in ways that run deeper than how the effects are done. One argument I’ve heard that’s pretty convincing is that this take on Batman is about how America sees itself in the world today: wanting both to be powerful and popular, turning to extreme measures in the face of its failure to deal with terrorism, wanting to continue to use democratic methods but increasingly subverting them when they’re inconvenient. There’s a lot to be said for that perspective, and getting that kind of mileage out of a superhero film is quite an achievement.

The best thing I can think to say about Donkey Punch is that it does exactly what it sets out to do, and does so with remorseless effectiveness. You pretty much know in advance what you’re in for, and that’s precisely what’s delivered: a shocker about what happens when some northern lasses meet some posh blokes on holiday in Spain, and take them up on their offer of going out to sea.

Anyone who’s heard a sea shanty could tell our heroines that they’re unlikely to be due a pleasant time. And I had the misfortune to study the godawful poem Peter Grimes for A level English, which is all about what happens when a salty seadog takes a series of handsome young men off the shore and returns without them. The canon is against our heroines, basically, so it’s no surprise that what follows is nasty.

The fate that befalls the women is a very modern sort of nasty, which is no surprise since this film is made under the Warp X umbrella, one of eight low budget features they’re making in the wake of the modest success of their first experiment in film, the Shane Meadows feature Dead Man’s Shoes. The role models for Warp X include Oz shocker Wolf Creek, and to some extent this is an aquatic variation on the theme.

The film is a morality tale of sorts, though one that’s already upset the Daily Mail. Our plucky Leeds ladies are wooed onto the boat by public school smoothies, plied with drugs, and what follows has a sick inevitability about it. Young people being up for sex is all well and good, but there’s a twisted laddishness at work that leads to one of the women being killed as the result of one of the guys trying to live out an urban myth, the one referred to in the film’s title.

The thing with corpses is, it’s hard to stop at one when you’re on a roll. And what follows is a textbook example of plotting that maximises the potential for conflict between every pairing of characters on board. It’s understandable that there’s tension between the guys about what to do now that one of their number is a killer, but even the two remaining women are split by their different understandings and objectives.

There are no great surprises here other than the ones you’d expect of a well executed film of this sort. It’s pacy, well performed and edited, and has a strong score, as you’d hope from Warp, up till now known for their music rather than their films.

I hope this film does well commercially, and see no reason to think otherwise. It’s not very ambitious, but it succeeds in achieving its aims, and if the Warp X slate can do that across the board then maybe it’ll pave the way for more films in the future. And if some of them can be as adventurous as the Warp musical roster, which includes Aphex Twin and Battles, then I’d be very happy. As it is, the musical equivalent of Donkey Punch would be a compilation of indie anthems by laddish bands; a few good hooks but nothing truly distinctive.

Whatever it is that fuels Pixar’s filmmaking, I want some. At a time when mainstream cinema is vapid and formulaic, summer is a graveyard for braindead blockbusters, and the tv schedules are empty of pretty much anything resembling intelligence, along comes WALL-E.

The sheer scope of the film is staggering. It’s pretty much a creation myth, or at any rate a re-creation myth, although what’s in the foreground most of the time is a touching love story. Between two robots. In a cartoon. And believe me, it’s likely to be one of the most emotionally affecting films you see this year, as well as being a bravura demonstration of filmmaking. Oh, and it’s designed for an audience of 4 and up. Feel humble? You should.

I’m not going to say a great deal more about this film except that you owe it to yourself to experience it if you are at all interested in cinema as an artform. It’s one of the most completely realised visions I’ve seen, an elegaic tale of impossible love that begs the question of whether our species deserves to survive. It would be easy to call it pretentious, but it accomplishes its goals with a lightness of touch that’s breathtaking.

What comes across more than anything in Pixar’s movies is their lack of cynicism. And that’s a beautiful thing to see. When so many producers are second guessing the tolerance of audiences for gross out ‘comedies’ and torture porn, it’s refreshing to encounter an organisation thinking on an epic scale and coming up with such beautiful films for audiences just experiencing their first taste of what cinema has to offer.

It’d be amazing to see something of Pixar’s spirit in the low budget sector in the UK, but all too often I meet aspiring filmmakers who have jaded ideas and no real respect for their potential audience. Some time ago I went to the launch event of one prominent filmmaking initiative and what came across was, first, the unquestionable intelligence of the people behind it and, second, the decidedly questionable aims to which they planned to put that intelligence, creating films that first and foremost were about pulling in identifiable niche audiences. Never mind quality, get those bums onto cinema seats and then off to town to buy the DVD for the price of a pint or three.

Fortunately there are exceptions, and I’ve been lucky enough to meet people who want to make films that find audiences and make money and even have something to say in the process. And that, when it comes down to it, is one of the big differences between film and television: come out of a cinema and you can feel charged up with a sense of how the world could be. That matters, and if there’s one thing I’d like to see in the British film industry it’s more filmmakers with something to say, and no regard for whether that something is fashionable or not. Which in an industry of hustlers, opportunists, and schemers out for a deal, is not a vision that’s very tactical of me, but so be it.

If The Visitor is the best that liberal filmmaking has to offer, the right wing populism implicit in so many Hollywood features has nothing to fear. It’s a shame, because Tom McCarthy’s new film (he also directed the sweet and subtle The Station Agent) seemingly has a lot to recommend it, on paper at least.

It’s the tale of an uptight academic widower, a specialist in international affairs, whose life is transformed when he encounters a Muslim couple. Were this a Tony Scott film, the transformation would be because they get him to swear allegiance to Allah after tying him up and dunking him in oil (politics, see?). But no, this is all about the slow alchemy that occurs when the academic is brought out of his shell by the erotic rhythms of a djembe drum.

The djembe is played by the male Syrian half of the Muslim couple, who are in America illegally as far as the authorities are concerned, and who turn up just at the moment you expect them to in the film. Which is one of its problems: I was a minute or five ahead of all of the film’s turning points, except the bit when a hovercraft full of liberal mavericks turned up to bust the Muslims out of their corporately owned detention centre. Turns out that was the ten minutes of the film I was asleep for, but damn if it wasn’t the most exciting part of the whole thing.

Actually, the corporately owned detention centre had cropped up before I nodded off, and it was one of the more effective aspects of the film. Sadly though, this is a film that has its heart in the right place, but thinks too small. An ageing academic is loosened up by his contact with a brown skinned percussionist, and the American government intervene to spare him the problem of having a houseguest outstay his welcome. That’s pretty much it. OK, at least we’re spared the big budget version of the story, where he quits his academic post and goes on the road with a Santana cover band populated by quirky seniors (The Bucket List meets School of Rock: I can see it happening, what with the lure of the grey dollar…). But it seriously would have helped the script (also written by McCarthy) for some more imagination and a sense of the epic to be brought into play.

What ultimately failed to convince me about The Visitor was its commitment to liberal politics instead of messy human realities. The academic is not attracted to the djembe player’s wife. The Muslim couple do not exploit his friendship. The academic’s field of study is international affairs, which far too neatly mirrors the film’s concerns. And so on. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the choices made, just that together they’re too obvious a selection. Result? A film that will only ever preach to the converted. Great for making white liberals feel better about themselves, and that they too might one day play drums with an exotic refugee, but in every other respect a film that consistently pulls short of really engaging your emotions because of the safety of the choices made at every step of the filmmaking process.

So, what makes you scared? Venturing into the dark? Noises that you can’t explain? Zealots? Fucking enormous monsters with sucking tentacles? All of these and more are to be found in The Mist, Frank Darabont’s third outing with a Stephen King adaptation after The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, and his first on the author’s home ground, horror.

It’s refreshing to see a horror film with a moral centre to it, and that’s what raises The Mist above most horror features you’re likely to see. A bunch of random Americans are trapped in a supermarket in the mist, and something is out there. More than one something in fact. And the longer they stay in the supermarket, the greater the tensions within the group. Consistently, it’s what people do that provides the real scares within the story: there are creatures sure enough, but it’s easy to claim that they’re acting by instinct. We’re supposed to be the ones with the capacity for reason, and that’s the first thing to go when people are under pressure.

We’ve all been in situations where things have got tense with the people around us. But we’re usually able to leave those situations, claiming other engagements or priorities. Part of King’s simple genius in this story is that there is nowhere to go…except into the unknown, about which the one thing that is known is that it’s highly dangerous out there. Imagine a dinner party with a high complement of arseholes, and the only way you can leave is to face a pack of werewolves while you’re armed with just a fire extinguisher. That’s pretty much what the characters in this story are faced with.

What with the setting being a supermarket, and there being a cross section of people there, it can’t help but feel like a microcosm of America itself under threat. And, true to life, the scariest part is when a good chunk of the people there fall under the spell of a deranged evangelist who perceives what’s happening as the realisation of all the really messed up Ray Harryhausen/Michael Bay style stuff that the Bible promises at the End of Days.

The protagonist and a few of the saner people there escape the supermarket rather than be stuck there with the zealot, driving through the mist and the monsters it contains, hoping to find an end or an answer. They come across neither. And what happens instead has to be one of the bleakest conclusions to a film I’ve seen in a long time. Which perhaps explains why the film is showing just twice a day at the cinema where I saw it, and was only selected at all because of the persistence of the film programmer at the cinema.

If that’s the case, that makes things bleaker still: are we so desperate for screenings of the film version of Sex and the City and Kung Fu Panda that we can’t stomach a film with some real intelligence and an unpopular viewpoint? Hopefully not: the recent success of No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood demonstrates that there is a taste for grown up films with bleak conclusions, but maybe in the summer months we’re expected to subsist on a diet of vacuous blockbusters. And that really is a horrific thought…

So, I got round to seeing Wanted, with a writer friend who I have occasional ‘man dates’ with where we go and see films together that no self-respecting woman would be seen at. And so far we’ve picked on films that have their origins in comics, what with the pair of us being comics geeks. Only, after Wanted I’m left wondering why studios persist in going for the big whizzbang kind of comics, when the medium has so much more to offer that could bring something fresh to the screen…

I’ve not actually read the series that Wanted is based on, having very mixed feelings about its author, Mark Millar. He did a pretty fine job on The Ultimates for Marvel, reinventing some of the company’s core characters for a new cine-literate generation, but I find his grandstanding hype and mixed-up politics put me off much of his other work. Plus, there’s the feeling that he’s better at the big shocking concept than the actual delivery.

The idea behind Wanted is simple enough: what if you found out you weren’t just an average citizen, but had amazing abilities, and could use your powers to shape the destiny of the world? Classic adolescent powertrip stuff in other words, and that’s pretty much the film in a nutshell. Beyond that, it’s spectacle piled on top of spectacle, connected by some frankly ludicrous ideas. Trains crashing into canyons while people fight on board. Secret mind powers that allow you to bend bullets round corners. A lorryload of rats wired up to explode the baddy’s base. The baddy’s base itself, to all intents and purposes a castle in a previously overlooked medieval quarter of New York. Riffs from Fight Club and The Matrix recycled blandly like the soundtrack’s generic guitar attack. It’s all kind of fun at the most superficial level, but five minutes after it had finished we were discussing something else entirely, since the whole was utterly devoid of content.

All is not lost though. There are some fabulous comics out there coming to the screen sooner or later, and the one I’m particularly keen to see is Y: The Last Man. Brian K Vaughan’s series for Vertigo is now available in full as ten trade paperbacks, and there are more ideas of consequence in there than have troubled Millar for his whole life.

The core concept is that one man and his pet monkey somehow survive an apocalypse which wipes out all other males of every species. It’s a big dumb B-movie conceit, and Vaughan knows how to write action-packed stories with cracking cliffhangers. But he also knows how to populate them with characters you care about, and ideas that drive stories which zig when you think they’re going to zag, and consistently pulse with intelligence regarding issues of gender, politics, and the practicalities of living in a post-apocalyptic world.

Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against action blockbusters and in particular ones based on comics. I absolutely loved Iron Man, and am really looking forward to Christopher Nolan’s next Batman film. But there’s an awful lot of chaff out there that could be replaced if studios forgot about looking at the big names in comics and searched around some more for quirkier talent.

And maybe that’s starting to happen: Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s stunning animal action escapade We3 is coming to a cinema soon enough, with Morrison himself writing a script that’s received considerable acclaim from those who’ve read it. Andy Diggle and Jock’s excellent political thriller Losers is on the way too, or was when I last heard anything. Let’s hope those films do their source material justice, and maybe even send people from the cinemas to book shops or comics stores to pick up the stories that inspired the films.

Centuries ago, communities had a very different relationship with their local churches. Think about it. Any given church may have taken over a century to build at a point when that represented maybe three generations of people in the same family. Imagine that: your grandfather started work on a building that your father spent all his life constructing, and which you got to finish off. In our world of constant change, such continuity is unthinkable. Not only that, but this would have been at a time when you’d have been lucky to see what passes for a local town: the world was a smaller place.

And what happened in that church? It was a special building, and the only place you’d get to see something amazing: the effect of light coming through coloured glass, through windows depicting stories that a preacher said were integral to society, even though you couldn’t understand the language he told those stories in. But you knew those stories were about someone called Jesus, and that he died for the sins of humanity. And because he’d done that, he could offer mortals redemption for what they’d done too.

All of this would happen in a place where people were quiet except when it came to signing hymns and saying prayers. And that, and the stained glass, gave it an atmosphere unlike anywhere else you’d have known. It really was a special place.

At this point, some of you will be worrying that I’ve gone and got religion and will be changing the name of this blog to something less occult, but have no fear. This is all by way of articulating something about the experience of cinema that interests me.

The church is pretty much defunct as an influence on society. But we still want or need stories to live by, and the experience of redemption. And we can get it, again by going to a building that’s set apart from others, where people are quiet and stories are told by light playing through glass…

People go to the cinema for all kinds of reason. But if you think about the commonality of the stories they experience there, one connecting factor is that many of them are about redemption. One of the most popular films with the public is The Shawshank Redemption, and how many films feature redemptive character arcs for their protagonists? As viewers we can’t get enough of that stuff, and experience redemption vicariously by watching others go through it in their own fictional journeys. Only, the nervous system can’t detect the difference between fact and fiction, and - to a greater or lesser extent, depending on the artistry of the film in question, and the way it resonates with our own lives - we respond to what’s happening as if it was happening to us. Doesn’t even have to be a recognisable human for us to feel that empathy, as the success of Finding Nemo and Bambi indicates.

All of which puts the experience of making and watching films in a different light. Films offer the prospect of redemption in a secular society. Somewhere along the line, we all feel bad about stuff we’ve done, or stuff that’s been done to us, and want to be absolved for it. Churches frankly don’t cut the mustard with their limited repertoire of devices, which only appeal to believers. Leaving it to filmmakers to perform a function that was once seen in spiritual terms, and with our growth into a more complex society is viewed more as a function of psychology…even though to most of the people involved, as makers or audiences, what really matters is entertainment. Which kind of begs the question, what is it we want from our entertainment, and why is it that redemption features so heavily as an aspect of it?

How many ways can you tell a story? When that story’s a thriller, there are particular expectations of the genre, of tension and races against time. And those can be handled in ways we’ve come to taken for granted, even though they heighten what we see so that it bears little resemblance to life as lived. That strand of thrillers includes everything from Speed to the Bourne films. What’s interesting is when you see someone make a thriller that doesn’t rely on the devices that filmmakers typically use to get audiences engaged with their stories.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is the first John Cassavetes film I’ve seen, but there was something very familiar about it stylistically. Anyone who’s seen films from the new wave of digitally shot and semi-improvised movies will recognise the rough and ready feel of his work. In that sense Cassavetes, making films in the sixties and seventies, was ahead of his time, though Chinese Bookie has some of the same feel of the earlier Au Bout de Souffle. But improvisation wasn’t such a part of his method as it may appear: certainly it would have been more technically difficult to improvise at length while shooting on film. The raw feeling of Chinese Bookie is largely to do with the leeway Cassavetes gave to actor Ben Gazzara in his portrayal of club owner Cosmo Vitelli, the film’s protagonist, and its verite style of scripting and shooting.

Sometimes you only realise what you’re used to in its absence. Chinese Bookie is a thriller, sure, but the thrills take a long time coming. Instead, there’s a leisurely build-up in which we see the fabric of Cosmo’s life. In the first ten minutes of the film he’s seen at three different drinking venues, the last his own stripclub. And we get to see quite a bit of life at the club itself, Cosmo’s pride and joy, where he choreographs dismal would-be comic hip routines featuring show host Mr Sophisticated and the women dancers.

Somewhere along the line, the owner of a gambling club pays a visit with his retinue, which is where the story really kicks off in conventional terms. But that’s to misunderstand what Cassavetes is doing. In his organic portrayal of Cosmo and the world he lives in, he’s painting a picture of a particular kind of masculinity. Cosmo is acutely aware of his status with others, and of his obligations as an alpha male who cares for his employees, and that’s the key to what could be his undoing.

It’s when Cosmo is obliged to kill the Chinese bookie that the film becomes more like a conventional thriller, and it does so brilliantly. The scenes of him shooting the bookie, running away from the scene, and then dealing with the consequences, are taut and energised. If anything, because the film isn’t stylised in the manner of a mainstream thriller, because it more recognisably draws from life, this stuff of action and violence is even more powerful than it would be.

So, what can be learned from Chinese Bookie? Well, it’s a fascinating template for anyone wanting to explore more organic filmmaking. But that doesn’t mean lengthy improvisation. I can’t think of many films where improvisation has been much of an asset when it’s a key part of the process. And one danger of the digital filmmaking revolution is that some directors think that if they just shoot enough material, then a film can be created in the edit suite afterwards. Look at One for the Road for where that kind of thinking leads: a few good scenes do not a movie make.

Ultimately, audiences like films because they like stories. And stories have themes, that are expressed through a beginning, middle, and end. Being in control of your material, knowing the story you want to tell, enables you to tell it all kinds of ways, including using the freewheeling choices that Cassavetes makes. If you don’t know for sure what story you want to tell to begin with, how can you possibly hope to create a narrative on an edit suite? Digital technology has begun to democratise the film industry, but at the moment I see too many examples of directors who adopt a ’spray and pray’ approach, hoping that if they film enough stuff, that they’ll capture some nuggets in the process. Maybe, but nuggets are best seen in the context of a backdrop, rather than randomly scattered, and that once again draws attention to the importance of storytelling and structure in cinema.

I had lunch with a writer friend today, and it turns out he’s increasingly seeing himself as a filmmaker rather than a screenwriter. He’s just completed a short course in direction, and he views his future career as one in which he will be the producer and perhaps director of his own scripts. It’s an absolutely valid route for some people, and I absolutely understand why he’s taken that decision - but is it for me?

A few years ago I filmed a pilot for a regional short film scheme, so I would have the bones of a showreel to present to the panel. It was something I learned a lot from. The piece was around 80 seconds long, an extract from the ten minute film I planned to make, and thinking it through from story to script to visual style to performances and sound was a fascinating experience.

Some aspects of making that sequence came to me more naturally than others. I was pretty good at getting the general look and feel of what I wanted in terms of still images, but found working with a camera that works in realtime and 3d space a stretch that I couldn’t cope with well at the time. Fortunately I was working with a seasoned cameraman who had directed several of his own pieces, and he was able to outline what choices I had available so I could make whichever one seemed suitable. I managed, but it was my least comfortable part of the process, and my lack of fluency with this part of what we did showed through in the finished piece.

Working with actors was a much more natural experience for me, not surprising since I’ve done it plenty of times before in a theatrical context. It helped that I’d got two talented and patient performers who I knew, and took my novice status into account. So, I was pretty happy with the performances we got.

Editing was the phase where I felt most at home. That surprised me, but I really took to it. This was my second time in an edit suite where I got to make the decisions, and I had learned valuable lessons from my first experience. Most importantly, for my approach at least, was the practice of editing in line with the soundtrack I’d chosen: the story was about the relationship between a father and daughter who connect through astronomy, and the audio backdrop came from NASA recordings of sunspots or other cosmic activities. Anyway, with the audio in place I found a rhythm to work to that suited the piece just fine, and overall it’s probably the audio and editing of that short sequence that I’m most proud of.

So, overall I found it a stressful but enjoyable experience that I liked a whole lot more when we took the raw material into the edit suite to shape it into something that, for the first time, I turned from a concept into a film, however short. And while I did enjoy that, I’m not convinced that I want to get that involved again with the mechanics of filmmaking.

More than anything, I’m someone who can come up with ideas and develop them into fully realised stories. I’ve spent many years learning how to do that, and I love doing it. Taking the next step to directing is not something I feel comfortable doing, if only because I’m not sure that I could realise my expectations in that regard. And yes, I recognise that as a self-fulfilling prophecy, but a bit of realism is no bad thing: if it’s taken me years to become happy with my ability to write a script, how long would it take for me to feel comfortable as a filmmaker? Why not instead pair up with people who are skilled in that regard and like my stories? I’m fortunate in that I know people who do have that opinion of my work, and it’d be churlish not to make the most of that situation.

That said, ‘filmmaker’ embraces the production as well as direction side of taking a concept from script to screen, and I can envisage myself getting involved in that aspect of the process for various reasons, since - to use an Old Labour analogy - it’s basically about taking control of the means of production, distribution and exchange, rather than assuming they’ll be passed on by wealthy benefactors. Maybe that aspect of what I do won’t happen for a while but, as the saying goes, watch this space…

I returned home late last night, curry-plump, to find a message from my mother on the answerphone. She sounded a bit anxious, and that made sense as her story unfolded. She’d been drinking coffee with a friend at a Nando’s, when police came in and ordered everyone outside. If I tell you that this happened in Exeter, you might understand why. Mum had chosen to have her coffee next door to the venue where a mentally unstable convert to Islam had done his best to blow the town centre up with a home made bomb. Oops.

This news happened on the same day that filmmaker Terence Davies lambasted fellow British creators for following American models of film and not being true to regional British experience. This as part of the launch campaign for his latest film, yet another elegaic exploration of the Liverpool of his childhood. Not to appear too crass, but I wonder exactly how much money this film will make? I have seen some of Davies’s work and found it sensitive and moving, but common sense tells you there is a limited audience for films that feature 90 second shots of the shadows of rain playing artfully on the living room rug.

So, if we’re to make films representative of the British experience, what are we to make of my mother’s story, which comes seemingly straight from an American thriller? It was even structured like a mainstream movie, with normality (coffee with a friend) shaken by an inciting incident a few minutes in (the police telling everyone to leave), before mum and everyone else were moved first to one point, then to another (two chunks of the second act) before returning home shocked but safe (third act).

Acts of terrorism have no respect for parochial aesthetics. And neither should filmmakers. We live in an interconnected world, where a web of influences play on one another in a fashion that no individual can comprehend. So instead, we simplify, and live within our own edited version of the world at large. In Terence’s case, it seems he’s still stuck in 1950s Liverpool.

Thankfully, other British filmmakers have found ways of capturing something to say about the world we live in now: Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things is a masterful examination of the effects of migration in Britain’s capital city. Michael Winterbottom’s Wonderland explores modern family relationships against a complex metropolitan backdrop. Shane Meadows has brought the underside of the East Midlands to the screen on several occasions, from his shorts such as the wonderful Where’s The Money Ronnie to his last feature This Is England. So, let’s not pretend that contemporary British filmmakers aren’t interested in the country they’re from. Even films that have an effectively American model of storytelling, such as Paul Andrew Williams’s brilliant thriller London to Brighton, still bring a distinctly British turn to the proceedings.

Yes, there is another side to British filmmaking, present in the James Bond films, in anything featuring Hugh Grant, and in costumed dramas, but those films are an equally valid part of the country’s cinematic culture - and unlike Terence Davies’s oeuvre are likely to be the ones that make the money that enable producers to take risks on edgier propositions. Let’s not forget, Davies’s work owes its existence to the arts equivalent of another grand British institution - the welfare state. And long may that be the case…but please don’t suggest that your preferred style of filmmaking is the best in a world as complex, as fascinating, as rich in story, as we all inhabit in the 21st century.