With the Bush Theatre’s main building undergoing renovations, this company’s shows are being staged in a selection of temporary spaces in West London. So, on this dark and freezing evening, I make my way to The Tabernacle, a Grade II-listed building in Powis Square, Notting Hill. It was once a church and is now a community centre.

The original 1961 poster for Paris Blues trumpeted it as “a love-spectacular so personally exciting you feel it’s happening to you”. Would it were actually thus. Instead, it’s ponderous and features a cast so obviously “acting” that any verve implied by being filmed in Paris and set in the world of jazz is missing in action. Paris Blues is worth seeing, but don’t expect the pulse to quicken.

The parallel universe of what was known as “race” cinema gets five packed DVDs here. Instead of cringing with sympathy at small, racistly conceived black roles in a classic Hollywood era which coincided with an American Apartheid, these are indie films made inside black neighbourhoods between the wars. Even when white writers or directors are involved – just as in the period’s record labels – authentic culture gets through.

True to its title, Pool of London is one of the great London films. More than this, it included British cinema’s first – albeit chaste – interracial romance and convinces as film noir. Filmed in 1950 and released in February 1951, it was passed by the British Board of Film Censors for screening with no cuts. But it did get an “A” certificate, which meant children had to be accompanied by adults. This no children’s film, though.

Kemp Powers’s play is set in a motel room in Miami on the night of 25 February 1964, after Cassius Clay (as Muhammad Ali then was) had earlier beaten Sonny Liston to gain the world heavyweight title. He is joined by two friends, the singer Sam Cooke and the American football star Jim Brown, and his political and spiritual mentor, the civil rights activist Malcolm X.

As an old Sixties lefty brought up on thrillers like The Parallax View, Oliver Stone loves ripping open great American political conspiracies, and inevitably he portrays CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a noble crusader for free speech and democratic accountability against the might of America's intelligence agencies. If you work for the CIA you'll hate Snowden (★★★★), but Stone has fashioned the story into a tense, fast-moving drama which will leave you pondering over what's really justifiable for the greater good.

Is Katori Hall (b. 1981) the embodiment of Martin Luther King’s dream? She was born in Memphis, the city where King died. The Mountaintop, her play about his last night alive, had its world premiere at Theatre 503, a tiny pub stage in south London. But the unanimity of the reviews, combined with the timely arrival of a black man in the White House, propelled the two-hander into the West End where it played to standing ovations from notably multiracial audiences.

Given the fractious state of American politics, perhaps it's a suitable moment for a movie taking a look back at the American Civil War. However, despite heaving at the seams with good intentions and noble sentiments, Gary Ross's Free State of Jones ultimately can't justify its debilitating 140-minute running time.

Cinema has waited a long time for a film about Miles Davis. It hasn’t been for want of trying by Don Cheadle, who stars in, directs, produces and takes a co-writing credit on Miles Ahead. Despite the support of Davis’s son, daughter, nephew and first wife Frances Taylor, the film was trapped in a pipeline for aeons. While he waited, Cheadle had plenty of time to turn himself into a trumpeter good enough to perform onstage in the film’s coda with Davis collaborators Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter.

And so we come to the end of the most spiteful, divisive and downright deceitful political campaign in living memory. And while we’re on the Ds, I’ll have disingenuous too, thanks. The remain camp was captained by a mildly Eurosceptic prime minister, who called the referendum in an attempt to secure an election victory, while Brexit has been spearheaded by a shambolic, and mildly Europhile, thatched homunculus, who simply wants the other guy’s job. We are, essentially, collateral damage in a spectacularly damaging career move.