Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 29/11/2012)

Notwithstanding the fact that the action takes place in November and December, the current furore over the Jimmy Saville scandal means that this much-lauded picture could not have been released at a more opportune time. It plays skilfully on every parent's worst fears about paedophiles exploiting positions of trust to prey upon their children. Moreover, it cannily capitalises on the wholly understandable tendency to believe the victim, whose innocence is always presumed as readily as the grown-up's guilt. But, in setting their scene, Vinterberg and co-scenarist Tobias Lindholm too frequently resort to melodramatic developments that, while serving to heighten the tension of the situation, also fatally undermine its credibility.

Mads Mikkelsen has had a tough year. He lost his teaching job and was prevented from seeing teenage son Lasse Fogelstrøm during a bitter divorce battle with ex-wife Katrine Brygmann. However, he now has access to Fogelstrøm and kindly Susse Wold has hired him as an assistant at the kindergarten she runs in the remote rural community where Mikkelsen regularly hunts for deer with pals Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe and Daniel Engstrup, with whom he also goes boozing and skinny-dipping.

As ready to listen as to get involved in a little rough and tumble, Mikkelsen soon becomes a firm favourite with the kids. Larsen's five year-old daughter Annika Wedderkopp is particularly taken with him, especially as he has a dog that she is allowed to take for walks. Thus, after Mikkelsen escorts her home one night after finding her alone on the street, the girl decides to give him a present. But, in rejecting the drawing of a kissing couple with responsible, but tactful firmness, Mikkelsen hurts Wedderkopp's feelings and she exacts her revenge by telling Wold that he has exposed himself to her.

Inspired by the pornographic images she saw on brother Sebastian Bill Sarning's iPad, her accusation is utterly groundless. However, Wold has to take it seriously. Yet she handles the situation with a staggering ineptitude that strains the credibility of the subsequent action. Despite informing Mikkelsen of the charge, she refuses to reveal the identity of the child involved. She then decides against calling the police and, instead, summons a deputation of parents and stokes up panic rather than providing reassurance. Moreover, she subjects Wedderkopp to the questioning of psychologist Ole Dupont, whose leading questions make it easier for the child to stick to her lie than confess the truth.

Suspended from duty and ostracised by his neighbours, Mikkelsen even has to endure the humiliation of having colleague-cum-girlfriend Alexandra Rapaport warned off dating him by Wold, who also calls Brygmann to cast doubt over whether now is a good time for  Fogelstrøm to move in with his dad. However, he comes anyway and is forced to seek sanctuary with lawyer Ranthe after the dog is killed, Mikkelsen is taken into custody and Larsen turns the distraught teenager away from his door.

Realising the damage she has caused, Wedderkopp tries to tell mother Anne Louise Hassing that she has made a mistake. But Hassing convinces her that she is always truthful and has done the right thing in reporting Mikkelsen and chides Larsen for being friends with such a predator. However, the tide begins to turn after Mikkelsen is badly beaten by staff at a downtown supermarket and he confronts the congregation as it awaits the Christmas service at the local church. Shortly afterwards, Ranthe is able to have the charges dropped and Mikkelsen is reintegrated just as quickly as he became a pariah. He looks on proudly as Fogelstrøm is made a member of his hunting club. Yet, during the ensuing party, Vinterberg cannot resist sewing a slight seed of doubt as Mikkelsen hugs Wedderkopp and assures her that everything is back to normal.

Alfred Hitchcock had a fondness for stories about the falsely indicted and echoes of The Wrong Man (1954) reverberate around this sombre drama, which laces its stark social realism with knowing moments of suspense and bleak humour. However, this archly controlled picture also recalls Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath (1943), in which Anna Svierkier is denounced as a witch by the residents of a 17th-century Danish village. The ease with which the calumny against Mikkelsen is accepted and then disregarded is far too simplistic, as is the incompetent manner in which Wold deals with the crisis and the way in which the denizens rise up like torch-wielding peasants in a Universal horror movie.

Nevertheless, Mikkelsen produces a suitably complex performance as a man powerless to defend his reputation against a wilful lie, while Fogelstrøm and Wedderkopp impress as the loyal son and confused accuser. However, the remaining cast members are too often asked to act irrationally or to make the best of being ciphers buffeted around by convoluted circumstances. Charlotte Bruus Christensen's views of the wintry woods are suitably forbidding, but Vinterberg struggles to convey an authentic sense of place or show how this cabal of bourgeois hunting buddies fits into the wider community that seems to follow its moral lead with pathetic plebian promptitude. Thus, while this always makes for unsettling viewing, it is also persistently frustrating in its emotional manipulation and its flirtation with TV-movie banality.

Vinterberg was in his late twenties when Festen thrust him into the international limelight. However, he has failed to find any consistency since and there are fleeting signs in Laurence Anyways that the precocious Xavier Dolan might have had his head turned by the acclaim for his first two features, I Killed My Mother (2009) and Heartbeats (2010). Yet, while he deprives himself of an acting role on this occasion, the 23 year-old auteur's personality leaps out of every frame of this epic tale of amour fou, which conforms Dolan alongside Pedro Almodóvar and François Ozon among contemporary cinema's great stylists and melodramatists. At times, his inexperience and penchant for self-indulgence cause him to lose focus. But this is a bold and confident piece of film-making that challenges the audience to embrace its excesses, as well as its contentious themes.

Early in the 1990s, Montréal literature teacher Melvil Poupaud meets assistant director Suzanne Clément and the sparks fly immediately. Their desire for and devotion to each other is the envy of their friends, with even a trip to the car wash being an excuse for torrid passion. Moreover, Clément supports Poupaud's ambition to become a writer. But even she is taken aback when he announces out of the blue that he has always felt like a woman trapped inside a man's body and that he intends living as female until he is ready to undergo gender realignment.

Naturally, heads are turned when Poupaud arrives for class wearing make-up and a dress for the first time. But, while mother Nathalie Baye is horrified by his decision, Clément remains loyal and warns sister Monia Chokri against interfering in her affairs. She even vents her spleen on a diner waitress who makes her views too audibly known. Yet even Clément's patience is tested when she loses her job because of her association with Poupaud, who is also dismissed after complaints from concerned parents and he gets beaten up in a bar while drowning his sorrows on the way home.

Eventually, Poupaud and Clément drift apart. She marries the sweetly conventional David Savard and moves to Trois-Rivières to raise their child. Poupaud, on the other hand, seeks sanctuary with a troupe of eccentric performance artists known as The Five Roses, which is comprised of `parents' Jacques Lavallée and Catherine Bégin, `aunt' Perette Souplex and juniors Patricia Tulasne and Emmanuel Schwartz. However, as the decade progresses and he begins to feel more at home in his new skin, Poupaud settles down with the accepting Magalie Lépine-Blondeau and writes an autobiographical book of poetry that is published to positive reviews.

Clément reads the book in a single, tear-stained sitting and knows that she has to see Poupaud once more. Handily, he has been spying on her and knows exactly where to find her and they decide to run away to Black Island to stay with old friends Mylène Jampanoï and Jacob Tierney, whose own relationship more than a little complex. However, Savard realises Clément is not on a film shoot and she is forced to return home to see if there is anything worth salvaging in a marriage that suffocates her. But, even though a deep bond remains between them, both she and Poupaud know that too much has changed for them ever to recapture what they once shared.

Stepping into a role relinquished at the eleventh hour by Louis Garrel, Melvil Poupaud delivers an astonishing performance as a transsexual struggling with the physical and psychological pressures of becoming their true self. But Suzanne Clément is even more eye-catching in a much less showy role and the restraint of the acting suggests Dolan's growing maturity as a director. But his flamboyance is also readily evident, as he conspires with cinematographer Yves Bélanger, production designer Anne Pritchard and costumier François Barbeau to fill each image with fashions and furnishings that are as impeccable as they are colourful and revealing of the characters and the time they inhabit. He also proves incapable of resisting the odd visual flourish, the best of which is the metaphorical torrent that soaks Clément after she reads Poupaud's verses.

Moreover, Dolan also captures the spirit and energy of the era with his editing, which is often dictated by a soundtrack that is replete with classics by such acts as Duran Duran, Visage, Headman and Depeche Mode. But his dialogue is occasionally florid, while the narrative feels thin in places, particularly during Poupaud's interactions with the stiffly disapproving Baye and the Felliniesque Roses. Nonetheless, Dolan is to be admired for attempting such an ambitiously sprawling saga, which exposes the prejudices of a supposedly accepting society and the extent to which happiness is a series of timid compromises rather than audacious decisions.

Eytan Fox caused quite a stir when he discussed homosexuality in the Israeli military in Yossi & Jagger (2002). A decade on, he returns to the surviving member of the duo in Yossi, which seeks to show how attitudes have improved even though society remains as conservative as ever and continues to value machismo as an outward symbol of its readiness to defend itself against its myriad enemies both within the state and across the Middle East.

Now in his mid-30s and slightly paunchy, Ohad Knoller is a successful cardiologist at a Tel Aviv hospital. He works long hours and frequently has to be woken for his shifts by technical assistant Ola Schur Selektar, who has long harboured a crush on him. Newly divorced colleague Lior Ashkenazi thinks Selektar is clingy and keeps trying to coax Knoller into going clubbing with him. But he prefers spending his downtime flirting on online dating sites and thinking about Yehuda Levi, the true love who died in his arms while on active service in the Lebanon.

One morning, Knoller recognises Levi's mother Orly Silbersatz Banai in the waiting-room and persuades Askhenazi to let him take the appointment. She fails to recognise him, even when he insists on driving her home, and she remains unsuspicious when he steers the conversation around to children. He is pleased that she remains proud of her late son and wants to tell her the truth, but decides discretion would be the better part of valour.

Sadly, he proves less circumspect when chatting online and sends an old photograph when trying to line up a potential partner. Arriving at a swish apartment, Knoller is offered a glass of wine by club owner Gil Desiano, who lets him get comfortable before accusing him of deception by using such a duplicitous image and forces him to perform a humiliating act before throwing him out.

With his mind evidently elsewhere, Knoller bungles a routine procedure and boss Shlomo Sadan insists that he takes a vacation. Initially, he is reluctant to do so. But he changes his mind after an appalling night out with Ashkenazi (that culminates in him narrowly escaping a threesome in a toilet cubicle with blonde Bobbi Jean Smith) and a misjudged visit to Silbersatz Banai and her husband Raffi Tavor, who recognises Knoller as Levi's commanding officer and welcomes him inside. He even allows him to see his son's bedroom after he breaks the news about their romance, but any hopes of acceptance are dashed when Silbersatz Banai asks him to leave her home.

Ignoring or perhaps relishing the possible dangers, Knoller heads towards Sinai. However, while lunching at a service station, he overhears four soldiers bemoaning the fact they have missed their bus and he offers them a lift. As Amir Jerassi snores in the corner, Meir Golan and Shlomi Ben Attar tease Oz Zehavi about being gay because he recognises the Mahler that Knoller is playing on the car stereo. But he seems utterly unfazed by their banter and even joins in when they insist on changing the CD and begin singing along to some popular tunes.

Smtten with Zehavi, Knoller checks into the hotel where they are holidaying in the seaside resort of Eilat. He hopes to catch sight of him by the pool, but he has gone for a massage, leaving Golan, Ben Attar and Jesassi to splash like big kids. When they meet up later in the cabaret lounge, Zehavi gives Knoller a voucher for a massage and assures him he will feel much more relaxed after letting somebody's fingers ease away his troubles.

Next morning, Knoller spots Zehavi chatting with the masseur by the pool and decides not to keep the booking and forget about trying his luck with such a handsome and confident kid. But Zehavi is not so easily dissuaded and seeks out Knoller at a performance by singer Keren Ann and persuades him to go for a nocturnal stroll. On reaching the beach, Zehavi strips off and charges into the sea, only to cut his foot on some broken glass.

Back at the hotel, Zehavi tries flirting with Knoller as he treats the wound and seems on the verge of giving up when he returns to the doctor's room and seduces him. Still bashful after his encounter with Desiano, Knoller tries to switch the light off. But Zehavi turns it back on and forces him to strip at the foot of the bed. The following day, the lovers make for a quieter spot along the coast. Relaxing with a couple of beers, Knoller jokingly suggests they should stay here forever and Zehavi readily concurs.

Less combative than its predecessor and much more assured in both its stance and style, this is a fascinating sequel that leaves one wondering whether we shall have to wait another decade for Yossi & Tom. Still mourning his loss and letting himself go in a semi-conscious bid to remain faithful to Levi, Knoller excels as the workaholic medic suddenly confronted with ghosts from his past, a gnawing dissatisfaction with his present and the tantalising prospect of future happiness. He cuts something of an ageing gay stereotype as he reclines poolside reading Death in Venice. But he retains a decency and a self-awareness that is only compromised by the specious denouement that all too readily rewards him with a toyboy after a decade of doubt and pain.

Yet, so intense is this focus on Knoller that screenwriter Itay Segal fails to surround him with fully fledged characters. Indeed, with the exception of Zehavi, everyone seems to exist solely to satisfy the demands of a momentous scene before they disappear. Schur Selektar slinks away after being caught awakening Knoller with a kiss, while Desiano is conjured up to reinforce his self-loathing and Ashkanazi to reaffirm his homosexuality. He also enables Knoller to connect with Silbersatz Banai, whose convenient appearance at the heart clinic is as contrived as Zehavi's instant realisation that he has met his soulmate.

Nonetheless, Fox directs confidently, particularly during the lengthy road sequence in which Knoller rediscovers something of his old self while trading quips with Zehavi's brothers in arms. He also makes shrewd use of Guy Raz's camera, as the tight close-ups of the hospital scenes give way to expansive shots of the winding road through the desert and the contrasting blues of the sea and sky at Eilat. But, most tellingly, he refuses to allow Knoller to become another casualty of the war he fought a lifetime ago and uses flashes of sour humour to jolt him into realising that he has to move on before it is too late.

Another unlikely liaison is formed at the end of David Barras's debut feature, Electric Man, which was shot in just 19 days for £55,000. This was raised through a combination of small investments, crowd sourcing and selling stuff at comic-book conventions and the makers are to be congratulated on their ingenuity and tenacity. Moreover, while there is no denying that it has a decidedly homemade look and feel, this sitcomedic variation on The Maltese Falcon raises the occasional smile and would make a fine companion piece to Morgan Spurlock's documentary Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan's Hope (2011).

Following a rousing title sequence designed by Graham Manley and animated by Andrew Muchie and Susanna Murphy, the action opens with the deeply indebted Fish (aka Derek W. Dick, who is still best known as the lead singer of Marillion) electrocuting brother Douglas Fotheringham in the bath in order to steal his valuable 1937 first edition of the Electric Man comic. Once in possession, Fish contacts American collector Mark McDonnell and they agree to meet at a convention in Edinburgh. However, Fotheringham's daughter, Jennifer Ewing, has hired a small boy to purloin the comic and she hides it in a box belonging to Deadhead Comics, a shop run by slackers Toby Manley and Mark McKirdy that is facing closure by landlord Andre Vincent unless they can come up with the £5000 needed for vital repairs.

On discovering the comic during a stock take, Manley realises it is worth around £100,000. Yet, instead of trying to sell it, he decides to track down the rightful owner. But, when the shop is ransacked, he concludes it would be best to hide the comic at the flat McKirdy shared until recently with girlfriend Emily Lockwood. As she makes a surprise reappearance to entice McKirdy into getting back together, Ewing visits Deadhead and explains to Manley that Fish is her uncle and will stop at nothing in his efforts to flog Electric Man to pay off the money he owes to some ruthless mobsters.

They kiss, but Manley is far from convinced he can trust Ewing. However, it's Lockwood who saves the day when she attacks Fish and McDonnell with a frying pan after they break into McKirdy's flat. She hands the comic to Manley, who summons Fish, McDonnell and Ewing to a meeting in a remote tunnel and proceeds to rip it up before their eyes. Fish is distraught, but McDonnell smells a rat and pays Manley a visit intent on acquiring the comic for a bargain price. However, despite the American's assertion that the geek never gets the girl, Ewing proves an able accomplice and the picture closes with the lovebirds running the store together and taking their revenge on pesky fanboy David Avern, who is forever waffling on about aliens and traffic cones.

Much more amusing and accomplished when concentrating on the byplay between Manley and McKirdy than when attempting to stage romantic clenches or chase sequences, this is a likeable caper that just about makes it to the end, even though the screenplay written by Barras and Scott Mackay begins running low on inspiration and momentum around the hour mark. McDonnell and Fish (who also contributes to the score with composer Blair Mowat and the Glasgow combo The State Broadcasters) ham it up gamely as the villains, while Ewing is passably femme fatalistic. But, for all its plus points, this is more a festival item than a general release, although you can judge for yourself when the director is due to introduce a special screening at the Phoenix on 6 December.

Released under the New British Cinema Quarterly banner, The Joy of Six is a collection of shorts by up-and-coming UK film-makers. All six titles have been acclaimed at festivals around the country and beyond and there are several familiar faces in front of the camera, even though not all of the names above the title are particularly well known - yet. As is always the case with portmanteaux of this sort, this is a very mixed bag. But there is one gem on offer that is almost worth the price of admission on its own.

Opening proceedings is Douglas Hart's `...Long Distance Information', a festive vignette that boasts music by Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys. Confining the action to two adroitly decorated interiors, this is droll aside on the communication age that is expertly played by the ever-watchable Peter Mullan. However, it is essentially a pocket-sized version of one of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected.

While Peter Mullan smokes a roll-up and reads the paper in his armchair, Caroline Paterson clears away the Christmas dinner in her cramped East Kilbride kitchen. Mullan snaps angrily when his wife suggests they watch the Queen's message and tells her to turn down the radio. Meanwhile, down in London, 20 year-old Alan Tripney wakes to the sound of a furious argument in a neighbouring flat and is clearly reminded of home. He struggles off the sofa and dials the number. When Mullan answers, they exchange unenthusiastic seasonal greetings and discuss Hogmany plans. However, they are both in for a rude awakening when Mullan's daughter knocks on the front door.

Will Jewell proves more ambitious in `Man in Fear', as Luke Treadaway flees the scene of a coach crash and races across the fields to the nearby town. He takes up residence in the corner of a café, but is ordered to leave after swapping plates with a man who has popped to the bathroom. Nervously and watchfully making his way along the pavement, Treadaway is helped across the road by an old lady and finds himself outside the police station.

Going inside, he informs desk sergeant Tim Healy that somebody is trying to kill him. However, the already incredulous Geordie comes close to exasperation when Treadaway insists that conceptual artist James Lance is intent on preventing the publication of his book and is trying to make the murder look like an accident so that nobody will suspect. Having teased him about being attacked by a pickled shark or a pile of elephant dung, Healy attempts to turf Treadaway into the street. But the man smiling with quiet satisfaction behind him in the queue is none other than Lance.

Although it remains a mystery why Healy keeps his cap on indoors, this is a curious cross between The Twilight Zone and Dixon of Dock Green. The notion that a creative would kill for his art is not a new one (consider Vincent Price in André de Toth's 1953 3-D classic, House of Wax, for example). But Jewell sells it hard and, while stuffing the frame with knowing references to iconic works of modern art, he manages to evoke something in the latter stages of Katie Johnson's priceless exchanges with Jack Warner in Alexander Mackendrick's Ealing comedy, The Ladykillers (1955).

More overt in its pastiche, Matthew Holness's A Gun for George is the pick of the bunch and will delight those with fond memories of the Channel Four series Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, which Holness created with Richard Ayoade. Harking back to the 1970s, when shows like The Sweeney, The Equalizer and The Professionals were required viewing for any teenage boy, the focus falls on the author of the kind of hard-boiled crime thriller whose lurid paperback covers once lined the shelves in WH Smith and Woolworth's. But nobody wants to read about The Reprisalizer any longer and Holness's die-hard author is forced to drive around Kent in his red Austin Allegro hoping to interest someone in his tales of brute force and rough justice.

Imagining himself as his own hero in inspired cutaways that tread a thin line between fantasy and insanity, Holness leaves the caravan parked in the shadow of a pair of giant cooling towers and sets out for a meeting with publisher Roger Ashton-Griffiths. However, he insists the market for stories about a vigilante patrolling Thanet has long crashed and Holness is escorted off the premises by security guard Matthew Ashforde. His welcome is no warmer at the local library, where Veronica Roberts requests the assistance of customer Tim Skelton when Holness gets testy about her refusal to stock his books or allow him access to a computer so he can publish them online.

Flashing back to visions of a man being attacked in his car by a gang of thugs, Holness visits ex-copper Joseph Bailey in hospital. He is on a respirator, but seems glad to see Holness, who reads to him until the old man has a seizure and doctor Edward Halsted walks Holness to the door. He hands him an envelope containing a thank you note from Bailey and the key to his flat. Driving to the soulless tenement estate, Holness notices a full collection of his novels on the shelves. He opens one on the dedication to his brother and opens the safe to find a gun that he aims menacingly at the camera. Suddenly the reveries and the text extracts take on a new meaning and there is a chilling poignancy about the final image, as Holness pulls back the net curtains to gaze down on the Allegro he named George in tribute to his murdered sibling.

A mite disorganised in places and somewhat scattershot in its parodic humour, this is still a film of considerable ambition and accomplishment. Veering between Bronson-like posturing and Chaplinesque pathos, Holness is hilarious as the moustachio'd, sideburned, specs-wearing outsider, while his brassy score is every bit as impressive as his performance, script and direction. The supporting cast also merits mention, as do cinematographer David Rom, production designer Alison Butler and editor Nick Fenton. Yet, for all the Marenghi-style lampoon, it's the twist that lingers longest.

Romola Garai's `Scrubber' is also clearly the work of somebody knowledgeable about and comfortable with the medium. Indeed, this is also a labour of love, as Garai claims to have made two series of The Hour for the BBC in order to raise the £12,000 budget. Working in collaboration with cinematographer Kate Reid, she makes disconcerting use of pristine spaces and sprawling expanses, as she follows thirtysomething Amanda Hale on a shocking quest to establish a niche for herself away from the stifling roles of wife and mother. However, some may be less troubled by the content than by the strained stiffness of the conversations and the ambiguity of the final freeze-frame.

First seen spying on a couple having sex in the woods, Hale returns to her home in a country lane to clean the carpet and shower with an almost obsessive thoroughness. On waking next morning in bed with her daughter Honor Kneafsey, Hale bathes her with equal rigour and notes without remark the child's small act of rebellion in dropping some cereal on to the kitchen table.

Frustrated that her babysitter is unavailable, Hale asks neighbour Michelle Duncan if she could take her to school with her own children because she has an appointment. Even though they have lived close by for several months, the women scarcely know each other, but Hale exploits Duncan's maternal instinct and rushes across the fields to her rendezvous. She is kept waiting for a while, but Martin Savage eventually pulls up in his car and Hale gets in. They find a secluded spot and proceed to have joyless sex, which culminates in Hale clambering out of the car before the stranger can start a conversation.

On collecting Kneafsey, she lingers in the kitchen and notices the mess the children have made while having a snack. She seems pleased to see her daughter, but has her in bed by the time husband Steven Robertson comes home. Whether later the same night or some time later, Hale hurries away from the house as darkness falls and cross the same field to reach her spot in time for a car to pull up.

This time, she has makes love on the ground in the beams of the headlights and wakes the next morning to find leaves sticking to her still naked skin. As she hears the sound of a car pulling away, she realises she is alone and has been out all night. She dresses quickly and reaches the road, where she stops to look both ways in an awkward metaphor for the confusion as to where her secret desires are taking her.

Despite the recent emergence of Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay and Gurinder Chadha, Britain still produces dismayingly few women film-makers. Thus, Garai's debut is more than welcome. Yet, while her visual sense is strong and her theme is laudably contentious, the mannered performances seem overly affected, even though it is only when Hale is anticipating or atoning for her trysts that she feels wholly alive.

There's little room for artifice in Dan Sully's  The Ellington Kid', a five-minute shaggy dog story that is told by Charlie G. Hawkins in a South London kebab shop as buddy Hammed Animashaun tucks into his burger. According to the urban legend, Durassie Kiangangu was stabbed in a nearby alley by gang members Danny Devall, Andrew Onwubolu and James Rallison. However, he managed to stagger into the kebab shop, where he was defended by knife-wielding staffers Vangelis Christodoulou, Rafid Golby and Haydar Koyel.

The punchline about why Hawkins only ever eats the chips can be seen coming a mile away. So can the ending of Chris Foggin's `Friend Request Pending', which, like `...Long Distance Information' feels rather like a quirky commercial for a telephone company. However, the presence of Judi Dench gives this tale of silver surfing a kudos that none of its companions can match.

Excited at having flirted tipsily over mojitos with choirmaster Philip Jackson at the vicar's soirée, Dench's middle-class widow is uncertain how best to proceed. Sat at her laptop, she asks friend Penny Ryder whether she should call, send him a text or email or poke him on his Facebook page. However, as they await the result of her friend request, Jackson logs on to his instant messenger and both Dench and Ryder are taken aback when he ends a jokey greeting with `LOL'.

Suddenly spouting cyberspeak like a giggling teenager, Dench repeats the acronym in her reply and is convinced she has blown her chances by failing to play it cool. Amused by her dithering, Ryder leaves Dench to stew by going out shopping. However, she decides to seize the day and phone Jackson, only to ring off almost as soon as she has dialled. But he calls her back and explains that he had to go offline and suggests they have dinner at a restaurant he knows that serves a mean mojito and Dench punches the air with delight as she stands by the window.

Although it feels like a sitcom incident involving Beattie and JR Hartley, this is a genial miniature that benefits enormously from Dench's girlish enthusiasm and quaint way with new media slang. Foggin rather smugly adds a coda featuring Tom Hiddleston as her son, but this fails to dissipate the picture's unassuming charm.

Finally, this week comes a new documentary that is showing exclusively at the Corn Exchange in Wallingford on 29 November and 9 December. The second showing of Shady Lady will be followed by a Q&A session with director Tristan Loraine, a former pilot who has teamed with writer Vivienne Young to bring research by Glenn R. Horton, Lindsay J. Peet and Margaret Prior to gripping life in recreating the longest distance bombing raid of the Second World War. At times reminiscent of Michael Caton-Jones's Memphis Belle (1990), this is a vast improvement on the misfiring thriller 31 North 62 East (2009) and is a must for anyone interested in the aviation aspect of the conflict in the Pacific.

Narrated by Michael Dorn, this tribute to the crew of the B-24 Liberator bomber who spent 16 hours and 35 minutes in the air in August 1943 opens on the salt pan in north-western Australia where Shady Lady crash landed. Alice Craig, the wife of the pilot whose skill ensured all survived the impact on treacherous terrain, had never visited the spot before and she is shown around by Balangarra elder Clement Maraltadj. It's a poignant way to bookend a film in which Loraine employs a mix of archive material and dramatic reconstruction to chronicle a mission that has been overshadowed by those undertaken by such British-based crews as the Dam Busters and the 633 Squadron, whose exploits were respectively filmed by Michael Anderson in 1955 and Walter Grauman in 1964.

These pictures were blessed with inspirational theme tunes and Loraine is well served by a Moritz Schmittat score that reinforces the intensity of combat sequences that are capably filmed by Nathalie Grace, who conveys the cramped confines of the plane and the perils it faced from enemy fire without over-exposing the fact that the project clearly didn't have the budget to lavish on special effects. The acting also occasionally betrays the limitations imposed upon the project. But what matters here is the story, which transcends any technical or stylistic shortcomings to inform and engross.

Just 10 weeks after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service launched an attack on the port of Darwin in northern Australia. Once again led by Mitsuo Fuchida, the first wave struck on 19 February 1942 and dropped more bombs and sank more shipping than the raid on the US base on Hawaii. Sanctioned by Winston Churchill, American personnel were swiftly dispatched to Northern Territory. But over a year passed before the combined forces of the Royal Australian Air Force and the USAF were ready to go on the offensive.

A meeting between Lieutenant Colonel William Miller (Jim Alexander) and a couple of Aussie counterparts (Robert H. Wainwright and Shaun Morton) explains the rationale behind an attack on the refineries at Balikpapan in Borneo, which produced 60% of Japan's aviation fuel and half of its lubricating oil. However, such were the distances involved that it would be an incredibly dangerous mission, even for the B-24s of the 380th Bombardment Group, which had acquired the nicknames `The Flying Circus' and `The King of the Heavies'.

Following a briefing, Shady Lady takes to the skies on Friday 13 August, with 23 year-old First Lieutenant Douglas Craig (Ross Neuenfeldt) at the controls. Dorn introduces each member of the crew with a little background snippet, but what is most notable is their youth and the fact that Craig had been a Liberator commander for just five months. However, it is only when navigator John Nash (Jonathan W. Colby) notices that a storm has put them an hour behind the rest of the squadron and 100 miles west of their flight path that Craig and co-pilot Robert Jackson (Gregory Kanter) realise the enormity of their task.

Eventually reaching Borneo without undue incident, Craig orders gunners William Klein (Charles Doug Craig), Maurice Powers (Josh Coleman), Vernon Krout (George L. Craig) and William Mynock (Mike Cali) into position. However, the communication link with bombardier Randall Packard (Jonathan Michael Anderson) fails over the target and Craig has to make a second sortie before the payload can be dropped and RAAF photographer Len Ruston (Andrew Adler) can get his shots of the inflicted damage.

Turning for home, the crew encounters more storms and Craig is forced to climb to avoid the severe lightning. However, flight engineer Louis `Little Joe' Joseph warns him that they no longer have sufficient fuel to make it back to Darwin and Nash suggests they head for Drysdale in Western Australia  But Craig is more concerned about passing over the enemy base on the island of Timor before daylight and is aghast when Nash informs him that adverse winds have slowed them down and that they will be flying over Kupang as dawn breaks. Pursued by a pair of Zeros, Craig keeps Shady Lady out of range, while waist gunner Powers relieves the tension by taking curtain calls in his bomb window to taunt the Japanese pilots.

After almost an hour of dog-fighting, the Zeros abandon the chase and Craig asks radio operator Rupert Daugherty (Marc Ferrante) to inform HQ of their whereabouts. Virtually running on fumes, Craig lands in the middle of nowhere and is mightily relieved when they are found by three Aborigines on walkabout from a nearby Benedictine mission. Loraine rather rushes through the conclusion of the tale, as Fr Seraphim Sanz summons assistance and the locals ferry spare parts across the wilderness to enable Shady Lady to be repaired before the flood waters rise. The aftermath is similarly glossed over, even though Craig was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the presidential citation was reissued in 2011 and presented to his widow in Sydney. Nevertheless, this is a sincere and often fascinating account of a daring enterprise that deserves to be much better known.