Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 16/1/2014)

As Rachel Cooper (Lillian Gish) teaches the children in her care in 1930s West Virginia about false prophets, firebrand preacher Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum) chats to the Lord about where he will fetch up next . He confesses to being tired after his latest crime and wanders into a strip club, only to be apprehended and sentenced to 30 days for driving a stolen car. Harry winds up in a cell with Ben Harper (Peter Graves), who has been condemned to death for killing two men while snatching $10,000 from a bank. Ben quotes Scripture in his sleep (`And a little child shall lead them'), but goes to the gallows without revealing that he has entrusted the loot's safe keeping to his children, John (Bill Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce), who have sworn to tell no one about it, including their naive mother, Willa (Shelley Winters).

While Willa is working at the soda fountain, Pearl asks John to tell her a story and he is describing how a bad man comes to steal a son's gold when Harry's shadow falls upon them from outside. Later that day, Harry introduces himself to Willa and reveals that he was a good friend to Ben in his final hours. John is sceptical and questions Harry after he tells a biblical story to explain why he has the words `LOVE' and `HATE' tattooed on his knuckles.

Despite John's misgivings, Harry is invited on the neighbourhood picnic and he leads the locals in a rendition of `Bringing in the Sheaves'. Although she had vowed never to remarry, Willa confides to friend Icey Spoon (Evelyn Varden) that Harry might just be her salvation and she accepts his proposal. But John realises that Harry has an ulterior motive and checks with Uncle Birdie (James Gleason) to see when their skiff will be repaired so he can make a quick getaway down the Ohio River if required.

Harry tries to coax the children into trusting him and promises to share the money if they tell him where it is hidden. Pearl is ready to accede, but John stands firm and Willa also realises she has made a terrible mistake when Harry tells her to look at herself in the mirror and accept that she is not the kind of woman to inflame a man's passion. She tells Harry that Ben made her throw the money in the river, but John catches Pearl making paper cut-outs with it and stuffs the notes into her doll and urges her to keep the secret.

Deciding to change tack, Harry tries to intimidate John by telling him that his mother is disappointed in him. When he refuses even to show his new stepfather any respect, Harry turns to Pearl again and convinces her that Ben had insisted that she should not keep any secrets from his great friend. But, before she can speak, John appears to throw a hairbrush at Harry and he skulks off to his bedroom to slit Willa's throat.

When Icey and Walt Spoon (Don Beddoe) come to check on the family, Harry informs them that Willa got drunk and stole his car in deserting them. They are scarcely reassured when Harry promises to stay and protect the children, but (unlike Birdie who is too scared to reveal what he saw while out fishing) they are unaware that Willa is at the bottom of the river in the Model T Ford with her hair billowing in the current. That night, Harry shows the orphans his knife as he demands to know where they are hiding the money. John tells him that the stash is buried in the cellar, but Pearl is shocked that her brother told a lie and blurts out that the cash is inside her doll. As Harry lurches for her, John dislodges a shelf and slams the door on Harry's fingers as they flee to the river and set off downstream in the skiff.

Pearl sings a lullaby to her doll as they drift along. They accept potatoes from a kindly woman and hide out in a barn to sleep. But John hears Harry singing and they rush back to the boat and push away from the bank. The next morning, however, they find they have run aground and are more than relieved when Rachel offers them sanctuary. She tidies them up and assures them they are safe, but John and Pearl remains silent, even as they help some of the other children carry baskets of eggs into town.

Rachel tells her charges the Old Testament story about pharaoh's daughter finding the baby Moses in a basket and John is so taken by it that he decides to trust her. Meanwhile, Harry has arrived in town and learns from Ruby (Gloria Castillo) that two new children have arrived at Ms Cooper's. However, she feels so guilty about letting him buy her an ice-cream that she tells Rachel that he has been making inquiries and, thus, she is ready for him when he tries to use his charm on her. He insists that he is seeking to save them from an unreliable mother, but John convinces Rachel that Harry is not his father and she drives him away with her shotgun.

Harry vows to return under cover of darkness and sits outside the house singing hymns. Undaunted, Rachel joins in with `Leaning on the Everlasting Arms' and sends Ruby to fetch the children downstairs. As she paces with her weapon loaded and ready, she tells them the story of Mary and Joseph fleeing into Egypt with the Baby Jesus to avoid the wrath of King Herod. When Harry calls to her, she opens fire and he beats a retreat. Rachel calls the cops and claims that someone is hiding in her barn. Harry is arrested for murdering Willa and John hits him with the doll, which bursts and spills the notes into the air.

Curiously, John refuses to identity Harry as his mother's killer in court, but he is driven away in a police car, leaving Rachel to celebrate Christmas with her brood. She gives John a watch and, for her gift, he wraps an apple in a doily and inserts a candle. As Rachel cooks, she tells the children about the love of God and thanks Him for their ability to abide and endure.

Adapted by James Agate from a novel by Davis Grubb, this is one of the most literate pictures produced in postwar Hollywood. But it is also one of the most visually innovative, as Laughton, production designer Hilyard M. Brown and cinematographer Stanley Cortez drew on German Expressionism and the milieu of silent film pioneer DW Griffith to create a rural America that was both frigteningly real and realistically frightening. Reinforcing the connection to the Griffith era was the inspired decision to cast his frequent star Lillian Gish as the Depression equivalent of a fairy godmother, who protects the fleeing waifs from the ogre. Delivering her lines with musicality to match Walter Schumann's haunting score, Gish gives the finest performance of her sound career and she is superbly supported by young Ben Chapin and Sally Jane Bruce, whose scenes were occasionally directed by an uncredited Mitchum, as Laughton didn't always know how to convey his intentions to the 12 and six year-old kids, who are both still alive, even though they haven't acted in over 60 years. Just as she was in George Stevens's A Place in the Sun (1951) and would be again in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962), Shelley Winters is splendidly cast as the blowsy blonde who fails to spot the bad apple, while Mitchum excels as the preacher with a soul of pitch.

A mix of fantasy, horror, film noir and Southern Gothic, this disconcerting picture failed to find criticial or commercial favour on its first release and Laughton never directed again before his death in 1962. Six decades on, it has become the ultimate cult movie and would be a worthy inclusion in one-shot features by respected actors - along with James Cagney's Short Cut to Hell (1957), Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Frank Sinatra's None But the Brave (1965) and Barbara Loden's Wanda (1970) - or in a dystopic debut list with fellow one-timers Herk Harvey (Carnival of Souls, 1962), Leonard Kastle (The Honeymoon Killers, 1969), Dalton Trumbo (Johnny Got His Gun, 1971) and James William Guercio (Electra Glide in Blue, 1973).

Although the story of a twentysomething slacker travelling to the Chilean coast to sample the mind-bending juice of the San Pedro cactus doesn't sound as though it has much in common with The Night of the Hunter, Sebastián Silva's Crystal Fairy & The Magical Cactus and 2012 is something of a kindred spirit. Largely improvised by a cast which was essentially vacationing as it worked, it also harks back to such countercultural offerings as Roger Corman's The Trip (1967), as it is a road movie in which the protagonist goes in search of a life-changing experience and winds up being transformed by another one altogether. Ultimately, it lacks the subversive edge of its hippie-era predecessors and proves once again that encapsulating hallucinatory sensation and emotion is trickier than it seems. But, in spite of its wooliness, this semi-autobiographical rite of passage is fitfully amusing and seems destined for cult status.

The night before he sets off to fulfil a lifetime's ambition to get high on home-brewed mescaline, American drifter Michael Cera goes to a party with his Chilean pal Juan Andrés Silva. Spooked by an allegorical religious painting in the bathroom, Sera notices compatriot Gaby Hoffmann dancing with wild abandon and pompously tells her she is embarrassing herself. She seems oblivious to his concerns, but expresses an interest when he mentions Aldous Huxley's 1954 account of his mescaline experiences, The Doors of Perception, and accepts his invitation to go north the next day.

On the way home, Cera and Silva bump into hookers Esteban Carreño and Juan Carlos Lara II and offer them a bite to eat. They chat idly before the transsexual twosome leave and Cera tries to get sleepy by exercising vigorously in his pants. He oversleeps and has to be woken by Juan Andrés, who packs the vehicle before picking up brothers José Miguel and Agustín Silva (who are the director's real siblings) and hitting the open road. They stop in the desert for a snack and Cera is surveying the bleak landscape when Hoffmann phones to ask about the expedition. He ignores the call, but the Silvas chide him for reneging on his invitation and he is aghast when Hoffmann finally gets through to tell him she is on the bus and will hook up with them along the route.

Against his better judgement, Cera agrees to rendezvous with Hoffmann in a park and finds himself having to rescue her from some irate women she has been sketching as fairies. His mood scarcely improves when she ticks them off for buying junk food in a 7/11 and objects when Augustín offers her his bed when they check into a hotel. Cera tells Hoffmann that she reeks and they go to buy beer while she has a shower. Boorish as ever, Cera mocks the fact she is so hirsute, but she laughs off his cruel nickname of `Crystal Hairy' and not only throws herself into their game of worst options, but also places stones in their drinks to help open up their chakras.

Next day, Hoffmann holds them up while she finishes meditating on the bed and tells Cera that she senses his hostility and would be happy to sit down and talk through any problems he has with her. He just wants to find his cactus and is frustrated that so many people are unwilling to let him take a cutting from the plants growing in their gardens. Eventually, Hoffmann sweet talks an old lady into inviting them in and, while she and the Silvas accept her hospitality, Cera sneaks away to cut a chunk off her San Pedro and stash it in the car. Leaving the lonely old dear hugging her teddy bear, the quintet speed away. However, Augustín is uncomfortable with taking advantage of a kindly stranger and announces he wants nothing to do with the mescaline.

Hoffmann takes pity on him and offers to do some healing work with him. But she further irks Cera by insisting on a bathroom stop in the middle of the Atacama Desert, during which she forces them into smelling the wild camomile. On arriving at the coast, Cera irritates Juan Andrés by hugging the cactus and refusing to help put up the tents. He also declines an invitation to go fishing and Hoffmann joins him to cut off the spikes and remove the outer skin. She suggests they share their hopes and fear as they work, but Cera is not convinced and is taken aback when she jokes that they should have an orgy as the cactus cooks.

The brothers play football and make music as they wait for the flesh to soften and Hoffmann shows them her drawings. She coaxes them into opening up and Augustín admits to being terrified of madness, hopelessness and the police, while José Miguel declares that he mistrusts people with bad intentions. Juan Andrés admits to having problems with uncertainty, but claims not to have a major hang-up, as does Cera, who is chastised by Hoffmann for being resistant to vulnerability on conceding his only dread is sharks. Hoffmann declares that she is most unnerved by humans who are too ego-bound to embrace freedom and frets that she won't experience true emancipation before the Mayan calendar brings about the end of the world. José Miguel laughs at this reference and Hoffmann is peeved that they refuse to take her seriously.

Cera wakes next morning to find Hoffmann exercising on the beach. She extinguishes his cigarette and tells him he is in too much of a hurry to get anything out of life. But he still considers her to be kooky and wanders off to strain the mush through a stocking. He berates his friends for having breakfast, as they are supposed to fast before the mescaline, and Hoffmann further irritates him when she urges the Silvas not to let him bully them and plonks her magic pebbles in their mugs. Realising that Augustín doesn't want to imbibe, she performs a healing rite over him as an excuse to pour away the liquid and tells him to play along as though he is tripping.

Cera finally snaps when Hoffmann claims to see smiling faces in the rocks and Juan Andrés admonishes him for being such an uptight control freak. She wanders off alone to look at the photographs in her sketchbook, while the boys clamber over rocks until Cera suddenly feels unwell and wishes he hadn't been so mean to Hoffmann. He gets testy when the others laugh at him for going pale, but he soon perks up and they go splashing in the sea. As Henry Mancini's easy listening classic `Two for the Road' plays on the soundtrack, Cera looks back to see Hoffmann sitting on a rock and he realises the drug is finally kicking in as he feels so well disposed towards her.

Having found some shells, Hoffmann spells out her name in the sand and starts doing physical jerks on an inland dune, just as Cera begins making similar movements in the water. He teases Augustín for not having the bottle to take the trip and marvels at the physical resemblance between the brothers. José Miguel plays with a crab before tossing it back into the ocean and strolling off with Augustín to chat to whale spotters Sol Squire and Mark Grattan. Meanwhile, Hoffmann has stripped down to her sneakers and is climbing rocks. She performs a healing ritual over a dead rabbit and gets distressed when it doesn't work.

Leaving the siblings looking at pelicans, Cera goes to find Hoffmann to apologise for being so hostile. He finds her sketch pad and is amused by the drawings she has done of them. However, he also finds photographs of her as a dominatrix and he suddenly becomes emotional and scurries to the car and demands they go in search of her. In fact, Hoffmann is busy switching the shells to read `Crystal Hairy' and she bursts out laughing for no apparent reason. She hides behind the rocks, however, when she is approached by a passing African-American, who offers her his shirt to cover up her nakedness and gives her a lift back to the beach.

Relieved to be reunited with her friends, Hoffmann reveals her real name (Isabel) and Cera hugs her as he apologises at sunset. They all make a big fuss of her, as they start to come down from their high, and Hoffmann smiles at them fondly as she tucks into some cookies. Around the campfire that night, Cera recalls the crush he had on a classmate when he was 12, while Hoffmann remembers going to a party with a man she didn't like and getting very drunk to make the evening tolerable. However, she was lured into the boathouse and gang raped by three boys, as she watched everyone enjoying themselves through the window. She woke in the bathtub and she starts to cry as she reveals that has never spoken of the incident to anyone before.

Juan Andrés consoles her and jokingly upbraids the sobbing Cera for upstaging her. He tries to apologise again and asks about her S&M fetish and she laughs that she does it to make a fast buck. Hoffmann goes to bed and no sooner has she gone than Cera turns to the Silvas and hisses that she didn't see any smiling faces in the stones. When he wakes the next morning, he cannot find Hoffmann, who is doing a watercolour in her book. She sees Cera coming and hurries away, having left everyone a sketch under their plate on the camp table.

Ending in an insouciant manner entirely in keeping with what has gone before, this is a disarming picaresque that has less to do with the opening of doors than the lowering of barriers, as Cera's immature, self-centred party animal does a little growing up while under the influence. It remains to be seen, of course, how permanent his transition will be and whether he will be any more genial to his hosts or take any more notice of their striking country on the trek back to Santiago. But many viewers will be more intrigued by the fate of Hoffmann's impulsive New Age sprite, who has to find a new niche now she has faced up to some of her own demons.

Made in 12 days almost to pass the time while Cera was learning Spanish in preparation for his role in Sebastián Silva's Magic Magic (which will be released in the spring), this has a pleasing ring of spontaneity. As one might expect of such an improvised project that involved actual imbibition, certain scenes ramble and the odd gag falls flat. But the plotline retains a certain coherence, while the performances are quietly committed, with Cera acquitting himself well in playing against geeky type and Hoffmann exposing herself with particular courage to the relentless gaze of Cristián Petit-Laurent's prying handheld lens. Despite the efforts of sound designer Roberto Espinoza, there is more sentimentality than insensibility about the trip sequences. But, even though it never comes close to matching Silva's exceptional social satire, The Maid (2009), this is a film that gets under the skin and, no matter how irritating it becomes, it somehow remains quirkily charming.

By a curious coincidence, the need to secure a beverage also drives the anti-hero of Jan Ole Gerster's Oh Boy, which is playing exclusively at The ICA on The Mall in London. Slickly shot in nouvelle vague monochrome and accompanied by a Woody Allen-style jazz score, this day in a life comedy feels like an updating of Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985), in which caprice and coincidence sent yuppie Griffin Dunne's ordered life spiralling out of control. Tom Schilling's twentysomething owes more to one of Richard Linklater's slackers. But, for all his faineance and genius for poor decisions, Schilling also makes a genial travelling companion through the streets and suburbs of Berlin, as he seeks to catch a break and find a cup of coffee.

Waking up beside girlfriend Katharina Schüttler, Tom Schilling feels the time has come to part. He shrugs when she suggests they meet up that night and she knows as he leaves that she won't be seeing him again. Schilling gets the U-Bahn back to his new digs and nods half-heartedly in the direction of Justus von Dohnányi, who is watching him from the stairs. Rummaging through an unpacked box of belongings, Schilling looks at Schüttler's photograph and lights a cigarette with his toaster. Suddenly, a long-unopened letter causes him to dash out and he curses as he misses the tram and has to run across the city.

Schilling knocks and enters the office of psychologist Andreas Schröders, who has been appointed to assess whether he is ready to have his driving licence returned. Aware of his power, Schröders takes an instant dislike to Schilling and tries to catch him out with a succession of vague and leading questions that inevitably prompt some peevish retorts. Still seething after having his application rejected, Schilling goes to a coffee shop and is duped into buying an expensive blend by barista Katharina Hauck, who refuses to let him off the difference when he doesn't have enough change.

He goes to a cashpoint and drops his last coppers into the begging cup of a sleeping tramp. However, when the machine eats his card, Schilling tries to retrieve the coins, only for the woman queuing behind him to shoot him a disapproving look. Returning home after leaving a message for wealthy father Ulrich Noethen to send him some cash, Schilling spots Von Dohnányi on the stairs and hurries inside. However, his neighbour knocks with a dish of his wife's famous meatballs and, having made Schilling eat one on the doorstep, pushes inside to have a snoop around. They toast with booze from Von Dohnányi's hip flash and try to make small talk about the Bundesliga. But Von Dohnányi quickly reveals that his life has been miserable since his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer and required a double mastectomy.

Schilling tries to be sympathetic, as the middle-aged stranger sinks to his haunches and sobs. But he realises he has outstayed his welcome and leaves with a regretful nod. Left to his own devices, Schilling lies on his bed until he gets a phone call from his pal Marc Hosemann. An out of work actor who is incredibly fussy about the roles he takes, Hosemann is the ideal companion for Schilling, who has been drifting and living off his wealthy father's allowance since dropping out of law school two years earlier. They go for lunch and bump into Friederike Kempter, who has lost a considerable amount of weight since Schilling knew her at school. She confesses to having had a crush on him and offers him free tickets to a performance art piece she is dancing in that night.

Hosemann eagerly accepts, as nothing free should ever be turned down in these recessional times, but Schilling has his misgivings, as he suspects Kempter has ulterior motives. They drive across Berlin to the Babelsberg film studio, where Hosemann's friend Arnd Klawitter is starring in a Second World War movie about a Nazi officer who falls in love with the Jewish woman he is sheltering. Klawitter tells Schilling that Hosemann could be a fine actor if he just shaped himself before going on to the set to shoot an intense scene with Inga Birkenfeld. Just as the action ends, Schilling's phone rings and he is summoned by Noethen to meet him on the golf course.

Cadging a light from a couple of extras in Gestapo and concentration camp uniforms, Schilling heads for the outskirts, where Noethen makes a fool of him on the driving range with his ultra-keen assistant, Leander Modersohn. As they sit on the terrace, Noethen asks Schilling about his law professor and then reveals that he bumped into him at a conference and knows that he has been lying to him for two years. He delights in informing his son that he has closed his account and leaves him a couple of notes to make his way home.

Unable to buy a ticket at the country station because the machine is broken, Schilling is accosted by martinet inspectors Martin Brambach and Rolf Peter Kahl and gets so tired of their hectoring that he barges past them and escapes on the nearest train. Still unable to get a coffee anywhere, Schilling hooks up with Hosemann to go to the theatre. However, Hosemann insists on making a detour to buy drugs from Theo Trebs and Schilling slips away to chat to his grandmother, Lis Böttner, and try out her reclining chair.

They arrive after the performance has started and box-office clerk Alexander Altomirianos is loathe to let them in. However, they gain admittance and Hosemann immediately begins sniggering at the pretentious mime Kempter is doing on the stage. Director Steffen Jürgens looks accusingly from the front row and lays into Hosemann during the opening night party. Schilling tries to be diplomatic before sneaking outside for a smoke. Kempter finds him and starts flirting with him. They are interrupted by street punk Frederick Lau cadging a cigarette and, when he tells Kempter that his mate fancies her, she launches into a vitriolic tirade that culminates in Lau punching Schilling in the face before he is led away by his gang.

Kempter takes Schilling to the toilets to stop his nose bleeding. She kisses him and begs him to make love to her and call her `Roly Poly'. But he pushes her away and she unleashes another volley of abuse as he flees into the night. He finds sanctuary in a quiet bar and orders a beer with a vodka chaser. As he lights up, he is joined by elderly Michael Gwisdek, who buys him another drink. Gwisdek tells Schilling that he grew up in this district, but that it has changed beyond all recognition in the 60 years he has been away. He recalls a night in his childhood when his father gave him a stone and led him into the street, where everyone was smashing the windows of the Jewish shops and setting light to them.

Realising he is describing Kristallnacht, Schilling tries to fathom what has happened to Gwisdek in the intervening period. Thus, when the old man collapses on the pavement, he goes with him in the ambulance to the hospital, where he waits all night until nurse Sanne Schnapp informs him that Gwisdek has died. Wandering out into the city, Schilling finds a café and finally gets the coffee that had eluded him throughout the previous day. The scene fades to black as he swallows, leaving us to wonder what surprises today will hurl at him.

The subtlety of the running gag sums up this highly entertaining and slyly satirical odyssey, which is as deftly played by the large ensemble as it is scripted and directed by the debuting Gerster. Considering how outwarldy resistible his character is, Schilling holds things together with a casual aplomb that recalls James McAvoy at his most appealing. But the deadpan cameo turns all splendidly suggest fleeting intrusions into lives being led rather than calculated showcases for parts being played.

Gerster also turns Berlin into a key supporting player, although there is nothing coy about Philipp Kirsamer's grainy black-and-white digital vistas. Moreover, Gerster is anything but benign about the average German, as he detects fascistic tendencies in minor officials and a readiness to obey rules and orders that would be all the more disconcerting if the ironic intent wasn't so clearly signposted. He also takes pot shots at the modern-day equivalents of bread and circuses and evidently finds today's counterculture seriously lacking when compared to the avant-garde ingenuity of the Weimar Jazz Age. Yet, for all the neatness of the contrivances, this is more a collection of fugues than a full-scale city symphony, as, rather like Schilling, Gerster is mostly content to watch the passing parade rather than take a closer look.

A difficult subject is handled with tact, if not necessarily with impartiality by debuting documentarists Martha Shane and Lana Wilson in After Tiller. Under the provisions of the judgement in the 1973 Roe vs Wade case, the decision to permit third-trimester abortions was left to the individual states. Nine currently have statutes allowing a process whose induced still birthing technique is so controversial that only a handful of doctors in the entire United States are prepared to offer the procedure to women facing the prospect of raising seriously ill or malformed children or who have been in such deep denial about their pregnancy that they have missed the 20 week deadline .

George Tiller was one of the few until he was gunned down during a service in the United Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas on Sunday 31 May 2009. Shane and Wilson avoid naming the perpetrator as Scott Roeder and make no reference throughout their film to the denomination of those who protest outside the clinics of Tiller's surviving colleagues. Indeed, they give no voice whatsoever to those opposing LeRoy Carhart, Susan Robinson, Shelley Sella and Warren Hern, while affording them plentiful opportunity to stress that late abortions account for only 1% of all termination in the United States, that each case (whether the pregnancy is planned or unplanned) is assessed on its own merits and that, where the law and their moral compass allows, the choice should always lie with the pregnant woman and no one else.

While Robinson and Sella share a clinic in New Mexico, Carhart is based in Nebraska and Hern in Colorado. They have given Shane and Wilson unprecedented access to their homes and premises to that they can be presented as caring and considered professionals rather than amoral egotists who are accused by their adversaries of committing crimes for profit. Sella explains that the quality of life a mother and baby can expect often dictates the outcome of a consultation. She is seen with two couples (whose faces are kept hidden), who are uncertain what to do for the best and one of the fathers admits that he prayed for a sign he was doing the right thing. In the end, both couples agree it is better to spare their offspring a short and painful life and Sella hopes that they remember the reasons for their decision if they are later troubled by guilt.

Across the country, Hern is meeting a rape victim who had been too frightened to tell anyone about her pregnancy. Speaking to camera, Hern explains that he loved delivering babies when he was training to be a doctor. But, during a stint with the Peace Corps in Brazil, he saw so many women die from botched backstreet abortions and treated so many infants abused by parents who didn't want them that he concluded he had no option but to start offering late-term abortions back in the States. He became an associate of George Tiller and is more convinced than ever that they are doing the right thing by sparing women and children from unspeakable fates.

Ignoring the protesters outside his Nebraska clinic, Carhart finds himself at the centre of a storm when a bill comes before the state legislature threatening to ban abortions after the 20th week because a report has claimed that the foetus feels pain after this time. Supported (albeit nervously) by his wife-cum-clinic manager Mary Lou, he insists he must keep practicing, as women will resort to desperate measures unless there is someone qualified to help them. Robinson shares his concern and, having described the euthanising process to a woman over the phone, she claims that the majority of women she sees want to keep their children and only make the decision to protect them from the inevitability of suffering in life. Dr Tiller was attacked before his death and Carhart recalls how the boarding stable he ran with his daughter was firebombed by anti-abortionists in 1991. He teamed with Tiller six years later and is quietly proud of being dubbed an abomination by the local Republican Party, which would gladly drive him out of the state. He is no longer a young man and Hern's nonagenarian mother Edna wishes he would retire and spend more time with his new Cuban wife Odalys and her son, Fernando. She has been targeted by extremists because of his work, but trusts him to make the right decisions. Hern admits that he has been shot at and that pressure led to the breakdown of his first marriage. But he continues to live as normal a life as possible and Shane and Wilson show him skiing, as if to emphasise his contempt for danger.

Robinson is equally undaunted by the threats. She started out in a Catholic hospital and only started doing abortions after she heard that activists were trying to close down facilities. Determined to prevent them from winning, she worked with Tiller before collaborating with Sella, a lesbian feminist whose experience in midwifery led her to specialise once she had qualified as a doctor. While their clinic appears to be thriving, Carhart is forced to close down in October 2010, when it becomes a felony in Nebraska to perform abortions after 20 weeks. Reluctantly recommending patients to his colleagues, Carhart vows to find new premises in a more liberal state and hopes to soon be helping women like the one Hern sees who is relieved to have spared her daughter extreme mental health problems.

As if to demonstrate there is no such thing as automatic acceptance, Shane and Wilson show Robinson refusing a woman named Michelle in Paris who was well into her pregnancy when she realised she was expecting. She clearly dislikes having to make such calls as a judge of last resort, but insists she didn't have a sufficiently compelling reason for termination. A 19 year-old single mother who would have to drop out of school if she had a second child proves another matter altogether, however, and Robinson is troubled by the fact that a better storyteller stands a better chance than someone lacking the urgency or eloquence. Sella has similar qualms and, as she interviews a black mother of two who left it late because she was awaiting a tax rebate, admits that she uses the term `baby' rather than `foetus' in the case of third-trimester euthanasia. She avers it is no longer mere tissue by this stage and she warns all women that the process is distressing.

But Sella remains convinced of the rectitude of her cause, even though some of her staff sometimes find themselves disagreeing with a decision. One assistant backs Robinson all the way when she is faced with a 16 year-old Catholic pro-lifer whose boyfriend's family has offered to raise the child if she has it. However, she thinks Robinson is wrong to offer an abortion to Lucy from Reno and asks to be taken off the case, which Robinson is happy to pursue, as she always reckons that nobody knows a someone's physical and psychological state better than the woman herself. She claims she will only turn down requests if it is unsafe to accept them.

Meanwhile, Carhart, who has spent a month trying to locate premises in Iowa, has found a sympathetic landlord in Maryland. But Operation Rescue rallies swiftly and Shane and Wilson are allowed into a church meeting plotting against him. As part of the campaign, activists doorstep the school attended by landlord Todd Stave's child and the incident makes the evening news. Carhart speaks to Stave on the phone and learns he is the son of an abortion provider and has long backed groups like Voice of Choice. He promises not to buckle and Carhart vows to continue doing what he thinks is the right thing. But, even though Robinson and Sella are training a new doctor, the foursome are fully aware that the situation can only deteriorate if the cannot find willing and numerous successors.

Despite occasionally coming perilously close to letting their film become an infomercial, Shane and Watson deserve considerable credit for revealing just how reluctant so many women are to opt for a third-trimester termination. They also avoid beatifying their subjects, which is just as well as Carhart and Hern make little effort to court popularity. However, the decision to depict opponents as nameless cranks outside the clinics is a poor one and the absence of a cogently argued rebuttal diminishes the actuality's intellectual and ethical validity.