Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 27/2/2014)

However, Astaire was then contracted to Paramount for Papa's Delicate Condition and the same the studio had no intention of lending his preferred co-star, Audrey Hepburn, to anybody. So, in a unique gesture of munificence, MGM musicals maestro Arthur Freed not only allowed Edens and Donen to transfer to Paramount for the duration, but he also threw musical director Adolph Deutsch, arranger Conrad Salinger, choreographer Eugene Loring and cinematographer Ray June into the bargain. Paramount art directors Hal Pereira and George W. Davis, SFX artist John P. Fulton and costume designer Givenchy all made major contributions, as did Avedon himself, who acted as visual consultant. But this undervalued delight still drips with MGM chic and copious references to the studio's finest hours.

Fashion editor Kay Thompson is searching for a new look for the cover of her magazine, Quality. She consults photographer Fred Astaire, who agrees that a chic intellectual look would be unusual and they seek out the drabbest bookshop in Greenwich Village in the hope of finding a fresh beauty among the musty tomes. Owner Audrey Hepburn disapproves of women parading themselves to sell ridiculous designs, but she allows Astaire to take some pictures and he quickly becomes convinced, as they develop in his darkroom, that Hepburn is the face of the future.

Thompson invites her to the office and her minions immediately swarm around Hepburn trying to change her look. She takes cover in Astaire's darkroom and is pleasantly surprised by his images. Yet, even though he tries to coax her into posing again, Hepburn is set against the idea until he mention as trip to Paris. Consequently, she agrees to go along with the shoot on the proviso that she can meet her hero, philosopher Michel Auclair, who has pioneered the theory of Empathicalism.

Once in the City of Light, Hepburn begins to enjoy working with Astaire, as they tour the landmarks for a series of iconic shots. However, when she slips away to see Auclair lecture at a backstreet café, Hepburn misses an important gala and Thompson and Astaire humiliate her in public. She goes to see Auclair for advice, but Astaire and Thompson inveigle their way into his home (and mock his disciples with a song-and-dance routine) and proceed to knock Auclair out during a tussle. Enraged, Hepburn throws them out. But, when Auclair makes a pass at her as he comes round, she breaks a vase over his head and storms off.

Distressed at hurting Hepburn, Astaire decides to fly home, leaving Thompson to guide her protégée through a runway show for the great and the good. As she looks out of the window, Hepburn sees a plane climbing into the sky and is so distraught at the prospect of losing Astaire forever that she runs off the catwalk in a wedding dress and vanishes into the city.

In many ways, this is a reworking of Vincente Minnelli's Oscar winner, An American in Paris (1951), with the Gershwin score providing the constant and the contrasts coming between Astaire and Gene Kelly, photography/painting, real locations/ soundstages, and Donen and Minnelli. There are also echoes of Singin' in the Rain, with Kay Thompson's magazine editor (who was based on Harper's Bazaar's Carmel Snow) recalling Millard Mitchell's studio chief, Astaire encouraging his models like a silent film director, and model Dovima recalling Jean Hagen's superficial actress, who loves the glamour and prestige of her trade, but hasn't the soul fully to participate in its creativity.  Consequently, she's replaced by Hepburn's fresh-faced gamine, who shares Debbie Reynolds's passion, independence and eagerness for new experiences.

However, in common with Minnelli's The Band Wagon (1953), the film is also a recapitulation of Astaire's career that allows for plenty of self-reflexive analysis. The `Funny Face' sequence, for example, comments on his passage from RKO monochrome to VistaVision Technicolor, while also exploring the very process of making pictures and star myths - with Astaire photographing, developing, projecting and printing Hepburn's portrait before comparing the image with the reality (which is itself merely an illusion on a cinema screen).

This emphasis on modernity and technology, while also referencing and reverencing an accepted iconography, recurs during the `Bonjour, Pareee!' sequence - which recalls both Rouben Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight (1932) and Kelly and Donen's On the Town (1949) and It's Always Fair Weather (1955) - and the photo shoot around Paris, which not only showcases the moving image's unique ability to capture a time, a place and a personality in a manner that's both kinetic and artistic, but which also celebrates film technique from the `city symphonies' of the silent montage era to the full-colour, widescreen, stereophonic present. Moreover, it also anticipates the strategies that would be employed by the nouvelle vague to break with the literate narrative linearity of commercial cinema.

Indeed, Donen's use of style is exceedingly ambitious throughout - from its opening emphasis on pink, through the darkroom dance illuminated by a single red bulb to the use of soft focus, split-screens, freeze frames, negative footage, monochrome and colours that seem to dance as vibrantly as Astaire. The picture is also studded with parodies, with Empathicalism joshing Existentialism, `Bonjour, Paree!' lampooning Cinerama travelogues and `Basal Metabolism' poking gentle fun at both danse modèrne and Kelly's dream ballet in An American in Paris. Donen even utilised the poor Parisian weather to comment on the artificial perfection of industrial film-making.

Furthermore, the equation of fashion with film makes the claim of Hepburn's bookstore clerk that cinema and photography each represent `a chichi and unrealistic approach to economics' all the more bitingly satirical, as by dressing her in beatnik black, Donen alludes to the European arthouse pictures that were becoming increasingly trendy in America's major urban centres and, thus provides a cultural counterpoint to both the Hollywood blockbuster and the lie that books alone can provide intellectual sustenance.

However, the picture is occasionally guilty of inverted snobbery, as Auclair's philosopher is concerned with ideas not images and, thus, he has to be exposed as both pretentious and fraudulent.  Hepburn, therefore, comes to learn more about Empathicalism from Astaire, as he understands everything about her mind, body and spirit. Indeed, having proved he's mentally attuned to her  during `Let's Kiss and Make Up', he offers physical proof of their compatibility during the exquisite `He Loves and She Loves' sequence in the Chantilly churchyard.

Somewhat going over the heads of contemporary American audiences, Funny Face lost money on its $4 million budget. But its cinematic inspiration has since proved priceless. Curiously, it also finds echo in Jim Jarmusch's achingly hip vampire saga, Only Lovers Left Alive, which flits between Tangier and Detroit in order to comment on the passage of time, artistic authorship, the transience of technology and the terrifying prospect of eternity. Impeccably designed by Marco Bittner Rosser and studded with quirky soundtrack selections, this may be a touch too languid and far too aware of its own chic laconic melancholia. But it is played with knowing gravitas by a fine cast and provides plenty of amusing variations on vampire lore.

Having made it down the centuries, Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is finally beginning to tire of life. He despises humans (whom he calls `zombies') for messing up the planet and corrupting the blood supply and despairs of modern music and gadgetry, even though he uses Skype to chat with wife Eve (Tilda Swinton), who dislikes the noise and chill of Detroit and prefers to idle away her time in the company of playwright Christopher Marlowe (John Hurt) in northern Morocco. Although he still makes music and has attracted a following of fan boys who occasionally ring his doorbell, Adam is a recluse, who relies on devoted acolyte Ian (Adam Yelchin) to find him vintage guitars and pieces of sound equipment and only sneaks out at night to score uncontaminated blood from Dr Watson (Jeffrey Wright) at the local hospital.

Troubled by a dream about her younger sister, Ava (Mia Wasikowska), Eve decides to visit Adam to convince him that life is worth enduring as long as it is possible to dance. She books night flights and is distressed by how low Adam has sunk when she discovers that he has commissioned a single wooden bullet in order to commit suicide. Distracting him with love-making, games of chase and nostalgic wallows about his friendship with Lord Byron while eating blood popsicles, Eve persuades Adam to go for nocturnal drives though Motown in the hope that she can either rekindle his spark or convince him that it is no longer worth staying in the recession-stricken city and that he should come and live with her.

However, her scheme is disrupted by the sudden appearance of the reckless Ava, who has wearied of Los Angeles and come east in search of adventure. She kicks against Adam and Eve's idea of a quiet night and urges them to join Ian at a nearby bar to watch rock band, White Hills. Adam is embarrassed by his sister-in-law's boisterous behaviour and insists on leaving and Eve has to soothe him when they get home. The following morning, however, they discover Ian's drained corpse on the sofa and Ava is sent packing before Adam and Eve dissolve the body in a convenient acid bath in a disused factory.

Reluctant to leave behind his treasures, Adam knows he has to get out of town and arrives in Africa in a state of mental and physical exhaustion. Eve is frustrated that she can't find Marlowe to get some of his `good stuff' and she begins to fear the worst when his café-owning factotum, Bilal (Slimane Dazi) informs her that he has ingested some tainted blood and is in a bad way. As she sits at her friend's bedside, Eve realises that his demise not only marks the end of an era, but also means that she and Adam will have to kill for themselves until they can find a new supply of reliable sustenance. Clearly, neither relishes the pursuit of victims and each is aware of the risks inherent in biting a stranger. But, when they see a young couple embracing in a quiet street, they know what they have to do to survive and approach them stealthily with bared fangs.  

A suspicion lingers throughout this simmering saga that there is more than a hint of autobiography in Jarmusch's screenplay. As an old punk who started making films during the No Wave boom inspired in the mid-1970s by Nick Zedd's concept of a Cinema of Transgression, Jarmusch seems to be echoing Wes Anderson in The Grand Budapest Hotel in paying analogue homage to outmoded technology, faded heroes, forgotten literature and the simple joy of remembering the past. He also acknowledges longtime partner and fellow film-maker Sara Driver in the closing credits and it is tempting to see this as an affectionately left-field love letter from one unregenrate avant-gardist to another.

Swinton and Hiddleston certainly capture the essence of a timeless passion. But this is primarily a study of time elapsing and there is something deeply moving about Marlowe's realisation that he will never receive credit for the plays he let Shakespeare claim because he could not reveal his vampiric identity. Similarly, Hiddleston's lament that there is no longer someone of the calibre of Schubert to compose with is drenched with regret at the frailty of mere mortals. This sense of desolation is reinforced by the equating of blood with drugs and  the heroin chic aspect of the mise-en-scène. But, in making his characters as enigmatic as they are tragic, Jarmusch puts a daunting distance between them and an audience who would be entirely entitled to feel patronised by the supercilious smugness of Hiddleston's world-weary sophistication and the trite coyness of Swinton's mumsy optimism.

There are lots of nice touches - the gallery of monochrome icons in Hiddleston's hideaway, the beguiling performance by singer Yasmine Hamdan in the Tangerian café, the montage in which Swinton speed reads her favourite tomes and Yannick Le Saux's haunting images of Detroit's urbo-industrial decay. But, if the listless opening adequately conveys the extent to which time hangs heavy for a vampire resenting his immortality, the denouement is unnecessarily protracted. Moreover, the notion that a younger sister who is hundreds of years old would behave like a petulant teenager and devour a trusted human on a whim seems lazily contrived. However, if the idea appeals of crossing Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell's Performance (1970) with Abel Ferrara's The Addiction (1995) and complementing it with plenty of quirky world music, then this is the movie for you.

Around the time Jarmusch was starting out, Francis Ford Coppola was proving that it was possible to make a sequel that was better than the original film. In fact, The Godfather Part II (1974) was as much a prequel as a continuation of the chronicle of the Corleone family that was started in The Godfather (1972) - all of which makes it somewhat odd that Park Circus has opted to wait five years between revivals of the first two parts of a saga that most agree was ruined by The Godfather Part III (1990). By chance, the release coincides with a tribute to Al Pacino at the National Film Theatre. But only those with a good working knowledge of the picture that earned Marlon Brando the Academy Award for Best Actor will be able to slip straight into the action, which cross-cuts between Vito Corleone's turbulent youth in Sicily in the early part of the 20th century and his son Michael's bid to hold the family together after his murder.

Although the interweaving complexity is one of the pleasures of Coppola and Mario Puzo's screenplay, we shall, for the sake of convenience, unravel the plot strands to focus respectively on Vito and Michael.

Having fled the village of Corleone in 1901 when his father was murdered by Don Francesco Ciccio (Giuseppe Sillato), Vito Andolini (Oreste Baldini) reaches Ellis Island in New York and suffers the humiliation of being a homeless immigrant, as he is mistakenly registered as Vito Corleone. By 1917, Vito (Robert De Niro) is living in a Little Italy tenement with his wife Carmela (Francesca de Sapio) and his son Sandino (Roman  Coppola). He works in a grocery store owned by the father of his best friend, Genco Abbandando (Frank Sivero), but loses his job when Don Fanucci (Gastone Moschin), a member of the Black Hand gang that extorts protection payments from local businesses, insists the post is given to his nephew. Vito's prospects look bleak. But, after he hides a cache of weapons for neighbour Peter Clemenza (Bruno Kirby),  he is invited to help burgle a plush apartment and gets to keep a rug as his share of the spoils.

A couple of years pass and Vito is running a lucrative fencing racket with Clemenza and Tessio (John Aprea). However, Fanucci demands his cut and, having paid half of what he demands, Vito uses the chaos of the religious fiesta of San Gennaro to follow Fanucci home and shoot him three times before stealing his wallet. The crime boosts Vito's confidence and, by the time we next encounter him, he has become such an important figure in his community that Signora Colombo (Saveria Mazzola) seeks his advice when she is threatened with eviction for buying a dog for her small son. Vito menaces landlord Roberto (Leopoldo Trieste), who is suitably abashed and afraid that he offers to lower her rent and Genco (who lets Vito use his shop as a front for his nefarious operations) jokes that America really is the land of opportunity.

By 1925, Genco's olive oil business is doing so well that Vito takes Carmela and their sons, Sonny, Fredo and Michael to Corleone to meet with their contact, Don Tommasino (Mario Cotone). He puts them up in his villa and accompanies Vito to the heavily guarded home of Don Ciccio, who is now old and hard of hearing. When he fails to catch his guest's surname, when he is presented, Vito leans in and produces an enormous knife and plunges it into Ciccio's chest. Tommassino is wounded in the leg in the ensuing melee, but they get away and Vito bids his homeland farewell, as this segment of the story ends.

A brief segment set on 7 December 1941 links the two plotlines. As the rest of the country reels from the shock of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Sonny (James Caan), Fredo (John Cazale) and Michael (Al Pacino) reunite to celebrate their father's 50th birthday. As Tessio (Abe Vigoda) brings in the cake, Michael announces that he is going to join the Marines. A second sequence, right at the start of the picture, takes place in 1955 and shows henchman Rocco Lampone (Tom Rosqui) kissing Michael's hands as he settles into his late father's chair.

The apprehension etched on his face has gone by 1958, however, as Michael hosts a first communion party for his seven year-old son Anthony (James Gounaris) at Lake Tahoe in Nevada. While Mama Corleone (Morgana King) chides daughter Connie (Talia Shire) for devoting more time to boyfriend Merle Johnson (Troy Donahue) than her own children, Michael and devoted consigliere Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) meet with Senator Pat Geary (GD Spradlin) about a gaming licence for a new casino in Las Vegas. Much to Michael's surprise, Geary denounces the Corleones and Michael replies by refusing to pay the increased fees he demands and schemes with Johnny Ola (Dominic Chianese) to ally with Jewish crime baron Herman Roth (Lee Strasberg) to increase his presence in America's booming gambling capital.

Much to his frustration, old retainer Frankie Pentangeli (Michael V. Gazzo) complains to Fredo and Willi Cicci (Joe Spinell) about having to wait to meet with Michael. But he insists upon seeing Connie and Merle first and informs them that he intends withholding his blessing for their union until Connie starts acting like a mother not a party girl. When he finally admits Pentangeli, Michael ticks him off for mixing it back in the Bronx with Carmine (Carmine Caridi) and Tony Rosato (Danny Aiello), who have connections with Roth. Moreover, he silences Pentangeli for criticising his methods and Michael is still feeling tense when he dances with his pregnant wife, Kay (Diane Keaton), who curses him for breaking his promise that he would abandon crime and become a legitimate businessman. But, later that night, he places affairs in Hagen's hands after he survives an assassination attempt that he suspects was an inside job.

The following day, Michael flies to Miami to meet Roth, who sympathises about the attempt on his life. Knowing that Roth was behind the shooting, Michael reassures him that he intends getting to the bottom of the matter and flies to Long Island to see Pentangeli. In Vito's old office, Michael orders Pentangeli to arrange a pow-wow with the Rosato brothers, in the hope that the traitor in the camp will reveal themselves. But Pentangeli is garrotted by Tony Rosato and Cicci is hit by their car, as the siblings make their getaway. Meanwhile, Geary is found in bed with a dead prostitute and Hagen promises to take care of him, just as he prevents Kay from leaving the Tahoe compound for her own safety.

Michael flies to Cuba to meet with several American bigwigs and President Fulgencio Batista (Tito Alba), who claims that the country has never been more prosperous. But Michael has his doubts as he sees the lengths to which Fidel Castro's supporters will go to seize power and Johnny Ora has to reassure him that everything will be fine. When Fredo flies in with a suitcase full of cash to facilitate the deal with Batista, he confides in Michael that he wishes he had married somebody stable like Kay, instead of his own flirtatious wife, Deanna (Marianna Hill). Michael feels sorry for his brother, who has always been made to feel like the outsider of the clan. But he also knows he is unreliable and warns him that Roth will stop at nothing to eliminate them.

As Fredo escorts Geary and other dignitaries to a sleazy sex club, he lets slip that Ora had brought him here on a previous trip (having sworn to Michael that he had never met Ora before) and Michael realises that his own brother had conspired with Roth to have him murdered. As Michael embraces him, Fredo surmises that his treachery has been uncovered and he wanders into the streets as the crowds welcome the new year. Michael is confident that his henchman has killed both Ora and Roth and urges Fredo to join him on a place back to the United States, as Batista announces that he has lost control of the country and intends to flee the country.  However, when Michael lands back in the States, Hagen breaks the news that Fredo has disappeared. He also reveals that Roth survived the attempt to kill him and that Kay has miscarried her baby.

As 1959 continues, Washington initiates a series of hearings under a leading senator (William Bowers) to investigate organised crime in the United States. Cicci is the first of the Corleone mob to be called to give evidence and Geary helps him answer awkward questions about Michael giving direct orders to rub people out. He also speaks highly of Italian-Americans when Michael takes the stand to deny any involvement in the murder of an NYPD captain and Virgl Sollozzo back in 1947 or the removal of the heads of the Five Families in 1955. In a prepared statement, Michael proclaims his innocence and legitimacy and hopes that the committee will clear his name with as much fanfare as it impugned his reputation.

However, he still has to face the prospect of the embittered Pentangeli testifying against him and Michael goes to see Fredo in Nevada to find out if he knows how they can discredit him. He explains that Pentangeli feels that Michael let him down over the Rosato brothers and admits that he was part of a Roth plan to eliminate him. Fredo also reveals that Senator Questadt (Peter Donat) is on Roth's payroll and has been using the hearings to target the Corleones. But Michael has run out of patience with his brother and he tells sidekick Al Neri (Richard Bright) that he will spare him as long as their mother is alive, but no more.

Having been protected on a military base, Pentangeli is escorted to the Senate by FBI agents. However, he sees Michael sitting next to his Sicilian brother Vincenzo (Salvatore Po) and fears that the Corleones are readying to kill his illegitimate children back home. Consequently, he answers Questadt with contradictions and the case is dismissed. But Michael is not able to celebrate, as Kay comes to his hotel room to inform him that she is leaving him and taking their children. She also tells him that she had an abortion, as she could never raise a son born into a loveless marriage.

Michael is still reeling from this revelation when his mother dies. At the funeral, Fredo asks Connie to intercede with their brother, but he refuses to listen to her and orders both his execution and that of Hyman Roth, who has been trying without success to find a foreign country to give him sanctuary. Hagen urges caution, but Michael is drunk with power and bitterness and (in a slickly constructed montage sequence), Roth is gunned down at the airport, Pentangeli slits his wrists in the bath and Fredo is shot during a fishing trip. Once again, however, any satisfaction that Michael might derive from his actions is diminished by an encounter with Kay, who has come to Tahoe to see her children and she is hurt when Michael cuts her dead.

The closing flashback to 1941 emphasises how far the Corleone clan has both risen and fallen since Sonny, Fredo and Michael prepared to celebrate Vito's birthday. Michael's isolation would be further emphasised in Part III. But Coppola proved unable to replicate the compelling complexity that had made instant classics of the first instalments in a lacklustre outing that confirmed his own film-making decline. There are those who find Part II unnecessarily convoluted and it is interesting that Coppola had editor Barry Malkin impose a strictly chronological structure when he reworked the films as The Godfather Saga (a seven-hour epic that contained around 75 minutes of previously unseen material) for television in 1977. Indeed, notwithstanding the fact that Robert De Niro won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor (beating Lee Strasberg and Michael V. Gazzo in the process), the Young Vito segments are far from fascinating and have a formulaic feel that owes much to the Warner gangster pictures of the 1930s.

Michael's mid-life crisis is much more intriguing, if only because it is better rooted in the wider socio-political milieu. Nevertheless, outside the anti-hero's continuing descent into megalomania, character development is at a premium, as friends, family and foes are buffeted around by events like pieces on a game board. Cazale, Duvall and Keaton do their best to stay with Pacino (who lost out in the Best Actor category to Art Carney in Paul Mazursky's criminally forgotten Harry and Tonto), while Strasberg and Gazzo have their moments. But many scenes reveal more about Coppola's genius for generating atmosphere and the craft excellence of cinematographer Gordon Willis and production designer Dean Tavoularis than they do about the Corleones and their predicament. Thus, while this often grips, it never entirely convinces. Indeed, one is left with the impression that, like Michael, Coppola is fully in control.

By contrast with this classic by an established director at the top of his game, the titles collected under the BAFTA Shorts banner have been produced by newcomers who caught the eye of the British Academy electorate during the recent round of award voting. Combining both animation and live-action, this shorts slate has become something of a tradition. But, while there are a couple of lively inclusions, this has to be considered one of the weaker selections of recent times.

The animations are particularly lacklustre, with even the winner being kookily quaint rather than top quality. Yousif Al-Khalifa's Sleeping With the Fishes centres on Sonja, a fishmonger whose shop is perched on a remote coastal promontery. She has little to say to her customers and feels more comfortable sharing her bath with a piscine assortment. However, she cannot help but notice that the new delivery man looks like a rainbow trout and she is deeply touched when he brings her several boxes of exotic fish. Unable to express her delight, Sonja returns to her slab and accidentally chops off a finger tip in her frustration. The driver rushes her to hospital in his van, but a misunderstanding causes him to crash and the pair splash down in the sea.

Although its twist ending and watercolour-like, Bill Plymptonesque graphics give it a certain charm, this is a lightweight vignette and the same has to be said for Sam Taylor and Bjorn-Erik Aschim's Everything I Can See From Here, even though it is clearly a labour of love that has been produced for the smartphone market in spare time on a shoestring budget. Once again, the visuals are intriguing (if only for the use of a toweringn rectangular frame), as the dour handdrawn industrial landscape in which two mates kick around a football in no way prepares the viewer for the grinning creature (possibly an alien) with the shock of electro-dayglo blue hair who descends from the heavens in a black box to return their ball, zap their dog and reduce one of the pals to powder when they decide against letting him join their game. But the story makes little sense, with the repeated shot of a bus stop with the tarmac and a road sign seemingly spattered in blood feeling positively gnomic.

Opening with a Rainer Maria Rilke quote about our fears being like dragons guarding our most treasured possessions, Ainslie Henderson's I Am Tom Moody is a CGI charmer that sees an unprepossessing fellow come to a pub open mike session with his keyboard-playing cousin Steve and suddenly get a paralysing case of stage fright. A flashback to their childhood shows Tom and Steve being embarrassed by his dad while trying to sing a Halloween song about witches and it is only when the older Tom reaches into his ear and pulls out his younger self and they have a chat amidst a melted clump of giant ice-cream cones that a bad memory is finally laid to rest. Sensitively voiced by Mackenzie Crook and his son Jude, this melancholic rite of passage has some inspired light and scene changes and will strike a chord with anyone who has ever suffered a juvenile humiliation.

Crook Senior also features in Jamie Magnus Stone's Orbit Ever After, a tale of first love set in a dystopian future in which humans float in space in rickety craft and live off soup made from any flying debris that can be caught in a net and cooked. Teenager Thomas Brodie-Sangster has grown tired of being tethered to the hovel he shares with parents Mackenzie Crook and Bronagh Gallagher, grandfather Bob Goody and several animals and wishes he could make meaningful contact with Naomi Battrick, the smiling blonde he sees the same time every day at the window of her ship high above him. Thus, when she sends him a metallic missive suggesting they take a leap of faith, Brodie-Sangster ignores parental pleading and prepares to seize the moment. But he has misread the note and pushes into the unknown at the same moment as Battrick and they meet for a fleeting second of happiness before becoming a shooting star witnessed by a couple of silhouetted peasants on Earth.

Splendidly designed by Abigail Joshi and photographed by Robin Whenary, this feels like Red Dwarf meets The Clangers. But for all its technical proficiency and the slapstick grace of the episode with the faulty gravity device, the performances are a touch broad and the plotting a little gauche in bringing about the undeniably delightful, if touchingly transient tryst. Similar problems beset Ben Mallaby's Island Queen, which centres on Cornish 30 year-old Nat Luurtsema, who has decided to have a child rather than leave the island where she has spent her entire life with her parents and younger brother Sam Perry. Fellow ferry worker Sam Pamphilon questions the wisdom of her plan and Luurtsema quickly concurs when she discovers that Perry provided the sample she chose at the local sperm bank.

Full of deadpan one-liners scripted by Luurtsema herself, this is undeniably amusing. But a throwaway subplot involving fisherman Toby Williams and a drowned geography teacher proves to be a dead-end, while Luurtsema's climactic decision to follow Pamphilon to the mainland when he lands a job on a newspaper feels more than a little contrived, even though it is obvious from the get-go that their relationship should be more than platonic. The same cannot be said for teenager Eloise Smyth and the much older Ciaran Griffths in Jane Linfoot's Sea View, as they meet up in a windswept Canvey Island for a stolen night of passion in a cheap B&B. Indeed, from the moment Griffiths fails to recognise Smyth and he comments on how different she looks in the daylight, it is clear that what she sees as a romantic adventure is nothing more than a seedy risk for him. He barely speaks to her as they wander on the beach and chats on the phone to his mate while she eats chips. But the gap between the ages and expectations is made most apparent when she enjoys herself on a dance machine in an amusement arcade and he can barely summon up the energy to smile.

Undaunted by the fact that the landlady mistakes her for Griffiths's daughter, Smyth delights in hanging up her new gold party dress and laying out scented soaps and lotions in the bathroom. But, no sooner have they had sex on the pushed-together single beds than Smyth realises that Griffiths has no real feelings for her and she wants to scream when he reveals he has a girlfriend and child. He calms her down by spooning on the bed and promises to take her somewhere nice if she gets dressed up. But, as she sips on an alcopop in all her finery, Smyth spots the room key and a £10 notes on the bedside table and she endures a miserable night wandering alone with her sense of exploitation and betrayal.

Starkly shot by Thomas Townend to contrast the tawdry glamour of the resort and the claustrophobic seediness of the love nest, this bears comparison to the work of Andrea Arnold and Amma Assante. But the revelation is Eloise Smyth, whose eyes convey the anticipation, disappointment, hope and pain of a naive child who has tried to grow up too quickly and paid a heavy price. Yet, this is merely a vignette and the BAFTA-winning Room 8 is similarly little more than a neat idea. Based on an outline by Geoffrey Fletcher and cleverly designed by Peter Francis, James W. Griffiths's tale opens with prisoner Michael Gould grabbing a moving matchbox as new cellmate Tom Cullen is pushed in by guard Franc Zalewski. Cullen tries unsuccessfully to make conversation, as Gould sits reading at a desk against the wall. He warns the newcomer not to open the lid of a red box on the lower bunk, but Cullen cannot resist and is shocked to find an exact replica of the cell inside.

However, he is even more amazed when a giant hand reaches into the cell when he lowers his own into the box. Realising he has a chance to escape, he climbs the bunk and asks Gould to lift the lid. But, as he scurries across the concrete floor like an insect, his fate is sealed by plot twist that actually makes no sense. Not that logic has much to do with this bleak fantasy, however, and it is hard to believe that it was considered superior to any of the aforementioned live-action shorts or to Michael Pearce's Keeping Up With the Joneses, which is by far the longest of the quintet.

The action opens with Maxine Peake starting another dull day as the wife of a respected MP. As she potters around her luxurious home, hitman Geoff Bell and his Scottish sidekick Adeel Akhtar examine their handiwork after burying a hatchet in the forehead of a besuited man in a caravan in an overgrown field. They claim to be a journalist and his photographer when they ring Peake's doorbell and ask to speak to her husband. She tells them he has gone on a business trip and shuts the door. But she has no sooner returned to her armchair than she hears a noise in the kitchen and Bell and Akhtar inform her that she is a hostage until she reveals her spouse's whereabouts.

Maintaining a frosty bourgeois civility, Peake sticks to her story until Akhtar guns down her nosy neighbour Sylvestra Le Touzel and they head off by car to the flat where her husband keeps his mistress of seven years. Forever hungry, despite polishing off a large slice of Victoria sponge from Peake's fridge, Akhtar insists on stopping to buy some chicken from a fast-food outlet. Unsurprisingly, he gets into an argument with a man in chicken costume and Peake notices Bell eyeing up a handsome young man as he passes the car window. He has no qualms about admitting he is gay and makes her face up to her duplicity when she says she didn't have children because her husband was concentrating on his career.

On arriving at the flat, Bell and Peake push past Anamaria Marinca, who rushes back inside to protect her young son. Peake stares at the boy in disbelief at her own folly and, when Akhtar pulls a gun on her in the tenement lobby, Bell shoots him and leaves him bleeding on the floor. He tosses the car keys to Peake and walks away. As she approaches home, she sees her husband standing in the middle of the road and the frame freezes as she puts her foot down on the accelerator.

Not a million miles in subject matter from maligned BritCrime pictures like Peter Stylianou's Who Needs Enemies, this benefits from some solid performances, a couple of unexpected revelations and a lack of surprise at the depths to which people can stoop. The doorstep killing and the takeaway headbutt feel a little extraneous, but Selina Lim's dialogue is sharp and Pearce neatly judges the shifts in the balance of power and the tacit rapport between Bell and the always excellent Peake.

Finally, this week, Don Argott's documentary, As the Palaces Burn, captures a seminal moment in the history of the American heavy metal band Lamb of God. Formed as Burn the Priest in Richmond, Virginia in 1994, the quintet enjoyed a modicum of success after name and line-up changes brought together guitarists Mark Morton and Willie Adler, bassist John Campbell, drummer Chris Adler and vocalist Randy Blythe. But the focus here falls firmly on the latter, as a profile commissioned by manager Larry Mazer to show how Blythe bounced back from a serious drinking problem turns into a courtroom drama after he is charged with causing intentional bodily harm during a gig in Prague in 2010 that resulted in the death of a fan he supposedly pushed off the stage. .

The opening third of the film could not be more conventional. Admitting to the odd internal bust-up, the guys explain how making it has been something of a surprise and how hard it is to keep going on the road now they're in their forties. But, with axe legend Slash hailing them among the unsung greats and die-hards like Colombian cabby Oscar Castañeda and Indian metal singer Pratika Prabhune hanging on every lyric to deliver them from the cruel reality of drug wars and dead-end disappointments, they know they have to go out and give the best show every night if they are to keep paying the bills. They also quite enjoy perks like getting to swim in the Dead Sea, while in Israel and playing at huge outdoor festivals in Europe.

But, as they landed in the Czech Republic in 2012, Blythe was held on suspicion of the  manslaughter of Daniel Nosek, who complained of headaches some two hours after a Lamb of God show and went into a coma for several months before dying. As Mazer explains to a friend on the phone, there is no concrete proof that the injuries were caused by Blythe pushing Nosek off the stage when he stormed it during the gig. Moreover, he cannot understand why it has taken two years for the Czech authorities to press charges. Despite the fact that Blythe is being detained in Pankrac Prison, local lawyer Martin Radvan is confident that the case can be resolved quickly. But American attorney Jeff Cohen suspects that someone in the prosecutor's office hopes to make an example of him in order to boost their own prospects and Blythe's bandmates start to fear that he could end up facing 10 years behind bars.

Footage emerges that shows a youth crowd-surfing at the gig before he gets pushed off the stage by Blythe and a roadie. However, a third clip shows him banging his head as he slips while trying to clamber on to the stage and the rest of the band trust that this evidence will assure Blythe's rapid acquittal. Following a montage of talking-head clips, in which Campbell, Morton and the Adlers lament Nosek's death and hope their own lives can get back to normal, a caption informs us that Blythe was released after 38 days on the proviso that he returned to Prague for his trial. His pals meet him at the airport and he receives a hero's welcome from the crowd at the Slipknot Festival. But, three months after Argott films Blythe taking arty photographs while communing with nature in the great outdoors, he is back in Prague for his day in court.

Blythe is shown rehearsing his opening statement and cross-examination technique with his legal team, while Prague Post journalist Jonathan Crane explains the procedure. Although cameras were allowed into court for part of the trial, other testimony could only be audio-taped, such as Jan Jebavy's recollection of how his friend came to be injured and Lucas Koutniks memory of how he came to fall ill some hours later. Blythe follows with the help of a translator and accepts that he has to adhere to the law, even though he is convinced the case would have folded back in the States. However, the tide turns in his favour when Milan Poradek comes forward to state that he was the person pushed off the stage and that Blythe could not have had anything to do with what happened to Nosek elsewhere at the gig. When questioned again by the judge, Jebavy and Koutniks concede that their accounts may be flawed and Nosek's uncle appears to give a moving speech about the impact the bereavement has had on the family and how they don't blame Blythe for what transpired.

Yet his lawyers still expect Blythe to be found guilty of negligent homicide and receive two-to-six-year sentence. He has an excruciating wait after delivering his closing appeal, but he is totally exonerated and retains his composure with admirable dignity as he understands what the translator is telling him. Welcomed back into the fold, his bandmates note how he has lived up to the title of the Resolution album and they hope to continue producing music that will help their fans deal with the ups and downs of life, as they have a debt to repay to the artists who helped and moulded them.

Given the seismic shift in the subject matter, Argott might have trimmed the Medellin and Mumbai segments and presented a little more backstory about Lamb of God, its brand of music and the personal difficulties that made Blythe something of a loose cannon until he sobered up shortly before the Prague incident. However, as someone with documentaries on postmodern painting (The Art of the Steal, 2009) and nuclear power (The Atomic States of America, 2012) on his CV, as well as such rockumentaries as Rock School (2005) and Last Days Here (2011; about Pentangle singer Bobby Liebling), he is able to slip into reportage mode with some aplomb. He is certainly fortunate to have had such access to Blythe during the trial, but he makes the most of it and not only creates something of a legal cliffhanger, but he also presents the vocalist as a decent and thoughtful citizen, whose willingness to face his responsibilities (even though he never doubts his innocence for a second) makes him much more of a role model than his status as a champion of the oppressed, marginalised and disillusioned.