Parky at the Pictures (22/5/2014)

While packing up his Brooklyn bookstore prior to retirement, Woody Allen mentions to old pal John Turturro (whom he first met as a teenage shoplifter) that he has told dermatologist Sharon Stone that he is quite the stud and would be happy to help her realise a fantasy to have a threesome with her best friend, Sofia Vergara. In decent shape for a man in his 50s, Turturro laughs off the suggestion that he is gigolo material and returns to the florist shop where he works part-time. Besides, he is dating Tunisian singer M'Barka Ben Taleb (although her part in proceedings is fleeting at best). However, the prospect of helping lonely ladies seeking solace appeals to him and he agrees to meet with Stone, even though Allen insists on becoming his pimp with a 40% cut of his earnings.

Allen lives with African-American Tonya Pinkins and her brood of kids and he is taking them to have their hair deloused when they witness Hasidic neighbourhood patrolman Liev Schreiber intervene in a road rage incident. By coincidence, he has a crush on Vanessa Paradis, a rabbi's widow who is working as a nit nurse to make ends meet. Allen remembers her from purchasing her late husband's books and, suspecting that her six children were not the product of 18 years of passion, he convinces Turturro that he might be able to work his magic on Paradis while giving her a massage to help ease her back pain.

Turturro has yet to complete his first date, however, and he arrives at Stone's apartment with a bunch of flowers. She is amused by his old-fashioned approach and informs him that she is married to a mountaineer who no longer excites her in bed. But, for all her surface assurance, Stone is nervous and Turturro dances with her to make her feel wanted and she responds by insulting her spouse as she orgasms. Feeling pleased with himself, Turturro shares $2500 with Allen, who pockets a grand with alacrity and suggests that they adopt the aliases Virgil Howard and Dan Bongo for future transactions.

A montage shows Turturro extending similar courtesy to his other clients, while Allen explains to eavesdropping charges Aubrey Joseph, Dante Hoagland and Isaiah Clifton that gigolos have something to do with the music business. Stone is clearly impressed and describes Turturro to Vergara as pistachio ice-cream and she arranges an introductory session that culminates in them watching basketball on TV because Stone calls during the foreplay to say that she is unwilling to share her discovery. But Turturro still feels bashful about taking money to alleviate loneliness and only agrees to continue when Allen convinces him that he is boosting egos to allow downtrodden women the chance to face life with renewed confidence.

With this in mind, Allen pays Paradis another call and persuades her that Turturro is a Sephardic Jewish healer. But Schreiber has been keeping an eye on the newcomer and follows when Allen escorts Paradis into a waiting car and they cross the bridge into the city. He even badgers Allen in a coffee shop by asking if he knows the number of a good plumber, while Turturro massages Paradis on a hastily erected table in his apartment. She blenches when she feels his fingers on her back and cries because no one has ever touched her with such tenderness before. He pities her and feels guilt at her gratitude, but she ventures out alone soon afterwards and turns down Schreiber's offer of a lift when she says she has a medical appointment. She urges him not to press his suit in the street and enjoys window shopping before meeting up with Turturro for a second session.

He has cooked for her and Paradis is touched that he has gone to so much trouble. She explains that her husband made her give away all her books, as he didn't want her getting ideas and Turturro jokes that men never want women to read. He is impressed by the way she fillets their fish and is amazed by the flavour of the cheek, when she tells him it's a delicacy. She also insists he brings enchantment to the bereft and urges him not to be embarrassed by what he does. Thus, when they next meet in the park, where Allen is keeping the kids amused with a game of softball, Paradis asks Turturro to kiss her and he removes her sheitel, lets down her real hair and begs her to forget the past and enjoy being herself.

Although he has tried to remain detached, Turturro finds himself falling for Paradis. Consequently, when he finally meets up with Stone and Vergara, he is unable to perform and they tease him gently for being in love. Before he can share his feelings, however, he gets a call from Paradis informing him that Schreiber has abducted Allen and intends bringing him before a tribunal at the synagogue for breaching Orthodox mourning customs. Turturro speaks to Pinkins, who has no idea where Allen has gone. So, he summons lawyer Bob Balaban to represent Allen at the hearing. But Paradis stumbles across them in the basement and ticks off Schreiber for not allowing her to think, feel and speak for herself. She explains that the anguish of solitude made her weep not shame and she gives the elders a long, hard stare before walking away.

Schreiber tries to apologise during the car ride home and declares his love for Paradis. She tells him to shut up, as she is cross with him not unattracted to him and he laughs with relief. He watches on as Paradis thanks Turturro for his kindness and, when Schreiber asks him if he is Jewish, Turturro answers that he is not sure. He tells Allen that he is quitting and plans to move away. But, as they sit in a café, Allen flirts with black customer Jade Dixon and tells her that he knows a great plumber if she ever needs one.

Ending quaintly to avoid giving overt offence, this is a slickly made dramedy that benefits from four fine performances and an excellent sense of place. However, it's difficult to know exactly what Turturro is trying to say. Ostensibly, he appears to be mildly reprimanding society at large (both religious and secular) for its treatment of women. But there is more than a whiff of chauvinism about the central premise that what ails females reduced to second-class status within a marriage or a community is a little physical or psychological attention from a non-flabby fiftysomething. It helps enormously having Woody Allen draw the sting from the conceit by exposing its absurdity, although he often seems more interested in playing a good father to someone else's kids in a subplot that feels like a calculated riposte to Mia Farrow and her acolytes.

Equally crucial is the fact that Vanessa Paradis plays the repressed soul with such sincerity and restraint. Liev Schreiber's emotionally immature cop is also highly persuasive, unlike Sharon Stone and Sofia Vergara as the poor little rich duo whose yearning for a ménage rings as hollow as the sound of their breaking hearts when they reveal their vulnerable sides. The opposite is true of Marco Pontecorvo's cinematography and Lester Cohen's production design, which ably contrast the cosiness of Allen's shop with the respectively cramped and simple and flashy and soulless sadness of Paradis and Stone's dwellings. Without such intelligence, this incongruous scenario could easily have descended into boorish male fantasy. It still has its faults, but Turturro refuses to take anything too seriously, as he unfussily explores how loneliness is universal and avoids melodramatics in showing that, sometimes, taking the first step takes much more than courage.

The debuting Steph Green and co-scenarist Ailbhe Keogan posit a similar situation in Run & Jump, another story of a mother being given permission to recommence her life after a trauma. In this case, however, vivacious redhead Maxine Peake's husband is still very much alive. But the medial frontal lobe damage that 38 year-old furniture maker Edward MacLiam suffered during a stroke that left him in a coma for a month has turned him into a very different person and Peake is not only faced with learning how to cope with his disability, but also with how to remain polite to American neuro-psychologist Will Forte, who has asked to move in with the family in their Irish country home so he can monitor his patient's progress.

Peake tries to hide her frustration, as she explains the circumstances to children Brendan Morris and Ciara Gallagher and in-laws Michael Harding and Ruth McCabe. But the latter thoroughly disapprove of their son being placed under surveillance when he is already struggling to remember anything of significance about his former life and, in their eyes, simply needs a bit of peace to re-acclimatise. Peake's nurse pal Sharon Horgan is more delighted by developments, however, as she has a crush on Forte and hopes to exploit his proximity to catch his eye.

However, the fastidious interloper has little time for pleasantries, let alone romance. When not pursuing MacLiam, he spends much of his time watching camcorder footage of their encounters on his laptop and making copious notes about the fact that the carpenter seems more intent on shaping wooden spheres than making chairs. But Forte loosens up a little after the precocious Gallagher wanders in on him in the bath and he realises how much strain Peake is under because Harding has little time for masculine weakness and she is uncertain whether to coax or bully her husband when he wanders round in a permanent daze or misses meals because he no longer has a sense of time.

One night, while snooping in Forte's room, Peake finds a birthday card with some marijuana inside and she dupes him into believing he is in for an earbashing when she summons him to the kitchen. But, in fact, she just fancies a joint and Forte finds himself being drawn to his feisty hostess, as they chat into the small hours and dance in the moonlight. However, he realises how carefully he will have to tread when Harding and McCabe notice glances exchanged across the lunch table and they curtly remind Peake that she is still married to their boy and that it is her duty to care for him.

Horgan also detects something blossoming between the pair when she bumps into Forte in the nearby town while he is shopping for something meaningful for Peake's birthday. Indeed, it seems hard to miss their new-found rapport during a family outing to the zoo when Peake mocks Forte for being too scared to stroke a python and she despairs of MacLiam sitting beside the various enclosures trying to stroke the animals with a wooden hand he has carved.  But Forte feels like the outsider again when they arrive home to a surprise birthday party and he realises that Peake is so central to the lives of so many people that any hopes he might have entertained of stealing her away seem inexcusably selfish and foolish. 

As the evening draws to a close, MacLiam starts behaving furtively and Peake discovers that he has stolen a creature from the petting zoo and hidden it under a basket in his workshop. She is relieved, therefore, when the guests have gone, to share more dope with Forte, who gazes at her like a smitten schoolboy, as she bops around the kitchen. Yet, such has been her preoccupation with her family, that Peake is taken aback when Horgan comes to warn her off Forte and remind her of her marital vows about sickness and health. But, while she proves less than a friend, Forte keeps an eye on Norris when he goes to collect him from swimming training and some bullies toss one of his trainers on to the roof. However, he unintentionally causes distress when Harding dies and McCabe catches Peake on the phone to Forte in the back garden after the funeral and she hisses that she doesn't know how lucky she is to have a living husband. Nettled by the scold, Peake bites her tongue and, when McCabe smashes a bird table in her grief, Peake joins in to deflect attention and show solidarity.

Recognising that his presence is having little effect on MacLiam and only making matters worse for Peake, Forte prepares to leave. However, he has one more service to perform for the family. When MacLiam surprises Peake with a display of amorousness, Forte goes to collect Norris from the pool. He watches in horror, as the lad emerges from the changing rooms wearing a pair of sequin-studded trunks embroidered with the word `gay'. But he cheers him on to victory and, suspecting that the teenager has stolen some pills from the medicine cabinet, he bursts into the locker room and finds him collapsed in his cubicle. Forte rushes Norris to hospital, but is careful not to let Peake see him, as she tearfully apologise to her son for not being there for him.

Peake arrives home some hours later and is grateful that Forte has waited up for her. They kiss and seem to sense that their surrender to temptation has shattered their idyll. Indeed, the erstwhile awkwardness returns when Forte brings Peake some release forms to sign before his departure. Yet, when Peake impulsively stops beside a tempting watering hole while driving Forte back to his quarters, he follows suit when the family strip off to their undies and plunge into the water. His hesitancy seems to confirm the dawning that while he may have done little to help MacLiam, Peake has done a good deal to make him a better man.

Filled with flashbacks to a time when Peake and MacLiam were soulmates, this is a sensitive study of what happens to a relationship when one of its partners is irreparably transformed by illness. It seems unlikely that a specialist would not have forewarned Peake that her husband had been permanently damaged by his stroke and utterly incredible that Forte would not have disabused her of any notions that he was going to make a miraculous recovery. This communication failure on the part of MacLiam's carers also extends to his parents, whose bitterness seems as much rooted in a misunderstanding of the permanence of his condition as in any falsely harboured hope. But Green and Keogan's screenplay is strewn with such implausibilities and those like Norris's identity crisis and Horgan's thwarted crush are so  clumsily integrated into the storyline that they drag it down towards melodrama.

On the other hand, Peake overcomes a wavering accent and the occasional bout of colleen caricaturitis to deliver a typically spirited performance. The rain-speckled bike rides, wacky baccy interludes and readiness to dance at the drop of a hat may strain a little, but she ably conveys the confusion and hurt of a woman who has suddenly had a lovely life taken away from her a replaced with a mediocre consolation prize. MacLiam also does well to capture the solipsistic bewilderment of a shadow man who is aware that he is confounding people's expectations, but has no idea why. In his first dramatic role, comedian Will Forte struggles rather more to find the right register for his blooming milquetoast. But his underplaying complements Peake's ebullience, in much the same way that the dappled interiors contrast with the lush expanses in Stephen Daly's evocative and nicely photographed (by Kevin Richey) production design.

It's not been a good few days for followers of Tottenham Hotspur. Firstly, trigger happy chairman Daniel Levy sacked his ninth manager in 13 years. Then, Arsenal won the FA Cup. And, now, Martin Kenp has based his second feature, Top Dog, around a firm of Spurs hooligans who get their comeuppance when they bite off more than they can chew. It should bode well that the screenplay has been written by Dougie Brimson, as the ex-RAF man has made a decent living from writing about football violence since following his 1996 book, Everywhere We Go, with the scenario for Lexi Alexander's Green Street (2005). But, while he may be at home in the world of fan brawls, Brimson seems as over-faced as his anti-heroic protagonist once he pits him against a petty thug, who just happens to have some terrifyingly powerful contacts.

Kemp has drifted in and out of this milieu since the onetime Spandau Ballet bassist made his acting debut alongside brother Gary in Peter Medak's The Krays (2010). But, while his direction often proves as proficient as it did in his little-seen debut, Stalker (2010), he fails to invest this decline and fall sage with any complex moral or socio-political meaning and, thus, it quickly becomes yet another humdrum excursion into BritCrime.

As a morgue attendant cleans his bloodstained apparatus, Vincent Regan muses off-screen in a sinister Irish brogue about how fear can be a powerful weapon until one comes up against an opponent who cannot be intimidated. Likely lad Leo Gregory is blithely unaware of the limitations of violence, as he and his pals in the Acton Casuals plan their next rumble with some boneheads from Aston Villa. Yet, it gets him a free Chinese takeaway when he throws a mouthy hoodie through a plate glass window and earns him a kiss from wife Dannielle Brent, who puts up with his shenanigans because he makes a fair wage from his car showroom. But Gregory allows his hubris to get the better of him when he decides to shakedown Ricci Harnett, the small-time mobster who is demanding protection money from his publican uncle George Sweeney and aunt Susan Penhaligon.

Ignoring a friendly warning to stay off AC territory, Harnett sends goon Ryan Oliva to pulp Sweeney and Gregory exacts his revenge by smashing up one of his bars and the pole-dancing club where Harnett happens to be snorting cocaine off a bimbo's buttocks. A furious Harnett shows up on Gregory's forecourt the next morning to inform him that he has made a terrible mistake in waging war with him. But Gregory smiles sardonically as he relishes his moment of macho triumph, as he has no idea that Harnett is merely a front for the fearsome Irish outfit that allows Regan to control vast swathes of North London.

Confident he has put down a marker, Gregory sets up unemployed mate George Russo in a garage security business to help him cope with the expense of having his first child with wife Lorraine Stanley. He then throws himself into a nocturnal showdown with some Manchester United nutters as a preamble to the big barney on the day of the match. Roaring his fury, Gregory rides into the confrontation atop Harnett's stolen car, which he proceeds to smash with a baseball bat once he has the Cockney Reds on the run. However, he oversteps the mark by sending Harnett a photo of his motor and, consequently, while he is having fun at Old Trafford, Russo gets kicked senseless on the banks of a canal while Stanley goes into labour in her bathtub.

A distraught Gregory sits beside his buddy's bed and vows to get even with Harnett. But the widowed Stanley urges him to report the culprits to the police and Gregory gets a mouthful from Brent for putting his son in danger. Faced with choosing between the AC and his family, Gregory announces his retirement from the Casuals and is bitterly upset when Stanley orders him to stay away from the funeral on returning the security cash, which she is convinced is protection money. Unable to resist, Gregory (who punches a pesky customer at the garage en route to the rain-sodden cemetery) goes to pay his respects and makes Stanley a graveside promise to get her some justice.

He summons a couple of loyal lieutenants to do one last job, but they inform him that several ACs have already joined up with Harnett, who has turned Russo's business into a protection scam. Sourcing a car from scrap merchant Jason Flemyng, Gregory shunts into a parked vehicle to crush Harnett and texts Stanley that the deadly deed has been done. However, Regan feels that a line has been crossed and, having failed to find Gregory in any of his usual haunts, he kidnaps Brent and holds her hostage at Sweeney's pub. Evading the coppers who have come to arrest him for the garage GBH, Gregory speeds across the borough to walk into the trap. He is dismayed to discover that Flemyng works for Regan and even more aghast to learn that Stanley has betrayed him for Harnett's murder. But he learns the harshest lesson of all when Regan shoots Brent to leave Gregory with a lifetime of guilt. As her body is stored at the morgue, Regan's voiceover cautions against ignoring the consequences of one's actions.

Proficiently photographed by Haider Zafar and edited by Peter Davies, this is all plot and no nuance. The smash-ups and scraps are solidly staged, with Kemp even hommaging Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), as the rampaging Gregory bestrides a pool table. But there is nothing genuinely sickening about the violence, as Kemp and Brimson shy away from exploring the sensations the ACs derive from their antics. Similarly, the murders of Harnett and Brent are too tastefully done to shock.

But what proves most ruinous here is the lack of character development. Gregory is somewhat immune from this criticism, as his penny isn't supposed to drop until it's too late. But everyone around him is a cipher, who strikes poses and snarls in the time-honoured Mockney manner. Penhaligon and Flemyng contribute amusing cameos, while Harnett, Stanley and Regan upstage Gregory at every turn (which, again, makes dramatic sense). Yet too many secondary characters fail to register and their surfeit clutters action that rarely feels ripped from reality.

One would be hard pressed to realise that this lairy timewaster shares a setting with Seven Streets, Two Markets and a Wedding: Glimpses of Lost London 1930-1980, a compilation of clips assembled by London's Screen Archives as part of the Made in London initiative launched by Film Hub London. Deeply frustrating in that few of the 10 films sampled are allowed to run their full course, this is a melancholic scrapbook of a lost metropolis rather than a nostalgic wander down memory lane. The purpose is supposedly to present the changing face of the capital by contrasting snippets of modern life with extracts from official documentaries and home movies. But the lack of social or civic context for the items and the seeming randomness of the selection means that, for all its charm, this is something of a missed opportunity to provide a worthwhile companion piece to the BFI's Wonderful London collection or Julien Temple's city symphony, London: The Modern Babylon (2012).

Dating from 1932 and filmed in monochrome 16mm silence, Taken From East Lane Bridge shows pedestrians, cyclists and motorists negotiating a narrow bridge and a couple of bends in the road during what looks like rush hour. What is so amusing here is how blithely those milling around North Wembley Underground Station treat the traffic, as though it is the duty of the cyclists and drivers to avoid them, as they wander down the middle of the road. Sadly, the consequences of such jaywalking are made all too clear in These Can Be Yours, a 1949 item from the Wembley Road Safety Council, which opens by showing a happy couple enjoying the speedway at the old Wembley Stadium. However, having met champion Tommy Price, a young man is run over soon after bidding his girlfriend goodnight and the narrator proceeds to issue further dire warnings and statistics as onlookers await the arrival of the police and an ambulance after an elderly man is struck by a taxi on crossing from behind a parked vehicle. A similar fate befalls a woman whose shopping trip ends at the library, as she walks into a motorcycle when not looking where she was going. As a result, she has to let her children cook and wash-up and the narrator tuts that your crockery could also end up being smashed if you don't cross the road safely.

This item ends cheekily by asking the audience whether they will be lying on the lawn in a swimsuit next summer of in your grave. But the innocence of the age is readily evident in Wedding of Frances Burgess and Charles Holmes at St Andrew’s Church, Kingsbury, 8 July 1944. Recorded just a few weeks after D-Day, this happy scene shows a groom from Harlesden and a bride from Wembley tying the knot with their friends. Everyone is in uniform and an officer from the Royal Army Ordnance Corps joins in the hijinks, as the guests frolic in a back garden, mug for the camera and look on as the couple kiss sweetly. The evidence of the war is still apparent in A E Reneson Coucher's All on a Winter's Day (1952), which opens with lovely colour footage of some ducks on a frozen pond before presenting a fascinating montage of views around Marylebone. Shabby Georgian buildings, seedy mews and empty shops abound, as the alderman and founding president of the St Marylebone Society contrasts these quiet nooks with more bustling thoroughfares and a top shot of the former home of the BBC on the High Street. Among the many street signs and plaques is one for Cato Street, where a plot was hatched to murder Lord Liverpool's government in 1820.

An inescapable air of sadness pervades this valuable offering and it's a shame it was not shown in full, as is the case with Cecil Musk's Green Island (1954), a colour short commissioned by London County Council to encourage citizens to use the many parks to take a break from the rat race and enjoy some fresh air while swimming, rowing on the lake, strolling and sunbathing. Ending with an atmospheric visit to a travelling fair, this offers a rare chance to see the kind of sponsored informational that found its way on to contemporary film programmes. There is even room for a little lobbying, as the narrator laments that London only has 12 square miles of open space, as opposed to the 20 suggested in the 1944 Greater London Plan devised by Sir Patrick Abercrombie to rebuild the capital after the Blitz.

Some of the estates that sprang up as a result of this review can be seen in Various Views: Hackney Housing, which was made around 1950 and shows the pristine tenements that replaced the slums and rubble. It's hard not to be moved by the bright optimism of these colour vistas, as children play on bikes in streets devoid of traffic, litter and graffiti and the same sense of hope recurs in Frederick Meiklejohn's Lambeth Walk, which was filmed in the 1960s in and around the amateur film-maker's Kensington toy shop. The rapt attention on the faces of those peering at the crowded window display belongs to another age, when consumerism was about longing and treasuring not demanding and grasping.

Sadly, market environs were demolished soon afterwards, as the area around No.189 was redeveloped and the aura of vanishing landscape also informs Patricia and Stanley David's Walworth Road (1960) and Alan G. Bell's S.E. 18: Impressions of a London Suburb. The former captures an ordinary day in Southwark, with a mother and daughter conducting an argument as they breeze past the camera, while the latter annoyingly truncates an intriguing snapshot of Woolwich, that centres on the river ferry, a keep-fit club for ladies, a bustling street market and an old-fashioned pub with a three-piece band comprising a pianist, an accordionist and a drummer. The excerpt ends with a voice complaining that a once thriving area is now dead at night because nobody goes out for their entertainment any longer. Yet, what is notable in this lament for an ending era is the predominance of white faces. Indeed, there's little sense of cosmopolitanism about R. Taylor's Tower Hamlets Carnival (1979), as the route from Victoria Park along Grove Road, Roman Road and Bethnal Green Road is filled with Morris dancers, uniformed majorettes, marching bands and dray horses. Once again, a caption or a bit of hindsight commentary would not have gone amiss here to explain the historical and sociological significance of the scene, as Britain entered the Thatcher epoch that would change it forever.

Archive material also proves crucial to The Punk Singer. But Sini Anderson makes much more dynamic use of the grainy images in this profile of riot grrrl icon Kathleen Hanna, whose blend of musical rebellion and feminist activism inspired a generation of young women, while also putting a shot across the bows of the misogynists in the mosh pits. However, in 2005, Hanna withdrew from the scene claiming she had nothing left to say. But Anderson reveals that she was actually struggling to come to terms with the ramifications of a debilitating illness that had been misdiagnosed for several years.

Although born on Portland, Oregon in 1968, Hanna endured a peripatetic childhood, as her father frequently changed careers. In later years, the press would hint at an abusive relationship and delight in discovering that Hanna not only had an abortion at 15, but also worked as a stripper to pay her way through Evergreen State College at Olympia, Washington. It was also here, however, that she began putting into practice the feminist principles that her mother had imbued in her when she opened the Reko Muse art gallery after the school had refused to show the pictures she had produced for an exhibition with photographer Aaron Baush-Greene.

Not content with creating a space for independent artists, Hanna also teamed with co-founders Heidi Arbogast and Tammy Rae Carland to form a band called Amy Carter, which played before the art shows. She also experimented with spoken word pieces until radical novelist Kathy Acker told her to concentrate on music and Hanna embarked upon a nationwide tour with a combo known as Viva Knievel. Within two months, however, Hanna had quit to join drummer Tobi Vail, guitarist Billy Karren and bassist Kathi Wilcox in Bikini Kill, whose first major tour - in support of the album Revolution Girl Style Now! (1991) - was filmed by Lucy Thane for her documentary, It Changed My Life: Bikini Kill in the UK (1993).

On returning Stateside, Hanna began collaborating with iconic rocker Joan Jett and the albums Pussy Whipped (1993) and Reject All American (1996) played a major part in sustaining the riot grrrl phenomenon that had spread from music into DIY fanzines and artworks. However, Hanna proved a restless type and, having already spent part of 1991 with Allison Wolfe, Molly Neuman and Jen Smith in Bratmobile, she had a brief spell with The Troublemakers and began working with zine editor Johanna Fateman on a live show for The Julie Ruin.

In 1998, Hana, Fateman and film-maker Sadie Benning united in Le Tigre and started producing danceable electronica with a decidedly political edge. In 2000, Benning was replaced by JD Samson on the follow-ups to the eponymous 1999 debut album, Feminist Sweepstakes (2001) and This Island (2004). But, just as it looked as though Hanna had found another niche, as well as happiness in her marriage to Beastie Boy Adam Horovitz, she suddenly disappeared. Even close friends had no idea what was going on, but Hanna was suffering from Lyme Disease and it took several years before the symptoms were identified and she was properly medicated. Rather than give up, therefore, Hanna has simply been recharging her batteries and Anderson euphorically reports that she has revived The Julie Ruin with Kenny Mellman and Kathi Wilcox and is actively campaigning to raise awareness of disability with the same commitment she showed on stage in her heyday.

Anderson is not the first to survey this explosion of feminist fury and creativity and she frequently covers material previously explored in Kerri Koch's Don't Need You: The Herstory of Riot Grrrl (2005) and Abby Moser's Grrrl Love and Revolution: Riot Grrrl NYC (2011). Indeed, several talking heads resurface here, but the focus in this chronology falls largely on Hanna herself, who is backed up by former collaborators, as well as the likes of Kim Gordon, Lynn Breedlove, Carrie Brownstein and Jennifer Baumgardner, who provide musical and intellectual insight. Anderson and editors Jessica Hernández and Bo Mehrad are very much to be commended for giving the footage a zine feel, as montages fizz with the energy of live clips embracing 38 songs from Hanna's sonically diverse, but consistently lyrically pugnacious back catalogue.

But the pace slows during the final third, as Anderson (herself a Lyme sufferer) reveals the anguish and uncertainty that Hanna and Horovitz faced while doctors sent her for an endless series of inconclusive and misread tests. In many ways, the Hanna captured in this period between 2010-12 is more heroic than the twentysomething who imposed a press blackout when she felt the stories were becoming too intrusive; who dressed provocatively on stage and often daubed herself with inflammatory slogans; and who ordered women to the front at gigs and demanded that the males in attendance treated them with the respect they deserved. Hanna has always been intense, erudite and uncompromising. But in reclaiming her life and giving it new direction and meaning, she has realised her greatest achievement. 

Finally, we return to fiction for Mexican Amat Escalante's third feature, Heli. Having served as an assistant to Carlos Regados on Battle in Heaven (2005), Escalante made a reasonable impact with Sangre (2005) and Los Bastardos (2008). But this is a much more mature work, as it takes generic tropes, roots them in the harsh reality of daily life and invests them with an aesthetic grace that makes the pitiless events all the more harrowing. Far from an easy watch, but also eschewing exploitation, this is a throwback to the unflinching social realism that made Latin American cinema so compelling around the turn of the century.

Seventeen year-old Armando Espitia lives in the arid northern region of Guanajato with wife Linda González and their infant son. They share the house with his father, Ramón Álvarez, and Espitia's 12 year-old sister, Andrea Vergara, who is besotted with army cadet Juan Eduardo Palacios, who is the same age as Espitia and wants Vergara to elope with him so they can get married. However, she resists his constant sexual advances, as she is scared of getting pregnant. But she is enchanted when he gives her a white terrier puppy she names Cookie. Espitia also disapproves of their romance (after discovering it from a flick cartoon drawn into the pages of her exercise book), as his own year-long marriage has not worked out particularly well and he has to work night shifts at the local car plant (while Álvarez does days) to make ends meet.

As part of a crackdown, Palacios's unit is ordered to make a show of destroying contraband in a bid to demonstrate that crime doesn't pay. Drugs and a variety of counterfeit items are tossed on to a large bonfire, but Palacios steals two bags of cocaine and hides them in the water tank on Álvarez's roof. He hopes to sell them to make enough money to pay for their escape, as he detests life in uniform and is forced to wallow in his own vomit as part of an initiation task. But Espitia finds the stash and locks his sister in her room after disposing of the powder in a drinking pool for cattle. .

Later in the evening, the premises are raided by crooked cops and Álvarez is killed while trying to defend his home. His body is dumped by the side of a deserted road, as Vergara is taken away on her own and Espitia and Palacios are dragged into a secure house, where teenage boys look away with dead eyes from a computer game playing on a giant screen to watch Palacios endure a ferocious cricket bat beating for stealing the drugs. Espitia is spared the severity, but he is also punished and has to watch on as Palacios is suspended from a hook and has his genitals set alight.

Once the torture is over, Palacios is handed over to some men who hang his corpse from a pedestrian bridge as a warning to anyone else thinking of challenging authority. Badly shaken, Espitia goes to the police station and reports his experience to detectives Reina Torres and Gabriel Reyes (who also co-scripted). But, while they help him recover Álvarez's body, they also suspect him of being a dealer and try to coerce Espitia into signing a confession that would incriminate himself and his father.

He returns home to deal with the trauma alone. Already reluctant to have intercourse since the birth of her baby, González becomes increasingly disturbed by his morose and erratic behaviour,.particularly after he is fired from his job for repeatedly losing concentration. Yet, when Reina comes to interview him again, she intimates that she would not be averse to an affair. But, while Espitia is tempted when she bares her breasts in her patrol car, he resists and Reina closes the file when she discovers that Vergara was Palacios's girlfriend.

Some time later, Vergara returns home. She is unable to speak and pregnant having been raped by her attackers. However, she draws a map to show Espitia where she had been hidden and he follows the route and beats to death the man he finds living there, without waiting to discover if he had anything to do with the travesty. Returning with a slight sense of closure, Espitia rediscovers his gentle side and, as he makes love to González that night, Vergara cradles her baby nephew in the next room, with sunlight pouring in through white net curtains that billow in the gentle breeze.

So much recent Mexican cinema has examined the grip the drugs trade has on the nation and the corruption of the law enforcement agencies detailed to tackle it. But, while the majority have adopted a combustible approach, Escalante has opted to show how decent people get dragged into the sordid business. He leaves us in no doubt that things are going to become gruelling, as the opening shot shows Espitia and Palacios bound and gagged on the back of a truck with a boot planted firmly on Espitia's skull. But he resists the cartoonish gunplay that has characterised many pictures on the theme and eschews the inclusion of a cackling druglord who takes sadistic pleasure in exacting his revenge on those who have tried to cheat or betray him. However, he lacks the steely detachment that makes Michael Haneke's depictions of barbarity so punishing. And he may have gone too far in turning Espitia into a cold-blooded killer. But, at least, he lays the groundwork to ensure such a development seem credible.

Always prone to lengthy takes, disconcerting camera moves and elliptical juxtapositions, Escalante also indulges in some dubious moments of animal cruelty, as he strives to show that humans are treated no better than beasts in this godforsaken country. Yet, there is a crucifix on the wall of the drug den, along with a girlie calender and various other items that testify to the complex mix of machismo and credence that underpins this savagely civilised society. But, while there can be no doubting Escalante's sincerity in wanting to alert the wider world to the chaos crippling the country, he does revisit an awful lot of ground already covered by similar specialists in grinding despair as Gerardo Naranjo. Consequently, despite the admirable performances of the largely non-professional cast and the remorseless simplicity of Lorenzo Hagerman's painterly cinematography, the most indelible impression is that of Palacios's grizzly evisceration rather that of the recuperating Vergara and the intimation that the future may well be in the safer hands because those who have suffered will surely not allow the madness to continue.