Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 30/4/2015)

Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight (1965) is the perfect film for May Day, as it invokes the spirit of ye olde tymes as readily as Morris dancers and madrigals from Magdalen College tower.

Welles first played Sir John Falstaff in a school production and his fascination with the incorrigible rogue inspired the bold attempt to meld eight Shakespearean plays into the stage epic Five Kings, which bankrupted the Mercury Theatre in 1939. Twenty-one years later, Welles opened in Belfast with the equally ambitious Chimes at Midnight, which combined extracts from Holinshed's Chronicle with elements from Richard II, both parts of Henry IV, Henry V and The Merry Wives of Windsor to cover the 13-year period from 1400 and create a lament for the passing of Merrie England.

As Sir John Falstaff (Orson Welles) and Justice Swallow (Alan Webb) sit beside a roaring fire in the Boar's Head Tavern, owned by Mistress Quickly (Margaret Rutherford), Narrator Ralph Richardson explains that Henry IV (John Gielgud) has been having problems since overthrowing Richard II. In particular, the Earl of Northumberland (José Nieto), his son Henry `Hotspur' Percy (Norman Rodway) and the Earl of Worcester (Fernando Rey) threaten rebellion unless the king releases Richard true heir, Edmund Mortimer from captivity in Wales.

As the crisis deepens, Henry curses that his heir, Prince Hal (Keith Baxter), wassails at the tavern with Falstaff and his disreputable friends. He warns the old knight that he will eventually be called to do his duty, but seems quite content to indulge in larks, as he allies with Ned Poins (Tony Beckley) to ambush Falstaff after he has waylaid some pilgrims and stolen their valuables with his mischievous sidekicks Bardolph (Patrick Bedford) and Pistol (Michael Aldridge).

Much to the amusement of the Prince of Wales, Falstaff returns to the inn and spins an increasingly far-fetched yarn to explain the loss of his loot. However, they all drink to celebrate when Hal reveals that he was the blaggard who duped him and the pair start doing impressions of King Henry. Falstaff chides Hal for consorting with common criminals, but reminds him that he will always have a trusted friend in Sir John. But Hal admonishes Falstaff for setting a bad example, even though he is secretly grateful to him for introducing him to teasing prostitute, Doll Tearsheet (Jeanne Moreau).

Hal visits the court and learns about the threat posed by the rebels. He promises Henry than he will eliminate Hotspur and prove himself a worthy son. However, as Falstaff joins the army in a parade through the streets, Henry tries to avert war by meeting secretly with Worcester and promising to overlook everyone's treachery if the revolt is called off. But Worcester returns to camp and informs Hotspur that the king intends showing no mercy to his enemies and, thus, the forces engage the next day at the Battle of Shrewsbury.

Falstaff takes cover in the bushes to avoid the fighting and watches on as Hal and Hotspur meet on the field. Their duel is desperate and savage, but Hal triumphs and he leaves is rival for dead. Meanwhile, Henry leads his troops to victory and condemns Worcester and his confederates to death. But he is less than convinced when Falstaff arrives with Hotspur's corpse and claims to have personally slain him in combat. The king shoots his heir a disapproving glance and realises that he will not be able to resist the temptation of rejoining the rogue and his band.

By 1408, however, Henry's health has started to fail and Hal is distressed to see him in such a feeble condition. He promises his father that he will be a good and noble king and Henry passes on his advice for ruling firmly and fairly. As Henry dies, Hal accepts that his youth is over and he presents himself to his subjects as Henry V.

Joined by Justice Silence (Walter Chiari), Falstaff and Swallow sit in the tavern and toast the passing of the monarch. Falstaff is excited to learn that the coronation will take place that morning and he hastens to the castle expecting to be welcomed as an old friend and offered a position of power and influence. As the ceremony begins, Falstaff is so proud of his protégé and is so eager to receive his reward for his faithful friendship that he interrupts the service and is aghast when Hal disowns him as a `fool and jester' and curses that he ever wasted his time with such a knave.

Banished from the court, Falstaff looks on with dismay as the procession returns to the castle. He tries to put on a brave face and reassures his cronies that he will be summoned after nightfall. But Falstaff dies of a broken heart at the Boar's Head and, as his friends mourn his passing, the narrator concludes that Hal lived up to the promise he made on his father's deathbed and ruled well as a warrior king.

Although it harked back 450 years, this

study of maverick potential being crushed by Machiavellian pragmatism was very much about Orson Welles, who clearly equated the Lancastrian monarchy with the Hollywood studio system that had cast him adrift. Moreover, it's possible to draw comparisons between Welles's final triumph and his first, Citizen Kane (1941), as the disappointment and dejection that Falstaff feels in his old age recalls that of Charles Foster Kane after the failure of his bid to mentor second wife Susan Alexander and turn her into an opera singer.

What's even more apparent is that, despite his customary battles with budgets and schedules, Welles had lost none of his vitality, either as an actor or director. There are flaws here, most notably the stylistic clashes between the meticulously mannered John Gielgud, the laconic Keith Baxter, the fulsome Margaret Rutherford and the anachronistically modern Jeanne Moreau. But nothing detracts from the melancholic majesty of this maligned masterpiece.

Having burst through the screen as the reckless roister-doister, his display of quiet dejection as Hal severs his ties is deeply touching, while the use of Edmund Richard's roving, deep-focussed camera around the Spanish sets and locations scouted by production designer Mariano Erdoiza is sublime. What's more, the depiction of the confusion and carnality of combat in the Battle of Shrewsbury sequence (which took Elena Jaumandreu, Frederick Muller and Peter Parasheles three weeks to edit) ranks alongside anything achieved by Sergei Eisenstein in Alexander Nevsky (1948) or by Akira Kurosawa in his own Shakespearean ventures, Throne of Blood (1957) and Ran (1985).

Made two years earlier, Federico Fellini's 8½ is an equally personal meditation on the film business. However, having fretted himself into a creative cul-de-sac in a bid to match the success of La Dolce Vita (1960), Fellini decided to abandon the allegorical avenue and simply pass his struggle to an on-screen alter ego and let him come up with a solution to his crisis of inspiration. Fortunately, co-writers Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Brunello Rondi were on the same wavelength and the resulting picture went on to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, as well as Best Costume Design (Black-and-White) for Pierre Gherardi (who also doubled as art director). Subsequently, the outline concept has been borrowed by Paul McCartney for Peter Webb's Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984) and Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit's musical Nine, which was adapted for the screen by Rob Marshall in 2009.

Film director Marcello Mastroianni is a 43 year-old film-maker in pre-production for his latest picture. He is supposed to be making a science-fiction epic, but he is running low on inspiration and decides to go to a spa to rejuvenate his batteries and enjoy a little peace and quiet away from the personal and professional pressures besetting him. However, his whereabouts are soon discovered and producer Guido Alberti, production supervisor Cesarino Miceli Picardi and production director Bruno Agostini all have a million and one questions that need immediate answers. Moreover, both wife Anouk Aimée and mistress Sandra Milo have checked into his hotel and demand his attention.

As Mastroianni tries to escape from the demands being placed upon him, he lets his imagination wander and he dreams of his long-deceased conservatively Catholic parents, Giuditta Rissone and Annibale Ninchi, as well as fantasising and reminiscing about the people, places and events that have shaped him as a man and as an artist. At one point, he even imagines himself cracking a whip to the various troublesome women in his life. Slowly, an idea begins to form. But assistant Mario Conocchia, critic-cum-screenwriter Jean Rougeul and French actress Madeleine LeBeau all need a quick word, and even best friend Mario Pisu is more interested in showing off new girlfriend Barbara Steele than supporting his pal. Even esteemed film star Claudia Cardinale causes Mastroianni grief, as he has cast her as an idealised woman in the film and she has yet to report for work.

Realising it's becoming more difficult to distinguish between the thoughts and the reality happening around him, Mastroianni concludes that he has lost control and is all ready to announce he is quitting the picture when Alberti hosts a press conference on the set of the spaceship launch pad that has been constructed at the studio. The assembled are perplexed that Mastroianni seems to detached from his project and they file away muttering about his artistic demise after he crawls under a table and puts a gun to his temple. But, as they leave, it dawns on him that the travails he has been going through would be the ideal subject for his film and that it should feature everyone who has played a part in his life. Suddenly, he sees himself as a ringmaster surrounded by his past, his present and a conditional future in which anything would be possible. And, as he leads his cast of characters on a merry dance to the tune of his flute, he realises that art does not merely imitate life, it is life.

Such a brief synopsis can do scant justice to the freewheeling audacity of a film that was titled to reflect the fact that the six features and three shorts that Fellini had directed to this point in his career amounted to 7½ full-length pictures. Majestically photographed by Gianni Di Venanzo and drifting with deceptive insouciance to the catchy melodies of Nino Rota, Mastroianni's flights of fancy touch upon numerous topics with a skittish superficiality that Fellini uses to mock the shallow world of the movies and the fallacy that worthwhile entertainment has to centre on SFX-laden escapism set in outer space rather than individuals and ideas and memories and emotions.

Dismissed by some as self-indulgent and chauvinist, this is very much a reflection of the Italian male psyche in the early 1960s and it has to be remembered that, even though Mastroianni represents his alter ego, Fellini is commenting upon types and attitudes rather than condoning them. Indeed, Fellini makes himself the butt of several jokes, as he allows everyone from the humblest member of the crew to Mastroianni's friends and lovers to point out his shortcomings. Moreover, he mischievously alludes to the iconic image of the flying Christ statue at the start of La Dolce Vita in the opening shot and even has his conflicted director rising as if from the dead after three days of entombment.

In setting the climax on a futuristic soundstage, Fellini is also contrasting the vast sets of the superspectacles that had put Italian cinema on the map in the 1910s with the more intimate stories of the neo-realist era and suggesting that, while blockbusters might draw the crowds and make money, cinema will only have artistic relevance if it remains a personal statement by its maker. Thus, while Fellini employs zooms and jump cut to pay homage to the nouvelle vague, he appropriates its self-reflexive techniques (most notably in the scenes depicting the paraphernalia of movie-making that draw attention to the very filmicness of 8½) to explore his own preoccupations with ageing, regret, love, responsibility, reputation, authorship, collaboration and legacy. In the process, he creates a cerebral spectacle about the evolution of a new aesthetic that was daringly ambitious for its day and remains pretty much unsurpassed five decades later.

It's safe to say that nothing else debuting this week will be revived in 50 years time. However, there is a neat link between 8½'s riff on the profundity of sci-fi and Jake Paltrow's Bad Land: Road to Fury, a Western set in a dauntingly near future in which Earth's depleted population fights to the death over the rapidly dwindling water supply. The standout character in this tripartite updating of the Dust Bowl sagas of the 1930s is a robotic beast of burden named Sim. But, for all the ingenuity of the special effects, Paltrow's screenplay lacks dynamism and character definition. Thus, while this may well achieve a certain cult status, the lingering impression is one of disappointment that a promising premise is allowed to meander to its fittingly bleak conclusion.

Michael Shannon lives in a rickety house on a parched plot of land with his teenage children, Elle Fanning and Kodi Smit McPhee. Wife Aimee Mullins was invalided in an accident and now resides in an institution where she has a degree of movement thanks to a special walking frame. Shannon wishes to stay close to Mullins, but he also refuses to believe that the drought is permanent and keeps watching the skies in the hope of rain. He makes money by delivering alcohol to the water men who dig deep wells under government contract, but his hopes of persuading them to irrigate his fields seem slim.

One day, the mule used to perform chores on the estate breaks its leg and has to be put down. Shannon replaces it with a robotic beast of burden called Simulit Shadow (or Sim for short), which he buys at auction from David Butler. His son, Nicholas Hoult, has been secretly taking Fanning for nocturnal rides on his motorbike and he deeply resents the fact that Shannon now occupies land that used to belong to his family. Consequently, he steals Sim and uses it to carry stolen water to the border and implicates Shannon for the crime. When Shannon catches Hoult red-handed, he vows to return the water so he can get in with the diviners. But Hoult murders Shannon with a rock and convinces those who find the body that Sim must have malfunctioned and killed him.

With Shannon out of the way, Hoult marries Fanning and moves back on to his family plot. He arranges for illegal irrigation supplies and soon has the old place prospering once again. However, he discovers that Shannon had taken out a sizeable loan from the bank and persuades his friend Christy Prankhurst to sell his new-born baby in order to raise the money he needs to avert repossession. But the transaction doesn't go smoothly and not only is Prankhurst killed, but Sim is also badly damaged.

The machine has a homing device that allows it to return to its manufacturer David Clatworthy, who conducts the necessary repairs and contacts Smit McPhee (who has devoted his time to drawing and watching the goings on with a growing air of dejection) to collect his possession. Smit McPhee has befriended Liah O'Prey, who belongs to the settler resistance that opposes government water policy and she helps him cross the border and meet with Clatworthy. He reveals that Sim has a camcorder facility and Smit McPhee learns that Hoult slew his father.

On returning to the farm, he confronts Hoult with Sim and he insists that he sold the robot legally to meet Shannon's debts. But Smit McPhee knows the truth and lures Hoult into the desert by pretending to be Prankhurst and traps him in a deep pit. With his legs broken in the fall, Hoult is powerless to escape and Smit McPhee shoots him through the head and promises the pregnant Fanning that he will help her raise the child and care for Mullins, whom he plans to bring home as soon as possible.

Broodingly photographed by Giles Nuttgens, inventively designed by Sharon Lomofsky and atmospherically scored by Nathan Johnson, this appears commendably polished for a modestly budgeted project. However, the sheen is a touch superficial, with Paltrow too often drawing attention to his direction by shuttling the camera around for no diegetic reason in his ambitious bid to meld John Ford and Cormac McCarthy. Shannon is typically bullish as the proud man trusting in God and fate, while Hoult makes a suitably implacable villain. But the characterisation is far too sketchy to persuade the audience to empathise with any conviction, while the introduction of too many peripheral figures in the final chapter smacks of contrivance.

It has long been one of the more depressing aspects of modern Hollywood that it has no idea how to create roles for its senior citizens. Unless they go into television, the stars of yesteryear are forced to subsist on cranky or kooky character roles that make few dramatic demands upon them and do little to enhance reputations forged when cinema was still glamorous. Take Shirley MacLaine and Christopher Plummer. They may now be 81 and 85 respectively, but they each have an Academy Award to their name and still know how to play a scene without trying to steal it. But the best anyone can come up with to keep them gainfully employed is a cornball confection like Michael Radford's Elsa & Fred, which has been remade from a 2005 Spanish picture of the same name in which director Marcos Carnevale teamed veterans China Zorrilla and Manuel Alexandre.

Refusing to go into a retirement home when he is widowed. Christopher Plummer resists the suggestions of daughter Marcia Gay Harden and son-in-law Chris Noth that he should invest $90,000 of his savings in a dubious business venture. Instead, he wishes to be left alone in his new New Orleans apartment and await release from being a member of the `dead living'. Caregiver Erike Alexander and building superintendent Wendell Pierce try to raise his spirits, but it's neighbour Shirley MacLaine who succeeds in shaking Plummer out of his tetchy lethargy.

Following a minor car accident, MacLaine takes a shine to Plummer and devotes herself to getting under his skin through long chats and walks in the park, which prove her to be a great raconteur with a relaxed attitude to veracity. Initially, Plummer resists her charms. But something about being wanted again prompts him to flush his medication and start taking dance lessons and accompanying MacLaine for candlelight dinners, complete with serenading guitars. He even begins to believe that her story about being painted by Pablo Picasso, even though she has lost the key to the safe in which she keeps it.

Naturally, Harden and Noth take exception to Plummer dallying with a free spirit who cannot be trusted. Bur MacLaine's son, Scott Bakula, and his wife, Deanna Meske, are more relaxed about the relationship. Indeed, even estranged husband James Brolin seems to think Plummer is the right man for her. Consequently, he falls under her spell and, after MacLaine makes it through a distressing health scare with the help of doctor George Segal, Plummer helps her realise the dream she has nursed since first seeing Anita Ekberg cavort in the Trevi Fountain in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita.

Radford is still fondly remembered for co-directing Massimo Troisi's final picture, Il Postino (1984), but this clumsily coy romcom is as much a misfire as his bid to reunite Michael Caine and Demi Moore in Flawless (2007). Plummer and MacLaine are practiced troupers and manage to inject a little life into the identikit grumpy old man and dotty old dear outlined in Radford and Anna Pavignano's script. But there is something undignified and a little desperate about getting laughs by having MacLaine bop to the rap song `Shake It' as she drives her car. Similarly, the moments of romantic realisation feel unnecessarily twee, while Radford ladles on the mawkishness in the closing scenes.

Rob Reiner struggled to generate sparks between Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton in And So It Goes, which also strove too hard to make the late-life love story seem whimsical rather than natural. Plummer and MacLaine had appeared together in Richard Attenborough's swan song, Closing the Ring (2007). But, for all their easy chemistry, this lacklustre remake is far too reluctant to trust them as performers and saddles them with tacky bits of business designed to reassure the audience that getting old can still be fun - at least, as long as your body holds out.

One of the more regrettable things about Elsa & Fred is its clichéd depiction of African-Americans in a city as diverse and vibrant as New Orleans. Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache just about got away with their discussion of race in Untouchable (2011), their endlessly twee tale of wealthy quadriplegic François Cluzets unlikely friendship with African carer Omar Sy, and they reunite with the first black winner of the César for Best Actor in their latest exercise in calculatingly sentimental feel-goodery, Samba, which has been adapted from Délphine Coulin's novel, Samba pour la France. Immigration is an even hotter topic in France than it is in the UK and Toledano and Nakache laudably take up the gauntlet thrown down by Philippe de Chauveron's Serial (Bad) Weddings (2014) in challenging preconceptions about foreigners coming to work and make a fresh start in La Patrie.

After a decade dodging the authorities as an illegal alien, Senegalese dishwasher Omar Sy is arrested in Paris and sent to the detention centre at Charles de Gaulle airport. On his release, he is warned that he may well be deported and Sy informs case worker Charlotte Gainsbourg (a high-flying executive who has volunteered to help at the centre as part of her rehabilitation following a nervous breakdown) that he will never realise his dream of becoming a chef if he is returned to Africa. Ignoring the advice of experienced colleague Izïa Igelin, Gainsbourg takes pity on Sy and begins to experience such deep feelings for him that she steals the baby picture from his file to keep beside her bed.

Meanwhile, Sy has made friends with Issaka Sawadogo, who is desperate to let girlfriend Liya Kebede know that he is okay, and would-be Algerian lothario Tahar Rahim, who masquerades as a Brazilian in order to impress the ladies. Once he is released into the custody of impoverished uncle Youngar Fall, Sy starts looking for work with forged ID and readily accepts everything from sorting through rubbish to cleaning windows, even though he is terrified of heights.

Awarded by soft-centred agency clerk Clotilde Mollet, the latter job gives Rahim the opportunity to spoof the cola advert in which female office workers drool over a shirtless hunk outside their window, but such flashes of wit often sit awkwardly with the burgeoning relationship between Sy and the vulnerable Gainsbourg, who is trying to find a niche after suffering from workaholic burnout. A subplot involving Sy's promise to pass a message to Kebede takes a contrived twist when a one-night stand impacts upon Sy's relationship with Gainsbourg and also results in a climactic chase and a case of mistaken identity before the inevitable happy ever after. But, despite the willingness of the cast and the odd sweet moment, this never comes close to convincing with its depiction of the migrant's lot.

Mischievously slipping in a joke about her role in Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac (2013), Gainsbourg ably conveys the brittle timidity of a do-gooder out of her depth, most notably in an amusing montage in which she and co-workers Hélène Vincent, Christiane Millet and Jacqueline Jehanneuf struggle to understand their client's poorly translated testimony and in the sequence in which she is reunited with Sy and allows her disappointment at his tetchy lack of enthusiasm to get the better of her. By contrast, Sy combines charming moments like his time-passing dance in the shopping mall with lapses into despairing anxiety, as he frets about his failure to provide for his family back home.

But, while production designer Nicolas de Boiscuillé and cinematographer Stéphant Fontaine highlight the squalor of the less salubrious parts of the City of Light, Toledano and Nakache keep hedging their tonal bets, with the result that the political message is diluted in order to accommodate the offbeat romance. Yet, even this fails to gel, despite the melodic promptings of Ludovico Einaudi's excellent piano score, as Sy and Gainsbourg spend more time chatting on the phone at times of crisis than they do getting to know each other and becoming irresistibly drawn together. Indeed, she has little idea of the casual xenophobia and flagrant exploitation with which he has to contend, while he has little appreciation of the gender-related issues that contributed to her implosion. So, while this means well in its pursuit of the easy smile and tear, it always feels like a liberal outsider's interpretation rather than a grittily authentic slice of life.

The milk and honey dreams that drive Coonan and Scott have little in common with the reality facing twentysomething Joe Cole in Mark Abraham's debut feature, In the Blood, which was known as Peterman while it was being filmed in and around the Bedfordshire town of Dunstable. Scripted by Andy Bloom, this is a variation on the BritCrime theme that strives harder than most to root its action in a recognisable social-realist context. However, the cogently established premise fails to pay off, as Bloom loses patience with the tensions simmering between the disparate characters and, consequently, the body count rises as the drama spirals towards its disappointingly predictable denouement.

Arriving with some trepidation at grandfather Phil Davis's funeral, Joe Cole slips out of the house and smokes smack from a sheet of tin foil in the potting shed. Aunt Alison Steadman frets over him and tries to give him some money, but Cole is well aware that he was too wasted to attend Davis's sickbed and is hardly surprised when his dad gives him an earful for letting the side down.

However, when he wakes next morning on the sofa to hear rummaging in the shed, he is taken aback when he is bundled into a car and driven for a meeting with urbane mobster Peter Bowles and his imposing oppo, Andy Linden. Badly beaten and suffering the first symptoms of withdrawal, Cole tries to make sense of what is happening to him, as Bowles explains that Davis had been hired to crack a safe stolen by the gang and that Cole will have to make good on the promise or face the consequences.

Realising that his only chance of survival lies in convincing Bowles that he has inherited his grandfather's thieving skills, Cole accepts the job and is bundled into a van and driven to a remote house in the countryside. He is left on a mattress in the basement to undergo cold turkey and vaguely recognises Adam Nagaitis, as one of his jailers. His older brother died as a result of some drugs that Cole supplied and he knows that Nagaitis's short-fused Irish father, Stuart Graham, will be keen to exact his revenge the moment the safe door is opened.

Taking advantage of Nagaitis's inexperience, Cole tries to escape during the night. But he is recaptured by Graham, with the help of boss Kenny Doughty and his gun-toting sidekick, Brian McCardie. Warned not to do anything else he might regret, Cole is returned to the cellar, where wakes from a doze to see Davis sitting on the safe on the opposite side of the room. He assures him that he is a natural and takes him step-by-step through the procedure for drilling through the door at the side of the lock and using a keyhole camera to crack the combination.

In order to play for time, Cole asks for the safe to be placed on its base and McCardie badly hurts his hand when the block and tackle slips. He also plays on the fraught relationship between Nagaitis and Graham, as the latter makes no secret of the fact that the wrong sibling died and he openly criticises everything his son does to try and impress him. But Nagaitis does manage to keep Cole quiet when cop Ali Cooke comes snooping.

Nothing, however, can be done to keep a lid on the simmering rivalry between the crooks after Cooke makes a reckless plainclothes return in the dead of night and Doughty guns him down. He also has Graham and Nagaitis tied to a bed when they challenge his authority. But, as Cole works diligently downstairs, Nagaitis decides to prove his loyalty to his father. Untying himself, he takes the wounded McCardie by surprise before catching Doughty unawares. However, his chances of getting the bleeding Graham to a hospital are lengthened by the simultaneous arrival of Bowles and Linden and WPC May Phillips.

The pieces rather clunk into place in the last reel. But Abraham and Bloom work hard to keep the move obvious Mockney clichés and caricatures in check and they are well served by a solid cast that nearly always manages to make the occasionally corny dialogue sound authentic. Steadman, Davis and Bowles add a touch of class to proceedings, although the first makes only the briefest of cameos. Gavin Fry keeps the camera prowling around Noam Piper's claustrophobic interiors, while Charles Cave's score helps reinforce Cole's woozy perspective. But Cole ably conveys the addict's addled confusion, while also suggesting the surly resentment and cocky tendency to self-destruction that prevents his anti-hero from being too readily sympathetic.

The standard of acting is of a much lower quality in Reg Traviss's Anti-Social, although the ensemble is given little opportunity to shine by a fact-based screenplay that is strewn with one-dimensional characters who spout Mockney clichés like a jackpotting fruit machine. Best known for being Amy Whitehouse's fiancé at the time of her death, Traviss has recently lambasted Asif Kapadia for excluding him from the final cut of a documentary on the troubled singer's life that has outraged her father, Mitch. But he has demonstrated a facility for cinema with the postwar drama, Joy Division (2006), the thriller, Psychosis (2010), and the prison exposé, Screwed (2011). But, while its heists and shootouts are slickly staged, this exercise in BritCrimery contains little to distinguish it from the herd.

Gregg Sulkin lives with Spanish mother Maria Fernández Ache and half-brother Josh Myers in the East End of London. By day, he works as a motorbike courier, but he spends his nights creating anti-establishment graffiti with his mate, Andrew Shim. Sulkin is also dating American fashion model Meghan Markle, who thinks he is a potent artist and has great hopes that his work will be discovered by a wheeler-dealer. However, he is happy on the streets and rooftops and regards the art world with a certain suspicion.

While Sulkin tags, Myers roars into shopping malls with motorbiking oppos Richie Campbell, Michael Maris and James Devlin and sledgehammers his way into display cases in poorly guarded jewellery stores. The gang even resorts to donning burqas commit a daring daylight raid and news bulletins reveal just how baffled the police are by these audacious crimes. But, while Myers is raking in the dough, he is engaged in a postcode turf war with Skepta and his sidekick Aymen Hamdouchi. Thus, when Myers persuades his muckers to invest their ill-gotten in a consignment of cocaine from mobster Doug Allen, it is only a matter of time before Skepta tries to muscle on to their patch.

Meanwhile, talent spotter Lisa Moorish brings high-profile German painter Christian Berkel to an outdoor tagging show and he is so impressed by Sulkin that he invites him to his studio to offer him a chance to exhibit in Berlin. Markle is delighted and model friend Amanda Ryan toasts their future together. But Markle sees a side of Sulkin's life she doesn't like when he introduces her to Myers and his crew at a swanky nightclub. Myers has brought girlfriend Sophie Colquhoun and her mate Sasha Frost along, while Campbell shows off new lover Caroline Ford. However, this doesn't stop the lads getting into a stand-up row with Skepta and Hamdouchi that shocks Markle with its vehemence. Sulkin assures her he has nothing to do with Myers's world and they make plans for their trip to Germany.

However, events take a downward turn when Myers and his boys rob Asian shopkeeper Tebraiz Shahzad and Ford snitches on them to Skepta. He exacts his revenge by breaking into Colquhoun's flat and allows his henchmen to rape her and Frost, while he tortures her younger brother, Giacomo Mancini, in the hope of discovering where the drug stash is hidden. He finds it in the false bottom of the wardrobe and the furious Myers exacts his revenge by ambushing some of Skepta's mob outside a club.

Myers asks Allen if he has a big job coming up to make up for the lost drug revenue. Fortunately, confederate Rob Knighton has his sights set on an exclusive jeweller's in the West End and Myers convinces his cohorts to take the risk so that they can disappear abroad for a while. In the days before the blag, however, Skepta shoots Myers outside a convenience store and, while he remains in hospital under police guard, Sulkin is talked into doing his bit for the family. He waits in a side street in his courier leathers and speeds off with the case full of valuables as the cops chase Campell, Maris and Devlin in the getaway car. But he is the only survivor and he approaches the airport check-in with some trepidation after a news flash in the departure lounge clues Markle into what her seemingly innocent boyfriend has been up to.

Traviss clearly made a close study of Michael Mann movies before embarking upon this project. But he learned his lessons well enough and colludes with cinematographer Bryan Loftus and editor Edmund Swabey to produce a series of pugnacious robberies, contretemps and getaways that are so propulsively driven along by George Kallis's score that they would not disgrace a picture made on a much bigger budget. The additional songs by Drew McConnell and Itch are another matter, however. As are the dialogue passages, as Traviss insists on packing the frame with redundant characters who chip in with superfluous utterances that distract from the essential information and sap the pace of the scene. The weakest sequences, however, involve Sulkin and Berkel's pretentiously grave discussions of the validity of street art, which are cross-cut with hilarious gaucheness with Myers swinging into strongarm action with his cronies.

Traviss clearly revels in the old ultra-violence. Yet, despite capturing something of the camaraderie between the thieves, he resists romanticising the gangland lifestyle and ably demonstrates the difficulty of escaping its vicious cycle. Thus, while much here is shameless knocked off from superior pictures, Traviss does enough to show he is improving as a director. But he definitely needs to bring in a collaborator to help with his scripts.

With just five hours of his 90-day sentence for stealing £6-worth of razor blades left to run, 19 year-old British Asian Zahid Mubarek was battered to death with a table leg by his racist cellmate, Robert Stewart. This gruesome incident took place at Feltham Young Offenders' Institution on 21 March 2000 and it has been recreated in unflinching detail by debuting director Anthony Petrou and actor-writer Leeshon Alexander in We Are Monster. It was subsequently claimed by a former employee that the prison guards could well have placed Mubarek in Stewart's cell as part of a game called Coliseum, in which inmates of ethnic origin were billeted with known xenophobes in order to see how much time would elapse before violence erupted. But this disconcerting, if not always restrained film seeks to uncover other reasons for the pitiless attack

Opening at 3.30am with the sickening aftermath of the assault as the perpetrator stands in silence over a victim laying still in his bunk, the action flashes back to 8 February, as the Feltham staff discuss whether to place Zahid Mubarek (Aymen Hamdouchi) in the same cell as Robert Stewart (Leeshon Alexander), a 20 year-old with a history of violence who openly espoused his white supremacist views. The men in uniform joke that the pair will soon be getting on like a house on fire. But it quickly becomes clear that Stewart is dangerously unstable and that their pairing can only have a brutal outcome.

Spurning all of Mubarek's attempts to communicate with him, Stewart holds a series of conversations with his alter ego, in which he thinks back (via projections on to the cell wall) to when he was 10 year-old (Niall Hayes) and his apathetic mother (Jennifer Aries) did little or nothing to protect him from the savage abuse meted out by his bigoted father (James Hyland). Over the next few years, Stewart finds trouble all too easily and discovers that there are worse places to be than Feltham once he has learned the ropes. He scowls at black kids in the canteen and generally lets it be known that he is not going to tolerate any intrusion into his space by non-Aryans.

Given their duty of care and the fact that they regularly perused Stewart's letters, it seems alarming, therefore, that Chief Officer Dean (Justin Salinger) and subordinates Poll (Doug Allen), Shah (Shazad Latif) and Hart (Drew Edwards) failed to spot the telltale signs that made assigning Mubarek to Stewart's cell an act of folly bordering on the wilfully reckless. Yet, the two are thrown together and Mubarek prattles on about his determination to sort his life out and make the most of his opportunities. But Stewart only hears the goading of his demented alter ego, whose tirades are filled with bileful hatred and corrosive language designed to educate the seemingly still redeemable side of his personality.

Artfully filmed, but still feeling dramatically hackneyed, these exchanges are bitingly written. But Alexander lacks the range as a performer to pull them off. He spews the invective with bulging eyes, throbbing veins and chilling conviction, but he is strangely inanimate as Stewart's pubic face and, as a consequence, the contretemps become cumbersome and repetitive when they should have become increasingly fraught and terrifying. One only has to compare Alexander's performance with Tom Hardy's in Nicolas Winding Refn's in Bronson, Michael Fassbender's in Steve McQueen's Hunger (both 2008) and Jack O'Connell's in David Mackenzie's Starred Up (2013) to see what he was aiming for and realise by quite how far he missed.

Clearly, Petrou and Alexander are solely interested in Stewart's schizophrenic psyche and they rely heavily on cinematographer Simon Richards's ominous lighting and use of Simon Rogers's airlessly enclosed spaces to generate the sense of encroaching menace and looming tragedy. But Fred Portelli's clumsily emotive score persistently manipulates the audience response, as much as the stereotypical depiction of the screws and their institutionalised ignorance, indifference and intolerance. Ultimately, while avoiding being apologist, the speculative central thesis seems deeply flawed, while the execution is a curious mix of theatrical and avant-garde. It also feels a little gauche to tidy up any loose ends in a series of closing captions outlining the findings of a government enquiry that only named and shamed 20 prison officers (none of whom were disciplined) after a six-year campaign for justice by Mubarek's family.

It's been a month or two since Oxford last appeared on the big screen and it is all the more noteworthy to see the Radcliffe Camera in Born of War, as this gutsy thriller has been directed by the city's very own Vicky Jewson. It was actually completed in 2012, but this follow-up to Lady Godiva (2008) has finally secured a UK release and reveals that the then 26 year-old had become more ambitious in the intervening four years. However, while it's good to see a young British woman venturing into Kathryn Bigelow territory, this comes closer to similarly low-budget homegrown offerings like Tristan Loraine's 31 North 62 East (2009), as problems with the dialogue, pacing and the construction of the action sequences undermine a decent premise.

The story opens in the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan, where Briton Lisa Kay is sheltering with Pashtun warrior Philip Arditti after she was stranded after being robbed by bandits while on her travels. She takes care of his young son. But, when the camp is attacked by Soviet forces and the child is killed, Kay is accused of being a spy and she only just manages to escape a gun-wielding banshee and is grateful to be rescued by some men in a fast car.

Flash forward 22 years and Sofia Black-D'Elia is teased by toffs in her Oxford tutorial for having an American accent. In fact, she and younger sister Rafaela Pugh live with her parents, Kay and Michael Maloney, in a farmhouse on the outskirts of the city. All seems hunky dory as the sisters bake a surprise cake. But Kay and Maloney return home at gunpoint, with terrorist Avin Shah demanding to know Black-D'Elia's whereabouts. She hides her sister in a bedroom and manages to lock one of the intruders in another room, as Maloney and Kay put up a heroic fight downstairs. They manage to reach their children and shepherd them out of a window before they are murdered. A shopkeeper also loses his life, as he tries to protect the girls while they phone the police. But everything goes black after Black-D'Elia is struck by a car.

She wakes in a private MI6 hospital and is informed by Lydia Leonard that Pugh is safe, but believes her sister died along with her parents. Puzzled by this fabrication, Black-D'Elia demands to know what is going on and Leonard reveals that Kay became pregnant during her stay in Afghanistan and MI6 believes that the attack was orchestrated by Arditti to reclaim his sole surviving child. Leonard asks Black-D'Elia if she would be willing to act as bait to trap the man who slaughtered her family and she consents after she learning that Arditti has made another attempt to harm Pugh.

Black-D'Elia is given a new name and some basic survival training by maverick agent James Frain, who shows her how to handle a variety of weapons while sympathising with her awful and unexpected situation. When they land in the Wakhan Corridor, however, they are soon separated following a car crash on a remote road and Black-D'Elia is whisked away to a hideout, where Jade Hudson performs a blood test to prove she is Arditti's daughter. As Frain staggers across the wilderness following a tracking signal, Black-D'Elia is introduced to her father, who tells her how much he adored Kay and how surprised he was to discover he had a child by her. He shows her a newspaper cutting and is appalled to learn that Kay has perished. Moreover, he convinces Black-D'Elia that he is not a terrorist and she feels terrible for leading the British secret service to his lair.

But worse is to follow, as Shah gets past the guards to take Arditti hostage in revenge for killing his father years before. He is also not best pleased with Black-D'Elia, as she scorched his face by pushing it down on to the cooker during the farmhouse raid. So, as Arditti pleads his innocence, she draws on her training to snap a CD in half and uses the sharp end to stab Shah and help Arditti make his getaway. However, when she is finally reunited with the dogged Frain, Black-D'Elia overhears a conversation between Leonard and Shah that puts a new spin on events, as they planned to kidnap her in order to lure Arditti into the open so that they could conclude a lucrative oil-drilling deal with ruthless executive Michael Brandon.

Just as she is wondering who she can trust, Black-D'Elia receives news that Arditti has been murdered with a bomb that Shah remote detonated in his car and comes to suspect that Frain and Leonard are in cahoots. But he proves to be loyal as loyal as Black-D'Elia is resourceful and they not only win the day, but she is reunited with Pugh to start a new life in the Canadian wilds, where Frain happens to have a cabin he bought for his retirement.

At several points in this eager, but undistinguished sophomore feature, Jewson and co-scribes Rupert Whitaker and Ben Hervey (writing under the name Alan Heartfield) resort to contrivance to keep the plot rumbling towards its inevitable conclusion. Some sleights of hand are more effective than others, but even the major twist around the mid-point fails to resound as intended because the characterisation is so weak and the pacing so cumbersome. Black-D'Elia does what she can with a two-dimensional heroine, whose pluck prevents her from being too patronisingly vulnerable. Frain, on the other hand, is given less room for manoeuvre with his identikit hunk and the capable support players also struggle to breathe life into ciphers who, for the most part, spout platitudes and banalities.

The second unit footage filmed in Jordan is decent enough, but Jewson needs to sharpen her editorial skills, as the action alternates awkwardly between sequences that meander and careen. She also needs to rethink her camera placements, as, while Malte Rosenfeld's imagery is often strong, the angle of perspective frequently feels forced for stylistic effect. Her dialogue is also problematic, as it too often feels scripted, particularly when tackling weighty political or emotional issues. But the picture's biggest demerit is James McWilliam's boomingly busy score, which over-punctuates every scene and winds up alienating the viewer because of its intrusiveness and reluctance to trust them to discern what is going on without the blatant musical cues.

Some of the reviews have a little harshly branded this amateurish and film schooly, when it actually represents a marked improvement on Lady Godiva. Furthermore, it demonstrates that Jewson has talent and mettle, as putting together a production on this scale takes some doing. She needs to spend longer on her screenplays, as the intriguing ideas about the part played by oil in the so-called War on Terror and the complexities of the various alliances that have riven Afghanistan since the Soviet invasion are lost in the more formulaic action aspects. But we can only hope there is a next time and Jewson keeps maturing as a film-maker.

By all accounts, Brighton-based Dan Rickard had under a thousand quid at his disposal. But he has spent it wisely enough, as Darkest Day is a lively zombie movie that is bound to draw comparisons with Marc Price's Colin (2008), which was purportedly produced for just £40. The use of special effects, however, recalls Gareth Edwards's Monsters (2010), while anyone familiar with Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later... (2002) will recognise the plot. However, the south coast town is developing a reputation for cut-price chills and, while this may not be on a par with Paul Andrew Williams's London to Brighton (2006), Ben Wheatley's Down Terrace (2010) or John Shackleton's The Sleeping Room (2014), it combines gore and gallows humour ably enough to suggest that Rickard might be the next name to watch.

Waking on a Brighton beach with no memory of how he got there, Dan (Dan Rickard) wanders into town and is rescued from a marauding maniac by a couple of strangers. The male is killed in the struggle, but Lisa (Christianne van Wijk) takes Dan back to the terraced house where she is holed up with fellow twentysomethings Sam (Chris Wandell), Kate (Samantha Bolter), James (Richard Wilkinson), Stephen (Christian Wise), Will (Simon Drake) and Adi (Adrienne Wandell).

Sam is immediately suspicious of the newcomer, as he has no idea what has been going on. Kate takes Dan to her room and he listens in shocked silence as she reveals that a neurological virus descended on Britain and turned the infected population into ravenous monsters whose actions are dictated solely by their need to kill and devour. Sheepishly, Dan admits to knowing nothing of the crisis or his recent movements. But Kate persuades the others to let him stay and everyone gets drunk on the copious amounts of beer they have managed to stash away.

As army helicopters hover over the South Downs and soldiers follow Dan's tracks, the housemates repel an intruder's attempt to get through the front door and only just evade more marauders when they dispose of his body. But the virus cannot be so easily kept at bay and Sam recognises the symptoms developing in Adi. All hell breaks loose when she suddenly turns from a frightened victim into a slavering ghoul, but they succeed in putting her out of her misery after she falls from an upper window into the courtyard.

After a while, supplies run low and Kate, Will, Lisa and Dan volunteer to scour the empty streets for food. Meanwhile, Sam tools himself up with some homemade weapons and goes on a furious killing spree in revenge for Adi's death. Lisa and Dan become separated from the others, who head home and hope for the best. But a military sniper takes out Lisa while aiming for Dan as he steals food from a corpse lying in the road and he only just makes it back to base in one piece.

Deciding it is no longer safe to stay in Brighton, the survivors decide to make for the countryside. They dispatch attackers with ruthless efficiency, but Stephen also becomes a casualty before the fugitives stop for the night around a campfire. As he gathers his thoughts, however, Dan realises that the soldiers may well be after him and his fears are confirmed the following day when they waylay a trooper (Matthew Dukes) and he informs them that Dan was given an experimental vaccine that it was hoped would cure the virus. However, it made the test subjects even more demented and Dan urges the others to go on without him, while he tries to distract their pursuers. But even self-sacrifice is not as easy as it seems in this crazy, mixed-up world.

It would be easy to criticise the mediocre quality of the acting here, but Rickard deserves enormous credit for getting this micro-budget horror to the screen. Started as a film school project, it was filmed over a four-year period and a further three years were required for the complex special effects. Although Rickard wrote the screenplay in tandem with Will Martin, he served as his own cinematographer and CGI artist and the results are highly impressive.

The use of light and colour filters inside the house is imaginative and atmospheric, while the visual contrasts between the coast and the countryside are also nicely handled. The handheld camerawork is a bit fidgety in places and too often draws attention to the fact that Rickard is trying to convey an impression he cannot afford to depict. Nevertheless, he does a better job of generating a sense of menace and mayhem than many an American indie with many times the resources and a good deal more technical nous.

A melancholic air pervades Hiroyuki Okiura's anime, A Letter to Momo, which took seven years to produce for Production IG and stands in complete contrast to the director's debut feature, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1999). Although there are similarities with Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli masterpiece, My Neighbour Totoro (1988), this also has things in common with Brad Silberling's Casper (1995), which was adapted from Seymour Reit and Joe Oriolo's 1939 book, The Friendly Ghost. Beautifully hand-drawn and coloured in the most evocatively muted greys, greens and mauves, this is less visually flamboyant than the typical Japanimation, while its measured storytelling style may be off-putting for some younger viewers. But this is a work of great sensitivity and charm that really should have been granted a theatrical release in this country.

Eleven year-old Momo Miyaura (Karen Miyama) bitterly regrets that the last words she ever spoke to her father Kazuo (Daizaburo Arakawa were in anger. He died shortly afterwards and left her an unfinished letter that contained just two words: `Dear Momo'. She has now moved away from Tokyo to the island of Shio, where her mother Ikuko (Yuka) was raised. They are staying with Momo's Great Auntie (Ikuko Tani) and Great Uncle (Yoshisada Sakaguchi), but Momo is often left alone while her mother works and she finds it hard to settle into her new surroundings.

Alienating her further, Momo feels put out when she is accused of a spate of thefts from nearby orchards and houses. But she discovers the culprits by accident when some odd happenings around the house culminate in her leg being licked and Momo makes the acquaintance of three spirits: Iwa (Toshiyuki Nishida), who is something of a giant; Kawa (Koichi Yamadera), who has an amphibian look; and Mame (Cho), who could easily be mistaken for an overgrown baby.

Momo learns that the trio were once goblins and have been sent to watch over her and Ikuko until Kazuo's soul reaches heaven and can assume responsibility for them. However, they are much more mischievous than solicitous and, even though only she can see them, Momo has a full-time job keeping them under control. But her new friends prove their value when Momo's mother falls dangerously ill and the island is lashed by a fierce storm.

Everything about this picture is delightful, from the traditional wooden buildings and religious shrines on the island to the interiors of the family home and the pages of the antiquated book that Momo unearths in the attic. The smallest detail is pitch perfect and the human movement feels as though it has been rotoscoped. But, while Okiura conjures up a magical world, it is nowhere near as twee as the Ghibliverse and, as a consequence, this is more likely to appeal to arthouse rather than genre audiences. Iwa, Kawa and Mame threaten to steal the show, but there is nothing cutesome about them and the real poignancy comes when Momo reflects on what her father might have wanted to say to her and when she rises to the occasion to nurse her mother. Rarely has coming of age been captured with such awkward honesty and such sincere care.

Coming four years after Constance A. Marks profiled Sesame Street puppeteer Kevin Clash in Being Elmo (2011), directors Dave LaMattina and Chad N. Walker chronicle the career of his great rival Caroll Spinney in I Am Big Bird. The fact that there is no mention of Clash by name suggests that the 81 year-old Spinney is not over the fact that Elmo supplanted Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch as the most-loved characters on the PBS children's show that was first broadcast in 1969. However, mention of any personal or professional animosity would not sit well with this hagiographic biopic that presents Big Bird as an extension of Spinney's own personality, while hinting that there might also be just a tad of Oscar in there, too.

Having struggled to gain the affection of his father, Chester, Caroll Spinney turned to puppetry for solace buying a puppet at a rummage sale. He was bullied at school and accused of being homosexual. Thus, as soon as he was old enough, he left his mother Margaret in Boston and joined the US Air Force, where he started drawing a comic-strip about military life entitled `Harvey'. He also animated a series of short monochrome cartoons about a character called Crazy Crayon. But, following a stint in The Rascal Rabbit Show in Las Vegas, he returned to Boston and struck up a partnership with Judy Valentine in the knockabout kids' series, The Judy and Goggle Show. She recalls their partnership with great affection, while he reminisces about his time as Mr Lion in Bozo's Big Top, which gave him the opportunity to show off his drawing skills with characters like Picklepuss and his gift for charming younger viewers.

But it was less Spinney's talent than a stroke of good luck that transformed his fortunes. Towards the end of the 1960s, he attended a puppetry convention to give an elaborate show involving projected images, live actors and puppets. However, a bright spotlight ruined the performance and Spinney was set to leave in some dismay when Jim Henson, the famed creator of the Muppets, congratulated him on his concept and asked if he would like to come to New York and work on his new show, Sesame Street.

Despite being part of the launch team, Spinney found the big city an alien environment and the breakdown of his marriage convinced him to tender his resignation. However, Kermit Love persuaded him to reconsider and, with Henson taking him under his wing, Spinney started to flourish and Big Bird and the garbage can-dwelling Oscar quickly became firm favourites with the pre-school audience. Puppeteers Frank Oz and Jerry Nelson and regular presenters Bob McGrath and Emilio Delgado testify to his appeal to young and old alike, while also stressing how much of himself Spinney put into every performance.

As Big Bird became a national treasure, Spinney found himself touring China with Bob Hope for a 1979 TV special and he and returned four years later to make Big Bird in China, with ace Sesame Street director Jon Stone. For some reason, the rapport between the two men broke down during the stressful shoot and Spinney and new wife Debra Jean Gilroy (whom he asked out on three separate occasions before she agreed to a date) were grateful to forge a close bond with Lianzi Ouyang, who played the little girl who helps Big Bird track down the legendary Feng Huang phoenix.

Spinney and Debra are reunited with Lianzi for the first time in 30 years towards the end of the picture, by which time he has become increasingly dependent upon protégé Matt Vogel, who often dons the giant yellow bird costume when Spinney is otherwise engaged or feeling a little jaded. This represents a considerable act of trust on Spinney's behalf, as he has barely let Big Bird out of his sight since it was vandalised by students during a campus tour.

A fascinating segment reveals how Spinney navigates his way around the set via a mini-monitor fitted inside the casing, to which he also attaches the lines he delivers while operating the creature's mouth and left wing. It looks exhausting work and it is hardly surprising that he has allowed a younger man to share the burden. However, Spinney still picks his gigs and when Mitt Romney threatened to cut the government funding to PBS, he was in the suit when Sesame Street bit back on Saturday Night Live.

In many ways, Spinney is lucky to be alive, as he was chosen to fly on the Challenger shuttle mission in January 1986 to try and get children interested in the space programme. However, the size of Big Bird's costume and the difficulty of operating it in zero gravity led to teacher Christa McAuliffe taking his place on the ill-fated flight. But, while Spinney dodged death, Jim Henson passed away unexpectedly in 1990 and he was devastated by the loss of his mentor. Daughters Jane and Cheryl Henson recall how everyone in the Muppet family rallied around to help them cope, with Spinney's own children, Melissa, Jessica and Ben doing their bit after their father delivered a moving rendition of `It Ain't Easy Being Green' at the memorial service.

This trauma also led to a rapprochement with Chester, at around the time that Elmo began to steal the limelight on Sesame Street. He had headlined Ken Kwapis's movie, Follow That Bird (1985), and remained a key figure. But presenters Sonia Monzano and Loretta Long accept that Spinney would have felt more than a little hurt at being pushed down the pecking order when the tone of the show changed to suit toddlers and they took the cutesome Elmo to their hearts rather than Big Bird. Yet, Spinney remained loyal to his character and Henson's legacy, even though he took time off periodically to work on his own graphic projects.

In December 2005, jogger Judith Nilan was found murdered in the grounds of Spinney's Woodstock home and the story made headlines because the killer, Scott Deojay, had recently been employed as a casual worker on the estate. Although sister Barbara Donovan recognised that the Spinneys could not be held responsible for hiring Deojay, husband Jon Baker too a little longer to accept the situation. But he has since become close friends with Spinney and regularly visits the memorial garden that he and Debra planted in his wife's honour.

This gesture sums up the man and LaMattina and Walker delight in painting him as a genial, gentle man whose pure heart has enabled him to enchant small people for 45 years. However, no one gets to remain at the top in show business for that long without a bit of nous and a great deal of ambition. But, if this is a somewhat sugar-coated tribute, it's an easily digestible one that makes expert use of home-movie and television footage to avoid an over-reliance on gushing talking heads. A touch more on Oscar might not have gone amiss, as there is only so much sweetness and light an audience can take.

There are those who place Elliott Smith alongside Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley in a tragic musical trinity. The very existence of the 27 Club, confirms that the annals of rock music are filled with talents who were so tormented by their inner demons that they were taken before their time. But Drake (26), Buckley (30) and Smith (34) were the wrong age to achieve such premature immortality and the latter's admirers will be glad to see his legacy honoured in a fulsome and sensitive way in Nickolas Rossi's documentary, Heaven Adores You. But those hoping to learn a little more about the man, his music and the melancholia that led to him taking his own life with two stab wounds will be more than a little frustrated by the superficiality of a chronicle that is otherwise packed with photos, interviews and gig and TV clips, as well as snippets from a remarkable songbook.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska in August 1969, Steven Paul Smith was raised in Dallas, Texas with his younger sister, Ashley. He endured a torrid time at the hands of his stepfather, Charlie Welch, but started playing the piano at the age of nine and began composing epic pop songs with his pal Steven `Pickle' Pickering, who revives some of them on screen with evident pride. However, Smith refused to remain under his mother's roof and, when he was 14, he moved to Portland, Oregon to live with his father, Gary. Here he formed the high school bands Stranger Than Fiction and A Murder of Crows and it is intriguing to hear how songs dating back to this period gradually evolved into numbers that were recorded for Smith's solo albums.

In 1991, Smith formed the post-punk band Heatmiser with college friend Neil Gust and three albums followed over the next two years. Yet, despite the combo being managed by his girlfriend, JJ Gonson, Smith had to keep doing odd jobs around Portland to make ends meet. Therefore, he decided to go solo on the advice of new manager Margaret Mittleman and played intimate gigs in small venues following the release of Roman Candle (1994) and Elliott Smith (1995). But, much to his dismay, his star started to rise with the acclaim for Either/Or (1996) and Smith was invited by Gus Van Sant to contribute to the soundtrack of Good Will Hunting (1997).

The majority of the talking-heads Rossi tracked down for his film consider the night Smith performed the Oscar-nominated `Miss Misery' at the Academy Award ceremony as the worst night of his life. Smith once confided to Dutch television that `I'm the wrong kind of person to be…really big and famous,' and he plunged into a potentially suicidal depression shortly after signing a lucrative contract with DreamWorks. Moreover, the pressures of playing live to promote XO (1998) and he became increasingly dependent on drink and drugs to function.

Having recorded a cover version of `Because' for the soundtrack of Sam Mendes's American Beauty (1999), Smith insisted on recording Figure 8 at the Abbey Road studios in London. The Beatle influence was pronounced. But this turned out to be the last album released in Smith's lifetime. Increasingly paranoid, recording sessions with Rob Schnapf and Jon Brion came to nothing and Smith started forgetting the words to his own songs on stage. He also began to cut shows short and fell out with Mittleman, who had tried to protect him from the worst slings and arrows.

Convinced that DreamWorks executives were persecuting him, Smith threatened to kill himself unless he was released from his contract. Thus, it was somewhat tactless to use his recording of `Needle in the Hay' for the suicide scene in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). But he was too unstable to record a cover of `Hey Jude' for the soundtrack and agreed to give rehab another try. He recovered sufficiently to play a couple of well-received gigs and laid down tracks that would eventually form From a Basement on a Hill (2004). But he was also arrested following a brawl outside a Los Angeles concert hall and, on 21 December 2003 in Echo Park, California, he stabbed himself twice in the chest following a heated argument with girlfriend, Jennifer Chiba.

The official autopsy refused to rule out homicide and the case remains open. Smith was cremated to prevent fans from turning his grave into a shrine and ex-lover Joanna Bolme agreed to help mix his last recordings. Smith had written the song `Say Yes' and she reveals here that, while the lyrics suggest a certain tenderness, they also cut deep and several other interviewees allude to the fact that Smith often used his music to get back at people who had disappointed him. But, rather than dwell on such darker aspects of a clearly troubled psyche, Rossi prefers to push the `tormented genius' angle and, in the process, does Smith something of a disservice.

Financed through Kickstarter, this is evidently a labour of love and Rossi merits praise for finding so many old friends, bandmates, lovers, managers and producers to share their reminiscences. But, while some wax about Smith's distinctive singing and guitar-playing styles and others search his lyrics for clues about his inner life, it soon transpires that no one knew Smith particularly well and that he could turn on people for seemingly minor infractions. A few more revelations of this kind might not have gone amiss, as would a deeper investigation into his last days. However, there is enough here to prompt viewers to (re)visit Smith's music and that surely has to be the most ringing endorsement of any rockumentary.

Finally, Stéphanie Argerich takes a very different approach to biography in Argerich, a portrait of her mother that took two years to compile and which not only explores the stellar career of Argentinian concert pianist Martha Argerich, but also provides some fascinating insights into her attitude to parenting and her relationship with the daughters she bore to three different fathers. Often resembling a glorified home movie, this may not be the most technically assured film and it should be noted that it has taken three years to find a UK distributor. But Stéphanie makes adroit use of the archival material and gives her mother plenty of latitude to speak her mind and betray a few confidences that she might have been better advised to keep to herself.

As the documentary opens, Martha declares that daughters alone are worthwhile just as Stéphanie is about to give birth to a son. It's a typically tactless piece of candour that makes Martha a riveting, if hardly sympathetic subject. Yet, no matter how forthright she is, Stéphanie and half-sisters Lyda Chen and Annie Dutoit continue to adore her with a loyalty that is all the more remarkable bearing in mind how callously she has treated all three of them over the years.

Lyda was born in Geneva in 1964 during the 22 year-old Martha's romance with Chinese conductor Robert Chen. However, her mentally unstable mother, Juanita, kidnapped the infant from her nursery and Martha was faced with the prospect of Juanita being jailed unless she consented to her having custody because her work schedule made it too difficult to care for her child. As it was, Lyda spent years in foster homes, but still inherited the talent that has enabled her to become a renowned viola player.

On divorcing Chen, Martha married the Swiss conductor Charles Dutoit in 1969. However, they parted four years later and Martha had an affair with the American pianist Stephen Kovacevich that had already ended by the time Stéphanie was born in Bern in 1975. Anne-Catherine was born in the same city later the same year after Martha and Dutoit reunited and the two girls grew up together in London and Geneva. Ultimately, Stéphanie would complete her education in Moscow and Annie in Pune. But they rarely felt their mother was proud of their achievements, as she was always focusing on her own career.

At one point, Martha plays Stéphanie one of her bestselling albums and complains that she lacked energy during the recording sessions because the child she was carrying was such an enervating presence. Aware that she was the foetus in question, Stéphanie rolls with Martha's lament that she felt like a fat housewife rather than a great artist as she sat at the keyboard. Yet Stéphanie still helps her mother prepare for important concerts in Poland and Japan and shrugs at the memory of the childhood fear that she would be abandoned during their frequent train trips across Europe when Martha disembarked to smoke on the platform.

But, while acknowledging that Martha has a tendency to revel in her status as a grande dame, Stéphanie also accepts that she had a tough upbringing herself. A child prodigy, she could pick out tunes on the piano at the age of three and gave her first public concert just six years later. At 12, she was presented with a scholarship to study in Vienna by President Juan Perón and she soon became famous for her innovative interpretation of Chopin. But, although her artistic reputation grew, Martha remained emotionally immature and Stéphanie suggests that her lack of self-confidence contributed to her predilection for being a monstrous diva.

In seeking to understand her mother and her views on juggling pregnancy and motherhood with the need to create and the trappings of stardom, Stéphanie returns to Argentina to trawls through the photographs and souvenirs her grandfather has amassed. She also goes to see her beloved father (who also performed under the names Stephen Bishop and Stephen Bishop-Kovacevich) in the hope that he will finally legally recognise her as his daughter. But only Lyda and Annie seem to grasp the kind of confessional material their sister needs for her film and, as a result, this always feels like a frustrating patchwork, as Martha refuses to contemplate in any detail her battle with cancer or her feelings for her children. She opens up a little more during her 70th birthday celebrations. But, despite the understandably respectful efforts of her `bloody daughter', she remains an enigma and one is left with the impression that Stéphanie needed to make this film more to resolve her own filial issues than to pay tribute to a wayward genius.