Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 27/8/2015)

The waspish New Yorker critic Pauline Kael once dubbed this austere drama `Some Like It Cold'. But the concluding part of the `alienation' trilogy that started with L'avventura and La notte (1961) was never likely to be a study in emotional warmth. At a time when the nouvelle vague was romanticising Paris, Antonioni was intent on showing that even a city as eternally vibrant as Rome could dehumanise inhabitants with seemingly everything to live for. Consequently, the setting becomes as important a character as Vitti's commitment-shy translator and Alain Delon's suave stockbroker, as Antonioni packs scenes of frantic activity or intense contemplation with a symbolic significance that makes the isolation imposed by modernity all the more tragic.

As dawn breaks on a July morning, Francisco Rabal pleads with younger lover Monica Vitti not to leave him, as alone knows how to make her happy. She insists she no longer loves him and turns out the lights in his apartment before heading out into the EUR residential district to the south of Rome. He chases after her through the deserted streets and escorts her home. But Vitti is not to be swayed and their goodbye outside her building will be their last.

Vitti seeks out her mother, Lilla Brignone, at the Stock Exchange. She wants to tell her about her break-up, but Brignone is more interested in the fact that her dashing stockbroker, Alain Delon, has made a tidy profit on some shares he bought as a result of eavesdropping. Suddenly, the Borsa falls silent, as a tannoy announcer calls for a minute's silence to commemorate the passing of a colleague. Telephones continue to ring and they are answered with alacrity the moment the mark of respect is over.

Vitti tries to tell Brignone about her love life as they walk to a nearby food market, but she is too excited by her windfall to pay much attention. Consequenly, Vitti tries again that evening when neighbour Rosanna Rory pops in for a chat. However, she calls Mirella Ricciardi in an adjoining building and they decamp to her place. As she has recently returned from the farm she has bought in Kenya, Ricciardi shows off some of the artefacts she has brought home. She disapproves peevishly as Vitti blackens her face and cavorts around the room wielding a spear in an African dance. Yet, when the conversation turns to the white minority being imperilled by the campaign for independence, Ricciardi turns out to be a colonialist bigot, who compares the Kenyans to monkeys who should not be armed at any cost.

Grateful for the chance to slip away, Vitti and Rory go searching for Ricciardi's runaway dog. Yet, while she enjoys being free in the night air, Vitti finds herself having to skulk in a corner when Rabal loiters beneath her window. She is further confined the following morning, when she and Rory take a plane to Verona. However, she is fascinated by the cloud formations and happily watches flights taking off from the tiny airfield and the people relaxing on the patio outside the refreshments bar.

While she can be anonymous at the aerodrome, Vitti is conspicuously out of place on the floor of the Borsa some weeks later, where Brignone is lamenting the loss of 10 million lira. Vitti follows a stranger who has lost five times as much and is taken aback when he calmly orders a mineral water in a backstreet café and starts doodling flowers on a scrap of paper. Her reverie doesn't last long, however, as Delon drives her home in his flashy Alfa Romeo sports car and makes a pass at her as she shows him some family photos.

Undaunted by her rejection, Delon returns to his office to let his workmates know about the mini-crash. He seeks solace with his favourite prostitute, but decides not to sleep with her, as she has dyed her blonde hair. Instead, he calls on Vitti, who is busy translating a text for work. Delon stands beneath her window and is distracted by a passing drunk, who proceeds to steal his car. The following morning, Vitti accompanies Delon to see the vehicle being fished out of a lake. But, rather than showing any concern for the fate of the thief, Delon frets about the damage to his paintwork.

They take a stroll in the park before returning to Vitti's building. She unties a balloon and calls out to Ricciardi to take a pot shot at it from her balcony. Delon impulsively kisses Vitti, but she barely responds. She drops a piece of wood into a water butt outside an unfinished building and it is still there the next morning, after she had spent the evening trying to phone Delon and then not having the courage to speak to him when she finally gets through.

When they next meet, Delon boasts that he has bought BMW and Vitti asks to see where he lives. He shows her the apartment his parents have stuffed with paintings and statues. But this makes her feel even more uncomfortable and she suggests it's never a good thing to know prospective romantic partners too well. Delon teases her by pouting through a glass panel and she succumbs to a passionate embrace. However, she tears her dress and seeks sanctuary in the bedroom, where she is looking at family photos and watching people in the street below when Delon comes to find her and finally succeeds in seducing her.

As they lie on a hill together, Delon confides that he feels like he is in a foreign country. Vitti confesses that she wishes she was either besotted with or indifferent to him, as she doesn't like feeling somewhere in between. Delon is stung by her ability to resist him. He shows her his office and they fall off the sofa while smooching. An alarm goes off and they promise to meet near her apartment at 8pm. But, while two people who look like Vitti and Delon pass by, they fail to keep the rendezvous and Antonioni lets the camera linger on buses, passengers and pedestrians before ending the picture on a close-up of a streetlight.

It takes artistic courage to make a film about tedium. Federico Fellini had failed to do so in La dolce vita (1960), as he couldn't resist making the ennui he was satirising seem so fascinating. But Antonioni is more disciplined, as the precise formalism of the opening sequence demonstrates. The juxtaposition of figure and prop is almost fanatically meticulous, with both the shifts in perspective and the contrasts between Vitti and Rabal and the décor being used to reflect the state of their relationship.

Yet, if Antonioni's style occasionally borders on abstraction, his motifs to suggest the breakdown of communication couldn't be clearer, as he utilises architecture to keep his characters apart. Moreover, he frequently films them through doors, hallways, gates, fences and windows. But his master stroke is the non-ending, in which Gianni Di Venanzo photographs people, places and things associated with Vitti and Delon and their designated meeting place before ending this allusional montage with a close-up of a street lamp, as if to suggest that artificiality has eclipsed what was once real. It's a deliberately ambiguous ending, as Antonioni shatters our passivity and forces us to speculate on the couple's future.

Another relationship is left hanging in the balance in Andrew Haigh's 45 Years, an adaptation of the David Constantine short story, `In Another Country', which has been co-scripted by the author to shift the context from the Second World War to the early 1960s. This subtle tweak allows Haigh to exploit the cinematic backstories of his stars, who were key players in the emergence of the social realist strain that has continued to dominate British film-making ever since. However, while this is thoughtful drama is set in Norfolk, it contains echoes of François Ozon's oeuvre that are reinforced by the fact that this is Haigh's first feature on a non-gay theme after Greek Pete (2009) and Weekend (2011).

As retired couple Kate (Charlotte Rampling) and Geoff (Tom Courtenay) prepare for a party to mark their 45th wedding anniversary, a letter arrives at their cosy Norfolk home. Sitting at the kitchen table, Geoff learns from the Swiss authorities that the body of his fiancée, Katya, has been found in a melting glacier. She fell to her death on a walking tour of the Alps in 1962 and, even though the tragedy occurred before they knew each other, Kate is dismayed to discover that her husband was listed as Katya's next of kin. She tries not to betray her feelings, but it's clear from the fact that Geoff starts smoking again that the news has had a profound effect upon him.

He starts playing music dating back to the period and revisits some books he associates with his old flame. But he reassures Kate that he is fine and, following a few glasses of wine and a dance to their tune, Lloyd Price's `Stagger Lee', they even attempt to make love for what is clearly the first time in a while. Although it doesn't quite go according plan, the moment reveals the intimacy between the childless couple, who have been together long enough to communicate without words. Yet, shortly afterwards, Kate hears Geoff scrambling around in the attic and is sceptical when called upon to bandage his injured hand that he cut himself repairing the long-broken ballcock in the lavatory.

Kate browbeats Geoff into lunching with some former work colleagues and ventures into the attic to find an old slide projector. She feels haunted by Katya, as she gazes at the expression of happiness on her face and her growing sense of jealousy and betrayal is exacerbated by the discovery that Geoff has been in contact with a travel agency in Norwich to enquire about flights to Switzerland, so he can formally identify the perfectly preserved corpse. Yet, rather than confronting Geoff about her feelings, Kate allows them to fester. Consequently, when Geoff starts crying while making a speech at their party, she looks on with embittered scepticism.

Rampling and Courtenay took the acting honours at the Berlin Film Festival for their performances in this deftly layered chamber drama, which invokes the spirit of both Ingmar Bergman and Joanna Hogg. Good though Courtenay is, however, the focus falls firmly on Rampling, who feels as though the ground has opened up beneath her after negotiating a tricky path for 45 years. She has long sensed she is on borrowed time with her spouse after his bypass surgery caused them to cancel their 40th anniversary celebration. But, rather than supporting Courtenay through the psychological trauma of being confronted with long-suppressed emotions, Rampling resents the fact they are taking precedence when he is supposed to be assessing his feelings for her and counting his blessings for their life together.

Haigh devotes much time to shots of Rampling walking alone through the flat Norfolk Broads with her dog, as the sights and sounds of the landscape so meticulously captured by cinematographer Lol Crawley and sound designer Joakim Sundström reflect her lowering mood. She had always known about the woman who had died several years before their wedding. But the fact that Courtenay had never told her they were engaged sets Rampling thinking about the other things he might have withheld from her over the decades. The silences only make her ruminations more sombre and enervating, although the emphasis on Rampling's reaction means that the audience never quite gets to know what is going on in Courtenay's mind. Is he simply reliving his youth or is he guiltily aware that Rampling has never really been his soulmate and that their ability to muddle along has been something of a consolation prize for losing his great love?

At one point, Rampling informs Courtenay that she was going to buy him a watch to mark the occasion, but he says he likes not knowing the time. Yet the discovery in the Alps cruelly reminds him of both his lost youth and the fact that his own demise is getting inexorably closer. Thus, there is an inevitable element of self-pity, as well as genuine gratitude and affection, in the speech that Rampling listens to with a rising sense of incredulity and revulsion. But, despite the scornful expression on her face, it also seems likely that she will never directly confront Courtenay over the matter and that she will continue to torment herself with doubt and envy, because they have stuck it out this long and she has no desire to start again this late in life.

Making similarly evocative use of the Breton countryside, Denis Dercourt's En Équilibre is also essentially a two-hander. Inspired by the experiences of French Paralympian Bernard Sachsé, this marks something of a return to form after Dercourt followed his admired psychological drama, The Page Turner (2007), with the disappointing trio of Tomorrow at Dawn (2009), La Chair de ma chair and A Pact (both 2013). The storyline is rather slender and conventional and could easily have seemed melodramatic had it not been rooted in fact. By the same token, the digs at the soulless nature of the financial sector could have felt superficially trite. But Dercourt concentrates on fundamental truths with unforced acuity and, as a consequence, delivers a satisfying picture of deceptive charm.

Confined to a wheelchair after a battlefield sequence on an historical saga went wrong, stunt rider Albert Dupontel refuses the offer of €250,000 compensation offer made by the German film company that had hired him. However, as insurance adjuster Cécile de France points out, any delay in settling his claim will leave him with debts that could compromise the disabled access conversion of his farmhouse. Her advice is not entirely impartial, however, as boss Philippe Duclos is keen to avoid paying out and is leaning on De France to find out whether Dupontel was in some way culpable for his accident.

Grumpily rejecting all offers of help from agent Marie Bäumer, Dupontel tries to keep his stable going with the aid of groom Antonin Gabrielli. However, his beloved horse, Othello, is showing signs of nervousness around him and Dupontel knows it will take considerable psychological courage, as well as physical exertion if he is ever to ride again. He coerces De France into sitting on Othello in his training ring and she overcomes her misgivings to enjoy the feeling of trying something new. Indeed, she is inspired by Dupontel's churlish determination to dig out the piece she played at her failed audition to become a classical pianist and is sufficiently pleased with her performance to ask old teacher Bruno Monsaingeon if she still has talent.

De France has two children with husband Patrick Mille and seems to have nice life. But she feels drawn to Dupontel and is frustrated when she is taken off the case and replaced by the more aggressive Vincent Furic, who tries to sell Othello in order to improve Dupontel's cash flow. The quick thinking Gabrielli hides the horse so it cannot be seized and De France visits Dupontel to warn him that Duclos is trying to entrap him. Moreover, she puts him in touch with old college pal Carole Franck, who asks if De France recorded any of their conversations, as she would be able to use any leading questions to expose coercive malpractice.

Feeling more loyalty towards Dupontel than her company, De France offers to give him her phone so he can use the transcript in prosecuting Duclos. But he is more interested in her and they sleep together after De France comes to the farmhouse in the middle of the night and they spend an idyllic day together. However, Dupontel feels a pang of guilt when he buys a quad bike from Mille and accepts her offer of the evidence to win his case. Rising to the challenge, Dupontel hauls himself on to Othello's back and begins riding him with growing confidence. A year later, De France comes home to see Dupontel riding in a dressage competition and she slips away to play her favourite Liszt étude down the phone, as she always told him that she was better at expressing her feelings through music than words.

Beautifully photographed by Julien Hirsch and effectively played by Dupontel and De France (who respectively spent months mastering stunt riding and playing the piano), this may offer few narrative surprises, but it approaches the theme of passion in a gratifyingly adult manner. There is something capricious about De France's sudden bout of discontent with her lot, while it is never quite explained why Dupontel turns down offers of work in order to keep wallowing in self-pity. Lacking the cutting restraint of Laurent Cantet and Christian Petzold's dissections of workplace etiquette, the depiction of Duclos and Furic as schemingly avaricious suits borders on lazy caricature and the ease with which De France sacrifices her career to strike back at the soulless corporate machine is wholly unpersuasive. But the sequence in which the unsuspecting Mille delivers the quad bike to Dupontel is as neatly handled as the growing recognition between De France and Dupontel that they will only be able to get on with their lives once they have surrendered to their need for escape and reassurance.

Coming to terms with is a life-changing occurrence also a key theme of Hans Herbots's The Treatment, an adaptation of a crime thriller by Mo Hayder that transfers the action from South London to Antwerp in order to play on the ramifications of the Marc Dutroux affair that continues to haunt Belgians some two decades after the event. Given that Herbots and screenwriter Carl Joos worked on the Spiral television series, it is hardly surprising that this police procedural is couched in Nordic noir terms. But, by playing on the trauma that has haunted the investigating detective since childhood, the unflinchingly grim action strays into vigilante territory and, as consequence, becomes a touch formulaic.

Ever since his nine year-old brother Bjorn went missing when they were playing cowboys and Indians down by the railway line, Flemish cop Nick Cafmeyer (Geert Van Rampelberg) had blamed himself. There was never enough evidence to convict prime suspect Ivan Plettnickx (Johan van Assche), whose lives next door to the house Cafmeyer can't bring himself to leave just in case his brother is still alive. Partner Danni Petit (Ina Geerts) is worried, therefore, when they are called to the address where Alex Simons (Tobo Vandenborre) and his wife, Cindy (Brit Vam Hoof), have been held for three days by an intruder who daubed their walls with slogans written in paint diluted with urine before absconding with their eight year-old son, Robin (Stan Puynen).

When Cafmeyer is finally able to interview the parents, they provide very different accounts of what befell them. Cindy recalls flashbulbs going off and hearing Robin screaming, while Alex insists he remembers little, as he was unconscious for much of the ordeal. Meanwhile, across the city, Hans Vankerkhove (Roel Swanenberg) is settling into a new flat with his wife, Steffi (Laura Verlinden), and their young son, Joff (Kyan Steverlynck). However, before they can go away for a few days, they are taken hostage, with Steffi being handcuffed to a pipe in one room, while Hans and Joff are kept together by the interloper, who shows no mercy to the family dog when it manages to escape from a cupboard.

Having encountered Chris Gommaer (Michael Vergauwen), Roland Claeren (Dominique Van Malder) and Bela Nercessian (Patrizia Berti), while making inquiries, Cafmeyer is urged by a small child to keep a look out for the troll who menaces kids. Shortly afterwards, Robin's body is found up a tree in nearby woodland and the autopsy reveals numerous bite marks, as well as signs of sexual abuse. The DNA report reveals that Alex sodomised his own son, but the bite marks don't match his dental records.

As he tries to put the pieces together, Cafmeyer gets the latest in a long series of taunting messages from Plettnickx suggesting possible fates that Bjorn might have suffered. Convinced the old man knows more than he is letting on, Cafmeyer breaks into his house under cover of darkness and finds a letter confirming a terminal cancer diagnosis on the kitchen table. Venturing into the next room by torchlight, he discovers Plettnickx in the process of hanging himself. He asks about paedophiles who bite their victims and is mocked for being more concerned about the current case when he should be asking about his brother.

Leaving Plettnickx to die, Cafmeyer searches his premises for clues and unearths a stash of child pornography in a secret store by the train track. As he watches the films, a registration plate leads him to the caravan occupied by Nancy Lammers (Ingrid De Vos), whose brother was an associate of Plettnickx. She insists that she knows nothing about a ring involved in kidnapping and violating children. But she prevents Cafmeyer from learning that she cares for a brain-damaged man-child (Roy Aernouts), who is excited at dressing up as an Indian when she tells him that it is no longer safe for her to stay and look after him.

By now, Cafmeyer and Petit have realised that Alex was forced to rape his son at knifepoint. Moreover, they have also discovered that Gommaer is a swimming teacher who was forced to endure the same nightmare. But Cafmeyer is too engrossed with tracking down the perpetrator to follow up the tangential leads and, consequently, Lammers's hapless charges remains bound inside the caravan after she absconds. However, Cafmeyer does find Claeren's lair and his collection of articles about impotence being caused by an excess of female hormones in the environment. He also liberates the imprisoned family and prevents Claerens from getting away with Joff before chasing him across wasteland abutting the railway line.

As the picture ends, Cafmeyer tells Petit that he is finally going to sell the house. Yet he has not worked out the connections that would have enabled him to be reunited with the brother who had seemingly been given to Lammers almost as a pet after he had been psychologically scarred by his tribulations. This aspect of the plot is unpersuasively integrated and feels akin to a superfluous MacGuffin, even though it makes the case deeply personal for the hero. One suspects that it might have worked better if Herbots and Joos has opted to make a mini-series rather than a feature, as, even at 130 minutes, this often feels rushed.

Thanks to cinematographer Frank Van Den Eeden and production designer Johann Van Essche, Herbots is able to sustain the disconcertingly sinister Se7en-style atmosphere. But, by placing the narrative emphasis so firmly on Van Rampelberg's conflicted detection and Verlinden's despairing efforts to free herself and make contact with her loved ones, the revelation that the culprit is a peripheral character comes as something of an anti-climax. However, the understandable wish to avoid lapsing into full-blown horror and the need to avoid the ire of the censor means that Herbots and Joos have gone as close to the taboo line as it is possible to go and they should be commended for presenting this gruesome material with such engrossing restraint.

At times, The Treatment bears a tonal similarity to Jonas Govaerts's Cub. But, despite what the title might suggest, this Belgian shocker has nothing in common with Crystal Moselle's documentary debut, The Wolfpack. There are moments, however, when one watches aghast as the secrets of a bizarre New York family are broached in a study that is half anthropology and half exploitation. Only a fraction of the truth emerges here. Indeed, the press notes are more revealing than the film when it comes to biography and methodology. But this curious actuality exerts a disconcerting fascination that suggests a sequel is almost an inevitability.

Peruvian Oscar Angulo met his Mid-Western wife Susanne on the hippie trail at Machu Picchu. They roamed the planet for a while before starting a family at the Krishna Centre in West Virginia. In addition to their daughter, Visnu (who has Turner's Syndrome and plays little part in the film), the couple also welcomed Bhagavan and twins Govinda and Narayana before settling in a City Housing Authority apartment on Delancey Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1996. Three more children (all bearing Sanskrit names) were born here. But, while Mukunda, Krisna and Jagadesh's siblings had enjoyed a measure of freedom in their previous domiciles, the septet were confined to quarters and home-schooled on benefits by Susanne and fed a steady diet of Hollywood movies by Oscar, who appears to have developed a reluctance to work and a predilection for imposing his will on his wife and children.

When Moselle encountered the handsome, long-haired lads on First Avenue, they were enjoying a rare sojourn in the wider world and she secured their parents' permission to spend the next five years filming the family. Accounts of this first meeting differ and have sparked rumours that this entire picture is a hoax. But all documentaries are the result of conscious collaboration to one degree or another and, if this one feels no more calculatingly contrived than other intimate portraits like Albert and David Maysles's Grey Gardens (1975), Jean-Pierre Gorin's Poto and Cabengo (1980), Andrew Jarecki's Capturing the Friedmans (2003) and Jeremy Coon and Tim Skousen's Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (2015).

The latter is particularly relevant, as its chronicle of how Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb reunite to complete their homemade remake of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) mirrors the efforts of the Angulo children to recreate the features that have not only captured their imagination, but also helped shape their personalities and their expectations of real life. Not content with memorising scenes, the boys copied out entire scripts in longhand before typing them out and making their own sets, costumes and props from items lying around the house. Among their favourites are Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men (2007) and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). However, their love of the silver screen (which evidently owes much to Oscar's lack of censorship) has landed them in occasional trouble, as the 20 year-old Mukunda wound up in court-mandated counselling after sneaking out and getting arrested while wearing a Michael `Halloween' Myers hockey mask and a SWAT team was called when the weapons they had fashioned from cardboard and duct tape were mistaken for the real thing.

Moselle must not have been able to believe her luck in stumbling across such a socially distinctive and highly cinematic subject. But, in return for stranger-than-fiction moments like the brothers bopping around to Baltimora's fortuitously emblematic 1985 Europop anthem `Tarzan Boy', one suspects that she must have consented to keeping her distance and not prying too deeply into the manner of the Angulos' upbringing and the relationships between Oscar and his wife and his kids. As a consequence, this has more in common with a reality show like Keeping Up With the Kardashians than it does a serious psychological study.

Moselle is clearly fond of the family and has expressed her delight in being able to help the brothers spread their wings and Suzanne rediscover a suppressed sense of self. Yet she seems to have little idea what story she is trying to tell and what point it is trying to make. Surely it must have dawned on her to ask the more rebellious Mukunda (who winds up with a girlfriend) and Govinda (who has since flown the nest) how the real world compared to the ones they had seen in pictures?

Resisting the temptation to identify the siblings or provide any sort of timescale, Moselle keeps her camera rolling and hopes for the best. Or does she? With more key incidents occurring off screen than on, Moselle's approach raises far more questions than it answers, both on the domestic and documentary levels. Indeed, it compels the viewer to reconsider the ethics of actuality that have been proving problematic ever since Robert Flaherty shaped the truth to suit his own purposes while making Nanook of the North (1922). Moreover, it leaves one wondering why a control freak like Oscar would suddenly allow a stranger into his fortress to expose his flawed parenting and posit a disturbingly darker side to his dysfunctionality.

If Moselle barely scratches the surface, Alan Byron and Mark Sloper almost miss the target altogether in Billy Fury: The Sound of Fury. Intended to be a tribute to the man many consider Britain's foremost rock`n'roller, this is a shoddy cut`n'paste job that has the spots knocked off it by Paul Pierrot's 1998 BBC Omnibus film, Billy Fury: Halfway to Paradise, which packs more information into 50 minutes than Byron and Sloper manage in 85. Byron is no stranger to rockumentaries, having teamed with Ashley Hall on John Lennon: Love Is All You Need (2010) and Wayne Allen on Keep On Burning: The Story of Northern Soul (2012), as well as with Sloper (who is more renowned for videos about superbikes) on Punk ’76 (2013). But, despite corralling a decent talking-head line-up, the pair devote more time to the nascent British rock scene in general than they do to Fury in particular.

Ronald William Wycherley was born in Smithdown Hospital (now Sefton General) to shoemaker Albert Wycherley and his wife Sarah Jane, who was known as Jean. Raised in the Holy Land part of the Dingle, he was educated at St Silas's Infants' School and Wellington Road Secondary Modern, but his youth was blighted by spells in Alder Hey Children's Hospital suffering from rheumatic fever. He started taking piano lessons in 1951, but was more enthusiastic about the guitar that Albert bought him from for his 14th birthday.

In 1955, Ron began working as a tea boy at Ellison's Engineering, but was fired for brandishing a welding gun at a foreman. Albert got him a job as a deckhand on the tugboat, Formby, and he came into contact with the country records the sailors were bringing back from the States. He formed the Formby Sniffle Group and wrote his first song, `Margo (Don't Go)', for Margo King, a workmate at the Joshua Reynolds department store. In May 1958, he recorded six songs at Percy F. Phillips's city centre studio and sent a tape to London impresario, Larry Parnes. He was undeterred by the lack of a reply or his failure to make an impression at a Carroll Levis Discoveries talent show at the Empire. But Jean sent Parnes another letter and Ron was invited to meet him when The Larry Parnes Extravaganza package reached the Essoldo Cinema in Birkenhead on 1 October.

Ron played five songs backstage to Parnes and headliner Marty Wilde. But Parnes made him open the second half of the show with `Margo', `Don't Knock Upon My Door' and `Maybe Tomorrow' and he was hired on the spot. Ignoring the 18 year-old's desire to be called Stean Wade, Parnes dubbed him Billy Fury (after bandleader Billy Cotton and the teenager's shyness) and the success of `Maybe Tomorrow' led to a contract with Decca and his first album, The Sound of Fury (1960).

Fury saw himself as a rocker (with The Silver Beatles auditioning unsuccessfully to become his backing band on a 1960 tour). But Parnes recast him as a balladeer and, in the early 1960s, he had hits with the likes of `Halfway to Paradise', `Jealousy', `When You Say I Love You' and `Because of Love', which he recorded after meeting Elvis Presley on the set of Girls, Girls, Girls (1962). He also appeared regularly on such shows as Oh Boy!, Boy Meets Girls, Thank Your Lucky Stars, Ready, Steady, Go! and Top of the Pops. Yet Fury never reached No.1, even though only Elvis, Cliff Richard and The Beatles had more Top 20 hits during the 60s.

He did prove himself to be a decent actor, however. Having contributed a song to Ted Willis's TV drama, Strictly for the Sparrows, Fury made his feature debut as Billy Universe in Michael Winner's Play It Cool (1962), which also featured Helen Shapiro, Danny Rivers, Shane Fenton and Bobby Vee. But he didn't return to the screen until Kenneth Hume's comedy musical, I've Gotta Horse (1965), and he had to wait another eight years before he was cast alongside David Essex and Ringo Starr in Claude Whatham's classic 50s throwback, That'll Be the Day, in which he performed `A Thousand Stars', `Long Live Rock', `That's All Right Mama' and `What Did I Say' as Stormy Tempest.

Bored with variety shows, summer seasons and pantomimes and with the Top 10 hits drying up after `In Thoughts of You' (1965), Fury began to suffer from illness and depression. Longtime girlfriend Lee Middleton left him for Kenny Everett and a 1969 marriage to Judith Hall proved short-lived. In 1971, he underwent open heart surgery, but succumbed to alcoholism and was declared bankrupt in 1978. He recorded tracks for a comeback in the early 1980s, but The One and Only was released posthumously, as Fury died on 28 January 1983 at the age of 42.

Byron and Sloper are to be commended for supporting Fury's mother and brother, Jean and Albie Wycherley, with such rock contemporaries as Vince Eager, Joe Brown, John Leyton, Clem Cattini, Alvin Stardust and Jimmy Page, as well as Mersey music experts Ray Connolly, Spencer Leigh and Billy Butler, ex-girlfriends Lee Everett and Amanda Barrie, fan club aficionado Chris Eley, flagwaving admirers Lord Puttnam, Len Goodman and Mark Kermode, and recent vintage musicians Boz Boorer, Imelda May and Gavin Stanley. But, from the opening shots of Tom Murphy's statue at Albert Dock on the famous Liverpool waterfront, this is a catalogue of gushing praise and sweeping generalisations rather than in-depth detail and informed analysis.

Having provided only the basic information on Fury's childhood and health problems, Byron and Sloper proceed to discuss at some length the rise of skiffle and the efforts of Larry Parnes to create a stable of singers to give UK teenagers their own icons to rival the American stars who (with the notable exception of Elvis) had all toured the islands in the late 1950s. This would be fine if they then went on to assess Fury's career in the same detail. But they don't. Granted, they explore the innovative nature of The Sound of Fury, but they pay little heed to the 29 Top 40 singles and the impact these had on up-and-coming artists. Not enough is made, either, of the decision to switch from self-penned numbers to Tin Pan Alley ballads and there is no mention whatsoever about the move into films.

We learn a bit about Fury's love of animals and penchant for birdwatching, but no one refers to the Welsh hill farm to which he retreated for much of the 1970s or the operations to insert and then replace a valve in his heart. Worse still, there is only a fleeting allusion to Merseybeat and the groups managed by Brian Epstein that swept the Parnes empire aside. Instead, Byron and Sloper (who appear to have had a meagre budget or very limited access to the archives) cut to footage of Fury's final TV appearance in 1982 and leave the audience to draw their own conclusions why the quiffed Adonis has gone to look so old and thin under a his layers of fake tan. It's great to see Eager and Brown reliving old times and Connolly and Leigh always know their stuff. But a talent of Fury's magnitude deserves a better commemoration than this.

Sadly, the week's final documentary is only marginally more accomplished. Released to coincide with the start of the Rugby World Cup, Building Jerusalem is the latest sporting documentary from James Erskine. However, this account of the transformation of English rugby under Clive Woodward lacks the populist appeal of One Night in Turin (2010), which centred on Bobby Robson's campaign at Italia 90, or the superheroism of From the Ashes (2011), which recalled Ian Botham's achievements against Australia in 1981. Perhaps it's on a par with The Battle of the Sexes (2013), which reflected on the tennis challenge between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, and Pantani: The Accidental Death of a Cyclist (2014), which questioned the legacy of a disgraced Tour de France champion. But it is clearly a marked improvement on Shooting For Socrates, this summer's badly muddled bid to show how the national football team brought Northern Irish Catholics and Protestants together during the 1986 World Cup in Mexico.

English rugby ended the 20th century in a sorry state. The national team performed indifferently at the 1995 and 1999 World Cups, while the power struggle between the club sides and the Rugby Football Union was preventing the game from developing in the way it had in the southern hemisphere. Matters came to a head when some of the leading clubs refused to release players for the 1998 summer tour of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa and the party of second-stringers suffered a series of humiliating defeats on what became known as the `Tour from Hell'.

England regulars Martin Johnson, Jonny Wilkinson and Matt Dawson recall the dispute and their desire to be paid a decent fee for putting their bodies on the line for both club and country. The professional era didn't start particularly smoothly, however, and matter were made no easier when captain Lawrence Dallaglio was caught in a drug-dealing sting by the News of the World in 1999. New national boss Clive Woodward stood by the Wasps man, but the arm band passed to Johnson, who had been leading Leicester to serial domestic honours.

Recognising how impotent Headquarters had been in the scandal, Woodward pushed for change at the top and, in 2001, the RFU combined with the premier clubs to form `England Rugby', which saw the introduction of a pool of elite players and reduced the number of games in which they were expected to play each season. With the clubs suitably compensated, new national boss Clive Woodward could set about implementing the new training strategies that would enable him to fine tune his starting XV physically and psychologically.

Digressing away from the kerfuffle at Twickenham, Erskine traces the rise of a skinny kid called Wilkinson, whose dedication to practice and determination to succeed saw him progress in a short space of time from Farnham Rugby Club to the Newcastle Falcons and an England debut against Scotland in 1998. Undaunted by the batterings he took on the Tour from Hell, Wilkinson established himself as the first-choice fly half with his performances in the Six Nations tournaments of 2000 and 2001. However, his shoulder had been badly injured during a bruising encounter with South Africa in November 2002 and concerns about his fitness would continue to haunt this fearless No.10 for the remainder of his career.

Yet, while Wilkinson's kicking was vital to Woodward's game plan, he had also beefed up the pack and introduced a new brand of pragmatically attacking rugby that saw England installed among the favourites for the 2003 World Cup in Australia after off-season victories over the All Blacks and the Wallabies in their own backyards. Among the fresh initiatives was the appointment of Dr Sherylle Calder, whose expertise in hand-eye co-ordination improved passing skills throughout the squad, while her impromptu lessons in Afrikaans enabled the forwards to crack the Springboks' line-out codes.

With Johnson as a commanding skipper, the team crushed Georgia in the opening group game and saw off the Springboks 25-6 before wobbling against Western Samoa and returning to form against Uruguay. Confidence was high, therefore, when England took on Wales in Brisbane. But the game was much tighter than anyone expected and the 28-17 margin flattered Woodward's men.

A soul-searching session followed, which resulted in an unexpectedly easy victory over France in the semi-final. Awaiting England, however, were the hosts, who had sailed through the tournament and were widely expected to extend an unbeaten record that stretched back to the 1995 World Cup, when Rob Andrew had won the day with a last-minute drop goal. Nobody expected history to repeat itself, but, as the game went into extra time and Wilkinson stood poised behind a rolling maul with the scores at 17-17, few had any doubt what would happen as Dawson snapped back the pass.

Although this is aimed squarely at armchair patriots proudly thrusting out their chests (and bellies) to test the stitching of their wildly overpriced XXL replica shirts, the main interest lies not in the epic struggle played out over 100 minutes on 22 November 2003, but in the months of planning that made it possible. Erskine has little option but to adopt a chronological approach, but he surely doesn't need to keep his lens trained on Johnson, Woodward, Wilkinson and Dawson during their often wordy pieces to camera. What's wrong with running the voices over some match footage or some photo-montages? Few are going to quibble about structure and technique, however. This is simply intended as a curtain-raiser to the main event that kicks off with England against Fiji on 18 September.