Parky at the Pictures (DVD 25/8/2016)

There is charm in abundance in Kenton Hall's debut feature, A Dozen Summers, a breezily loopy peak into the minds of a pair of 12 year-old Leicester twins who just happen to be the director's daughters. Imagine the kind of concerns that once taxed fellow Leicesterite Adrian Mole being viewed through the prism of Spaced and Family Guy and you get a rough idea of the gleeful self-reflexivity of this largely homemade affair. Admittedly, the acting is patchy, while some of the gags falls flat and the mid-section is beset with longueurs. But this is an ambitious, amusing and entirely amiable enterprise that should strike a chord with tweenagers everywhere.

As the action opens, narrator Colin Baker waxes lyrical about the joy of having adventures. But, as the camera follows a brother and sister heading into school, Baker attracts the attention of Maisie and Daisy McCormack (Scarlet and Hero Hall), who accuse him of being a pervert for filming children. When he explains that he is making a movie, the sisters decide to hijack the project and sit on a bench in the playground wondering what form the picture should take. Trading insults, they consider the merits of period melodrama and film noir in cine-literate cutaways that will become a key component of the scenario (along with finger clicks for edit points).

Their deliberations are interrupted by mean girl Jennifer (Holly Jacobson) and her posse, Audrey (Sophiya Sian) and Beth (Yasmin Allen). She sneers that the siblings are so weird they must be lesbians and they counter that there is nothing wrong with being gay, even though Maisie has a crush on Matty (Quenton Nyrienda) and Samuel (David Knight) follows Daisy like a devoted puppy. However, their Canadian mother, Jacqueline (Sarah Warren), is appalled by the accusation and interrupts an art lesson to humiliate Jennifer in front of her classmates.

Maisie and Daisy don't see much of Jacqueline, as she has set her heart on becoming a model (even though she isn't very good at it) and finding her soulmate, as she has realised that she is not right for their Irish novelist father, Henry (Kenton Hall). He desperately wants the girls to think he is cool and does his best to entertain them, while also allowing them to indulge their fantasies. At times, they are embarrassed by his over-zealous efforts (such as dressing as a pirate and playing the accordion for their friends), but they prefer him to Frank (Richard Stephenson Winter), the string vest-wearing father of their pal, Patricia (Demi Lou Allen), who is part of their quartet, along with Etta (Kylie Lee).

This makes it difficult to go to the local shop together, as Gary (Ewen MacIntosh) only allows three schoolchildren in at any one time. But the McCormacks mock his petty restrictions in a robbery reverie that ends explosively, thanks to a shaken fizzy drink can. Such digressions also come in handy when reminiscing about awful encounters with Jacqueline's new beaux (Clifford Hume, Sanjiv Hayre and Michael Smith) and plotting how to find Henry a new girlfriend). But time hangs a little heavily, as Maisie and Daisy meet Tyler (Robert Bilic) in his cavernous modern home and use a billet doux inside a book to bring Henry together with Miss Walters (Tallulah Sheffield), a teacher who finds herself in an Austen-like ménage with two colleagues: Mrs Vargas (Karen Ayre) and Mr Brown (Kieron Attwood). However, the normal bickering order is restored once Daisy and Maisie decide it's tough enough living their own lives without trying to influence anyone else's and the picture closes with a final ticking off for the returning narrator and a promise that there won't be a sequel, because that would be stupid.

Although much credit has to go to Kenton Hall, who wrote and directed the feature (as well as having a hand in its production, editing and music), this jolly jape would be nowhere near as enjoyable without the wonderfully deadpan performances of Hero and Scarlet. Committing wholly to the conceit, they banter with the hiss and fizz of real sisters and often upstage the more experienced grown-ups in the cast. Nothing seems to faze them, whether they are dreaming in animal onesies or debunking a monochrome homage to the chess sequence in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957).

Hall litters the action with similar movie and pop cultural references and some of the jokes may fly over the heads of the target audience. But any accompanying adults will be wreathed in smiles by the time they leave the cinema and some may even be inspired to attempt screenplays for their own kids. However, pulling off an exercise like this in 19 days on a £20,000 budget is not as easy as it looks and Hall (an actor-musician with five shorts to his credit) is ably served by art director Gurdeep Sian and cinematographer and co-editor Geoffrey Gilson. He has already announced a second project that doesn't seem to involve Hero and Scarlet. But, even if they never act again, they will always have the satisfaction of having headlined one of the best British kidpix since the heyday of the Children's Film Foundation.

The other holiday treat is John Henderson's Friday Download: The Movie, which has been spun off from a BAFTA-winning CBBC programme and has been retitled after playing in cinemas as Up All Night. Harking back to the golden age of the Children's Film Foundation or such BBC classics as Here Come the Double Deckers!, this is aimed squarely at tweenage fans of the show. Moreover, the producers have even thrown in a couple of upcoming pop acts in a bid to entice the odd waiverer into the Vue Cinemas, where this Scooby-Dooesque horror romp is showing exclusively. Given the recent standard of British movies for younger audiences, this has to be considered a modest success. The jokes are corny, but they're not terrible (well, not all of them). Similarly, the visual effects are serviceable, if not exactly special. Even the performances are half-decent in a pantomimic kind of way. But this is more likely to amuse fans of the TV series than any grown-ups who happen to be stuck in the room where its playing.

Bursting out of a TV studio to mobbed by fans (that comedian Marcus Brigstocke thought were waiting for him), Dionne Bromfield, Shannon Flynn, Bobby Lockwood, George Sear and Richard Wisker pile into a rickety old van for a road trip. Losing their way, they decide to park for the night in a graveyard, where they encounter the decidedly odd Kevin Eldon, who speaks like a butler and bids them goodnight because he has to bury the contents of a wriggling sack.

Voting to find somewhere else to spend the night, the gang dispatch Lockwood to walk in front of the van to guide Sear through a dense and rapidly descending fog. However, when he nips into the bushes to relieve himself, Sear veers into a ditch and tips the van on its side. Spotting an imposing stately home in the distance, the not so famous five grab their bags and trudge across the parkland. The door is opened by siblings Tyger Drew-Honey and Louisa Connolly-Burnham, who readily invite them to spend the night and explain that they have lived alone since their parents were killed in a car crash in Paris.

As they show the friends to their rooms, Drew-Honey turns on the charm to Flynn, while Connolly-Burnham coyly reassures Wisker that there is plenty of chicken in the fridge. But, after they retire for the night, odd things keen happening to their guests. Bromfield sees a hideous face in the mirror as she removes her make-up, while Sear sees himself on a widescreen television that rises from the floor as he tries to sleep. Wisker is dismayed by the fact that a plateful of chicken disappears from the kitchen table, while Lockwood is dragged under his bed by a canine-type creature and Flynn finds herself trapped in an unending row of identical rooms.

Suitably spooked, they agree to sleep in the van and bid a hasty retreat. When they return to the grounds, however, they find the van a tree and are at a loss to explain how it got there and why it suddenly comes crashing back down to earth. As they ponder, paranormalist Ethan Lawrence appears through the gloom and informs them that the house is haunted and that he has longed to get inside to test for spectral entities. Realising they can't stay in the van, the pals reluctantly return to the manor and are greeted with wry smiles by their hosts, who allow Lawrence to enter, even though Drew-Honey recognises him and nods to him with seething civility.

As no one can get a signal on their phones, Lockwood uses the landline to call the police and PC David Mitchell arrives to treat their tale of vans and trees with scarcely concealed scepticism. Convinced they are wasting his time, he leaves them to spend the night tucked under blankets in the main hall. But Lawrence has waited too long to get inside the mansion and snoops around upstairs before getting himself trapped under a falling bookcase. When he finally wriggles free, he sees letters forming on a dusty mirror urging him to `Stop Them'. But his progress is hindered by the flapping wings of some murderous crows and he is powerless to prevent two trails of coloured smoke speeding along the landing and down the stairs (in a dramatically rendered point-of-view shot) to hover over the slumbering friends.

Lawrence manages to escape into the corridor, but realises he has dropped his notebook and he is met at the door by Drew-Honey, who warns menacingly him to be more careful in future. By the time Lawrence reaches the hall, the questing spirits have departed and Bromfield opens the curtains on a new day to find Angus Barnett on the lawn outside demanding to speak to the occupants. Much to the annoyance of Drew-Honey and Connolly-Burnham, she lets Barnett inside and he serves them with papers detailing that they have to be off the premises by sunset, as they owe him £20,000 and he intends taking possession of the estate and turning it into an eco wonderland.

Naturally, the pals take umbrage at Barnett's hectoring and offer to put on a charity concert to help raise the funds the siblings need. A montage sequence follows in which those not making phone calls are helping build a stage in front of the house and everyone is convinced that Friday Fest is going to be a huge success. Looking on from an upper balcony, Drew-Honey and Connolly-Burnham exchange cryptic remarks, while Lawrence keeps getting himself stuck in dumb waiters with minds of their own that deposit him in unlikely places around the grounds.

All seems to be going to plan as bands start to arrive, among them The Vamps and Bars and Melody. Yet, despite putting fliers up around the area, the sole member of the audience is geek Gavin Lee Lewis. They decides to blitz social media and a flash mob of screaming adolescents bursts out of a fleet of coaches like something from a St Trinian's film. But, as Bromfield kicks off the gig, Drew-Honey and Connolly-Burnham keep a close eye on the appeal barometer that Lockwood is colouring in as buckets pass between the bopping fans for donations.

While everyone else is distracted, Lawrence sneaks back into the house and pushes against a door that disappears the moment he is inside a small room. He sees a photograph of Drew-Honey and Connolly-Burnham's and watches in amazement as the image dissolves into vapour trails that guide him to a crumpled newspaper that reveals that all four members of the family perished in the car crash. Lawrence asks the spirits if Drew-Honey and Connolly-Burnham are ghosts and they nod vigorously and draw his attention towards a book of supernatural lore. The pages flutter open to a passage on the dangers inherent in allowing ghouls to own the places they haunt and Lawrence realises that he has to stop the collection before the target figure is reached.

Taking his chances with another dumb waiter, he is projected through the air and lands in front of the stage just as The Vamps finish their toe-tapping number. Flynn invites Barnett on to the stage to count the takings and he rubs his hands when he discovers they are 50p short. Drew-Honey and Connolly-Burnham exchange worried glances. But, before Lawrence can stop him, Lockwood finds a coin and flips it into the bucket just as the sun goes down.

Suddenly, the siblings are transfigured by striations of light and they seem to grow in terrifying power. The audience lets out its biggest scream of the night. However, Lawrence knows how to tame the pair and uses Twitter to bring every ghost hunter, nerd and thrill-seeker in the vicinity to the manor and, in the process, convinces Drew-Honey and Connolly-Burnham that they would never have a second's peace unless they entrust themselves to the care of their parents. Realising fate has conspired against them, they return to the family photo, which Lawrence claims as a souvenir. Everyone disperses and the quintet realise they have no way of getting home. However, Lewis offers them a lift in his uncle's coach and they gratefully accept, without noticing the sinister red glint in their new friend's eye.

Filmed at Stradey Castle in South Wales, this may not be the slickest or the more original movie ever made. But it passes the time admirably and will be lapped up by its target audience. Henderson directs steadily, but accepts his technical limitations and those of his juvenile cast. Consequently, this has a small-screen feel about it that means it will probably be more widely seen in the various home entertainment formats than in cinemas. There are amusing moments along the way, particularly David Mitchell channelling his inner Graham Chapman to play the copper who just happens to have about his person identification charts for tree species and makes of van. Drew-Honey and Connolly-Burnham do a nice line in glacial ethereality, while Lawrence proves a good slapstick stooge. But only Flynn stands out from the Download troupe, although she has experience of things going bump in the night before in Dani's Castle.

The British summer has always been synonymous with the seaside, but few will feel like taking a day trip to Bournemouth after seeing writer-director Dan Pringle's debut, even though K-Shop has made a bit of screen history by becoming the first feature to have been made entirely in the town. Promoted as a Sweeney Todd-like horror, this is actually a sobering satire on Britain's booze culture that delves beneath the tabloid headlines to hint at the social malaise that drives thousands of men and women across the country to spend their weekends in a state of desperate stupefaction. Body parts might well be hacked off with doner knives and fed into a mincer, but the grimmest scenes Pringle presents are those depicting real-life revellers who were captured staggering, fighting, urinating, copulating and vomiting during guerilla filming expeditions around Dorset's premier resort. And what is so gruesome is that such boorish behaviour has now become the norm across our rapidly splintering nation.

As the residents of an unnamed southern seaside town spill out from the pubs and clubs after another night of debauchery, socio-economics graduate Ziad Abaza comes to visit his hospitalised father. Nayef Rashid came to the UK after surviving a chemical weapons attack on his Kurdish village and he has slaved in a backstreet kebab shop to give his son an education and a chance to make something of himself. Despite the deadline looming on his dissertation, Adaza offers to run the shop while Rashid recovers. However, he discharges himself to work alongside his son, only to lose his life during a contretemps with a quartet of drunken youths.

Appalled that a manslaughter charge has to be dropped because of a lack of evidence, Abaza learns from the family solicitor that Rashid had plans to open a restaurant on the premises that have just been acquired by Scot Williams, a former Big Brother winner who has reinvented himself as a nightclub entrepreneur. Determined to honour his fathers memory, the dazed Abaza's decides to keep the shop open, while he weighs up his options. However, he soon discovers that Rashid was in debt to his meat supplier and that local coppers like Lucinda Rhodes-Flaherty don't really care about bringing inebriates to book for their uncouth actions.

At the end of yet another quiet night, Abaza clears up around Cyrus Barghchi, who has sparked out at his table. When he wakes, Barghchi is so peeved that Abaza has thrown his food away that he starts making his own chips behind the counter. When Abaza tries to stop him, a struggle ensues and Barghchi perishes after his head is pushed into the deep fat fryer. Hauling the body into the basement, Abaza picks up the phone. But he realises that nobody is going to believe his story. So, he starts to hack the corpse to pieces and that's when he gets the idea to mix the flesh with a few herbs and spices and pass it off as lamb.

Having disposed of the bones by swimming them out to sea, Abaza bides his time. But, while eavesdropping on Chris Wright and Ewen MacIntosh boasting about how they fleece their clients, Abaza decides to try out the new recipe and is bitingly amused when they declare it the best kebab meat they have ever tasted. Sometime later, he adds Samantha Leyden to the larder after she mouths off about his service and he throws in Lucinda Davidson for good measure, when she comes back to the shop in search of her missing friend. However, by the time Abaza dispatches Sean Cernow (who sells drugs for Williams while wearing a yellow duck costume), he has amassed a wall full of cuttings about the town's growing number of missing persons. But nobody has ever asked him if he has seen anything untoward and he continues killing with a clean conscience.

One night, migrant gang member Reece Noi sees Abaza chase a stag night stray into a rundown hotel. Night manager Kristin Atherton manages to calm Abaza down (she's Irish, but knows some Turkish) and smiles that another socio-economics graduate like herself has wound up doing such a menial job. She promises to drop into the shop, but Noi has also become intrigued by Abaza and asks for a part-time job. As Christmas is coming, Abaza agrees to take him on at weekends, but order him to stay well away from the basement.

While closing up in the small hours, Abaza is confronted by bellicose customer Darren Morfitt. Now a dab hand, he knocks him out and chains him to the handle of the large chest freezer. But, as he blenches at the torrent of racist abuse, something prevents him from killing Morfitt straight away. Moreover, as he scans the messages on his phone, he feels a pang of pity, as his father is seriously ill in hospital. As they chat, Abaza discovers that Morfitt was tyrannised as a child and he realises that the scum he has been slaughtering with such numbed abandon are often victims of misfortune who had been seeking solace from their problems in a wild night out.

Having freed Morfitt, Abaza turns his attention to Williams, because he is exploiting the hapless in his club. Turning down a menacing offer to sell the shop, he disguises himself in the duck costume and films Williams having sex in an underground car park. Using the security code found on Cernow's phone, Abaza breaks into the disused church that Williams is converting into another venue and plants evidence linking him with the kebab crimes. However, as bones are found in the sea, Abaza is forced to fire Noi when he finds that he has broken into the basement in the hope of becoming his vigilante sidekick.

Unfortunately, with Atherton unable to appeal to Abaza's sensitive side, he loses control of his fate when Noi betrays him to Williams, who keeps him trussed in his own basement and berates him for daring to thwart his plans. As Williams rants, Abaza produces a blade from his sleeve and cuts himself free. However, as they tussle, Abaza is stabbed and he stumbles into the street to collapse on the pavement like one of the drunkards whose dissolution he had so abhorred. As he slips out of consciousness, the local television news reports that Williams has been arrested for kidnap, murder and drug dealing. But he doesn't hear the vote of thanks for delivering the community from such a corrupting monster.

Pringle has clearly watched a fair few darkly comic British chillers, as well as a good deal of torture porn. But, while he makes the most of Jen Nelson's excellent special effects, this is more of a modern-day fairytale, in which the townsfolk pay for the crimes of their errant ruler at the hands of a misguided savior. Scot Williams is suitably hissable as the suave hypocrite, but he spends too much time on the periphery until after the admirably earnest Abaza has his awful epiphany.

Production designer Andrew Soakell makes the most of an empty fast food shop, while cinematographer Chris Fergusson deftly contrasts images of crashing waves with the corporate blandness of the town centre and the claustrophobic nooks of the dimly lit basement. But Pringle allows proceedings to drift at times, while he also skirts the issues of migration, racism, social deprivation, sexual irresponsibility and the younger generation's lack of basic intelligence and self-restraint that arise during the course of Abaza's rampage. He also struggles to make Atherton and Noi seem essential to a plot that might have ramped up the pressure on the killer by having the police encroach more threateningly on his patch. The finale also feels rushed and more than a little contrived. But Abaza's encounter with Morfitt manages to be both disconcerting and poignant, as the Butcher of Bournemouth finally realises the error of his ways and becomes the champion rather than the persecutor of the deluded masses.

Ever since Al Jolson fell out with his cantor father in Alan Crosland's The Jazz Singer (1927), films about jazz musicians have tended to focus more on their fractured relationships, tormenting demons and unquenchable addictions than their art. Taking its cues from Clint Eastwood's Bird (1988), Robert Budreau's Born to Be Blue is less a biopic of Chet Baker than a free-form fantasy that blends fact and fiction in much the same way that Todd Haynes rethought Bob Dylan's career is I'm Not There (2007). Given the excellence of Bruce Webber's documentary Let's Get Lost (1988), which was made just before Baker died in Amsterdam, Budreau has his work cut out. But this stylish variation on a theme captures the man and his times with such smooth acuity that it's easy to overlook the odd inexactitude and cliché.

Opening in a prison cell in Lucca, Italy in 1966, the story opens with Chet Baker (Ethan Hawke) being rescued from hallucinations of a spider crawling out of his trumpet by film producer Nick (Tony Nardi), who wants to take him back to Hollywood to make a movie about his life. In a monochrome clip, Chet prowls nervously backstage at the legendary Birdland club in 1954, as Miles Davis (Kedar Brown) and Dizzy Gillespie (Kevin Hanchard) listen sceptically to the MC introducing `the James Dean of jazz' and `the inventor of West Coast swing'. But, while Chet is keen to make an impression, he is just as eager to seduce Jenny (Natassia Halabi), a chic member of the audience, who has been smoking seductively throughout his set.

She accompanies Chet to his hotel room and lures him into shooting up. But they are caught in a state of undress by his wife, Elaine (Carmen Ejogo), and she throws him out. Suddenly, it becomes clear that this is a scene from the film and Nick assures Chet that he is doing a good job, while manager Dick Block (Callum Keith Rennie) suggests they could cut another record if he can prove he is off heroin for good. However, his co-star, Jane Azuka (also Ejogo), has only heard bad things about Chet and surprises herself by accepting an invitation to go bowling. They get along well, but Chet is attacked outside by his dealer with such ferocity that he loses the front teeth he needs to play the trumpet.

Unable to help herself, Jane nurses Chet through his bloody attempts to play again, although it's only his desire to prove Miles Davis wrong that drives him on. They go to visit his parents in Yale, Oklahoma (Stephen McHattie and Janet-Laine Green) and, when he lands a job pumping gas over the Christmas holidays, Jane learns how hard the young Chet found it to emerge from the shadow of his embittered father. There's little affection in what appears to be their last goodbye, but Jane has fallen for Chet and they share her Volkswagen van on the Pacific coast, as she auditions with no success for movie roles and he tries to master the dentures that keep slipping when he plays.

Eventually, Chet sits in with a band at the local pizzeria and the leader suggests he puts in a little more private practice after a tortured rendition of `Summertime'. Another customer recognises Chet, however, and he soon commands a loyal Sunday audience, with Jane accompanying him on the piano. She gets jealous when a young fan named Sarah (Katie Bolandi) slips Chet a packet of heroin, but she is more concerned with his parole officer, Reid (Tony Nappo), threatening to give him a negative report unless he finds a proper job. Scared that Chet will relapse, Jane asks Dick to give him another chance and he hires him for some session work.

Chet hates playing in a Mariachi band and begs to be given a solo slot. Reid is impressed with the hard work he is putting in doing odd jobs around the studio and he wishes Chet well when he meets Jane's parents, Harry (Eugene Clark) and Elsie (Barbara Eve Harris). They stroll on the beach, but it soon becomes clear that Harry thinks his daughter is too good for a washed-up junkie and Chet wanders fully clothed into the sea in furious despair. Jane holds him as the waves lap around them and she urges him not to give up because she loves him.

At the studio, A&R man Danny Friedman (Dan Lett) hears Chet plays `Over the Rainbow' and agrees to bring a few record industry suits to a special concert that weekend. However, just as Chet needs to feel settled, Nick offers Jane a part in a film and he is hurt when she accepts it. She assures him she is devoted to the father of her child and he proposes to her with a ring she wears on a chain around her neck. Yet, despite the fact he sings `My Funny Valentine' to her during the soirée show, she refuses to come to New York with him when Dizzy Gillespie promises him a comeback spot at Birdland.

So, Chet goes east alone and promptly runs out of methadone. Dick scurries among the waiting patrons to find him some, only to return to see heroin paraphernalia laid out on the dressing-room table. Chet says he can't help himself, as the drug gives him the confidence to find the musical rule-breaker within. Dick shrugs, as he knows Chet is never going to change and Jane reaches the same conclusion as she arrives at the eleventh hour and recognises the signs, as she watches him perform `I've Never Been in Love Before'. She unhooks the chain and hands it to Dick, as Chet completes the number and nods in quiet satisfaction because Miles and Dizzy are applauding.

A closing caption reveals that Chet remained an addict for the rest of his life, despite finding new fame in Europe. But this summation feels a little out of place in a picture that delights in keeping the audience guessing as to which events really happened and which are mere conjecture. Such is the conviction of Ethan Hawke's performance, however, that even the romantic scenes with Carmen Ejogo (who plays a combination of Baker's muses and mistresses) have a persuasive authenticity that informs the vulnerability he displays before the microphone. Kevin Turcotte provides the brass work, but Hawke does his own vocals with a reedy hesitancy that affectingly conveys Baker's inner struggle.

Basing the premise around an unrealised Dino De Laurentiis project, Budreau plays with the conventions of the jazz biopic while also paying homage to classics like Otto Preminger's The Man With the Golden Arm (1955). He is ably served by production designer Aidan Leroux, while cinematographer Steve Cosens bathes the monochrome and muted colour sequences with a hazy light that reinforces the sense of nostalgic illusion. But this is all about Hawke, who eschews self-pity in reflecting Baker's contradictions and struggles with a witty awareness of what makes him ticks as both a man and as a musician.