Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 16/6/2011)

Following Michel Mitrani's Les Guichets du Louvre/Black Thursday (1973) and Joseph Losey's Monsieur Klein (1976), this is only the third screen drama about the infamous Val d'Hiv raid. Yet, while its sincerity and historical authenticity cannot be called into question, this lavish production is imbued with the arch bittersweetness that so polarised opinion of Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful (1997). Moreover, in striving for documentary accuracy, Bosch has a tendency to under-dramatise some events and overplay others, with the result that power and poignancy are often compromised by pathos.

Opening with newsreel footage of Hitler touring the newly conquered Paris, the scene shifts to Montmartre, where 10 year old Joseph Weismann (Hugo Leverdez) is playing with classmate Simon Zygler (Olivier Cywie) and his younger brother, Noé (identical twins Mathieu and Romain di Concetto). Jo's Great War veteran father, Schmeul (Gad Elmaleh), is confident that Marshal Philippe Pétain (Roland Copé) would never betray the Jews. But neither his wife Sura (Raphaëlle Agogué) nor Bella Zygler (Sylvie Testud) share his confidence and their suspicions are confirmed by scenes of Hitler (Udo Schenk) lecturing Heinrich Himmler (Thomas Darchinger) in his Berchtesgaden retreat about the need to expedite the Final Solution and Pétain giving his assent to Prime Minister Pierre Laval (Jean-Michel Noirey), his deputy René Bousquet (Frédéric Moulin), police chief Émile Hennequin (Patrick Courtois) and German security chief Helmut Knochen (Holger Daemgen) to begin the round-up.

Once the operation begins, Bosch turns her focus to some of its other victims, including Anna Traube (Anne Brochet), a wealthy woman who uses forged papers to secure her release from the crowded Val d'Hiv cycling stadium, and Protestant nurse Annette Monod (Mélanie Laurent), who found herself tending to the distressed with Jewish doctor David Sheinbaum (Jean Reno). But, while some help Jewish friends evade capture, bigots like the baker's wife played by Catherine Hosmalin taunt the persecuted in a scene reminiscent of one in Steven Spielberg's equally well-meaning, but flawed Schindler's List (1993).

Eventually, the detainees are transferred from the stadium to the transit camp at Beaune-la-Rolande, where the adults are separated from the children and Sheinbaum parts company with Monod, who wants to join him in the `work camp' in case she can be of assistance. Jo learns the truth about the destination of the trains, however, and, having recovered the cash and valuables his father had hidden in the washroom, he slips under the barbed wire fence to safety.

Concluding with a postwar coda that allows Monod to reunite with the handful of survivors, this is a noble and imposing account of an unpardonable crime. Olivier Raoux's production design is impeccable, with the velodrome being so meticulously recreated that it's impossible not to be shocked and moved by the chilling scale of the enterprise. David Ungaro's photography and Pierre-Jean Larroque's costumes are equally impressive. But, while Serge Klarsfeld makes a valuable contribution as historical adviser, no one seems to have coerced Bosch (who also scripted 1492: Conquest of Paradise for Ridley Scott and has recently announced a biopic of Rasputin) into improving the realism of the dialogue.

Too many minor figures also border on caricature, while Udo Schenk comes close to emulating Martin Wuttke's pantomimics in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009) in his exchanges with Himmler, Rudolf Hess (Tamás Lengyel) and Eva Braun (Franziska Schubert). However, the most serious failing is the refusal to confront the role of ordinary civilians in the round-up. Admittedly, only about half of Paris's Jewish population was apprehended and those who aided the escapees merit history's gratitude. But the chance to follow Louis Malle's courageous lead in exposing collaborationist iniquity in Lacombe, Lucien (1974) has, sadly, been missed. Thus, while this epic in scale and ambition, it only tells part of the story.

A sombre pall is also cast over a futuristic America in Jim Mickle's Stake Land. Essentially a horror Western, this thoughtful piece of genre revisionism exploits the recessional landscape to examine contemporary attitudes to faith, prejudice, consumerism and survival. Moreover, it also seeks to reclaim the vampire from the designer schmaltz of the Twilight series and it's no accident that the blood-sucking predators roaming the frontier wilderness bear a greater resemblance to the zombies in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) than Stephanie Meyer's Edward Cullen.

Having been delivered from the feral attack that accounts for parents Traci Hovel and Gregory Jones, rural teenager Connor Paolo throws in his lot with gnarled vampire hunter Nick Damici, who is heading north in the hope of reaching the supposed sanctuary of New Eden. Quickly learning Damici's tried and trusted self-defence and counter-thrust techniques, Paolo soon forgets the squeamishness of his first kill and attempts to emulate his mentor's macho posturing as they greets the vigilantes defending the lockdown safe zones that hark back to the simple settlements of the Wild West era, with their barbershop, doctor's surgery, all-purpose store, saloon and brothel.

However, having rescued nun Kelly McGillis from a pair of marauding youths, the duo incurs the wrath of Michael Cerveris, the raving leader of a fundamentalist cult whose intolerance extends to disbelieving mortals as well as vampire. Lusting after McGillis, Cerveris captures Damici and leaves him to his fate with a quartet of snarling beasts. However, Paolo refuses to bow to his tyranny and bumps into the seemingly indestructible Damici after slipping away from the Brotherhood's camp.

They hit the road again and offer a lift to pregnant teen Danielle Harris, who was singing in a lockdown bar, and ex-Marine Sean Nelson, who informs them that US troops abandoned the Middle East after it became `vampireland' and have now dispersed to defend their families. His field craft comes in handy when Damici stages a nocturnal incursion into Cerveris's stronghold and leaves him tied to a tree with blood seeping from a cruciform wound carved into his back to attract the nearest vampires.

Rolling on, the foursome reunite with McGillis in Stridington, an idyllic oasis guarded with grim determination by ex-soldier Chance Kelly. But an old-fashioned square dance is disrupted by a hideous bombing raid and the quintet is lucky to get out alive. Forced to walk after Damici's vintage convertible finally breaks down, they lose McGillis in a cornfield and hole up in an abandoned house, where Paolo is forced to kill the infected young girl (dubbed a `scamp' by Damici) he finds sleeping in the attic.

Protected by the winter chill, they enjoy a brief respite in a trailer in the woods. But they decamp after Nelson is abducted in the night and wander into an ambush laid by the vengeful Cerveris (in the movie's only entirely misjudged sequence). Yet, even though they once again find themselves a twosome, Damici and Paolo push on to find their final ally in the crossbow-wielding Bonnie Dennison.

Mickle and co-scenarist Damici clearly know their apocalyptic horror, as this disconcerting chiller contains allusions to the Vincent Price vehicle The Last Man on Earth (1964) - which was adapted by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow from Richard Matheson's classic novel I Am Legend - the aforementioned Night of the Living Dead, Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later... (2002) and John Hillcoat's take on Cormac McCarthy's The Road (2009). But while it settles for the odd formulaic situation and stock characterisation, this never feels particularly derivative, as the influence of the saddle trail Western is as pronounced as that of the road movie or the stalk`n' slash horror.

Indeed, the film contains surprisingly little violence (which is perhaps as well given the mediocre make-up effects), as Mickle keeps Ryan Samul's Red One camera trained on the ghost towns, deserted industrial architecture and sinister expanses of desolate countryside from which the next attack could come at any moment. He puts Jeff Grace's soundtrack mix of folk tunes, spirituals and tense strings to similarly suspenseful use and by so doing reinforces the sense of a nation returning to roots from which it had been singularly unwise to have strayed.

By contrast with this eminently satisfying watch, Matthew Porterfield's Putty Hill is a picture that's easier to admire than like. Broodingly shot in a pseudo-documentary manner by Jeremy Saulnier, the non-action chronicles the response of family and friends to the death of a twentysomething Baltimore addict, who nobody really knew at all. Interspersed with interviews that reveal more about the speaker than the deceased, this is a rigorously indie enterprise, with the non-professional cast seemingly improvising though long takes that reinforce the impact of the dead kid's overdose and the emptiness of a life built around skateboard parks, paint-balling, swimming and copious amounts of drugs.

Refusing to judge or patronise his characters, Porterfield takes their every utterance seriously, no matter how inconsequential it might be. Indeed, he regards their inarticulacy as a socially unifying trait and it's only during the karaoke session after the burial that the mourners succeed in tapping into their suppressed emotions with renditions of such maudlin ballads as `I Will Always Love You'. Even the lamented's sister, Sky Ferreira, struggles to find anything positive to say about him. But, at least she made the effort to travel home for the ceremony, unlike her grandmother, who prefers to remain in her sheltered accommodation and remember things as they were.

Complete with scenes of a tattoo artist newly released from prison calmly discussing the revenge killing of the man who raped his wife and a car-load of slackers making a pilgrimage to the shabby squat where their buddy died alone, this is a difficult watch that makes no dramatic or stylistic compromises. There are moments of genuine poignancy and Porterfield's sense of people and place is exceptional. But he doesn't always succeed in making the viewer care about characters whose willingness to drift and wallow prevents much insight into their mindset, social situation and hopes for the future.

Finally, Tuesday 21 June has been designated Demand Zero Day and the Phoenix is uniting with cinemas across Britain and Ireland to show Lucy Walker's acclaimed documentary Countdown to Zero. Following the screening, audiences will be linked to a BAFTA panel discussion on the need for the elimination of nuclear weapons, which will be led by Her Majesty Queen Noor of Jordan, former Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, ex-CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and Lawrence Bender, the producer of Al Gore's Oscar-winning actuality, An Inconvenient Truth (2006).

Walker leaves the audience in no doubt where she stands in Countdown to Zero, which takes as its text John F. Kennedy's 1961 contention to the General Assembly of the United Nations that we live under a sword of Damocles that is hanging by the slenderest of threads that could be cut at any moment by accident, miscalculation or madness. JFK strove to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons and this muscular documentary reaffirms the urgent need to bring about their abolition before disaster strikes.

If the various vox pops taken around the world are anything to go by, people have little or no idea about the size of the threat posed by the arsenals held by the nuclear nations. They seem oblivious to the fact that the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and possibly North Korea all have the power to launch missiles or that several attempts have already been made by rogue states and terrorist organisations to steal warheads from surprisingly poorly guarded silos (particularly in the former Soviet Union). Fewer still appear aware that the apocalypse has only been narrowly averted on a handful of occasions, including instances when a training tape was mistaken for a full alert at a US base, when a malfunctioning $1 computer chip caused a scramble during the Carter era and when Boris Yeltsin alone responded calmly in Moscow to news of a 1995 rocket launch near Norway that was actually a pre-arranged mission to study the aurora borealis.

In addition to numerous academics, activists and experts, Walker also corrals such luminaries as Jimmy Carter, Robert McNamara, Zbigniew Brezinski, James Baker, Richard Burt, Valerie Plame Wilson, Bruce Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, Tony Blair, Pervez Musharraf and FW De Klerk to discuss their own nuclear experiences and the terrifying ease with which a calamity could occur. She also recalls the roles played in the arms race by scientists Robert Oppenheimer and AQ Khan and reveals the shocking fact that many of the component parts needed to assemble a crude bomb to add to the 23,000 currently held in international stockpiles can be obtained via the internet.

Unsurprisingly, this makes for alarming viewing and Walker reinforces the stark warnings given by her uniquely well-informed contributors with grim test footage and graphics outlining the damage that devices could do to the world's major cities. Yet, one can't help worrying that even if these arresting arguments impress those with their fingers over the red button, they will hold far less sway with Al Qaeda and other opponents of the existing world order, who know they could wreak more havoc than a million 9/11s with just one detonation.