Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 14/7/2011)

Heavily influenced by Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, Yasujiro Ozu and Satyajit Ray, Egg centres on thirtysomething poet Yusuf (Nejat Isler) returning from Istanbul to his Anatolian home for his mother's funeral. She has asked him to sacrifice an intercessory ram at a nearby saint's shrine and, in preparing for the task, he becomes increasingly moved by the very rituals and rhythms of rural life that had driven him away several years before.

The seismic social, economic and cultural changes that affected Turkey's remoter communities in the late 20th century are also very much to the fore in Milk, in which Yusuf (Melih Selcuk) is forced to deal with both the blow to his virility dealt by his rejection for military service and his widowed mother's growing affection for the stationmaster. But tensions between tradition and progress are nothing new, as Kaplanoglu reveals in Honey, which is again set in the wooded mountains of the north-eastern province of Rize.

Despite Baris Ozbicer taking over from Özgür Eken behind the camera, this is every bit as visually striking as its predecessors. It's also marginally more conventional in its narrative. But Kaplanoglu remains an intractable, controlling and often obscurantist minimalist, whose predilection for terse dialogue and lingering contemplative shots will make this a challenge for anyone not already attuned to his style.

Six year-old Yusuf (Bora Altas) lives in the forest with his beekeeping father (Erdal Besikçioglu) and tea-picking mother (Tülin Özen). As he stutters and has difficulty reading in public, Altas has come to dislike school because of the teasing of his classmates and he lives for accompanying Besikçioglu on his rounds, so he can learn about the flora and fauna and perfect his bird and animal calls. But when Besikçioglu leaves to search for new colonies further afield, Altas is left to his own devices and he quickly retreats into his shell when his father fails to return.

The viewer has been warned about the dangers Besikçioglu faces as he fixes his hives in the topmost reaches of the trees. Yet it still comes as a shock to see the branch snap and watch this strapping fellow hanging from a rope above the ground. And it's this knowledge of Besikçioglu's fate that makes Altas's bid to conjure his return all the more poignant. Even though he can't stand the stuff, he drinks milk to please his mother and he even makes more of an effort to read aloud in class, as he comes to appreciate poetry. He remains mischievous, however, and gets a buddy into trouble by refusing to take the blame for his own actions and spends an evening using his bucket to catch the moon's reflection in a pond.

But, while Altas delivers a delightful performance - whether he's whispering with total conspiratorial trust with Besikçioglu, gazing longingly at the jar of reward ribbons in the corner of the classroom or joining his grandmother for a Koran reading to mark the holy night of Mi'Raj - Kaplanoglu's refusal to allow us any insights into what the boy is thinking or feeling is deeply frustrating. Nevertheless, his use of sound to convey the timeless sanctity and beauty of the forest (for all its perils) is masterly and it will be fascinating to see what topic Kaplanoglu decides to tackle now that Yusuf's odyssey is complete.

Jamie Thraves is another director worth watching, although he has so far only produced films that intrigue rather than enthral. The Low Down (2000) focused on a group of university graduates trying to make the transition to real life, while The Cry of the Owl (2009) stumbled somewhat in following Claude Chabrol in reworking the Patricia Highsmith story of a troubled soul who becomes a small-town murder suspect. But Thraves has laudably remained committed to quirky characters incapable of conforming to societal or cinematic norms and he latches on to another misfitting trio in Treacle, Jr., which he self-financed in order to retain complete artistic control.

Kissing his wife and baby goodbye in his suburban home, thirtysomething architect Tom Fisher leaves for Birmingham New Street station on what seems to be just another working day. However, he takes the train to London and promptly flops down on a street corner and begins his new existence as a down and out. He can't quite toss away the entire contents of his wallet, but soon finds himself enduring a harsh new world when he is taunted by a juvenile gang and winds up in casualty after colliding with a tree.

Among his fellow patients is garrulously gauche Irishman Aidan Gillen, who sibilates with a Daffy Duck exuberance that makes him simultaneously affable and avoidable. However, he has no intention of letting Fisher go and tells him all about his scissors hedge-trimming business and his ambitions to become a drummer. He also introduces him to his kitten, Treacle, Jr., and informs him that he has to keep it hidden from live-in girlfriend Riann Steele, as she is allergic to cats.

A street-toughened hustler forever on the make, Steele comes as quite a surprise to Fisher, as he had earlier seen her engaged in a vigorous bout of love-making in the local cemetery. She is clearly not emotionally attached to Gillen and thinks nothing of battering him into submission to get her own way. Consequently, on accepting his temporary tower-block hospitality, Fisher becomes Gillen's reluctant ally and comes to his rescue when Steele has him ambushed by her lover for the rent money that Fisher has given him.

Reminiscent of such odd couple pictures as John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Terry Gilliam's The Fisher King (1991), this is an affably askew view of life on the London margins. Fisher is perhaps a touch too impassive, but Gillen and Steele are splendidly eccentric and their abrasive interaction makes Gillen's unshakeable optimism seem all the more engaging. However, the script has obviously been workshopped and more thought has gone into the exchanges than the evolution of the narrative. Thus, the incidents often seem contrived, while the characters never feel as fascinating as Thraves evidently finds them.

He makes fine use of his Dulwich and Herne Hill locations, however, with the parks, byways and churches being divertingly juxtaposed with venues like the Horniman Museum, whose focus on anthropology, natural history and musical instruments will remind many Oxford residents of the glorious duo on Parks Road. Yet, for all the flashes of wit and tenderness, this never quite manages to fuse its various droll or dramatic set-pieces into a cohesive storyline, while the denouement is rather disappointingly conventional.

Despite its desperate efforts to be shocking, Jason Eisener's Hobo With a Shotgun is also grimly bromidic. A so-called `graffiti Western' that takes its cue from urban outrage flicks like Walter Hill's The Warriors (1979), Danny Steinman's Savage Streets (1984), Brian Trenchard-Smith's Dead End Drive-In (1986) and J. Michael Muro's Street Trash (1987), it has been so cynically produced with the cult market in mind that its moments of gore-gushing provocation seem more nerdishly smug than baitingly horrific. Yet, for all its many shortcomings, this has also been surprisingly well made by a debuting director who first devised the concept for a trailer competition linked to the release of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse (2007).

Riding the rails into a hellhole town in the middle of the great North American anywhere, Rutger Hauer is gleaning for junk he can sell to buy a lawnmower from a pawnshop when he witnesses the pitiless manhole cover execution of Robb Wells by his demented brother Brian Downey and his sociopathic sons, Gregory Smith and Nick Bateman. Yet, while he can tolerate the sight of a man having his head ripped off by a speeding car and the onlookers terrorised into behaving like the audience in a snuff reality TV show, Hauer decides to fight back when he has the word `scum' carved into his chest after rescuing hooker Molly Dunsworth from the reprehensible Smith.

Caught in a robbery, as he is gazing lovingly at the red mower with which he hopes to start a grass-cutting business, Hauer buys the eponymous shotgun and goes on a vigilante spree across town that accounts for, among others, sicko film-maker Pasha Ebrahimi, vicious pimp Duane Patterson and child molesting Santa Brian Jamieson. However, Downey (whose operation includes a bizarre arcade where teens can go on murderous dodgem car rides) is enraged that Hauer is stealing his thunder on the local news and he sends his sons out to slaughter the newsreader live on air and turn a flame-thrower on a packed school bus.

Naturally, Hauer feels duty bound to up the ante when Downey's boys attempt to ambush him and he leaves off electrocuting Bateman with a toaster to kill Smith in the act of sawing into Dunsworth's windpipe. Pausing long enough to ensure she recovers from emergency surgery and deliver a homily to a crèche of bawling new-borns, Hauer sets off for a showdown with Downey. But he hadn't counted on his deranged adversary calling in The Plague, a couple of robotic biker assassins who appear indestructible as they drag Hauer to his fate.

The Django-like coffin in which Hauer is entombed is just one of the multitude of movie allusions that Eisener and screenwriter John Davies stuff into this gleefully excessive slice of exploitation. Several of Hauer's own films are referenced alongside the spaghetti Westerns and Japanese chambara, including Spetters (1980), The Hitcher (1980) and Blind Fury (1989). But, while there are plenty of bad taste gags, the film lacks the wit to work as an ironic homage.

The cast was clearly instructed to act on stalks to make Hauer's taciturn Eastwood-Bronson hybrid seem all the more iconically cool and Smith and Bateman (who doubles as one of The Plague alongside Peter Simas) responded with admirable brio. Downey also chomps into the scenery at every opportunity. But it's Hauer's kitschy exchanges with Dunsworth about bears and lawns that best expose the senseless cruelty of Hope Town's endless line of disposable lowlifes.

Similarly, the picture's production values are superior to its scenario. Karim Hussain's retro-looking Technicolor visuals and the synthed soundtrack are particularly impressive, while Ewen Dickson's mean streets and inhospitable interiors are also splendidly dystopic. Yet, while Eisener deserves credit for achieving such effective visuals on so tight a budget, he will entice more viewers to seek out the pictures that inspired him than sit through his own pastiche for a second time.

Liz Garbus's documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World is also a difficult watch, but for very different reasons.

When Bobby Fischer challenged Boris Spassky for the World Chess Championship in 1972, the contest took precedence over Vietnam and Watergate on American television newscasts. Henry Kissinger viewed the match as a chance to claw back some kudos in the Cold War, while chat show hosts like Dick Cavett and Johnny Carson fell over themselves to interview the new superstar. For a brief moment, the most cerebral of pastimes became the subject of mass hysteria. But, once the fuss had died down and Fischer no longer had expectation to sustain him, he was left with the desperate dilemma of having to deal with his own prejudice and paranoia for the next 36 deeply unfulfilling years.

Born in Chicago in March 1943, Fischer was raised in Brooklyn with his older sister Joan by his mother Regina, a Polish-Jewish, Communist-sympathising political activist who was divorced from German biophysicist Hans-Gerhardt Fischer and took maintenance payments from Hungarian-Jewish physicist Paul Nemenyi (whom some have since claimed as Fischer's actual father). He began playing chess at six and won the first of his eight US championships at 15. However, within a year, Regina had moved out to further her medical career and Joan was left to accompany her brother to tournaments and TV appearances.

Fischer's rise up the chess rankings was nowhere near as meteoric as Garbus would have the viewer believe. Indeed, there is no mention of his 1960 clash with Spassky, his defeat by Samuel Reshevsky or the semi-retirement that followed accusations of collusion after his failure at the 1962 Candidates Tournament in Curaçao. However, she does mention his membership of the Worldwide Church of God, which he joined in the mid-1960s, along with fitness coach Harry Sneider, who played a key role in the strenuous physical regime that helped make Fischer the poster boy of American chess.

But, intriguing though the backstory is, the emphasis is firmly on the Reykjavik showdown and Fischer's eccentric behaviour beforehand, as he argued about the purse and playing conditions and seriously considered backing out altogether before receiving a stern phone call from Dr Kissinger. His arrival came as a great relief to tournament organiser Gudmundur Thorarinsson, although Fischer was unsportingly late for the first game, which he inexplicably lost after moving what became known as `the poison pawn'. He failed to show at all for the second game and chief arbiter Lothar Schmid still feels a pang at having been compelled to `destroy a genius'.

However, following complaints about the positioning of cameras and the need to play games in total isolation, Fischer began the fightback in Game Three by famously using the `Son of Sorrow' strategy. He surpassed this in Game Six, however, when his victory took on a `placid beauty'. But, even though the world was gripped by every move three decades ago, Garbus decides to condense the next 14 skirmishes into a breakneck montage (slickly assembled by Karen Schmeer and Michael Levine) and concludes the segment on Game Twenty-One, when Spassky resigned by telephone after an overnight adjournment.

Thrust into an even more glaring media spotlight, Fischer struggled to retain his equilibrium and his demands for future tournaments became increasingly outrageous. He also started studying contentious texts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The White Man's Bible and groups like the Illuminati, with the result that his pronouncements became disturbingly anti-Semitic and the enigmatic genius was soon being branded a detestable bigot. Garbus compares his plight to that of Paul Morphy, a 19th-century chess champion whose psychological collapse similarly testified to the thin line between mastery and mania. But, while `The Pride and Sorrow of Chess' slipped into anonymity in the 1860s, Fischer very publicly accepted Hungarian Zita Raycsanyi's suggestion of a Belgrade rematch with Spassky and fled to Tokyo after he was threatened with a 10-year prison sentence for defying a UN sanction against war-torn Yugoslavia.

However, Fischer hit a new low when he called Radio Bombo in Philippines on 9/11 to gloat about the United States receiving the punishment it had long been overdue and he was forced to seek asylum in Iceland after he was detained in Tokyo at Washington's request. Footage from Fridrik Gudmundsson's documentary Me & Bobby Fischer (2009), showing how former bodyguard Saemi Pálsson helped facilitate the move back to Reykjavik, enlivens this sorry episode. But Fischer quickly alienated would-be supporters like neurologist Dr Kari Stefansson with his hateful politics and he died in January 2008 after refusing the dialysis that might have saved him.

In seeking to reconcile the sublime with the pernicious, Garbus draws on an impressive range of experts, including authors David Edmonds (Bobby Fisher Goes to War), David Shenk (The Immortal Game), Sam Sloan, (Bobby Fischer's Games of Chess), Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers), Clea Benson (Life Is Not a Board Game) and Nikolai Krogius (Spassky's `Second') and chess masters Garry Kasparov, Susan Polgar, Fernand Gobet, Fridrik Olafsson and Asa Hoffmann. However, the most useful insights come from those who knew Fischer well, most notably chess friend Anthony Saidy and Larry Evans, TV anchor Shelby Lyman, lawyer Paul Marshall, brother-in-law Russell Targ and Life photographer Harry Benson, who recalls Fischer's love of solitude and animals.

Yet nobody is fully able to explain the origins of Fischer's social gaucheness and vicious intolerance and the speculation of the early and latter stages of the film lacks the conviction of the Reykjavik chronicle. Garbus has unearthed some exceptional archive material and she tells her tale with admirable brio. But one suspects that any chance of getting to the bottom of the Fischer riddle passed with his sister Joan.

Distilled from 250 hours of footage, Just Do It is a lively insider account of direct action protest in 21st-century Britain. Focusing on the efforts of Climate Camp, Climate Rush and Plane Stupid, Emily James confirms her reputation for quirky, but deceptively trenchant film-making and reveals the levels of commitment required to make a difference in a world seemingly bent on self-destruction in the name of greed.

Unlike the majority of documentaries seeking to raise awareness about climate change or globalisation, Just Do It places the emphasis on doing rather than debating. Thus, while the activists James profiles know their stuff, they prefer to put theory into practice, as they mount campaigns that prioritise peaceful resistance, but occasionally advocate obstruction and occupation.

The central figure in the documentary is Marina Pepper, a fortysomething former Page 3 Girl and Playboy Playmate who tried her hand at acting before finding a niche in local politics. She is considered `a domestic extremist' by the police, but her primary role is making tea and keeping those on both sides of stand-offs sweet. Blending wit, wisdom and warmth, Marina smuggles chips into the protesters barricaded into the Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight in a bid to stop the closure of the UK's largest producer of wind turbine blades. She even tries to start a small garden before she is forced off the site by bailiffs whose sudden switch from chatty to brutal is decidedly disconcerting. But Marina remains undaunted and also does her bit at both the Climate Camp that descends upon Blackheath like the pacifist counterpart of a crack military operation and the Trafalgar Square rally backing the attempt to influence the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit.

However, not all of James's subjects are as experienced at civil disobedience. Sally's first mission is the occupation of the London headquarters of the Royal Bank of Scotland and James is allowed to film the precision planning and execution of an operation that involves super glue, stepladders and chains. Lily is also pretty new to the scene and she moves into a house in Harlington with Tracy, Rowan and Paul to make preparations for a campaign against a third runaway at Heathrow Airport.

Paul and Rowan are busy boys, however, and they are soon off to Nottinghamshire to storm the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station. In addition to showing how they form a brick of buddies within an affinity group with Sophie and Mary, James also shows how good intentions are often thwarted by well-organised security. Rowan would later have more success scaling one of the cooling towers at Didcot Power Station, while his comrades paralyse a coal conveyor. But unqualified successes like the community scheme run in some renovated greenhouses near Heathrow seem comparatively rare and the groups often have to content themselves with trying rather than triumphing.

The classic example here is the noble effort to use bicycles for hindrance and self-defence during the Copenhagen conference. Yet, in electing to hold an outdoor practice session, the protesters merely alerted the Danish authorities to their intentions and the premises where the bikes were being customised was unsurprisingly raided by the police. Admittedly, several of those detained managed to escape by lifting the cages in which they were being kept off their moorings. But a planned meeting with delegates was prevented by the crackdown on the melee outside the venue, while the congress itself achieved precious little because of the intransigence of the United States.

Such setbacks are frustrating, but they serve only to redouble the resolve of Marina and her confederates. They clearly view the documentary (which was funded by subscription to ensure total creative freedom) as a recruiting tool and they are invariably presented in the most positive light. But, while such earnest enthusiasm and genial articulacy is hugely appealing, James skirts more contentious issues like vandalism and violence and the extent to which the efforts of such right-on cabals are undermined by the aggressive tactics of extremist organisations over whom they seem to have little or no influence. Nevertheless, this is a timely and ambitious piece of film-making that exposes the cynicism of the alliance between the various law enforcement agencies and the politico-economic establishment and celebrates the ingenuity and courage of those unwilling to allow it to silence their voices or impose policies that serve anything but the greater good.