Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 22/11/2012)

It appeared as though the International Olympic Committee had been entirely justified in its decision to entrust the Games to Lord Coe and his team. But it is now clear that they got one call badly wrong, as the official film record of the most exciting 17 days in British sporting history is an utter shambles. The auspices couldn't have been better, as director Caroline Rowland had collaborated with Daryl Goodrich on the films that had supported the successful bid in Singapore in 2005. However, in opting to profile 12 debuting Olympians, Rowland has produced a big-screen equivalent of one of the many preview programmes that dotted the schedules prior to 27 July. Thus, First is less a record of the London Games than a triumph of pre-planning to ensure that as much footage was in the can as possible before the start of Danny Boyle's opening ceremony to alleviate the pressure of meeting the impossibly tight deadline of completing the documentary within three months of the Olympic flame being extinguished.

In fairness to Rowland, Leni Riefenstahl took two years to assemble her masterly record of the infamous 1936 Berlin Games. Olympia set the tone for subsequent IOC sanctioned films to present an impression of the event rather than an exhaustive overview of its sporting highlights. In this regard, First has much in common with Romolo Marcellini's La Grande Olimpiade (1961), Kon Ichikawa's Tokyo Olympiad (1965) and Visions of Eight (1973), which collated snapshots of the 1972 Munich Games taken by such renowned directors as Miloš Forman, Claude Lelouch, Yuri Ozerov, Mai Zetterling, Kon Ichikawa, John Schlesinger, Arthur Penn and Michael Pfleghar. Furthermore, Rowland must have been aware that she was assuming the mantle of Bud Greenspan, whose 16 Days of Glory (1986) was the first of his 12 official accounts of the Summer and Winter Games held between Los Angeles 1984 and Vancouver 2010.

Obviously, as 204 countries had sent over 10,000 competitors, First had to have an international appeal and it would have been wholly wrong to tilt the focus on to British successes. Similarly, it would have been impossible to cover all 302 medal events across 36 sports. But there is virtually no coverage of team or water-based pursuits or, indeed, any races that took place on the streets of London itself. Logistics probably played a part here. But the inflexibility of Rowland's approach means that numerous key moments and pivotal personalities have been omitted and few of the insights given in voiceover by the chosen 12 and their families and friends come even remotely close to compensating for what is missing.

There are moments of inspiration and poignancy here, including the brave run of Saudi Arabia's Sarah Attar in an 800m heat and South Africa's Oscar Pistorius competing as an equal with his able-bodied rivals in the 400m. But there can be no excuse for a survey of London 2012 that makes no mention whatsoever of Mo Farah. Admittedly, he was not a first-timer. But, then, neither was Usain Bolt and, yet, Rowland found space to include his double triumph in the 100m and 200m. She even managed to catch his trademark `Lightning Bolt' pose. Surely, the `Mobot' was every bit as iconic? Bolt himself certainly seemed to think so.

The notion of concentrating on a dozen debutants is sound enough. However, having used captions to identify a clutch of global locations, Rowland suddenly abandons the tactic and, consequently, none of the athletes is introduced graphically on screen. This makes it difficult to work out who they are, where they come from and which event they are participating in. But Rowland compounds the confusion by adding new names as she goes along without providing them with any useful sporting or sociological context. In the case of Kenyan 800m champion David Rudisha, American backstroker Missy Franklin, South African butterfly swimmer Chad Le Clos, Irish boxer Katie Taylor, British cyclist Laura Trott, Chinese diver Qiu Bo and French sprinter Christophe Lemaitre, this isn't so much of a drawback, as their already reasonably high profiles were raised by their achievements during the Games. But it would have helped considerably to have learned more about American gymnast John Orozco, Indian 10m air pistol shooter Heena Sidhu, Albanian judoka Majlinda Kelmendi, Australian BMX rider Caroline Buchanan, American boxer Queen Underwood, British 200m runner James Ellington and Brazilian 50m freestyle swimmer Bruno Fratus.

However, Rowland further clutters the portraits with off-screen contributions from parents like William and Damaris Orozco, Laurence and Gail Buchanan, Dick and DA Franklin, Bert Le Clos and Adrian and Glenda Trott, as well as from Indian shooter Ronak Pandit, Albanian coach Driton Kuka and Katie Taylor's coach-cum-dad, Peter. Their pride is evident, but they are afforded too little time to discuss the obstacles overcome and sacrifices made to bring their children or charges to the pinnacle of their careers. There are bound to be compelling human interest stories here, but they are left untold and such is the fussiness of the editing of the sporting action that not even the skill required to compete, let alone win, goes largely uncelebrated.

Dividing Olympia into two parts, Leni Riefenstahl was able to showcase the athletic and the aesthetic side of sport. She even demonstrated how the victory of Jesse Owens in the 100m sabotaged any Nazi intentions to use the Berlin Games as a platform their pernicious racial ideals. But Rowland only fleetingly refers to the fact that all teams had to include male and female competitors for the first time and singularly fails to convey the psychological effect that London 2012 had on the British population and how this, in turn, drove the athletes on to record-breaking performances.

No attempt is made to examine the architecture of the Olympic Park or the atmosphere generated within its instantly iconic venues. Life in the Village is ignored, while the role of the Games Makers is shamefully marginalised. We get a couple of shots of William, Kate and Harry as they watched Zara Phillips riding at Greenwich, but the Queen is notable by her absence from the muddled mash-up of moments from the opening ceremony, whose symbolism and significance is dismissed out of hand. The musical elements are also excised, but the soundtrack is stuffed with mediocre tunes by Ellie Goulding, Underworld, Michael Kiwanuka, Seye, Jess Mills, Delphic, Olly Murs, Two Door Cinema Club, Jake Bugg, Beach House, Chase & Status, Jack Penate, Snow Patrol and Brandon Flowers that rarely seem to have much to do with the action they are supposed to be complementing.

The latter quibble can almost certainly be put down to this critic being far from au fait with new music. But the complaints about the organisation of this deeply disappointing film are less easily dismissable and it is such a shame that what were widely acclaimed as the best Games of all time should now be saddled with such a flawed, feeble and eminently forgettable memento.

By stark contrast with Caroline Rowland's race against time, Eugene Jarecki could afford to spend three years criss-crossing the United States to research and record his documentary, The House I Live In. The result is a structurally complex and courageously contentious denunciation of the War on Drugs that successive administrations have been fighting with little tangible success since Richard Nixon made his reckless declaration in 1971. Ultimately, Jarecki fails to convince with his most inflammatory claim that the policies introduced to catch, punish and detain drug users and dealers are every bit as pernicious as those that drove his Jewish ancestors out of Russia and Germany. However, so compelling is the testimony presented by the phalanx of cops, lawyers, judges, jailers, academics and journalists that Jarecki has assembled that he is able to make a credible case for a radical overhaul of federal and state legislation before irreparable damage is done at every level of American society.

Some of the statistics given here are truly shocking. One trillion dollars has been spent on combating the drugs trade over the last four decades, during which time over 45 million arrests have been made. As a consequence, despite only having 5% of the world's population, the USA has 25% of its prisoners, with 500,000 currently being held for non-violent drug-related crimes. This means that 1.7 million Americans have a parent in jail and they are more likely to offend than other children. Indeed, there are more school dropouts today than there were in the days of segregation and more African-Americans are currently behind bars than there were slaves in the decade before the Civil War. Of course, this statistic owes much to prejudicial sentencing dictates, which insist that even though blacks represent only 13% of America's crack users, they take 90% of the raps for its sale and possession, while the penalties for crack were, until 2010, 100 times more severe than those for powder cocaine, which is more associated with white hedonism than ghetto degradation.

Keen to connect his investigation to a scenario to which he can personally relate, Jarecki reveals that the son of Nannie Jeter, his family's faithful retainer, died as a result of drug use. Nannie reassures Jarecki that she loves him like one of her own, but now regrets spending so much time caring for him to the detriment of her own offspring. She has high hopes in 2008 that Barack Obama will do something to clamp down on dealers and introduce new forms of education and treatment. But David Simon, a former journalist on the Baltimore Sun and the creator of the TV series The Wire has a more realistic and fatalistic view on the War on Drugs and Jarecki finds plenty of evidence to support his sobering theories.

He heads to Providence, Rhode Island to meet Lieutenant Michael Correia, the commanding officer of the local narcotics unit, who admits the odds are stacked against the police and officers Glendon Goldsboro and Fabio Zuena share his despondency, with the latter joking bitterly that he wouldn't be against the idea of sterilisation for addicts. Larry Cearly in Magdalena, New Mexico is no more convinced that the battle can be won, but he keeps stopping and searching motorists on the road running through his patch and admits that a good deal of racial profiling goes on in his line of work. Over in Miami, Bill Cuneen paints an even bleaker picture, as he says incentive payments have encouraged cops to make easy busts rather than try to nail the bigwigs behind the operation and he worries that this will not only be bad for morale (as those dealing with rape or homicide receive no such inducements), but will also result in a growing number of unsafe convictions.

Federal judge Mark Bennett is certainly no fan of the existing system for dispensing justice. During his 15 years on the bench, he has handed down to more than 2600 Iowans mandatory sentences that he knows do not fit the crimes they have committed. However, his hands are tied and, thus lawyer Jim McGough has no chance of keeping defendant Maurice Haltiwanger out of the cells. New Yorker Anthony Johnson is equally on a hiding to nothing when he is caught dealing in Vermont. As well as meeting with Johnson, his mother Kecia and girlfriend Alicia Alcindor (who is the mother of his child), his pusher pal Shanequa Benitez, his lawyer John Pacht and private investigator Susan Randall, Jarecki also tracks down his ex-dealer father, Dennis Whidbee, who now lives in Trenton, Florida. He concedes that Anthony had a tough time as a kid, but that he has to take responsibility for his own deeds.

As so many drug felonies have harsh post-release ramifications, countless offenders go straight back inside and NYU professor Carl Hart (who managed to escape the cycle) is worried that his own recently arrested son will be similarly trapped for what he considers petty dealing. His fears are shared by Harvard professor William Julius Wilson, who says that he can almost predict a child's fate simply by checking its name and class in the maternity ward register. Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow, concurs that the law is stacked against African-Americans. However, Julie Stewart, the founder of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, and Mark Mauer from the Sentencing Project suggest that a new generation of blue-collar white males has been dragged into the morass by the recession, among them Kevin Orr, who got life for dealing meth amphetamine after becoming addicted on losing his job.

Orr's mother, Betty Chism, visits him each week and campaigns tirelessly to secure his release. But Mike Carpenter, the martinet chief of security at the Lexington Assessment and Reception Centre in Oklahoma, claims that too many big companies profit from the prison-industrial complex for them to allow politicians needing to look tough on crime to back any worthwhile reform of sentencing policy. Addiction specialist Gabor Maté says too much emphasis has been placed on the wrong issue in the United States, as social malaise needs to be redressed much more urgently than the drug subculture. But historian Richard Lawrence Miller reckons it is too late to reverse a strategy that has been in place for over a century.

Miller insists that the authorities across the States have always used drug laws to discriminate against minorities perceived as a threat to the socio-economic well-being of the white populace. Thus, Chinese workers in California were punished for smoking opium in the first decades of the last century, as they were deemed to be depriving white workers of manual labour. Similarly, African-Americans were targeted for their cocaine and heroin consumption in the 1930s, while Mexicans were singled out for using marijuana in the 1950s. However, Miller also detects a more sinister plan at work, as he describes the five links in the so-called `chain of destruction': identification; ostracism; confiscation, concentration and annihilation. David Simon agrees with his reasoning and goes so far as to accuse Washington of presiding over a slow-motion holocaust designed to eradicate the black and working-class elements of society that have become de trop now they have no place in the realigned economy.

This is a chilling assertion and one that Nannie Jeter corroborates with her conviction that the drug problem would have been solved long ago had it impacted primarily on white suburbia. However, the early 21st century has shown that addiction is becoming increasingly colour blind, as it creeps into rural and trailer park communities, as well as into industrial towns who have lost their major sources of employment. Jarecki admits that he has no easy solutions, but his summation of the drug question is articulate, impassioned and insightful. Moreover, it lays down a challenge to America's first black president at least to initiate a debate and enable his compatriots to recognise that many of those serving drug sentences are being punished more out of a sense of fear than justice. Sadly, for all its rectitude in pointing out that the War on Drugs has caused as much, if not more, damage than drugs themselves, it seems unlikely that anything will change anytime soon.

Chronicling the history of the Avala Film Studios, Mila Turajlic's Cinema Komunisto provides a fascinating insight into how the Yugoslavian film industry operated during the presidency of Josip Broz Tito and conspired with him to create a mythology and nostalgia designed to inspire the population to support his non-aligned stance against a hostile world. Largely ignoring the subversive pictures that ultimately earned the new wave Novi Film official censure, this is a study in revisionist Nationalist Realism and international co-production that is strewn with clips and recollections from some of the period's key players.

Although she coaxes telling anecdotes about the `nema problema' attitude to picture making from studio boss Gile Djuric, producers Steva Petrovic and Dan Tana, director Veljko Bulajic and superstar Bata Zivojinovic, Turajlic's most compelling contributor is Leka Konstantinovic, Tito's personal projectionist, who showed him 8001 films between 1949 and his death in 1980. Returning to the official residence that was bombed by NATO during the civil wars that dismantled the Yugoslav state, Konstantinovic recalls Tito and his wife Jovanka rushing through supper to settle down in their private screening room.

He also remembers the enthusiasm with which Tito greeted guests at the Pula Film Festival on his Brioni island retreat and how his defiance of the Kremlin and active support of the Avala complex brought directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles to Belgrade, as well as stars of the magnitude of Kirk Douglas, Yul Brynner, Richard Burton, Alain Delon, Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren.

But the films that Tito encouraged the national industry to make were rarely of the highest quality and many focused on the Marshal's resistance to the Nazis during the Second World War. Indeed, he loaned service equipment and personal to ensure the authenticity of these combat epics and he was eventually rewarded when Bulajic's Battle of Neretva (1969) was nominated for an Academy Award in 1970. Such was the kudos attached to his tale of rearguard courage (which starred Orson Welles as a Chetnik leader) that Tito agreed to let Stipe Delic recreate his own heroics in Sutjeska (1973), on the proviso that Richard Burton took the lead.

An air of melancholic nostalgia pervades proceedings as Turajlic's camera roams Avala's decaying backlots and soundstages (Studio 1 is the second largest in Europe) and witnesses the photographs of the movie greats that once stayed there being ripped off the wall at the Hotel Metropol. But she also makes solid use of archive footage of crowds piling into Pula's Roman arena for atmospheric outdoor screenings and Tito's on-set encounters with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. But it might have been useful to have included a critical assessment of the 750-odd features produced during Tito's rule, while some mention of `black film' renegades like Zivojin Pavlovic, Dusan Makavejev, Zelimir Zilnik and Lazar Stojanovic would have placed the Avala achievement in a wider context. Nevertheless, with its insights into the willingness of Hollywood to collaborate with a Communist regime, this is a must for cultural and political historians alike.

For the record, the features referenced are Vjekoslav Afric's Slavica (1947) and Barba Zvane (1949); France Stiglic's Na svoji zemlji (1948); Radivoje Lola-Djukic's Jezero (1950); Rados Navakovic's Daleko je sunce (1953); Vladimir Pogacic's Poslednji dan (1951); Alberto Lattuada's La Tempesta (1958); Stole Jankovic's Partisan Stories (1960) and Partizani (1974); Ljubomir Radicevic's Ljubav i moda; Vojislav Nanovic's Bolje je umeti (both 1960); Toma Janic's A Piece of Blue Sky; Aleksandar Petrovic's Dvoje (both 1961); Mladomir 'Purisa' Djordjevic's Leto je krivo za sve (1961) and Podne (1968); Frantisek Cap's Nas avto; Sava Mrmak's Zvizduk u osam (both 1962); Branko Bauer's Prekobrojna (1962) and Bosko buha (1978); Veljko Bulajic's Kozara (1963), Battle of Neretva (1969) and Visoki napon (1981); Fadil Hadzic's Desant na Drvar (1963) and Sluzbeni polozaj (1964); Vatroslav Mimica's Prometej s otoka Visevice; Jack Cardiff's The Long Ships; Obrad Gluscevic's Lito vilovito (all 1964); Henry Levin's Ghengis Khan; Denys de La Patellière, Raoul Lévy and Noël Howard's Marco the Magnificent (both 1965); Dragoslav Lazic's Tople godine; Jovan Zivanovic's Kako su se voleli Romeo i Julija? (both 1966); Bato Cengic's Playing Soldiers (1967) and The Role of My Family in the Revolution (1971)l Vojislav 'Kokan' Rakonjac's Nemirni (1967) and Before the Truth (1968); Zorz Skrigin's Koraci kroz magle (1967); Hajrudin Krvavac's Most (1969), Walter Defends Sarajevo (1972) and Partizanska eskadrila (1979); Zivojin Pavlovic's Zaseda (1969); Stipe Delic's Sutjeska; Predrag Golubovic's Bombasi (both 1973); Miomir 'Miki' Stamenkovic's SB zatvara krug; Zivorad 'Zika' Mitrovic's Uzicka Republika; Predrag Golubovic's Crveni udar (all 1974); Midhat Mutapdzic's Doktor Mladen (1975); Zdravko Velimirovic's The Peaks of Zelengore (1976); Mica Milosevic's Nija nego (1978) and Berlin kaputt (1981); Zdravko Velimirovic's Dvoboj za juznu prugu (1978); Zdravko Sotra's Winning of Freedom (1979) and Igmanski mars (1983); Rajko Grlic's U raljama zivota (1984); Miroslav Lekic's It Happened on This Very Day (1987); Bozidar Nikolic's Tri karte za Holivud (1993); and Srdan Dragojevic's Pretty Village, Pretty Flame (1996).

Last, but by no means least, is the week's sole fictional feature. Ken Scott's Starbuck topped the national box-office poll last year and has made such an impact in North America that Scott has been hired to direct the Hollywood remake for Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks outfit.

Named after a Canadian Holstein bull who fathered thousands of calves in the 1980s, this droll domestic comedy has its similarities with Jerry Rothwell's 2010 documentary, Donor Unknown. However, Scott and co-writer Martin Petit take the tale into Capracorn territory, as its hapless anti-hero realises the need to grow up and take some responsibility for his past actions.

Patrick Huard is a delivery driver for immigrant father Igor Ovadis's butcher's shop. His siblings despair of him and girlfriend Julie Le Breton can barely bring herself to believe she is dating such an overweight loser, who owes $80,000 to mobsters who are quite prepared to use violence unless they get paid. But, just as it seems that things cannot get any worse, lawyer friend Antoine Bertrand informs Huard that his past is about to catch up with him. Back in the 1980s, the cash-strapped Huard donated sperm at $35 a deposit. However, owing to a clerical error, his contributions were used on an abnormally large number of occasions. Consequently, 142 of the 533 children he helped conceive have decided to sue the clinic in order to discover the identity of their biological father.

Already reeling from this revelation, Huard then learns that Le Berton is pregnant and he is dismayed when she admits she has doubts about allowing him to be involved in raising the child. Bertrand, who is the father of four troublesome brats, assures Huard that fatherhood is not all it is cracked up to be. But the thought of not being there for his own child prompts Huard to open the file containing details of the 142 litigants desperate to meet him and he becomes sufficiently intrigued by them that he finds ways to mingle with them anonymously and even start acting as a guardian angel, as he intervenes in their lives to sort out a range of problems, including saving one daughter from an overdose.

Although the emphasis is firmly on the comic, Scott doesn't always resist the temptation to let a little sentimentality seep into the proceedings and David Laflèche's score often borders on the mawkishly manipulative. Some of the montage sequences also seem more intent on tugging on the heartstrings than furthering the plot, while the spate of good deeds ultimately becomes a distraction from the problems that Huard faces with the class-action suit, the leg-breaking goons and the hesitant Le Berton. However, such is the schlubby charm of his performance that this remains amusing and engaging. Moreover, it means that Vince Vaughn has quite an act to follow.