Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 8/9/2011)

Despite being raised as the son and nephew of Morris men, actor-writer Tim Plester never felt the urge to don ribbons and bells or prance around the green wielding a long stick and waving a white handkerchief. Yet, while being painfully conscious that this quintessentially English pastime was almost universally mocked by his fellow countrymen, he felt drawn to exploring the history of Morris dancing and assessing its current status in a society that has almost completely forgotten its folkloric significance, let alone the supposed origin of this `moorish dance' as a bequeast from some North African Berbers, a relict from the Crusades or a late 15th-century import from Ferdinand and Isabella's Spain after the expulsion of the Moors.

Whatever the disputed dating of its first mention in Anglo records, there is no doubting that the Industrial Revolution and the Great War did much to change the national perception of Morris. In the case of the latter, thousands of young men accustomed to country ritual lost their lives in the trenches and their surviving comrades simply didn't have the heart to rebuild local sides. All but one of Adderbury's dancers, for example, perished in the fields of Northern France.

But, as Plester and Curry discover, the way of the Morris continues across Britain and around the world. It also numbers among its adherents such celebrities as Billy Bragg and Chris Leslie, who ensured Morris became a key component of the Fairport Convention legacy. Indeed, the Adderbury Village Morris Men guested on the album Son of Morris On, which was released the year after Bryan Sheppard and Tim Radford reformed the team in 1975 and danced outside the house of the sole survivor of its predecessor, Charlie Coleman.

Unfortunately, this sense of unity didn't last long and, while Sheppard was left in charge of the `natives only' Adderbury Village Morris Men, Radford quit to form the Adderbury Morris Men, who were not only open to those born outside the village and its immediate environs, but also favoured the songs and dances collected by Cecil Sharp rather than Le Hall Place-based folklorist Janet Heatley Blunt. More might have been said about this schism, but Plester and Curry prefer to canvas the opinions of local kids on the Day of Dance to gauge Morris's immediate future before accompanying Sheppard and his cohorts on a solidarity pilgrimage to mark the 90th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme.

The sequence in which their scions pay tribute to George Robins (21), Lawrence `Harry' Wallin (21), Ronald Pargeter (19) and his younger brother Percy (20) is deeply moving and it clearly had a profound effect upon Plester, who decides to consult with father Bill and uncle Jim prior to taking the plunge and strapping on the baldrics and popping on the top hat for his long overdue debut.

The opening animation claiming that Morris started with a gambolling fox at the dawn of time sets the tone for this engaging and enjoyable study. But the highlights are the Super-8 images filmed by Plester's grandfather Harold and the moving rendition of `The Happy Man' at the Thiepval Memorial. A marked improvement on Lucy Akhurst's amiable, but lightweight comedy Morris: A Life With Bells On (2009), this may not prompt you to sign up for your local team. But it will certainly increase your understanding of an ever-evolving custom. So hats off to Bryan Sheppard, Jim Plester, Chris Garrett, Edd Frost, Dave Davies, Malcolm Wood, John Eckers, Nick Duxbury, Dave Trivett, Paul Brierley, Mark French, Donald McCombie, Chris and Pete Holmes, Robin Wilkinson, Tom Leary, `Dorset' David Reed, Ian Baum, Damian Piessel and Peter Jordan - and long may their shin-bells tinkle!

Falconry is an even older art, although it has never been better represented on screen than in Kes (1969), Ken Loach's poignant adaptation of Barry Hines's masterly novel, A Kestrel for a Knave. Boasting the best performance by a child actor in a British film, Loach's second feature has been reissued to mark the 75th birthday of the St Peter's law graduate, who performed with the famous Oxford Revue before making his way in repertory theatre and cutting his directorial teeth on series like Z Cars. Kes more to Italian neo-realism than Cathy Come Home (1966) and Up the Junction (1968) and the other kitchen sink dramas that Loach had produced for the BBC prior to making his feature bow with Poor Cow (1967). But it established the brand of compassionate, politicised authenticity that has characterised Loach's remarkable canon ever since.

Fifteen year-old Billy Casper (David Bradley) lives in Barnsley with his neglectful mother (Lynne Perrie) and his bullying miner brother Jud (Freddie Fletcher). Unmotivated and unruly, he is dismissed at school by the likes of games teacher Mr Sugden (Brian Glover) and headmaster Mr Gryce (Bob Bowes), while the visiting careers officer (Bernard Atha) despairs in trying to cajole Billy into contemplating his dead-end future. But all he knows is that he won't go down the pit and wants more out of life than the boozy nights out that keep his mother and brother sane.

Having discovered a kestrel's nest in the nearby countryside, Billy steals a chick and is soon rushing through his paper round and skiving off school to bring it titbits and teach it to fly on a creance. His enthusiasm attracts the attention of kindly English master Mr Farthing (Colin Welland), who encourages him to give a show-and-tell presentation to the class. But Billy remains a rebel and when Jud gives him money to place a bet, he decides to splash it on chips and some choice cuts for Kes. However, when the rank outsider Jud had backed unexpectedly wins, he exacts cruel revenge for missing out on some extra spending money.

Scripted by Hines, Loach and producer Tony Garnett, this is a rigorously unsentimental snapshot of a British working-class childhood at the fag end of the Swinging Sixties. Despite roundly condemning the education system that cynically stifled talent to churn out drones for the heavy industries on which the economy still rested, Loach resists romanticising manual labour or the unskilled psyche. Indeed, he finds little joy in the nightclub where Jud and Mrs Casper drown their sorrows and frets about the decline of the traditional family. But he also comes perilously close to casting Billy as a juvenile variation on the flat-capped, pigeon-fancying stereotypical Yorkshireman and even the wonderful football sequence, in which Brian Glover runs rings around his teenage charges in the guise of Bobby Charlton, risks patronising rather than celebrating the game of the common man.

Yet such is the sullen, spiky naturalism of David Bradley's performance that it's impossible not to believe in the truths at the heart of Kes, which are reinforced by Chris Menges's lowering cinematography and Loach's genius for making minor characters seem as though they have wandering into shot from real life.

The credible depiction of the surroundings also proves key to Julian Gilbey's A Lonely Place to Die, a visually striking and slickly suspenseful wilderness survival thriller set in the Scottish Highlands. Mixing aerial shots of mountains and forests with handheld close-ups that heighten the sense of peril, cinematographer Ali Asad not only captures the forbidding majesty of nature, but also the atmosphere of a small town during the folkloric festival that provides the backdrop for the combustible climax.

Having survived a potentially fatal fall on a sheer face while out climbing, Ed Speleers is relieved to join companions Melissa George and Alec Newman at the remote cottage being rented by married friends Kate Magowan and Garry Sweeney. The mood is strained over supper and Speelers and Sweeney fall out over a game of poker. Consequently, there's a lingering tension next morning as they set out to tackle a nearby peak. But rivalries are quickly forgotten when they stop for lunch and spot a breathing tube in the undergrowth and find terrified Eastern European girl Holly Boyd cowering in a shallow pit.

As the most experienced climbers, Newman and George agree to go for help over the hazardous Devil's Drop, while the others escort Boyd to the village of Annan Moor. However, Newman plummets to his death and George realises that his rope has been cut before falling herself into the river below. Waking from a dream of being entombed, George tries to find her bearings, unaware that only a stone's throw away Douglas Russell and Alan Steele are being murdered by Sean Harris and Stephen McCole, who are furious that Boyd's prison has been discovered and will do anything to retrieve her.

Aware she is being hunted, George reunites with her friends and takes charge of Boyd after Magowan is shot protecting her. They fall into the river and negotiate some rapids before making the bank. Speelers and Sweeney catch up with them and the former injures his leg shielding the girl from Harris and McCole, while the latter sacrifices himself by creating a diversion with a hastily made doll.

As George, Boyd and Speelers seek sanctuary in sergeant Eric Barlow's police station, Serbian gangster father, Karel Roden, arrives in Annan Moor with mercenaries Eamonn Walker and Paul Anderson intent on getting his daughter back without paying a ransom. The village streets are packed with Beltane carnival revellers as Harris and Roden meet in the pub to discuss terms. However, as night falls, the fugitives realise they can't trust Barlow and make their getaway, followed by McCole wearing a pig mask.

Ably cutting between Walker and Anderson scouring the streets, Harris and Roden playing cat and mouse and George and Boyd being stalked by McCole, Gilbey unleashes mayhem in the last reel, as gunshots are exchanged, houses are torched and villains plunge through upper-storey windows. However, he restores a semblance of calm with a sickening woodland execution that typifies the picture's sinister tone.

Complementing the fine photography with some bravura stuntwork, this is a neatly constructed tale that keeps introducing ever-more pitiless predators to imperil the feisty George and the trusting Boyd. Scripting with brother Will, Gilbey might have come up with something more inventive than a `shoot `em up' denouement. But the experienced editor sketches the characters with brisk efficiency and handles the action sequences with the same aplomb with which he exploits the terrain.

Sadly, the same can't be said of Christopher Hatton in Robotropolis, as he moves his ciphers and caricatures around nondescript futuristic locales with a thudding deliberation that owes more to budgetary constraint than directorial inadequacy. Yet, even though the malfunctioning robot plot and the live news broadcast format are hardly original, this is far from the unmitigated disaster that some critics have claimed.

Ace reporter Zoe Naylor and her camera crew Graham Sibley and Tonya Cornelisse have been granted access to New Town, a residential facility adjoining a vast South China Sea oil platform that has been kitted out with experimental service bots by tycoon Lani John Tupu and his college buddy Bjorn Turmann. Their reports are chanelled back to the Global News Network studio in New York by producer Edward Foy and his assistant Karina Sindicich from the headquarters of MegaNational Industries and all seems to be going well as Naylor interviews the residents about living in such a cutting-edge community.

But, as Naylor is about to have a kickabout with one of the Burts (as they're nicknamed), it shoots a rival player and clunks off into the nearby skyscraper complex. Tupu and PR chief Peer Metze order Foy off the air, but he refuses and Naylor keeps broadcasting as police and paramedic robots arrive to take Cornelisse into custody. Naylor and Sibley follow and witness other slayings as Tupu learns that nothing can be done to regain control. News anchor Daniel Jenkins discusses the shocking turn of events with robotics expert Remesh Panicker as Naylor is informed by MNI employee Jourdan Lee that this is not the first instance of Burts going rogue. But nothing can prepare them for Cornelisse's execution at the main command centre and Foy leaps into a helicopter to rescue Naylor and Sibley from what is quickly becoming a disaster area.

The remainder of this mediocre slice of sci-fi plays out pretty much as expected. Tupu discovers a saboteur within his organisation (whose identity is blatantly obvious from the outset), while Foy and Sibley continue their romantic rivalry over Naylor as they seek to escape the rampaging killbots. But Hatton struggles to create much tension, with an encounter with scared Chinese moppet Olivia Hatton proving something of a red herring and the sense of peril becomes no more tangible even after the Burts hurl Foy's chopper off a rooftop and force the fugitives into the surrounding jungle and thence into the sewer system.

The cast tries hard, with Naylor playing the all-action newshound with a creditable composure. But too many of her co-stars are prone to over-acting, with the consequence that the already hokey dialogue comes to sound increasingly ridiculous. The special effects are also less than convincing, with the long shot of the blazing oil refinery recalling something out of Thunderbirds. However, the faceless Burts are suitably sinister and their sudden ability to run swiftly on all fours is a disconcerting development that is somewhat compromised by a techie's eleventh hour realisation that they can be pacified by simply rebooting their operational data. But Hatton offsets this anti-climax with an ambiguous ending that is made all the more tantalising by the opening sequence, which either depicts a previous bot rebellion or the shape of things to come.

Finally, this week, Pablo Larraín's third feature Post Mortem reveals some disturbing facts about Chile in the September week in 1973 when General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the Socialist Party government of Salvador Allende. Staged with a troubling deliberateness that is reinforced by Sergio Armstrong's disorienting widescreen framing, this macabrely mesmerising drama is dominated by a deadpan display by Alfredo Castro that contrasts sharply with his murderous turn as the John Travolta obsessive in Larraín's much-admired Tony Manero (2008).

The lank-haired Castro lives in a quiet Santiago street opposite union activist Ernesto Malbran and his children Antonia Zegers and Santiago Grafigna. The younger boy helps Castro type up the morgue reports he has to produce for coroner Jaime Vadell, while Zegers dances in a down-market burlesque run by the charmless Luis Gnecco. Despite a past fling with medical assistant Amparo Noguera, Castro is obsessed with Zegers and slips backstage during an afternoon performance to see her being fired for losing her allure to anorexia.

Seizing upon her vulnerability, Castro invites her for a drink and Zegers seems quaintly amused by his respectful earnestness as they drive through the city. However, he is powerless to protect her when their route is blocked by a Communist youth rally and Zegers is hauled out to join the throng by her father's radical friend, Marcelo Alonso. However, she eventually makes it home safely and seeks sanctuary in Castro's shabbily cosy abode to avoid the meeting taking place in her own. She bursts into tears over a simple supper and Castro bawls with her and is rewarded for his empathy by joyless intercourse that clearly means more to him that his self-obsessed guest.

Determined to impress Zegers, Casto takes her to a Chinese restaurant and proposes marriage. Humiliated by her incredulity, he tries to reel back to a suggestion they become an item. But the damage is done and, even though he gives Gnecco his car to have Zegers reinstated in the show, he only sees her again after her father and brother are abducted by troops during the coup that takes place while Castro is distracted in the shower. He willingly agrees to protect Zegers and even patches up her wounded dog. But his workload has increased enormously at the hospital, as captain Marcial Tagle orders him and Noguera to abandon their usually meticulous procedures and simply label the dead and count their bullet holes.

After a day of wheeling corpses through narrow corridors to the morgue, Castro is exhausted and wholly unprepared to be bundled into an army truck with Vadell and Noguera to perform an autopsy on Allende in front of the military brass. Unused to operating an electric typewriter, Castro has to be replaced by a more competent soldier, while Noguera proves unable to open the dead president's abdomen, leaving Vadell hurriedly to cover his corpse and pronounce him a suicide.

Although Castro seems happy to go along with the verdict (which was proved correct in July 2011), Noguera is convinced that Allende was murdered and, thus, readily conspires with Castro to spirit a badly wounded survivor of the reprisals into the main ward. However, when he is found among the pile of bodies next day - along with the nurse who tried to help him - Noguera launches into a bitter diatribe that is only halted by a trooper firing his weapon repeatedly into the victims at her feet.

Castro and Vadell look on impotently. But when he discovers that Zegers has been sleeping with Alonso while under his protection, Castro proves himself to be as vindictive as the new regime and remorselessly piles furniture in front of the shed in which Zegers is hiding to barricade the door and bring about the death by malnutrition that had earlier been signposted by a provocative flash forward.

From the opening shot taken from the undercarriage of an armoured patrol vehicle rumbling through a debris-strewn street, this is as bleak as the desaturated palette that suggests the cadaverous decolorisation of an entire country. Larraín has stated the film is dedicated to the silent majority of Chileans who tolerated a genocidal policy of disappearances in order to avoid falling prey to it. However, this is the most back-handed of tributes, even though Larraín ensures that no one is wholly sympathetic in this sorry situation, with even revolutionaries like Alonso and such respectably bourgeois as Noguera having decidedly dubious morals.

The performances are outstanding, with Zegers and Noguera respectively conveying a selfishness and a selflessness that attract the opposite (and, thus, wrong) responses from Castro, who is too naive to recognise his error. Yet, while his refusal (or inability) to register emotion causes his romantic problems, it also enables him to survive the brutal transition to military dictatorship and Larraín leaves the viewer in little doubt that he will always know which direction to jump when pushed.

Such subtlety makes Post Mortem so chillingly dark. But it would be only half as accomplished aesthetically without Matías Valdés's sound mix (which comes brilliantly to the fore as the shower all-but drowns out the cacophony of the coup) and Sergio Armstrong's 16mm widescreen imagery, which, thanks to Larraín's compositional audacity, always manages to suggest that something is occurring or lurking beyond the edges of the frame in a tangible and very dangerous reality.