Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 7/6/2012)

Edited down from a three-hour version originally shown in the American Masters series on the PBS network, Robert Weide's profile pays little heed to the musical aspect of Allen's career, which was admirably covered by Barbara Kopple in Wild Man Blues (1997). Nor does he pry too deeply into his romantic liaisons or find room for many naysaying voices. But, as a chronicle of Woody Allen's evolution from teenage gagsmith to septuagenarian auteur, this is unlikely to be surpassed.

Born in the Bronx, Allen Stewart Konigsberg was raised in Brooklyn with his sister Letty by their parents Martin and Nettie. His home life was occasionally fractious and he used magic tricks to court popularity at school. In his teens, however, he started writing jokes for newspaper columnists and graduated to television after a short stint at New York University. Guided by managers Charles Roffe and Jack Rollins, he teamed most notably with Mel Brooks and Larry Gelbart in producing award-winning shows for Sid Caesar and Pat Boone. But it was his management's insistence that he concentrated on his stand-up act that led to stardom and a chance to write and act in Clive Donner's farce, What's New Pussycat? (1965).

Unhappy with the lack of control he had over his material, Allen decided that he would only return to the cinema if he could direct and he made an auspicious debut with Take the Money and Run (1969). Co-starring second wife Louise Lasser, this cod documentary initiated a series of gag-led comedies that he referred to in the Felliniesque Stardust Memories (1980) as 'the early funny ones'. Yet Bananas (1971), Play It Again, Sam (1972), Sleeper (1973) and Love and Death (1975) allowed him to learn screen technique and strengthened his bond with former lover Diane Keaton, who would headline Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), the masterpieces that demonstrated a new comic and cinematic maturity that was reflected in his 1978 homage to Ingmar Bergman, Interiors.

Having failed to convince with his first attempt at serious drama, Allen found himself on the end of another backlash after some perceived the self-searching Stardust Memories as an assault on his fans. However, he returned to favour during a 12-film association with Mia Farrow that included such enduring favourites as A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy (1982), Zelig (1983), Broadway Danny Rose (1984), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Radio Days (1987). However, a darker edge appeared in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) before Farrow discovered during the shooting of Husbands and Wives (1992) that Allen had been having an affair with her adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, who is 34 years his junior.

Many have never forgiven Allen for this incident and it became common for reviews to pick up on his habit of casting himself opposite younger actresses. Yet, he continued to produce work of the calibre of Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993), Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Mighty Aphrodite (1995) and Sweet and Lowdown (1999), as well as quirkier fare like Shadows and Fog (1992). John Cusack, Mira Sorvino and Sean Penn all readily testify to the privilege and pleasure of collaborating with Allen, but only Mariel Hemingway mentions that this period also saw the release of several clunkers and it's one of the shortcomings of this abridgement (which one hopes is not repeated in the 192-minute version) that no mention is made of enjoyable outings like Everyone Says I Love You (1996) and Small Town Crooks (2000), let alone such critically derided features as Deconstructing Harry (1997), Celebrity (1998), The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001). Hollywood Ending (2002), Anything Else (2003), and Melinda and Melinda (2004).

Similarly, too little is made of the reasons for his decision to quit New York - to which he has only subsequently returned for Whatever Works in 2009 - and work in Europe, with the underwhelming quartet of Match Point (2005), Scoop (2006), Cassandra's Dream (2007) and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010) being shot in London, while the locations for Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Midnight in Paris (2011) and To Rome With Love (2012) are pretty self-explanatory. This failure to address the misfires comes from the heavily reliance on talking-head contributions from long-term collaborators like Letty Aronson, Marshall Brickman, Tony Roberts, Diane Wiest and such admirers as Dick Cavett and Martin Scorsese. But Weide had either been warned off raising them with Allen himself or he deemed it prudent not to mention them.

Notwithstanding the tendency to gloss, this is a fascinating tribute, with the standout moments including Allen displaying the contents of a drawer stuffed with scrap-paper ideas and discussing his surprise at stars like Scarlett Johansson and Penélope Cruz wanting to work with him. But genuine revelations about his backstory and his working methods are few and far between, as Allen clearly exercises as much control over deferential profiles as he does his own pictures. Yet Weide still manages to imply that Allen's peak among America's most important film-makers was dismayingly short and that, while he is still revered on the European festival circuit, he fell victim to the unmentioned menace of the Hollywood blockbuster that aimed itself squarely at undiscriminating kids and dumbed down the potential future audience for Allen's witty, urbane style of old school film-making.

As Allen carries on regardless, South Korean Kim Ki-duk makes a striking return to film-making with Arirang. Kim has been out of the limelight since suffering a nervous breakdown after blaming himself for an actress's near-death during the making of Dreams in 2008. In some ways resembling Jafar Panahi's This Is Not a Movie in allowing access to a director's home and mindset, this distinctive comeback is the ultimate work of auteurist cinema, as Kim is solely responsible for every aspect of its action on screen and behind the scenes. Sometimes almost unbearable to watch because of its seemingly genuine self-lacerating honesty, but at others feeling more like a slickly cynical in-joke, this is strictly for fans of the prolific maverick. Yet its insights into the artistic and emotional anguish of making films and having them judged by rivals, critics and audiences are intriguing.

Living inside a tent in a shack on a remote hillside, Kim and his feline companion seem to be hiding from the world. As records of days in the life go, this one shifts from mundane to manic remarkably quickly. Kim shows himself doing everyday chores while camping out on a mountainside like chopping wood and making a meal. We are even treated to the sight of his relieving himself in the snow and reminiscing about unfulfilled projects such as the story he was discussing with Willem Dafoe about a Korean War veteran who returns to find the body of the woman he killed and winds up confronting her spirit through a shaman.

Putting his hair into a pony tail, Kim begins to interrogate himself through cross-cutting and explains why he had to withdraw after the Dreams incident and has to work out what to do next as making films is his sole reason for existence. Suddenly, he starts slugging back the Korean hooch known as soju and begins to unburden himself torrentially as he launches into a diatribe against the colleagues who have betrayed him, the money men who have failed to back him, the governing politicians who feted him for mostly self-serving reasons (especially as several of his films present South Korea in such a dim light) and the reviewers who have pronounced on his work without either having seen his canon in its entirety or understood what he was trying to achieve in any given picture.

Kim also blames himself, however, particularly for the accident that saw Lee Na-young nearly suffocate while filming a hanging suicide sequence and left Kim sufficiently traumatised to quit cinema for three years. But this is more an accusatory than a confessional work, with Kim acting as his own inquisitor and audience as he pieces together snippets of footage to deconstruct both the interviewing and film-making processes. He even seems to involve his shadow in the questioning and the ingenuity of his imagery leads one to suspect that, even if this wasn't meticulously scripted, it was certainly premeditatedly planned so that every expletive-strewn outburst is shot from just the right angle to make the most audiovisual impact.

Given Kim's past genius for controversy, it's almost surprising that this isn't more outlandish and defamatory in denouncing such erstwhile collaborators as Jang Hoon and the actors specialising in playing villains, whom Kim insists are so convincing because they are actually evil. He seems to let genuine emotions slip out while singing the folk lament `Arirang' and watching his 2003 masterpiece Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring on DVD. But the suspicion that this is less a confessional exercise than a piece of mischief making start to be aroused when Kim faces questioning by his own shadow and keeps being disturbed by mysterious knocks at the door.

However, the authenticity of the enterprise is only conclusively thrown into doubt when Kim draws on his former career as a machinist to fashion a gun out of spare pieces of metal and leaves his hideaway declaring that he is going to mow down his betrayers. Climbing into his car, he drives to Seoul where three shots are heard at different locations before Kim is shown using wires to pull the trigger on himself. So have we just witnessed the painfully frank outpourings of a soul in personal and professional torment or another gleeful gesture of defiance by a director who simply refuses to play by the rules?

As he suggested with The House of the Devil (2009), Delaware director Ti West is well versed in the conventions of the horror genre and he demonstrates again in The Innkeepers how to exploit them while also cheating them sufficiently to sustain atmosphere and spring surprises. While not perhaps as consistently chilling as its predecessor and occasionally succumbing to contrivance, this is still a satisfyingly disconcerting ghost story that confirms West should steer clear of franchise assignments like Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever (2009) and stick to original offerings like The Roost (2005) and Trigger Man (2007), with which he launched his career while still in his early twenties.

The once prosperous Yankee Pedlar Inn is about to close its doors and the tomboyish Sarah Paxton and the nerdy Pat Healy have landed the final desk duty while the owner is away in the Caribbean. The only guests are Alison Bartlett and her young son Jake Schlueter, who needed a port in a storm after she walked out on her husband, and onetime soap actress Kelly McGillis, who has reinvented herself as a spiritualist and is in town to address a convention.

Healy has a crush on Paxton, but contents himself with bantering with her and playing pranks when she watches footage on a paranormal site he has found online. He is also the curator of a page dedicated to a 19th-century bride who hanged herself on being abandoned by her new husband on their wedding night and whose body was hidden in the basement by the owners for fear the scandal would be bad for business. Paxton is keen to help Healy record any lingering psychic energy before the hotel closes for good and goes wandering into the corridor leading off from the lobby on hearing a noise.

She jumps on bumping into Healy, who had come looking for her, and she has to resort to her asthma inhaler. Already feeling fragile after a confrontation in her room with the testy McGillis, Paxton is startled by further sounds on taking out the garbage and she padlocks the cellar doors to prevent any undesirables from sneaking inside. However, she regains her composure after Healy heads to bed and decides to spend her graveyard shift recording electronic voice phenomena on the ground floor. Convinced she can hear voices and the piano playing, she rushes up to wake Healy and runs into McGillis returning from her assignation. She reveals she is now a medium and uses a crystal pendulum to summon any spirits occupying the Yankee Pedlar and warns Paxton that there are three ghosts abroad and that she should stay out of the basement at all costs.

Awoken next morning by the sight of the hanged bride in her room, the terrified Paxton is reassured by Healy that she was simply having a nightmare. She recovers sufficiently, however, to show elderly George Riddle to the third-floor room he spent his honeymoon and he is grateful to her for allowing him to use a suite that has been largely emptied before the closure. Yet she cannot forget the noises she picked up on Healy's recording equipment and, after they get tipsy on beer, she suggests they venture into the cellar to investigate.

Ignoring McGillis's warning, the pair creep into the darkness. But, on hearing some voices, Healy becomes so scared that he bolts to his car and drives away. Aghast at being abandoned, Paxton runs up to McGillis's room and she agrees to check out the basement. However, she is so stricken by what she discovers on making contact with a spirit that she tells Paxton they have to leave immediately. With Bartlett and Schlueter having already departed in frustration at receiving such poor service, the melancholic Riddle appears to be the only guest to inform. But, Paxton's troubles really begin the moment she knocks on his door.

Unlike so many modern horror directors, West opts for atmosphere over histrionics and gentle jolts over jumps out of the skin. He cannot quite resist the temptation to indulge in a spot of goriness, but he refuses to splatter the screen and this restraint ensures the audience is prepared to follow in the hesitant footsteps of the deftly delineated characters and await their fate with the delicious sense of dread that permeates the best chillers.

Already familiar from Dennis Iliadis's 2009 remake of The Last House on the Left and David R. Ellis's Shark Night 3D (2010), Paxton is charming as the puckishly vulnerable twentysomething who is bored by neighbourhood barista Lena Dunham's prattling, starstruck by the washed-up McGillis and fond of Healy, though clearly not in the same besotted place that he occupies. But, solid as the performances are, the standout turns here come from cinematographer Eliot Rockett, whose camera roams open, confined and darkened spaces with equal menace, and Jeff Grace, whose wonderfully Herrmannesque overture gives way to teasing cues that allow West to build tension in every nook and cranny of a location in Torrington, Connecticut, where he stayed while shooting his previous picture.

In truth, the denouement is mildly disappointing and the final jolt smacks of the drive-in fodder that was churned out in the 1950s and 60s, as a new breed of independent film-makers began to mess with teenage minds without the excessive interference of the waning studio system's watchdogs. But, overall, the allusions to these purveyors of B-grade exploitation, as well as those to such cinematic masters as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick, significantly add to the enjoyment of a haunted house saga that places as much emphasis on wit as scaring you witless.

Britain has always had a solid reputation for low-budget horror. But Gareth Evans's Footprints (2006) and Marc Price's Colin (2008) ushered in something of a golden age that has recently produced the likes of Philip Ridley's Heartless (2010), Cristian Solimeno's The Glass Man (2011) and Sean Hogan's The Devil's Business (2012). Regional horror is also on an upswing, with Laurence Gough's Scouse zombie romp Salvage, Kerry Anne Mullaney's isolated Scottish farm chiller The Dead Outside (both 2008) and Susan Jacobson's Derbyshire psycho saga The Holding (2011) now being joined by Oliver S. Milburn's debut feature, The Harsh Light of Day, which makes evocative use of its Dorset coastal locations to put a Faustian twist on the traditional vampire scenario.

Returning home after the launch of his new book, Dark Corners, occult expert Dan Richardson and his wife Niki Felstead celebrate his success by cavorting around their plush bedroom. However, their passion is interrupted by a trio of intruders (Paul Jacques, Matthew Thom and Tim J. Henley) who film the brutal assault on the couple that leaves Richardson widowed and paralysed. Furious with the local police and often short-tempered with well-meaning carer Sophie Linfield, he discusses his frustration on the phone with fellow supernaturalist Lockhart Ogilvie, who promises to put him in touch with somebody who might be able to help.

Shortly afterwards, Richardson is visited by the mysterious Giles Alderson, who agrees to help him, albeit at a price. The following night, the stranger returns and orders Richardson to consume a piece of raw meat from the fridge and he wakes next morning feeling discomfited by the sunlight streaming through his window. He astonishes Linfield by getting up from his wheelchair, but she flees when he starts to make sinister advances towards her. However, she is captured and killed by Alderson, who insists that drinking her blood will enable Richardson to wreak his vengeance on Felstead's murderers and their cynical boss, Wesley McCarthy, who sells the footage of the gang's outrages on the thriving snuff movie market.

Richardson ventures into the seedy netherworld inhabited by his adversaries and slaughters Thom without conscience. Indeed, he leaves a taunting message to his buddies to finish off the task they started in Dorset and they break into the cosy cottage with snarling determination (and, of course, the cameras rolling to record an opportunistic sequel). Yet Richardson survives gunshots and stab wounds to dispatch the terrified interlopers with Alderson's assistance. However, he refuses to join the undead and takes his wife's ashes to face his fate as dawn breaks over an idyllic hillside.

Twenty-three year-old Oliver Milburn is a much better director than he is a writer. He sets the scene hesitantly and indulges in some gratuitous softcore before getting down to the grim business of revenge. The action certainly picks up pace after Alderson's introduction before reaching its poignant clifftop climax, but the performances remain wildly inconsistent and some of Samuel Stewart's camerawork betrays the makers' inexperience. However, the editing and sound design are as admirable as Milburn's ingenuity and ambition, with some of the match shots being as amusing as they are astute. So, while this may not be in the same league as Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In (2008), it shows an understanding of generic convention and the bid to impart some social realist authenticity puts it streets ahead of Mockney horrors like Steven Lawson's Dead Cert (2010) or Jonathan Glendening's Strippers vs Werewolves.

Speaking of the capital, we conclude a week that has been awash with nostalgia with the reissue of Henry Cornelius's Passport to Pimlico (1949), a story of postwar secession that manages to both reinforce and subvert the cosy myth of the Ealing Comedies. Suggesting that a Central London borough would simply opt out of the austerity measures that almost seemed as big a sacrifice as those required to win the Second World War, TEB Clarke's screenplay could be interpreted as a gentle revolt against Clement Attlee's Labour government. But, such is the emphasis on community and beating the odds, that this is as much a paean (and, perhaps, a regretful farewell) to the spirit that existed between the Phony War, Dunkirk and the Blitz, when Britain was as isolated as the plucky Duchy of Burgundy.

In the midst of a heatwave, the residents of Pimlico are informed that an unexploded bomb has been found in a derelict street. However, before it can be safely detonated, some children cause the device to go off and local shopkeeper Stanley Holloway gets too close to the edge of the crater and falls in. Convinced he saw something in the mud, Holloway returns with daughter Barbara Murray and they not only find a stash of treasure, but also documents relating to the 15th-century Duke of Burgundy.

At a meeting to decide the fate of the artefacts, historian Margaret Rutherford reveals that the surrounding area had been granted to the Duke by Edward IV for services in battle. Moreover, as the royal order had never been rescinded, Pimlico belongs to Burgundy rather than Britain. Bank manager Raymond Huntley quickly realises the import of this discovery and ignores the admonition of his superiors because they no longer have jurisdiction over him. His neighbours soon follow suit and ration books and pub opening hours are discarded with mischievous glee, while black marketeers flock to the district to make a killing without the inconvenience of police harassment.

Indeed, HM Customs is forced to set up a border checkpoint after Paul Dupuis arrives from Dijon claiming to be the rightful heir to the ducal throne. Consequently, while Holloway begins developing the bomb site as a lido, his fellow citizens start to discover the drawbacks of independence, as travel to the rest of London is restricted and power and water supplies are cut off. The children are sent to the country to escape the privations and most residents come to enjoy the mood of embattled unity. However, when a nocturnal bid to siphon water from a hydrant close to the frontier succeeds only in flooding the food store, the breakaway seems doomed.

The conclusion represents pure Ealing whimsy, as Londoners flock to provide the Burgundians with emergency food parcels and a compromise is achieved that allows the renegades to re-embrace British sovereignty without losing face. Even more typically, the moment things return to normal, the weather breaks and sun is replaced by torrential downpours. The status quo has not only been restored, it has been reinforced. But this very English coup was hardly anarchic, as one monarch was replaced with another, while the programme of reform centred on a civic pride that was prevalent throughout the war-scarred nation.

Such nostalgia-tinged fantasy was typical of Tibby Clarke's writing. But there is an edge to the satire and one suspects this came from Henry Cornelius, a South African who had assisted Max Reinhardt and René Clair before editing features for Alexander Korda and heading up the South African Government Film Unit during the war. Recruited by Alberto Cavalcanti, he had scripted Ealing's prototype comedy, Hue and Cry (1947), and this marked his directorial debut. But he brings an outsider's eye to the quaint customs and chirpy caricatures and he ensures that his cast perfectly captures the civilised nature of the rebellion, with the more outspoken declarations always being balanced by a caution rooted in the knowledge that something this good could only be transient.

Holloway and Rutherford deliver trademark performances, but stalwarts like John Slater, Hermione Baddeley, Sydney Tafler, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, Michael Hordern and Charles Hawtrey all do their bit to the accompaniment of Georges Auric's jaunty score. Yet Cornelius never made another film for the studio, after boss Michael Balcon refused his request for a pay rise. Thus, Ealing missed out on Cornelius's masterpiece, Genevieve (1953), which has become something of a national institution in a way Passport to Pimlico never has.