Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 24/10/2013)

Spanning the period from the suppression of the workers' protests in 1970 to the collapse of authoritarianism in 1989, the action turns around the 1981 interview between Lech Walesa (Robert Wieckiewicz) and Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci (Maria Rosaria Omaggio), which brought the leader of the Gdansk shipyard rebels to international attention. Readily depicting Walesa as a flawed individual, Wajda recalls how the young electrician was duped into becoming an informer in 1970, as he struggled to raise numerous children with his wife, Danuta (Agnieszka Grochowska). But, as the decade progressed, Walesa started to play a greater part in the protest movement and, following the homecoming of Pope John Paul II in 1979, he emerged as a charismatic figure within the Solidarity union, whose activities led to the imposition of martial law in 1981.

Wieckiewicz presents Walesa as an arrogant, under-educated, grandstanding everyman whose championing of the common people was rooted in a mistrust of intellectuals and apparatchiks. But he also captures his courage and commitment, as he wins back the trust of the comrades he had been forced to betray in seeking to act as a conciliator. The most gripping segment centres on the Solidarity struggle. But Wajda also excels in the sequences in which Danuta is strip-searched at the airport in 1983 after being allowed to collect her husband's Nobel Prize in Oslo and in which Walesa addresses the US Congress in 1989.

He is superbly abetted by production designer Magdalena Dipont, cinematographer Pawel Edelman and editors Grazyna Gradon and Milenia Fiedler, who switch between monochrome and colour and archival and dramatic material with seamless dynamism. In truth, Wajda comes close to hagiography at times, but he and screenwriter Janusz Glowacki can be forgiven for being in awe of such a raw and sometimes reckless working-class hero.

The notion of strength through unity that sustained Solidarity is noticeably absent from the Bradford depicted in Clio Barnard's The Selfish Giant. Ostensibly inspired by Oscar Wilde's sentimental Christian fairytale, this owes much more to John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Ken Loach's Kes (1969). Indeed, in echoing recent works about marginalised kids in downturn Britain by the likes of Lynne Ramsay, Shane Meadows and Andrea Arnold, this ticks so many boxes on the social realist checklist and resorts so meekly to melodrama for its denouement that it represents something of a disappointingly conventional follow-up to Barnard's stylistically innovative docudrama, The Arbor (2010). However, the exceptional performances of the young leads and the telling contrasts made between the post-industrial city and the enervated countryside ensure that this is always lively and engaging, without ever being politically strident.

Akin to a latterday George and Lennie, 13 year-olds Conner Chapman and Shaun Thomas are inseparable. They live on estates on the outskirts of Bradford - Chapman with mother Rebecca Manley and brother Elliott Tittensor and Thomas with parents Steve Evets and Siobhan Finneran. The quick-witted Chapman is on medication for hyperactivity, while the affable Thomas gets picked on for being overweight at a school full of petty rules and misapplied good intentions. But, in spite of their physical and psychological disparity, the boys are fiercely loyal to one other and, thus, when they are excluded after Chapman defends Thomas in a fight, they gravitate together toward scrap merchant Sean Gilder, who pays decent prices for all kinds of metal and rarely asks awkward questions.

Chapman makes a good impression when he steals a consignment of quality junk, but he quickly becomes jealous of Thomas when Gilder notices his skill with horses (he hails from a traveller family) and puts him in charge of his sulky-racing champion, Diesel. The rift widens after Chapman uses a foal in a field to check if the wire he is about to purloin is electrified and he takes out his frustration by thieving from Gilder's yard. However, he loses his money to the men from whom he stole his first batch of metal and Gilder punishes him by sending him to collect some brass from a live power connection.

Naturally, there is an accident and Thomas dies. But, in an act of redemption, Gilder (who is rather unpersuasively cast in the eponymous role) accepts full responsibility for the situation. Chapman attempts to apologise to Finneran, who refuses to speak to him. He is eventually forgiven, however, and not only starts caring for Diesel, but also finds solace in Thomas's ghost clambering under his bed (where Chapman often hides) to hold his hand and reassure him that everything will work out for the best.

Admirably conveying a north in which manufacturing has been replaced by scavenging and honest toil by opportunistic graft, this recalls the uncompromising community studies produced by the Newcastle-based Amber Films, right down to the trap racing sequences from the collective's 1995 drama, Eden Valley. But Barnard allows herself to be distracted by the need to justify the Wildean nexus and, as a result, the story becomes mawkish at the very point it needs to sharpen its edge. Cinematographer Mike Eley also harks back to bygone times with `grim oop north' visuals whose sombre colours and dewy mists are reflected in the muted melancholy of Harry Escott's score.

But it's the acting that makes this picture. Only 12 at the time of shooting, Chapman spews out expletives and smart alec quips with a surly confidence that irresistibly recalls David Bradley as Billy Casper in Kes. But he also captures the vulnerability that makes his friendship with Thomas all the more authentic and affecting. The 15 year-old also makes a fine impression and they are well supported by the adult cast, with Finneran standing out as the embittered mother. Yet, for all its accomplishment and poignancy, this lacks the narrative rigour and detached compassion that makes the films of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne so powerful and truthful. But there is no question that Barnard is a film-maker of considerable talent and imagination.

Belgian director Felix Van Groeningen could also learn from the Liège siblings, as he and co-scenarist Carl Joos are so faithful to the text of Johan Heldenbergh and Mieke Dobbels's play that a surfeit of speeches towards the end of The Broken Circle Breakdown feel like they are being declaimed from a stage to the back row of the stalls. However, the fragmented structure creates a number of temporal and thematic juxtapositions that considerably enhance the narrative, as do a number of fine bluegrass songs, which are performed with aplomb by the spirited leads.

The action opens in the Flemish city of Ghent in June 2006, as Johan Heldenbergh and Veerle Baetens struggle to control their emotions in seeking to reassure their hospitalised six year-old, Nell Cattrysse, that the excruciating chemotherapy she is undergoing will cure her cancer. However, rather than attempt to follow the various flashes backwards and forwards that make the storyline so complex and compelling, it is easier to unpick it here and present it in linear form.

The bearded Heldenbergh and the well-inked Baetens meet when he ventures into her tattoo parlour to enquire about a design that will encapsulate his love of America. Although he lives in a caravan on a rundown farm outside Ghent, Heldenbergh's passion is music and, the moment he hears Baetens sing, he invites her to join the band in which he plays the banjo. They quickly go from strength to strength as both lovers and artists and all seems idyllic until Baetens breaks the news that she is pregnant. Overcoming his initial shock, Heldenbergh begins renovating the farmhouse and solves the dispute about whether they should have a terrace or a verandah by creating a `terranda'.

Too wrapped up in playing with their baby to pay much attention to the coverage of 9/11 on the television news, Heldenbergh and Baetens buy new white outfits for the band to mark the fact they are appearing at bigger venues. However, in 2003, a bird crashes into the glass overhang of the terranda and Baetens chastises the avowedly atheist Heldenbergh for scolding his distraught toddler when she insists that the deceased creature will become a star in the heavens. The tension continues to simmer, as Baetens becomes more protective towards Cattrysse and, thus, she is all the more devastated when the child is diagnosed with cancer shortly after her sixth birthday party.

The band welcome her home from her initial hospital stay with a sweet rendition of `The Lion Sleeps Tonight'. But the treatment fails to work and, following the funeral, Heldenbergh and Baetens have a blazing row in which they blame each other for Cattrysse's death. Baetens moves out, but continues to sing with the combo and resists Heldenbergh's efforts to coax her home. Increasingly prone to depression, she changes her name (from Elise to Alabama) and is so dismayed by Heldenbergh hijacking a gig to denounce George W. Bush for blocking the embryonic stem cell research that might have saved Cattrysse that she storms off the stage and quits.

Unable to accept losing his wife, as well as his daughter, Heldenbergh goes to Baetens's shop, where she has attempted to commit suicide. Even though he breaks the window and gets an ambulance to rush her to hospital, the brain damage proves so severe that he is advised to switch off the life-support machine and his bandmates join him in playing a rousing send-off as Baetens slips away.

Brilliantly edited by Nico Leunen, this is as unashamedly sentimental as one of the songs so adroitly chosen by Bjorn Eriksson to comment on the action and complement his own score. But it is only after Heldenbergh and Baetens are left alone to confront their grief that the intricately assembled plot begins to lose its way. His growing disillusion with the politics of the country whose culture he adores is as cumbrously presented as her mental deterioration, with the consequence that a deeply moving study of love and loss becomes preachily shrill and soap operatic.

Yet, as Van Groeningen's storytelling becomes increasingly erratic, the performances remain strong, with Baetens skillfully channelling her emotions into the lyrics of her songs. But Heldenbergh is never quite as natural and, hence, his diatribes on religiosity and the arrogant, hypocritical tyranny of moral conservatives feel forced and any worthwhile points they make barely survive the sledgehammered delivery. All of which is a shame, as this is an ambitious attempt to immerse the audience in the lives of a mismatched couple whose passion for each other, their daughter and their music is not enough to overcome the chasmic differences in their personalities and beliefs.

The usually temperate Hirokazu Kore-eda also succumbs to melodramatics in Like Father, Like Son, a baby swapping saga that comes hard on the heels of Mira Nair's adaptation of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children. This has long been a common plot device in everything from classic novels to cornball telenovelas and it is rather surprising to see such an astute commentator on the modern family resorting to such a hackneyed gambit. Yet, even though this is Kore-eda's weakest domestic drama, he is still such an assured storyteller and so gifted a director of children that this is not without interest, even though his previous picture, I Wish (2011), was another study of antithetical households, albeit one seen from the perspective of brothers trying to reunite their estranged parents.

Workaholic architect Masaharu Fukuyama and his dutiful wife Machiko Ono are trying to get six year-old son Keita Ninomiya into an exclusive elementary school. Fukuyama has taught the boy to fib about how he taught him to fly a kite on a happy camping trip and their application seems set to be accepted when an anomaly arises over a blood test. A hurried DNA check reveals that Fukuyama is not Ninomiya's father and the hospital confirms that his biological son, Hwang Sho-gen, has been raised, along with their other two children, by suburban appliance salesman Lily Franky and his wife Yoko Maki.

Fukuyama persuades Franky into suing the hospital and they agree on some weekend visits to get to know their natural sons. Much to Fukuyama's frustration, however, Ninomiya rather enjoys the free-and-easy atmosphere of Franky's cramped home, while Hwang finds it difficult to cope with Fukuyama's fussy restrictions. Feeling he could offer both boys a better start in life, Fukuyama consults with his lawyer about adopting Ninomiya and even contemplates accusing Franky and Maki of being bad parents, even though this might entail them losing custody of their other kids.

However, when Fukuyama broaches the subject of making it worth the parsimonious Franky's while to sign over Ninomiya, he is so insulted that the pair are barely on speaking terms when the court date comes around and a nurse admits that she switched the infants in a fit of pique because she was having such a tough time with her own stepchildren. Naturally, the judge finds in favour of the plaintiffs. But the problem still remains of what to do with the boys.

Fukuyama consults his own frosty father, Isao Natsuyagi, who insists that bloodline is everything and Franky agrees to go along with the exchange. However, Hwang is so unhappy living with Fukuyama and Ono that he runs away and, even when he returns and starts to bond with his new father, he admits that he would much rather be with Franky. Trying to do the right thing, Fukuyama returns some photographs to Ninomiya and they have such an unsettling effect on the child that he also runs away. But all ends well, with both families promising to stay in touch and celebrating with a party in Franky's shop.

Steering well clear of the savage class satire that made Étienne Chatiliez's similarly themed Life Is a Long Quiet River (1988) so raucously enjoyable, this may be more convoluted than earlier Kore-eda family outings like Nobody Knows (2004) and Still Walking (2008). But he dots the action with moments of tranquil, Ozu-like contemplation and conspires cunningly with production designer Keiko Mitsumatsu and set decorator Akiko Matsuba to use the forbiddingly chic and chaotically cosy abodes to highlight the contrasts between the competing fathers. Disappointingly, he relegates the mothers to the margins and also rather dubiously aligns good parenting with larking around and discipline with suffocating nurture.

Yet, while Fukuyama is rather obviously set up as the fall guy with childhood hang-ups of his own, he gives such a plausible performance that it is possible to feel more sympathy for him in his bourgeois moral confusion than it is for Franky in his cheerful, working-class acceptance of fate. But while the focus is often on the grown-ups, Kore-eda  also slyly shows how readily Ninomiya and Hwang acclimatise to their new surroundings and it is these small details that often prove more poignant than the more stage-managed confrontations.

Kore-eda's themes find echo in Mamoru Hosoda's Wolf Children, which follows the fortunes of a single mother raising her half-human offspring. Coming after The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) and Summer Wars (2009), which he also wrote with Satoko Okudera, this puts Hosoda in the front rank of Japanimators and it will be fascinating to see where his lively imagination takes him next.

Nineteen year-old university student Hana (Aoi Miyazaki) becomes intrigued by Ookami (Takao Osawa) when she sees him skulking at the back of a lecture theatre. She offers to share a book with him and they start dating and fall so deeply in love that she stands by him, even when he declares that he is a shape-shifting lycanthrope and is the last of a line descended from the now extinct Japanese grey wolf. In time, they have two children - Yuki (Momoka Ono as a child and Haru Kuroki as a teenager) and Ame (Amon Kabe and Yukito Nishii) - whose respective names mean `Snow' and `Rain'. However, when Hana sees Ookami's lupine carcass being hauled out of a sewer, she realises he has perished while hunting for his cubs and vows to bring them up as he would have wished.

She soon finds raising the children in a cramped flat difficult, however, and the landlady receives complaints she is keeping pets after Yuki keeps changing form and bounding around the room, while Ame howls long in the night. Child services are also giving Hana a hard time, as they want to know why she hasn't had them immunised and she frets when they fall sick about whether to take them to a doctor or a vet.

Eventually, Hana decides to move to the countryside and there is plenty of gossip about the unmarried mother and her funny looking kids. However, grumpy grandpa Nirasaki (Bunta Sugawara) takes a shine to Hana and not only helps her tidy up her ramshackle house, but also helps her plant crops and she is finally accepted by her neighbours when she offers them food after their own supplies are damaged by wild animals. Hana also gets a job at the local wildlife reserve, so she can learn more about its Mackenzie Valley wolf, and she is soon befriended by a warden, who tells her that the creature was born in captivity in a Moscow zoo.

Despite his mother's best efforts, Ame hates his new surroundings and only has a dramatic change of heart one snowy day when Yuki pulls him out of a river after he falls in while chasing a kingfisher. Hana is so proud of Yuki for saving her brother that she allows her to attend the nearby school, on the proviso that she uses the chant `one, two, buckle my shoe' to prevent her from changing form in class. However, while the extroverted Yuki overcomes the initial suspicion of her classmates to become popular with everyone, Ame grows increasingly taciturn after he is bullied. He knows he cannot transform to teach his assailants a lesson because he has made a promise to his mother, but Yuki proves less circumspect when exchange student Sohei (Takuma Hiraoka) arrives and informs her that she smells like a dog. Tired of his constant questions, Yuki shifts shape and scratches Sohei across the ear. His furious mother (Megumi Hayashibara) demands compensation and Hana worries that they will have to move away. But Sohei informs the school authorities that he was attacked by a dog and Yuki agrees to be friends after he sends her some sweets with her homework.

However, while Yuki seems to be favouring her human side, 10 year-old Ame finds a mentor in an old fox in the woods (Shota Sometani), who teaches him about his animal instincts and how he should never deny them. Hana approves of her son learning about his nature. But Yuki is concerned that her own situation will be jeopardised if her brother commits to his lupine form and they have a furious fight in the house. As the rain falls heavily outside, Ame insists on leaving to protect his master, who has hurt his leg and is now sheltering in the mountains. Hana is fearful for her boy and goes out into the eye of a storm to find him and is knocked unconscious when she slips.

The downpour leaves Yuki and Sohei stranded at school and he confides that he always knew she was the beast that attacked him. However, he would never dream of betraying her secret as he is an outsider himself and will need her friendship even more now that his mother is pregnant and she won't have as much time for him. Meanwhile, in the forest, Hana wakes to find Ookami standing guard over her. He congratulates her on doing such a fine job in rearing his young and urges her to let Ame go, as he has made his choice. Ookami carries Hana home and howls on a crag overlooking the village as the sun comes up to reassure her that everything will be all right.

Concluding her narration, the older Yuki reveals that she went to live in the school dormitory, while Hana remained in the hills so she would always be near her boys. But, while it inevitably had to reach such a `happy' ending, the resolution rather lacks conviction and it is hard not to feel a sense of anti-climax after nearly two hours of often leisurely plotting. Nevertheless, the graphics are charming and, if there is a hint of anthropomorphism about the cute cubs, Hosoda sets the action in a much more credible world than the ones envisaged by his peers at Studio Ghibli. Moreover, he tackles the themes of identity, belonging, acceptance, mother love and sibling rivalry with suitable gravitas and avoids the platitudinous sermons on difference that made the Twilight movies so trite.

A well-heeled South Korean family disintegrates in a more expected and darkly comedic manner in Im Sang-soo's The Taste of Money, an unofficial sequel to his glitzily shoddy 2010 remake of Kim Ki-young's 1960 masterpiece, The Housemaid. Taking rather predictable pot shots at the elite controlling the country's industrial and financial wealth, this is played to the hilt by a willing cast. It also looks magnificent. But, despite Im's insistence that he owed much in the plotting to Shakespeare, Balzac and Hitchcock, there is no getting away from the fact that this is a soapy potboiler dressed up to resemble sophisticated satire.

Middle-aged heiress Yoon Yeo-jeong ruthlessly rules the empire amassed by her now ailing father, Kwon Byung-gil, who is periodically wheeled around their Seoul mansion by hulking carer Hwang Jung-min. Yoon is married to company president Baek Yoon-sik, a shameless social climber who avoids his wife as much as possible and seeks solace in the bed of Filipina maid Maui Taylor, whose room is under covert CCTV surveillance by the seething Yoon, who envies the fact that Taylor is adored by her children back home while her two, divorced daughter Kim Hyo-jin and wastrel son On Joo-wan, pay her just enough respect to earn their monthly allowances.

In order to avenge herself on Kim, Yoon begins sleeping with private secretary Kim Kang-woo, who has risen from humble origins and is currently helping On broker a potentially lucrative deal with shady American businessman Darcy Paquet. However, when Baek announces that he wishes to leave Yoon and settle in the Philippines with Taylor, she has the maid drowned to show him who is in control. But Yoon is already starting to lose her grip, as On is arrested for setting up a slush fund for Paquet, while Kim Hyo-jin falls in love with Kim Kang-woo. Moreover, the heartbroken Baek kills himself and, having done his duty to the family, Kim Kang-woo announces that he is going to take Taylor's casket to her children. Unbeknown to Yoon, however, he has stuffed it full of cash and is joined on the plane by Kim Hyo-jin, who has decided to seize what may well be her last chance at happiness.

Without doubt, the stars of this tawdry, cliché-strewn romp are production designers Kim Young-hee and Kim June, whose vast and magnificently decorated sets are shown off in a series of increasingly flamboyant camera movements by cinematographer Kim Sung-kyu. Yoon also merits mention for a display of ostentatious bitchiness that would not have been out of place in Dallas or Dynasty in their heydays. But the fact that Paquet's fat cat is called Robert Altman and that Im quotes from both Kim Ki-young's and his own versions of The Housemaid betrays the smugness of a lacklustre enterprise that cries out for the unflinching anti-bourgeois malevolence of a Luis Buñuel or a Claude Chabrol.

Sex, power, greed and murder will always make for enticing viewing. But Im lurches straight into the lambasting without giving the audience time to get to know the characters. Thus, it's difficult to care what happens to anyone within the clan or amongst its staff. There is plenty of flesh on display, but far too little wit. Consequently, this simply feels like a cynically lurid exercise in bashing the rich that provokes the odd laugh, but induces a good deal more frustration that such an inspired craftsman cannot find a more incisive and insightful way of exposing the corruption and complacency of the patricians he so clearly despises.

Moving away from gaudy opulence, there is a rare chance this week to compare a foreign-language picture and its American remake, as Icelandic debutant Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson's Either Way (2011) is released alongside David Gordon Green's Texan rethink, Prince Avalanche. This may be one of those rare occasions on which the transposition is superior to the original. But each film has its merits. 

Sigurðsson doesn't quite capitalise on a decent idea in his droll variation on the road movie format. Set in the 1980s and making exemplary use of the craggy landscape, the story sometimes meanders in a similar manner to the road being maintained by Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson and his younger assistant Hilmar Guðjónsson. But Sigurðsson (who started out making skateboard videos) uses the Sisyphean nature of their labour to examine the futility of existence and the (im)possibility of finding love in a cruel world.

Home for the summer, Gunnarsson has been sent by the Icelandic Road Administration to the rural north of the island to hammer in kilometre posts and paint yellow lines down the middle of a highway that seems to come from and go nowhere. He is less than chuffed that his companion is Hilmar Guðjónsson, who just happens to be the brother of Sara Varti Guðnarsdóttir, whom he has left behind in Vienna with their daughter, as they try to decide the future direction of their foundering relationship.

Forced to listen to Guðjónsson's prattle during the day, Gunnarsson just wants some peace at night when they return to the cramped two-man tent they have erected on the hard shoulder. However, Guðjónsson seems incapable of shutting up about either his own sex life (and his plans for the upcoming weekend in the nearby town) or Gunnarsson's situation with a sibling for whom he clearly has little time or respect. It comes as a relief, therefore, when passing trucker Þorsteinn Bachmann gives them a bottle of hooch and Gunnarsson can get on with a letter begging Guðnarsdóttir not to give up on them and lose everything they had worked so hard to achieve.

Next day, the pair plod on with resentment in the air. However, Gunnarsson is finally left to his own devices when Guðjónsson takes the Land Rover into town for his furlough. He returns with a letter from Guðnarsdóttir announcing that she has fallen in love with her chiropractor and doesn't see much point in Gunnarsson returning to Austria. Guðjónsson feels his friend's pain and confesses that he didn't spend the weekend with the hot chick he had lined up. Moreover, his frustration had been compounded by the news that an unprepossessing one-night stand is pregnant with his child.

The sudden shift from antipathy to empathy is neatly done and Sigurðsson piles on the misery by having comely hitcher Valgerður Rúnarsdóttir snub the pals to ride with the elderly Bachmann. But he is careful not to condone the pair's chauvinism and even goes so far as to suggest that this crisis in Icelandic masculinity is a necessary evil. Gunnarsson and Guðjónsson often say more with body language than they do with the spartan dialogue, while Árni Filippusson's evocative vistas belie the picture's meagre budget. Yet, for all its plus points, this never quite hits its stride and it is somewhat surprising that David Gordon Green took an option on the story.

The new setting is rural Texas in the summer of 1987 and Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch are the duo painting fresh markings and replacing reflectors on a highway that has been damaged in a recent series of bush fires. Having been toiling alone since the spring, the thirtysomething Rudd feels superior to Hirsch, as not only is he much smarter, but he also got him the job in the hope that the favour would improve his standing with girlfriend Gina Grande, who just happens to be Hirsch's sister. Rudd also claims to be a much better outdoorsman, who is more temperamentally suited to coping with the isolation and deprivation of living and working in the wilderness, and Hirsch soon tires of the simple joys of fishing, cooking on a camp stove and sleeping under the stars in a cramped tent.

Indeed, all the immature party animal can think about is the forthcoming weekend trip to the nearest town and satiating his lust. They get a temporary respite from each other's company when trucker Lance LeGault parks up and foists a bottle of moonshine on them. But this makes Hirsch even less interested in Rudd's efforts to learn German in order to make a new life with Grande and the already lengthy silences between them have elongated beyond awkwardness by the time Hirsch drives off for his much-needed R&R.

In his absence, Rudd makes the acquaintance of Joyce Payne, an elderly lady who has returned to the burnt-out shell of her former home to see if there is anything worth salvaging. However, Hirsch is soon back on site and he hands Rudd a letter from Grande that has arrived at the local post office. It becomes clear that Hirsch has already read the missive, which is essentially a Dear John, and Rudd is so affronted that he has pried into his business that he storms off, only to knock himself unconscious in a creek.

Suitably chastened, Rudd apologises to Hirsch for his outburst and they get drunk on LeGault's booze. Recognising that Hirsch also has something on his mind, Rudd urges him to open up and he reveals he is going to be a father, as a one-night stand has fallen pregnant. Setting aside his envy, Rudd reassures Hirsch that this could be the making of him and they agree to celebrate by spending the next weekend at a music festival. As they get ready to leave, however, they meet up with LeGault again and Rudd is surprised to see Payne sat alongside him in the cab.

David Gordon Green is a somewhat eclectic film-maker. He started out charming the critics with the intimate indies George Washington (2000) and All the Real Girls (2003), but lost their favour with less nuanced mainstream comedies like Pineapple Express (2008), Your Highness and The Sitter (both 2011). Prince Avalanche represents a return to his roots, but it is always much broader than Either Way, with Rudd and Hirsch indulging in some familiar odd couple shtick, as well as the odd instance of knockabout. But they grow into their characters and there is a genuine poignancy to their performances after Hirsch returns from the town.

Green and cinematographer Tim Orr also make splendid use of the scenery in the Bastrop State Park, with the montages of the flora and fauna being evocatively counterpointed by the score by David Wingo and the post-rock band Explosions in the Sky. As in Sigurðsson's scenario, the attempts to suggest that the trucker and the wandering woman are ethereal presences doesn't quite come off. But, once again, the leads tend to say more with a gesture of an expression than they do with the spartan dialogue and this willingness to prioritise the visual over the verbal considerably enhances the picture's melancholic comic charm.

Another director who has not quite fulfilled his early promise is the Turkish-born, Italian-based Ferzan Ozpetek and he doesn't quite recapture former glories with A Magnificent Haunting. However, this gay ghost story could easily have become coy and sentimental in lesser hands. Co-scripted with Federica Pontremoli, this bears a passing similarity to Antonio Pietrangeli's Ghosts of Rome (1961). But, while the tone is mostly comical, this typically deft ensemble piece also delves into the dark secrets of Italy's Fascist past in questioning contemporary attitudes to what many still consider taboo topics.

Leaving his native Catania to try his luck as an actor in Rome, Elio Germano hooks up with cousin Paola Minaccioni and starts searching for digs. She has misgivings when he finds cheap lodgings in the Monteverde district, but it's all he can afford while making ends meet as a croissant baker. Besides, he is confident all the apartment needs is a lick of paint. But, while he is decorating, Germano notices that belongings keep moving around and he is certain that immigrants are squatting in the building.

Undaunted, however, he arranges a dinner for Giorgio Marchesi, an assistant film director with whom he has long been corresponding. But the cosy supper goes disastrously wrong when Marchesi accuses Germano of being a stalker who has bombarded him with e-mails and texts since they spent barely an hour together three years earlier. He storms out in disgust (which leaves one wondering why he accepted the invitation in the first place). But the smell of the food lures the apartment's mysterious occupants out of their hiding place and they start to gorge on the feast.

Their leader, Giuseppe Fiorello, explains to an astonished Germano that they are members of the Compangia Apollonio theatrical company and he introduces sisters Margherita Buy and Vittoria Puccini, along with Cem Yilmaz, Andrea Bosca, Claudia Potenza, Ambrogio Maestri and young Matteo Savino. However, it soon becomes clear that the unexpected guests still think it is 1943 and that they are fighting with the anti-Fascist resistance. Moreover, they have absolutely no idea that they are dead. Yet the actors prove willing to help Germano learn his craft, while Bosca's dapper writer seems more than keen to help him get over his recent romantic fiasco 

Naturally, however, they want something in return, as they are intrigued to know the whereabouts of the leading lady who has vanished without a trace. Despite being distsacted by a handsome neighbour, Germano agrees to do what he can and his investigation leads him to a clothing factory that is owned by Mauro Coruzzi and staffed exclusively by transsexuals. Here he meets the aged Anna Proclemer, who confesses that she betrayed her companions to further her own career and reveals that they suffocated because of a faulty heater in the apartment. She agrees to make her peace with the troupe and Germano is as surprised as he is relieved that his new friends take the news so well. Indeed, they seem liberated and bundle him on to a tram to the Teatro Valle, where they stage a farewell performance solely for his benefit.

Closing on such a bittersweet note confirms that this genteel drama is often as moving as it is amusing. But the plot strains plausibility in places, as only Germano can see the spirits and the scene in which Minaccioni forces him to consult pompous psychiatrist Massimiliano Gallo (who brands Germano a fantasist) is entirely extraneous. Ozpetek also avoids delving too deeply into the spectres' wartime experiences and the pace invariably slows whenever they are off screen, as the script struggles to interest viewers in Germano's personal and professional misfortunes.

Ozpetek and Pontremoli also overdo the Felliniesque aspects of the kinky underworld sequence. But Andrea Crisanti's production design and Maurizio Calvesi's photography are admirable, as are the performances, with Germano just about convincing as the country rube finding big city living something of an ordeal, while Fiorello, Puccini and the always excellent Buy ably convey both the `white telephone' elegance of their times and their steely resolve to defeat the Axis.

Released the year that Benito Mussolini came to power, FW Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) remains one of the genre's most influential entries. An unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, it was a keystone of the vogue for Expressionism in Weimar Germany and cast its pall over the brooding horrors made at Universal Studios in the early 1930s and the lurid colour chillers produced by Hammer from the late 1950s. Werner Herzog fashioned a stylised remake in 1979 and Nosferatu the Vampyre is also set to receive a theatrical revival. However, Murnau's remains the more unsettling picture and not even the lampooning of its production in E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire (2000) can diminish its dreadful appeal.

Making evocative use of their locations (in Bremen), Murnau and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner not only capture the sense of doom hanging over the town of Wisborg at the height of the 1838 plague, but also the desperate hunger in the vampire's eyes as he pursues his quarry. However, Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) knows nothing of his reputation, as he entrusts wife Ellen (Greta Schröder) to the care of close friend Harding (Georg H. Schnell) and his sister Annie (Ruth Landshoff) after he is dispatched by his employer, Knock (Alexander Granach), to make contact with a new client in Transylvania, Count Orlok (Max Schreck). Unnerved by the reaction of the customers at a Carpathian inn to the nature of his errand, Hutter is further dismayed when the coachman refuses to drive all the way to the count's mountain retreat and he has to complete his journey in a black carriage that is waiting for him on the other side of the bridge.

Events at dinner scarcely assuage Hutter's misgiving, as he has to repel Orlok when he cuts his thumb and his host attempts to suck the oozing blood. Yet he convinces himself next morning that a mosquito or a spider made the puncture marks on his neck and it is only when he peruses a book on vampires borrowed from the innkeeper (Guido Herzfeld) that he realises Orlok is a nosferatu or `bird of death'. Terrified, Hutter tries to hide in his room, but the door flies open and Orlok appears in search of sustenance. The following day, Hutter explores the castle crypt and finds the coffin in which the vampire rests. But he lacks the courage to destroy him and watches with relief as Orlok departs in a coach piled high with caskets.

While Hutter recovers in hospital after jumping to safety from his window, Orlok travels down river on a barge and his baleful cargo is loaded on board the schooner Empusa. A crew member lifts the lid of one of the coffins and unleashes a horde of rats, which spreads disease at such a frightening rate that only the captain (Max Nemetz) and the first mate (Wolfgang Heinz) are left alive at the end of the voyage. However, the latter perishes when he plunges into the sea after trying to kill Orlok and the former becomes his latest victim after he lashes himself to the wheel. But, when his body is discovered the following morning, the Wisborg authorities convince themselves he has died of the plague and warn the inhabitants to remain indoors.

Amidst the chaos, Orlok is able to slip away to the house he has purchased from Knock. But the estate agent has lost his mind and he escapes from his asylum after slaying his guard (Heinrich Witte). Hutter has also managed to return home and he is concerned that Orlok will come looking for Ellen, who has been reading the sinister volume on vampires. The count has also been watching Ellen sleep and has become so bewitched by her that he is willing to take reckless chances to possess her. Ellen has learned that a nosferatu can be defeated if someone pure in heart is able to distract him for a night and she uses her beauty to entice Orlok into her chamber, where he becomes so preoccupied with drinking her blood that he fails to notice the dawn break and disappears in a puff of dust as the rooster crows. Ellen had sent Hutter to fetch Professor Bulwer (John Gottowt), but he is unable to save her life. Yet, as the final image of Orlok's delapidated lair suggests, her sacrifice has not been in vain.

Von Wangenheim and Schröder excel, but it is Schreck who fixes the gaze throughout this mesmerising silent, as he appears from the shadows cast over Albin Grau's sets and surveys his prey like a ravenous beast. His expression as Hutter cuts his thumb during dinner is chilling. But he takes no pleasure in his bloodlust. It is a curse he has to satiate in order to avoid the agony of death and his melancholy pervades every scene of this inhuman tragedy. Whether following the carriage rattling through the Transylvanian countryside, revealing the awful majesty of Orlok's castle, depicting the cargo of coffins on the ship or showing how the sleepwalking Ellen's cry startles the count, Murnau judges each scene to perfection. Ninety years on, the film's terrors have largely abated. But its emotional potency remains undiminished and no one has since surpassed the pathos and ethereality of Schreck's vampire.

It only requires a couple of minutes of V/H/S/2 to elapse before one starts wishing that the directors involved in this portmanteau sequel possessed an ounce of Murnau's visual acuity and subtlety. Released briefly in cinemas before going to disc in time for Halloween, this is the latest excursion into found footage territory and does little to advance the form, even though one of its contributors is Eduardo Sánchez, who started what has now become the most tiresome trend in modern horror when he and Daniel Myrick appropriated the actuality perspective gimmick originated by Ruggero Deodato in Cannibal Holocaust (1980) for The Blair Witch Project back in 1999. Nevertheless, it has to be said that this is a marked improvement on its predecessor and will doubtless be followed a threequel in the fullness of time.

Linking the four vignettes is a wraparound story, which starts with private investigators Lawrence Michael Levine and Kelsy Abbott spying on a fornicating couple in a cheap motel. But they are also on the lookout for missing student LC Holt and arrive at the address provided by his anxious mother to find the place in darkness. The fact that a bank of screens is flickering in one room suggests, however, that someone has recently been in residence and Levine leaves Abbott to check the videocassettes littering the floor while he searches the rest of the property.

The first tape opens in the office of doctor John T. Woods, who is explaining the side effects that Adam Wingard might experience from the camera that has been installed in his left eye socket after he lost his sight in a car accident. He also reveals that this is a prototype and that the footage will be recorded for analysis. As Wingard leaves the clinic, he receives a long staere from Hannah Hughes, who shows up at his luxury home the morning after he has been disturbed by a series of noises and flashing visions of a young girl (Corrie Lynn Fitzpatrick) and a bloodied man (Brian Udovich). Hughes confides that she was once deaf and began hearing dead people after an operation to cure her condition.

She appears unflustered by the fact that the ghost of her dead uncle (John Karyus) is waiting menacingly for her outside and she urges Wingard not to pay the spooks any attention as their presence will only become stronger. However, his visitors refuse to go away and they prey on him with renewed vengeance after Hughes drowns in his pool and he rushes to the bathroom to remove the camera with a cut-throat razor. Wingard falls to floor in agony, but his ordeal is not yet over, as an intruder forces the camera eye down his throat.

As the tape ends, Levine comes to check on Abbott and she shows him a message from Holt on his laptop explaining how the each VHS has to be played in the correct order to have a truly demonic effect. Levine is unimpressed, however, and wanders off as Abbott inserts the next cassette. This time, it starts with cyclist Jay Saunders promising girlfriend Devon Brookshire that he will hurry back from his ride through the woods. However, he is bitten by zombie Bette Cassatt when he hears her screaming at the side of the trail and Saunders similarly lays into good Samaritans David Coyne and Wendy Donigian when they stop on seeing him prone in the undergrowth.

Things quickly spiral out of the control as the ravenous trio stagger into young Bianca Sanchez's birthday party and begin devouring the guests. Anxious father Mikael Johnson attacks the marauding zombies with a baseball bat, but he is overrun and Saunders turns his attention to Ryan Thomas, who is ushering his brood into the back of a people carrier. He thrusts a barbecue fork into Saunders's skull and he ceases to attack on catching his reflection in the vehicle window. Momentarily distracted, he is shot by bravura dad Mark S. Sanders, but survives to stoop and pick up a discarded teddy bear. Suddenly, stricken with the last vestiges of humanity, Saunders is knocked over by a speeding car and, when Brookshire calls his phone, he grabs the rifle and blows his head off to spare himself and others more agony.

Abbott is clearly becoming affected by what she is viewing and Levine notices that she has blood trickling from her nose when he comes to touch base. She complains of suffering from a migraine and Levine offers to go to the chemist for some painkillers and he departs as she inserts the next tape, which starts with a news crew led by Oka Antara arriving at a compound that is rumoured to be the headquarters of an Indonesian cult whose founder sleeps with young children in order to purify them.

As Antara and cameramen Fachry Albar and Andrew Suleiman prepare to interview `father' Epy Kusnandar, production assistant Hannah Al Rashid (who is Antara's fiancée) asks to be excused as she is feeling unwell. Albar goes to check she is okay and Antara hears through the headphones that she is pregnant with Albar's child. However, he hardly has time to react, as a bell sounds and Kusnandar announces over the tannoy that the time they have all been waiting for has arrived. He strips to the waist and slits Suleiman's throat with a box cutter and, by so doing, unleashes mayhem.

Albar realises that all the children in the classrooms are now dead and Antara looks on in horror as a group of men rush into a room and commit suicide. He tries to escape, but he is executed on his knees as an apologetic Albar looks on before he staggers back into the birthing room (in which he had earlier found an undead woman under a sheet in a stirrup chair) in time to witness a hideous horned demon burst through Al Rashid's stomach. Pursued by zombies, Albar sprints to his car and seems to have made his escape when the vehicle flips and, as he climbs out of the window, he is aghast to see the demon hovering above him and calling him `papa'. .

Abbott has passed away by the time Levine returns with her medication. But, rather than going for help or just getting the hell out of there, he cannot resist the allure of a tape marked `watch' and settles down to view its contents. The footage begins with Fraser McCready and Rebecca Babcock heading off for a couple of days and leaving teenage daughter Samantha Gracie to look after younger brother Rylan Logan. She is supposed to be studying for her exams, but no sooner have her folks departed than boyfriend Jeremie Saunders arrives with a carload of friends and they scuttle down to the lake to swim.

Determined not to miss out on the shenanigans, Logan summons his pals and they set about disrupting the party on the dock. What they don't notice, however, is that one of the gang almost has a close encounter when an alien form lurking under the water makes a grab for him. But, having burst in on Gracie and Saunders making out in her room, they notice the surfeit of flashing lights piercing the darkness and the kids and their tweenage tormentors are soon haring away from lumbering extra-terrestrials. Their friends already dead or abducted, Gracie and Logan try to hide in the barn. But they are snatched and the tape runs out as the dog who had been filming everything from a camera attached to its collar expires.

Already stunned by what he has witnessed, Levine is even more surprised when Abbott sits up and attempts to strangle him. He snaps her neck as they struggle and shoots her when she refuses to play dead. However, just as he thinks he is safe, Levine realises that he is not alone and, having dispatched the interloper, Holt takes the camera and gives a thumbs up sign, as he has completed the task he had been describing in his laptop spiel.

There is nothing outstanding on offer here, but Simon Barrett's `Tape 49' just about holds things together and there is enough in Adam Wingard's `Clinical Trials', Eduardo Sánchez and Gregg Hale's `A Ride in the Park', Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Huw Evans's `Safe Haven' and Jason Eisener's `Slumber Party Alien Abduction' to keep this interesting. In truth, scares are pretty scarce and all five shorts overdo the shakicam. Moreover, there are way too many instances of distortion, blackout, fuzz, pixel slip and other forms of image interference designed to enhance the viscerality of the footage and confirm that it has been taken (albeit neatly edited) from the various digital cameras, CCTV rigs, phonecams, camcorders and GoPro helmet gadgets shown in the episodes.

But Sánchez and Hale submit an amusing homage to Sam Raimi's brand of living dead, while Tjahjanto and Evans generate a distinctly unsettling atmosphere (aided by the refusal to subtitle the Indonesian dialogue) before letting themselves down with an unconvincing monster and a cheap payoff line. Wingard and Eisener rather lurch through their tales, with the premise of the former and the telling of the latter being respectively flawed and muddled. However, there isn't an anthology movie in existence whose quality is uniformly good throughout and this one does more than enough to please its target audience.

Rounding off what the smarter cookies will have realised is a fortnightly survey of fictional features is Omid Nooshin's Last Passenger, which feels like it could have been made in the 1970s by a company like (no pun intended) Euston Films. It may lack the heart-pounding excitement of Andrei Konchalovsky's Runaway Train (1985), but this pitches well-drawn characters into a terrifying and reasonably plausible scenario and has the courage to stick with them and their efforts to avert disaster rather than focus on the motives of the madman at the throttle bent on causing carnage.

Doctor Dougray Scott is on the last train out of Charing Cross after taking son Joshua Kaynama to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in the West End as a Christmas treat. He gets a call from the hospital to say they are having a busy night and promises to get there as soon as he has deposited Kaynama with his grandparents. Party planner Kara Tointon overhears the conversation and starts chatting to Scott and is intrigued to learn he is a widower. However, they are interrupted by Pole Iddo Goldberg giving guard Samuel Geker-Kawle a hard time because the buffet is closed and, having calmed down, he makes Kaynama smile by doing a magic trick with a cigarette.

As the carriage begins to empty, Scott notices a man skulk on board and disappear down a connecting corridor. However, he thinks nothing more of it as he is distracted by Kaynama accidentally opening the outer door as he plays with his toy dinosaur and Tointon looks across sympathetically as the boy tearfully tries to apologise. All seems well again, until Scott becomes convinced that he saw someone run past the window after the train comes to an unexpected stop. Asking Tointon to keep an eye on his son, he goes to the guard's van to investigate and is chastised by businessman David Schofield for disturbing him by banging on the door.

Goldberg comes to see what the commotion is and, when the train fails to stop at the next station, it becomes clear to the remaining passengers that someone has taken over the controls and is bent on crashing into the station at Hastings. As they search the carriages, they find Lindsay Duncan, who is on her way to visit her grandchildren. She agrees to stay with Kaynama and Tointon, as Scott, Goldberg and Schofield try to attract the driver's attention. Unable to gain access and certain he detected a malevolent glint in the hijacker's eye, Scott seeks advice and Goldberg (who works as a cleaner for London Underground) suggests breaking into the Geker-Kawle's room and applying the guard's break.

As there is an `and then there were none' element to this story and surprise is a key factor in the schemes the passengers devise to try and save themselves, it is only fair to halt here. Suffice to say, as the action remains firmly inside the compartment, the denouement is hardly spectacular. But it is tense and Nooshin and co-writer Andy Love do a decent job of maintaining our interest in the commuters without indulging in idle speculation about terrorism or suicidal lunacy.

The debuting Nooshin is well served by cinematographer Angus Hudson and editor Joe Walker, as well as by composer Liam Bates, whose score ramps up the suspense without becoming overly melodramatic. The ensemble also does well, with Schofield's testy know-all and Goldberg's migrant worker scared of disappointing his soon-to-visit parents combining well with Scott, who conveys muscular competence without teetering into action man territory. His romance with Tointon is somewhat far-fetched, but this is a minor quibble with a film that makes confident use of its confined and off-screen spaces and demonstrates that it is still possible to make an exciting thriller without spending a fortune on daredevil stunts or computer-generated pyrotechnics.