Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 8/5/2014)

Most perplexingly, however, this is a picture that seems to make the same error of judgement as its antagonist, as while he allows his yen for success to destroy both the band and the delicate balance of its leader's mind, so Ronson appears to exploit Sievey's creation for his own ends. He can argue that he has already atoned in part by writing the book, Frank: The True Story That Inspired the Movie, and can claim with some justification that the film hardly exalts his alternative self. Moreover, he can point those seeking a factual account of a curious career in the direction of Steve Sullivan's forthcoming documentary, Frank: The Chris Sievey Story. Yet the doubt lingers about just what this faux portrait is actually trying to say about its palimpsestic subject. 

Staring out to sea in the hope of finding inspiration, middle-class twentysomething Jon Burroughs (Domhnall Gleeson) struggles to compose a song. Incorporating the passing scene into the lyrics, as he wanders through his unnamed English coastal town, he finally hits upon a tune on the bus home. However, as he records the chords on his computer, he realises he is duplicating the Madness hit, `It Must Be Love'., and settles down for another night in with his parents.

Bored with his office job, Jon returns to the shore and watches the police trying to prevent a distressed American (Matthew Page) from drowning in the cold grey tide. Turning, he sees a van belonging to The Soronprfbs, a band whose handbills have been posted all over town. On learning that the stricken fellow being bundled into an ambulance is the keyboard player, Jon casually mentions that he's a musician and he is invited by the combo's manager, Don (Scoot McNairy), to join them on stage that night.

Arriving at the bijou venue, Jon finds himself extemporising alongside theremin player Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal), bassist Baraque (François Civil) and drummer Nana (Carla Azar). But, while his gaze is fixed on Frank (Michael Fassbender), the lead singer who sports a large cartoon head, a fight breaks out between the volatile Clara and Baraque that results in the gig being abandoned midway through the first song. Jon is somewhat surprised, therefore, to get a message from Don the next day asking him to come to Ireland for a recording session. Presuming this will only take a couple of days, Jon packs a holdall and reunites with his bandmates at a motorway service station.

On the ferry, Jon learns from Don that Frank is a former psychiatric patient, while he later discovers that Don used to have a predilection for sleeping with mannequins. Figuring he can cope with such idiosyncracies if they afford him a shot at the big time, Jon goes with the flow, even when the stay at the cottage in the depths of the country drags on for several months and he has to dip into his nest egg in order to stop the landlord from giving the digs to some German tourists. He also puts up with Clara's ceaseless hostility, as he grows closer to Frank, who takes to describing his facial expressions so that Jon can come to terms with the head that he wears at all times (even in bed and in the shower).

However, progress on the album is painfully slow, as Frank pushes his bandmates to their `furthest corners', while insisting that every experimental note is played to perfection each time. One night, Jon lets slip that he writes songs and embarrasses himself when Frank summons the others to listen and he demonstrates his palpable lack of talent. But Frank feels reassured by his presence and Jon has been transformed into a bearded, chain-smoking hipster by the time the album is finally completed some 11 months later. The conclusion of the session proves too much for Don, however, who hangs himself from a tree while wearing Frank's spare head. He is given a Viking funeral on a rowing boat in the lake and Frank scoops up some of his ashes and keeps them in an empty tin of the dietary supplement he sucks through a straw (because he refuses to remove the head to eat).

In the hope of cheering everyone up, Jon reveals that he has been filming the rehearsals and posting them online. He has also been tweeting about Frank and, as a result, The Soronprfbs have been invited to play at the prestigious South By Southwest festival in Texas. Clara is dismayed when Frank decides to accept, as he has always prioritised realising his vision over reaching an audience. She threatens to stab Jon if anything goes wrong. Yet the pair end up having furious sex before relaxing in the outdoor hot tub. Clara is amused that Jon thinks she was also an asylum inmate and explains that she loves Frank and feels bound to protect him, as he is something of an innocent abroad, as well as a musical genius.

En route to Austin, Frank stops off in the desert to scatter Don's ashes, only for Clara to realise that Baraque has left them behind in Ireland and brought a tin of Grownut, instead. Frank seems to take this in his stride. But he is unnerved by the crowds when they reach the SXSW venue and is only mollified when artist registration clerks Simone (Hayley Derryberry) and Alice (Lauren Poole) seem so excited to meet him. They accompany the band to a diner, where Frank is delighted to be recognised by a waiter, who, thanks to the YouTube clips, knows the `chinchilla' safe word they use during their often abrasive brainstorming sessions.

However, Frank is mortified when Alice and Simone reveal that their online hit numbers are tiny compared to other cult acts and he tries to convince the others that they should take Jon's advice and adopt a more commercial style. Clearly unsettled by self-doubt and the pressure of appealing to the audience, Frank becomes agitated at a meet`n'greet session and Jon has to go looking for him when he runs away. He finds him being cosseted by Clara in a back alley, who makes good on her threat to stab Jon and he has to go to hospital for treatment on a leg wound. When he returns to the motel, Clara, Baraque and Nana announce that they are quitting. But Frank allows Jon to convince him that they can still do a great show with an acoustic guitar.

Buoyed by the warm reception, Jon launches into one of his own songs and Frank has a breakdown on stage. He confesses, as they share a motel bed, that he cannot function without Clara and a frustrated Jon tries to pull his head off. Frank flees and is hit by a passing car. The head breaks, but Jon is knocked down by another car before he can see what Frank looks like without it. The other Soronprfbs show Jon no pity, even when he tracks them down to the near-empty bar where they are gigging. However, he uses his Twitter connections to follow Frank to Kansas, where he is hiding out with his parents (Tess Harper and Bruce McIntosh). He says nothing when he finally sees the severely scarred Frank without his disguise and is suitably chastened when he asks what happened to make him this way and his father calmly explains that he suffers from a mental illness.

Taking his leave, Jon returns to the bar where Clara is playing. As he watches, a headless Frank wanders in and stands in front of the stage. Baraque hands him a microphone and he starts to sing a mournful tune. Realising, at last, the damage he has done, Jon leaves them to it and the closing shot shows him sidling away along a nondescript street into the obscurity he so richly deserves.

Much has been made of the challenge facing Michael Fassbender in giving a performance from beneath a large spherical head whose unblinking features vaguely resemble something out of a 1930s Fleischer brothers cartoon. But, as one might expect of this gifted actor, he achieves such nuance with his body language and vocal delivery that it is almost a disappointment when the scenario demands he is unmasked in his last two scenes. However, his enigmatic excellence leaves Gleeson exposed in what is actually the leading role, as Gyllenhaal is able to hide beneath her helmet of bobbed hair and her air of fearsome passivity, while McNairy is permitted to leer maniacally and Civil and Azar are allowed to drift into the background.

Unfortunately, however, Gleeson is often at a loss to make Jon's delusions of grandeur or self-serving miscalculations seem either geekily droll or edgily tragic. It scarcely helps that Ronson and Straughan (who are re-teaming after Grant Heslov's The Men Who Stare at Goats, 2009) fail to establish Frank's avant-garde credentials or why those in his coterie are so convinced of his aptitude. Moreover, even though they are played with laudable competence by the cast members, the quality of the songs penned by Stephen Rennicks further undermines a conceit that lacks satirical sharpness as it muses on the state of modern music, the devaluation of talent and celebrity in the age of social media and the psychological fragility of those who long to be in the spotlight without appreciating the relentlessness of its glare.

Lenny Abrahamson has examined precarious mental states before in Adam & Paul (2004), Garage (2007) and What Richard Did (2012). However, the sensitivity, insight and wit that screenwriter Mark O'Halloran brought to the first two have been enervatingly replaced with self-consciously surreal whimsy that often sits awkwardly with the more serious issues under consideration. Revistiting several themes from his earlier films, Abrahamson neatly pocks the action with copies (a Madness song that's a cover of a Labi Siffre original; a mistakenly identified corpse; and some bogus ashes) and surrogates (a false heads, some sexualised mannequins, and a couple of replacement sidesmen). But the Irish interlude is devoid of fresh ideas - beside the charming dance between Fassbender and hausfrau Rosalind Adler, who leaves with a fresh perspective on life after their fleeting encounter - and the characters have become so resistible by the time they reach the States that it's hard to summon up much sympathy when the wheels start to come off.

Clearly, Ronson and Straughan have the likes of Daniel Johnston, Syd Barrett and Arthur Kane in mind as the basis for Frank. But it's frustrating that so little of Chris Sievey has survived the re-imagining. Moreover, it's hugely disappointing that a treatise on the incompatibility of art and commerce should have pandered so readily to the mainstream and that such a fine film-maker seems to have been lured into repeating Jon's mistake of being seduced by the idea of a left-field band rather than imbuing it with a genuine artistic vision.

The Celtic musical flavour carries over into American Interior, which reunites Welsh film-maker Dylan Goch and Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys for a second New World odyssey after their splendid 2010 road-doc, Separado! Moving north and backwards in time from 19th-century Patagonia to the Mississippi-Missouri heartland in the 1790s, this may lose its way in places and strike the odd artful pose. But the songs are catchy and clever and the mumbling Rhys makes a genial travelling companion, as he follows in the footsteps of his intrepid ancestor, John Evans.

According to legend, Prince Madoc discovered the Americas in 1170 and members of his expedition spawned a Welsh-speaking tribe when they interbred with the Native Americans of the Great Plains. In 1792, 22 year-old John Evans, a farmhand from Waunfawr in Snowdonia, was convinced by the poet Iolo Morgannwg to find the Padoucas or Madogwys and he set out on an epic journey that distant descendant Gruff Rhys decided to retrace after coming across Evans's map in the Beineke Library at Yale. However, Rhys also plans to use his quest to play a few gigs, while examining how myths are formed and distorted and showing how well-meaning enterprises can often have unforeseen cultural and colonial consequences.

Having visited the cottage where Evans grew up, Rhys meets with Ffionn Mair Jones at the National Library in Aberystwyth to learn more about his background. He also consults psychiatrist Ceri Gwynfryn Evans to see why he would have undertaken such a risky voyage and dramatist Gareth Miles to discover how Welsh Jacobins based in London paid Evans's passage in the hope that he could furnish them with some potentially seditious propaganda. Rhys also commissions artist Peter Fowler to create a three-foot felt effigy of Evans, which he will use en route to recreate many a moment of historical significance.

Landing in Baltimore, Rhys opens the first of his intimate shows (which combine music, powerpoint presentations and wry commentary) with a clip from a TV film by fabled Welsh historian Gwyn Williams recapping the Madoc myth. Goch intercuts this with a montage from the musivid to the `American Interior' ditty that will serve throughout as a linking device and reinforce the idea of how alone Evans was for much of his trip. Indeed, he was so grateful for the friendship of landlord Samuel Jones in Philadelphia that he abandoned his Methodist faith to become a Baptist. But brotherly love seems the least of Rhys's concerns as he puts the Evans puppet on his shoulders and runs up the steps that Sylvester Stallone climbed in Rocky (1976).

Having acquired some useful skills during a short spell as a surveyor, Evans departed for Rio Grande in Kentucky. Hot on his trail, Rhys fetches up in Cincinnati, where fans relish the chance to celebrate their Welsh heritage and hear new songs in development. He learns that Evans was persuaded to take Spanish citizenship here by one General Wilkinson, a double agent who sent him along the Ohio River to its confluence with the Mississippi at New Madrid. Here, Rhys meets local historians Martha Hunt and Virginia Carlson, who inform him that Don Juan Evans contracted malaria in the swamps and was lucky to survive. But, although his puppet endures some hallucinations, the real-life Evans was keen to press on, even though the next stage of his trek would take him through 2000 miles of terrain belonging to 12 hostile tribes.

In his TV programme, Gwyn Williams had suggested that Evans was driven on by a kind of madness, but he reached St Louis in 1795, where he was promptly arrested as a spy. Goch recreates the moment by having a local cop slap handcuffs on the puppet (whose face is pixillated to protect its anonymity) and Rhys joins historian Carolyn Gilman in visiting the site of the gaol, which is now occupied by a multi-storey car park. She explains how Spain still claimed much of the territory to the west, even though it was largely unexplored, and why, following his release from prison, Evans's willingness to sally forth in name of the Spanish monarchy probably led to him being accepted into polite society.

Rhys repays the kindness shown to his ancestor by serenading an enraptured audience outside the theatre, although the host of a local radio chat show looks less enamoured as his guest starts to explain the reason for his tour. By all accounts, the Spanish appointed Evans second in command to Scot James Santiago McKay, who was dispatched to find a north-west passage with a party that was mostly comprised of French fur trappers. On reaching Columbia, Rhys hooks up with Kliph Scurlock, the drummer of The Flaming Lips, who goes into the studio with him in Omaha to lay down the `American Interior' track.

Rhys presses on alone to see where Chief Blackbird of the Umo Ho Nation detained the explorers and only agreed to free them when they accepted terms that included mapping the Missouri Basin to the Pacific, expelling British intruders and capturing a unicorn. Sporting a wolf headdress, Rhys carries the Evans puppet on his shoulders to a rendezvous with river dweller Matthew Batten, who explains how he quit the rat race to commune with nature. He commends Evans for venturing into the unknown against the current and Goch uses animation to show how he was chased by the Lakota Sioux and captured by the Arikara tribe, who let him go because they were so enchanted by the Welsh language that he became known as `the Man with the Golden Tongue'.

On reaching the lands of the Mandan Nation, Rhys meets with tribal preservation officer Calvin Grinnell and park ranger John Moeykens before flautist Keith Bear explains how the tribe helped Evans survive a rough winter in their earth lodges. As an agricultural people, the Mandan had crops and culture and historian Marilyn Hudson reveals how they also traded with the British and the Spanish for guns and horses. But Evans was a wanted man and the Canadians sent an agent to assassinate him. However, he fled when Evans challenged him to a duel and he was left to survey the region and play a key role in the establishment of the 49th Parallel between Canada and the United States.

A comical sequence has the puppet raising and lowering Spanish and British flags before Rhys visits a local school to tell the pupils about his trip. A song goes down better than his history lesson, but a teacher notes the similarities between Welsh and disappearing First American languages. So, Rhys goes to Twin Buttes to meet 82 year-old Edwin Benson, the last fluent speaker of Mandan, and his sole student, Cory Spotted Bear. He shows Rhys how to ice fish and, as they sit in a small tent erected over a hole in the frozen lake, the pair discuss how languages evolve and swap amusing stories about the naming of iPods and microwaves. Cory recalls having his mouth washed out with soap when he made an English pronunciation error. He also laments the effect that oil refining and fracking are having on the environment.

Although he likes the dragon on the flag, Edwin has never heard of Wales and Rhys reveals how he grew up speaking Welsh and picked up English from Sesame Street on the television. This perhaps explain the Muppet-like appearance of the Evans doll, which is shown scouring the plains, as Rhys learns from Keith Bear that Evans gave up his search for the Madogwys after nine months of fruitless inquiry among the neighbouring tribes. Eventually, he was summoned to New Orleans by the Spanish governor and placed under house arrest in 1798. As bluesmen sing about his exploits, Rhys learns that Evans was forced to admit his failure in a letter home. However, his findings were rejected and he was branded a failure before he died of yellow fever at the age of 29 in May 1799.

Guide Kelley Todd Edmiston escorts Rhys through the graveyard where her mother had watched the filming of LSD scene for Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969). She admits no one knows where Evans is buried, but they visit the Protestant section and Edmiston speculates that his spirit may be inhabiting a nearby cypress-oak tree. She tells Rhys that her mother was a voodoo priestess and, in dismissing movie hokum about the religion, she suggests that he treats the puppet in the same way that a fetish would be handled in order to make a connection with the beyond.

Goch indulges himself here by having cinematographer Ryan Owen Eddleston wobble his camera to create a dislocatory effect that he enhances with a digital paintbox to colour a twirling umbrella purple (one of several instances of highlights being used to decorate the glossy digital monochrome imagery). A similar demob-happiness afflicts Rhys, as he asks his next audience to applaud a new song as though it was an old favourite. But an air of solemnity descends when George Miles from the Yale Collection of Western Americana suggests that Evans's feat was akin to travelling into space. He also claims that his map proved vital to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark during their push to the Pacific. But academic Dafydd Rhys puts a dark spin on proceedings at the end of the pilgrimage by averring that Evans's failure to find a Welsh-speaking utopia did much to expose native tribes to the marauders who would eventually subjugate and eliminate them.

Anthropologist W. Raymond Wood likes the romantic notion that Evans died of a broken heart and Rhys asks if he can take back some stones from the graveyard to use in the extension that is being built at Evans's childhood home near Caernarfon. Edmiston helps him select some pebbles and shells and suggests that he performs a voodoo ceremonial to instal the puppet in its own shrine as a mark of respect. So, Rhys returns to Wales and, donning his wolf headdress one last time, he has the felt Evans carried on a palanquin behind some singing children and a brass band playing a New Orleans jazz lament. Somehow, it seems a fitting welcome-cum-farewell for a hero who has never quite got his due.

Recreating the playful mood of Separado!, this may seem a mite less fresh in purely stylistic terms, while the odd directorial flourish feels a touch de trop. But Goch and Rhys make a decent team and this feels more substantial and better planned out than its predecessor. The film is part of a package that also includes an app, an album and a book, but these will all miss the mumblecore deadpan of Rhys's stage patter and the deft way in which Goch both exploits the changing landscape and captures the differing ways in which Rhys is greeted by fans, academics and tribal representatives. But, even though the celebratory climax is charming, the genocidal consequence of Evans's anti-heroic exploits casts quite a pall.

Less freewheeling, but every bit as distinctive in its unconventional approach, Janez Burger's Silent Sonata recalls the absurdism that characterised so much Eastern European cinema in the 1960s. Back then, the tactic served a subversive purpose, as film-makers sought ways of hiding socio-political criticisms from Communist censors. But the lyrical surreality employed by this Slovenian sophomore always feels like a contrived stylistic gambit in a picture whose self-conscious artifice is reinforced by the fact that also opts to dispense with both dialogue and intertitles.

Burger is not alone in borrowing a conceit that had resurfaced periodically since 1930 before Guy Maddin gave it renewed artistic credibility with Careful in 1992. Subsequent efforts have included Aki Kaurismäki's Juha (1999), Jerzy Skolimowsk's Essential Killing (2010), Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist (2011) and Pablo Berger's Blancanieves (2012). Even Hollywood got in on the act with JC Chandor's All Is Lost (2013). But, even though Burger finds plausible reasons why the characters might eschew verbal communication, the `silence' imposes an eccentric artifice that will be more readily associated with the kind of quirky animation that became synonymous with the Eastern Bloc prior to 1989.

Indeed, the fall of the Iron Curtain appears to have sparked the war that provides the backdrop for action that seemingly takes place in an unnamed former Yugoslav country. Leon Lucev and children Luna Zimic Mijovic and Devi Bragalini are mourning the loss of Marjuta Slamic, who has been shot by a soldier near their remote farmhouse. Having prepared the body for burial, Lucev hears the sound of approaching vehicles and hides his offspring in the cellar before readying to face the interlopers with his shotgun. However, the trucks traversing the devastated terrain belong to the Circus Fantasticus and leader Ravil Sultanov asks permission to camp on Lucev's fields in order to stage a farewell show for ailing ringmaster René Bazinet.

Lucev consents and members of the troupe look on as he buries his wife. However, her place on the kitchen table is soon taken by Bazinet, who is brought indoors after being overcome by smoke after almost setting light to his caravan. Meanwhile, Mijovic and Bragalini become fascinated by the rehearsals and, when a tank appears on the horizon, strongman Slava Volkov and fire-eater David Boelee stage a show of defiance that results in the tank performing some tricks of its own before it is destroyed in a terrifying air strike.

As the days pass, Mijovic becomes fond of trick cyclist Yannick Martens, while her father finds solace in trapeze artist Pauliina Räsänen. Happy that her brood are rediscovering the joys of life, Slamic looks indulgently on, as her daughter rides to the coast with Martens, where they collect shells and fragments of coloured glass, in spite of the fact that the beach is strewn with cadavers.

The big top is erected and Lucev attends the show with his family. Clowns Daniel Rovai and Nataða Sultanova present Bazinet with a white rose, whose scent rejuvenates him and he resumes his role as master of ceremonies before handing his baton to the youngest member of the troupe, Enej Grom. As Bazinet walks off into the night, the heavens open and the tent and the farmhouse are flooded during the ensuing storm. The following morning, Lucev holds hands with Räsänen as they stand before two fresh graves. They rejoin the rest of the circus and head off with Mijovic and Bragalini in tow to see what awaits them in a still uncertain world.

Originally entitled Circus Fantasticus and released in 2010, this has taken a while to reach UK screens. It's very much a niche item and will frustrate as many as it fascinates. Despite conveying the idea that the troupe is comprised of artistes without a common tongue, Burger fails to provide a convincing reason why the family members would not speak to each other and this sense of enforced pantomime undercuts the grim aura that should make the flashes of magic realism all the more enchanting. Only Federico Fellini among film directors has consistently managed to make carny life seem romantic and relevant and Burger, like Jacques Rivette before him in Around a Small Mountain (2009), often finds himself caught in a no man's land between Ingmar Bergman and Cecil B. DeMille.

The performances are solid, with specialists from the Cirque du Soleil and the Moscow State Circus showcasing their skills to fine effect. Czech Divis Marek's photography and Vasja Kokelj's production design are also impressive. However, the use of the circus is a metaphor for existence is hardly novel and Burger has little new to add to the concept that life must go on, even in the midst of bereavement. Nevertheless, this remains a work of aesthetic elegance, whose melancholic sincerity proves hauntingly indelible.

The pacifist allegory is hammered home with markedly less subtlety in Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson's I Declare War, which has also taken its time getting here, as it was released Stateside back in April 2012. Despite the odd witty line and the occasional shrewd insight into the competitiveness, cruelty and arrogance of adolescent boys, this laboured satire would appear to be the very kind of kidpic that Mark Cousins takes to task in A Story of Children and Film for presenting an adult approximation of youth rather than an accurate child's eye perspective. Frequently blurring the line between innocent make believe and terrifying reality, this is a picture with aspirations. But Lapeyre's script fudges too many key issues for it to be anything other than a valiant, but deeply flawed effort.

Somewhere in suburban America, a group of 12 year-olds are engrossed in playing Capture the Flag in the local woods. Some carry replica weapons, others humble sticks and others still balloons filled with red paint that symbolise grenades and mean exclusion for the stricken. All of the combatants take proceedings seriously, but no one engages with more commitment than Gage Munroe, the undefeated leader of one army, who inspires confidence with his rudimentary knowledge of military history, his love of Franklin J. Schaffner's 1970 film, Patton, and his scrupulous respect for the rules of the game.

His opponent, Aidan Gouveia, also plays fair. But his good looks and poor track record prompt the podgy Michael Friend to stage a coup and eliminate him from battle when he insists on treating the captured Siam Yu with courtesy. Friend is a bully, who channels his self-loathing into a ruthless aggression that ensures the loyalty and obedience of his troops. Thus, having dispatched Quinn, he sends them all on a mission that ensures he is left alone with Yu, who is not only one of the few non-Caucasians on the frontline, but who is also Munroe's best pal. Already chaffed around the wrists after being tied up, Yu is subjected to a crude form of torture, as Friend piles cement blocks on top of a wooden board placed across his chest.

Munroe tries to rescue Yu by sending a messenger to inform Friend that Yu has to go home immediately because his mother has been rushed to hospital. But his foe spots the ruse and orders his oppos to pelt the messenger with stones. This humiliation rankles with Munroe's forces, who urge him to fight back in kind. However, he insists on winning by honourable means and dissent begins to fester in the ranks.

Meanwhile, Mackenzie Munro, the only girl permitted to participate, hatches a plan to steal both Munroe and Friend's flags and present them to Gouveia, in the hope that he will finally notice her. Her cause is aided by the fact that close friends Alex Cordillo and Dyson Fyke each has an enormous crush on her and they are so distracted by their rivalry that she is able to snatch Munroe's flag from under the nose of the defenceless Andy Reid (who was earlier offered $50 to eat dog faeces by Spencer Howes, who shares a `Joker' nickname with Matthew Modine's character in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, 1987).

Before she can flee, however, Munro is `killed' by Kolton Stewart, a taciturn enigma who admires Munroe's insistence on doing things by the book. But not everyone agrees with his decision to send the escaped Yu back behind enemy lines in order to facilitate his grand strategy. Roused into action, Munroe launches his offensive and he triumphs over Friend, who is revealed to have once been his bosom pal before Yu moved into the neighbourhood. However, when Munroe invites Yu to dinner to celebrate their victory, he declines because he so resents Munroe's readiness to sacrifice him in order to prevail.

Castigating the good guy for being as prepared to win at all costs as his hissable adversary, Lapeyre and Wilson seek to demonstrate that there are only casualties in any conflict. But they go about this in such a heavy handed manner that this proves to be a very easy movie to resist. Munroe ably conceals his Napoleonic egotism beneath his calculated bonhomie, while Friend makes such a credible villain that the co-directors are able to stress the sadistic insecurity of a traitor who is also a casual racist, misogynist and homophobe. Yet, his moral failings have as little consequence as his cruel violence and Lapeyre could surely have come up with a better motive for his fury than merely being jilted by a hero with feet of clay?

But, one suspects not, given the clumsy readiness to replace the homemade weapons with the real thing in sequences that are only prevented from seeming ludicrous by the ferocity of Bryan Day's sound design. Such subject matter invites comparison with William Golding's Lord of the Flies. But Lapeyre and Wilson ruinously opt to turn the combat sequences into a cross between Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) and Alan Parker's Bugsy Malone (1976). Moreover, they come perilously close to repeating the latter's unfortunate (if unintentional) effect of sexualising the young cast, particularly Mackenzie Munro, a Katniss Everdeen wannabe who seems to exist solely to arouse unwholesome feelings in some of the troops. As a consequence, this is a classic example of a picture whose good intentions are fatally undermined by some slipshod execution.

A duo with infinitely more impressive credentials than Lapeyre and Wilson prove that teamwork doesn't always pay off, as director Paul Schrader and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis combine to make a right old mess of The Canyons. Initiated when a collaboration entitled Bait fell through at the eleventh hours, this was intended to be a seedy little noir that shocked audiences while lamenting the demise of movies and morality in Los Angeles.

By all accounts, Schrader and Ellis invested $90,000 each in the project and raised the remaining $70k through Kickstarter. Having secured the services of onetime Disney moppet Lindsay Lohan and porn star James Deen, they completed the ensemble using the Let It Cast website. But, while mischievous rumours started circulating that Schrader had made a shoestring masterpiece, Ellis let it be known that something had gone awry between him delivering the script and his viewing of the premiere. However, it doesn't take an experienced critic to realise that the majority of the problems with this intriguing misfire lie with the writing.

In order to justify the trust fund payments he receives from his father, James Deen agrees to get a job and attend weekly sessions with psychiatrist Gus Vann Sant. He makes plans with producers Jim Boeven and Amanda Brooks to invest in a low-budget slasher movie to be filmed in New Mexico and travels to Los Angeles with girlfriend Lindsay Lohan to meet the star, Nolan Funk. He used to date Lohan and the spark is sufficiently rekindled at the casting session for them to embark upon an affair.

Deen is as restless as he is insatiable where sex is concerned and he often invites strangers to share his bed with Lohan. Consequently, she has become somewhat inured to romance and mocks Funk when he expresses surprise that she left him for a playboy. She also rejects his suggestion that he should break up with Brooks so they could get back together. But, while Lohan tries to play it cool, Deen suspects something is going on behind his back and he hires hooded snoop Jarod Einsohn to keep an eye on the pair.

In order to get his own back, Deen seeks out former lover Tenille Houston, who is now a yoga instructor. Against her better judgement, she allows herself to be seduced. But the pair argue furiously and Houston sends Deen packing. He returns home to news that Lohan is cheating on him with Funk and starts exacting his revenge by hacking into his online profile and his bank account. He also coerces Boeven into threatening Funk with the sack unless they sleep together. But not everything runs Deen's way, as Houston contacts Lohan and informs her that he once arranged for her to be gang raped so that he could film it, as he had it in his head that he was an undiscovered director.

Unaware of Houston's revelation, Deen brings Lily Labeau and Thomas Trussell to his hillside Malibu mansion to play with Lohan. However, she turns the tables on him and orders him to service Trussell. The following day, Funk comes to complain to Lohan that the movie has been cancelled and that he will have to go back to his day job as a bartender at Victor Fischbarg's hotel. Realising that her fun is over, Lohan dismisses him and Funk arrives home to receive his marching orders from Brooks.

Now starting to unravel, Deen confronts Lohan about her infidelity and she taunts him about his antics with Houston. He insists she is lying and, following a visit to Van Sant, he murders Houston. Deen returns to find Lohan packed to leave. He agrees to let her go, on the proviso that she gives him an alibi if he ever needs one and that she doesn't take up with Funk again. Several months later, Lohan bumps into Lauren Schacher, who asks about the unsolved Houston case and whether she has seen anything of Deen. Lohan claims to be getting on with her life. But, when Schacher reports on her conversation to Funk, he grips the phone with an anxiety that suggests he is still smitten.

It's never good to have 30 credited producers on one project and, were it not for the fact that Showgirls (1995) is so far along the road to rehabilitation as a misunderstood kitsch gem, it would be very easy to claim that Bret Easton Ellis had done a Joe Eszterhas with his first original screenplay. Packing in the nasty nihilistic clichés and caricatures - many of which have been lifted from such previously filmed Ellis novels as Less Than Zero (Marek Kanievska, 1987), American Psycho (Mary Harron, 2000) and The Laws of Attraction (Roger Avary, 2002) - Ellis has fashioned a `will that do' sort of scenario that Paul Schrader and cinematographer John DeFazio have worked wonders to make look as good as it does, through their use of iconic locations around LaLaLand.

While he struggles with many of the supporting players, Schrader does coax laudable performances out of Deen (in his first non-adult role) and the wayward, but undoubtedly talented Lohan. It may be pushing things more than slightly to compare her work (as some have) with Marlon Brando's soul-baring (among other things) turn in Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972), but Lohan reveals a good deal more of herself than her bosom, particularly during a monologue delivered in the Century City shopping mall. That said, this is far from the sizzling smutfest hinted at in the advanced publicity, as Schrader and DeFazio bathe Lohan's fourway in multi-coloured lights, while editor Tim Silano has clearly been told to keep things tantalising, but tasteful.

Comparisons between this seedy saga and great Tinseltown exposés like Vincente Minnelli's The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), John Schlesinger's The Day of the Locust (1975) and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) are equally exaggerated. But Schrader has plumbed these depths before in pictures like Hardcore (1979), American Gigolo (1980), The Comfort of Strangers (1990) and Auto Focus (2002). And, while this is nowhere near in the same category, it has enough moments to suggest what might have resulted has Schrader written the script himself and given his deeply unpleasant characters some much-needed depth.

Mistakes are not exclusively the preserve of the young, as Phlippe Claudel demonstrates with Before the Winter Chill, a treatise on the drawbacks of middle-aged bourgeois contentment that has aspirations to being a psychological thriller. Renowned as a novelist before turning to film, Claudel reminds one of those literate 1950s directors who were accused of peddling a `cinéma du papa' by François Truffaut in his epochal denunciation of `the Tradition of Quality'. It has frequently been argued in this column that many fine film-makers and decent pictures were consigned to the dustbin of screen history as a result of this tirade from Cahiers du Cinéma's angriest young man. But there is something stiflingly bookish about Claudel's approach to storytelling and one is frequently left wishing throughout this potentially intriguing saga that he had resisted his authorial instincts and followed the example of that master of dissecting middle-class mores, Claude Chabrol.

Brain surgeon Daniel Auteuil seemingly has the perfect life. He is respected professionally and is supported every step of the way by his wife of 30 years, Kristin Scott Thomas, who keeps their garden as immaculate as their well-appointed home. She also enjoys hosting dinner parties and babysitting her new grandchild, so that son Jérôme Varanfrain and daughter-in-law Vicky Krieps can concentrate on their careers. Auteuil and Varanfrain don't always agree about politics and Auteuil occasionally confides his frustration to colleague and best friend Richard Berry, who has long held a torch for Scott Thomas, but knows he stands no chance of luring her away from her cosy existence.

There are clouds on her horizon, however, as Scott Thomas's sister, Laure Killing, has started to exhibit the first signs of mental decline, while Auteuil has grown grumpier and increasingly distant. She puts this down to pressure at work, but Auteuil's malaise stems from the daily delivery of red roses and notes from a Moroccan woman thanking him for the life-saving surgery he doesn't remember performing. He tracks Leïla Bekhti down to the florist shop and assures her that she has confused him with someone else. But she keeps showing up at the clinic and Auteuil is so angry when he sees her chatting to Berry that he assaults her on the street.

Instead of reporting the incident, Bekhti apologises to Auteuil for inconveniencing him. He tries to resume his duties and is moved when Jewish spinster Annette Schlechter tells him the names of all the relatives who perished in the Holocaust, in case she doesn't survive a delicate operation. But Auteuil's mood deteriorates and boss Laurent Claret decides that he is close to a breakdown and recommends that he takes a leave of absence. Rather than relaxing at home, however, Auteuil uses his time to stalk Bekhti. He even drives around the rough industrial area where she lives and discovers she is a prostitute. Yet, while he starts meeting with her on a regular basis, he keeps things platonic by sharing walks in the park and drinks in quiet bars.

Concerned by her husband's increasingly erratic behaviour and unsettled by Berry's romantic overtures, Scott Thomas leaves home. Auteuil argues with Varanfrain and arranges to meet Bekhti in a seedy hotel. However, she is found dead and cops Jean-François Wolff and Joël Delsaut explain to Auteuil how he has had a narrow escape, as Bekhti and her associate are notorious for luring wealthy older men into a relationship and then torturing them for their money. Startled by the revelation, Auteuil recognises his folly and reconciles with Scott Thomas. But, even though the family is shown celebrating together at the close, the suspicion lingers that things will never quite be the same again.

In 2008, Claudel and Scott Thomas collaborated on I've Loved You So Long, an involving study of a woman struggling to reconnect with her circle after spending 15 years behind bars. But Claudel fails to achieve the same blend of seething emotion and simmering suspense with this equally convoluted, but much less convincing melodrama. As in Joanna Hogg's Exhibition, there is something calculated about the austere minimalism of the dream house (which is actually in Luxembourg) and Claudel even hammers home the point by having Killing tell Scott Thomas that she is essentially living in a luxurious prison.

Claudel is similarly unsubtle in his depiction of the animosity between Auteuil and Varanfrain, whose spoilt brattishness is slowly starting to wear down the amiable Krieps. Yet, having established the `poor little rich folks' scenario, Claudel marginalises it to focus on Auteuil's fixation with Bekhti. But, by presenting the liaison solely from Auteuil's perspective, he similarly fails to exploit the class chasm between them and the issues arising from her ethnicity. Indeed, Claudel seems content to couch Auteuil's midlife crisis entirely in clichéd terms, as he is tempted by a troubled younger woman who seems to need him more than his coolly assured spouse. But, having taken such pains over this set-up, it seems odd that Claudel should suddenly dash towards the deeply unsatisfying denouement.

As always, Auteuil creates a character of some complexity and his willingness to alienate the audience is laudable. But Scott Thomas has far too little to do as the disillusioned domestic goddess (no wonder she is thinking of quitting acting), while Bekhti is required to be little more than exotic and enigmatic. Denis Lenoir's visuals are strong, with the nocturnal point-of-view sequence of Auteuil negotiating the winding roads in the red light district contrasting with the bracing views of the parks and the woods abutting the family home. But the abrupt tonal shift upsets the balance of a picture that is deleteriously short of the discreetly dark comedy than Chabrol would have utilised to take the curse off the contrivance.

Growing old appears to hold no terrors for the seven New York seniors profiled in Lina Plioplyte's Advanced Style, a documentary inspired by the eponymous website and coffee table book produced by photographer Ari Seth Cohen. He launched the venture at the suggestion of  his grandmothers, Bluma and Helen. But, such was its appeal, that the site soon had women from across the world posting their own images and confidences and inspiring other ladies of a certain age to express themselves in the way they dress and to live their lives to the full.

Fashion icon Iris Apfel and provocateuse Dita von Teese adore the project and the women who sustain it. But rather than exploring how the thirtysomething Cohen developed his idea or how it caught the imagination of the media, Plioplyte opts to focus on a select septet, whose sartorial elegance is matched by their eloquence and boundless energy. Each is given a window to introduce themselves and say something about their backgrounds and the circumstances that shaped their highly individual approach to clothes. Yet these snapshots merely pique rather than satisfy our curiosity and the decision to emphasise lifestyle over personality repeatedly proves foolhardy as the action unfolds.

Sixty-four year-old Ziporah Salamon cycles around the city in search of new outfits and trinkets and admits to putting more thought into her ensembles than she does her health regimen. Two years her senior, Debra Rapoport describes herself as a designer and visual artist who is not afraid to make an exhibition of herself. She lives with a younger musician and is quite prepared to enthuse, in a Mae West kind of way, about the life in her man.

Eighty year-old Joyce Carpati wanted to be an opera singer, but spent 27 years as the marketing manager for beauty advertising at Cosmopolitan. She retains her porcelain skin and keeps her grey hair in stylish braids. But her reserve contrasts with the effusive vivacity of 81 year-old Lynn Dell Cohen, who refers to herself as `the Countess of Glamour' and runs the Off Broadway Boutique when not caring for her blind husband, Sandy. Eighty-two year-old Jacquie `Tajah' Murdock also has problems with her eyes. But she never allows anything to get her down, having been raised by Jamaican immigrants during the height of the Depression. In her heyday, she was a dancer at the fabled Apollo Theatre in Harlem and has lost none of her showbiz tenacity or poise.

Born in Poland, 93 year-old Ilona Royce Smithkin has reinvented herself so many times she scarcely knows where to start. She is most renowned as an artist and her portrait of Ayn Rand continues to adorn many a book cover. Sporting the huge eyelashes she makes from her own red hair, she also teaches art and enjoys singing in nightclubs. But she is also aware she has become a fashion icon, as has 95 year-old socialite Zelda Kaplan, who has a thing for African fabrics and partying the night away. An avid traveller and champion of humanitarian causes, she is always ready with an opinion and seems more than comfortable on camera, having been the subject of Nicole Sampogna and Mona Eldaief's 2003 documentary, Her Name Is Zelda.

Engaging though the veterans are, there is only so much mileage to be had from them reminiscing and modelling what are often pretty outlandish outfits. It must have come as something of a relief to Plioplyte, therefore, when Murdock and Salamon got to audition for a Lanvin campaign and Cohen was invited to guest on The Ricki Lake Show. Joyce, Debra and Lynn pack their glad rags and chatter happily en route to Hollywood, where they get to strut their stuff and pass on their beauty and fashion tips. The garrulous Lynn seizes the opportunity with both hands. But, soon afterwards, she is hospitalised when her gallbladder ruptures and Sandy confides to the camera that she has had a narrow escape.

Unfortunately, Zelda proves less fortunate when she faints at the Joanna Mastroianni show during New York Fashion Week and fails to regain consciousness. They all agree, she passed the way she would have wanted, but the shadow lingers over the closing moments and many viewers will be saddened to learn that the irrepressible Ilona has also since died. As a consequence, the sequence at the beach, in which she sings show tunes with her friend Karen, who is suffering from dementia, becomes all the more moving. But an uneasy sense lingers throughout this self-consciously quirky actuality that these women are being paraded in a geriatric version of Sex and the City.