Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 25/6/2015)

When American writer Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arrives in Vienna shortly after the Second World War, he discovers a city that has been divided into five zones - a neutral area and sectors respectively controlled by Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union. Martins is in Austria to take up a post with the medical charity established by his best friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). But he is appalled to discover that Lime recently perished in a car accident and he arrives at the Zentralfriedhof cemetery in time to learn from British military policeman, Major Calloway (Trevor Howard), that Lime was a racketeer who exploited the poor and helpless in order to make a quick buck.

Having been deposited at the Hotel Sacher by Sergeant Paine (Bernard Lee), Martins is persuaded to stay by Crabbin (Wilfrid Hyde-White), who runs the British Cultural Re-education Centre and is prepared to pay for Martins's lodging if he gives a lecture on his literary technique. Martins is a hack writer of dime Westerns, but he is too preoccupied with discovering the truth about his friend to realise he is wholly unsuited to conducting such a seminar.

Instead, he makes contact with Baron Kurtz (Ernst Deutsch), who assures Martins that Lime's last words related to his well-being. Kurtz also reveals that Lime was romancing actress Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli) and Martins tracks her down to the Josefstadt Theatre. He confides that something rings hollow about Lime's death and they revisit the scene, where the building porter Karl (Paul Hörbiger) contradicts Kurtz by insisting that Lime died instantaneously and that his body was carried to a waiting vehicle by not two, but three men. Sensing a conspiracy, Martins accompanies Anna to her flat, where Calloway is busy confiscating her correspondence and documentation. She complains that she faces deportation to the Russian zone because she is Czechoslovakian, but Calloway merely shrugs and avers that he is only doing his duty as he takes her away for questioning.

Tipped off by Anna, Martins pays a visit on Dr Winkel (Erich Ponto), who confides that Lime could easily have been murdered. He also goes to the Casanova Club, where Kurtz introduces him to Popescu (Siegfried Breuer), who claims to know nothing about the third man mentioned by Karl. Later that night, however, Kurtz, Winkel and Popescu rendezvous with a shadowy figure on a bridge and Martins is horrified to learn that Karl has been killed.

Returning to his hotel, Martins is bundled into a vehicle. But any fears he has been abducted are allayed when he is wheeled in front of an expectant audience at the British Cultural Centre. Crabbin makes a fawning fuss of him and the meeting descends into chaos when Martins notices that Popescu is skulking around at the back of the hall. Managing to slip away, Martins reports his suspicions to Calloway. However, the major counters any suggestions that Lime is an innocent victim by explaining that hundreds of children have been affected by the batches of adulterated penicillin that Lime has been selling on the black market.

Confused by this turn of events, Martins gets drunk and foolishly declares his love for Anna. She jilts him and he is feeling at a low ebb when he notices a cat brushing against a man's legs in a nearby doorway. He calls out and a woman opens a window to see what is causing the commotion. The light from her room pierces the shadow and Martins catches a glimpse of Lime's sardonic smile before he runs off into the night. Summoning Calloway, Martins shows him the street along which Lime disappeared and the major orders an exhumation when he discovers an entrance to the Vienna sewers beneath a roadside kiosk.

The corpse in the Zentralfriedhof turns out to be a medical student who was helping Lime acquire supplies and Calloway arrests Anna on the strength of a letter to the deceased among her papers. Martins informs her that Lime is alive and he exits headquarters to send a message to Lime via Kurtz to meet him under the Ferris wheel in the Prater Park. Amused to see his old friend again, Lime ushers him into a compartment and admits that he is operating on the wrong side of the law. However, he points to the people on the ground below and confesses that he has no qualms about risking the lives of such insignificant dots in the grander scheme of things. When Martins tries to protest, Lime jokes that the world would be a dull place if everyone abided by the rules and contrasts Italy at the time of the Borgias with a peaceful Switzerland whose main contribution to civilisation has been the cuckoo clock.

Angry at being patronised and aghast at being offered a percentage of the scam, Martins betrays Lime's whereabouts to Calloway. Initially, he refuses to help capture his erstwhile buddy, but relents when Brodsky (Alexis Chesnakov) arrives from the Russian zone to initiate the process to repatriate Anna. However, when she discovers that Martins has traded her life for Lime's, she tears up the papers that would have enabled her to stay in the West and hisses her contempt for Martins, as she disembarks from the train bound for safety.

Desperate not to alienate Anna, Martins dashes back to the British base to beg Calloway to call off the ambush. But the major scolds him that he is out of his depth and detours en route to the airport to show Martins evidence of the suffering caused to young children by Lime's heartless avarice. Suitably chastened, Martins agrees to set Lime up at a café rendezvous. But Anna warns her lover as he enters and Lime flees into the sewers.

Calloway and Paine follow with reinforcements, but Paine is fatally wounded and Lime staggers away after being winged by Calloway. As he tries to climb back to street level, Lime is cornered by Martins, who fires without remorse. At the cemetery, Martins hopes to patch things up with Anna. He waits on a long, tree-lined avenue as she walks towards him. But, such is her loathing of his treachery, that she passes without acknowledgement and heads towards the divided city and a terrifyingly uncertain future.

Graham Greene and Carol Reed made three films together, although The Fallen Idol (1948) and Our Man in Havana (1960) are nowhere near as well known as this intricate and superbly executed thriller. Cinematographer Robert Krasker's inkily angular evocation of post-imperial Vienna is certainly crucial to its classic status, as is Anton Karas's chillingly jaunty score. But the often over-looked contributions of production designers Joseph Bato, John Hawkesworth and Vincent Korda and editor Oswald Hafenrichter should also be highlighted, along with the exemplary playing of the supporting cast.

Joseph Cotten was never the most animated of actors and this could have been a very different film if Reed had succeeded in casting Cary Grant as Martins. But Reed exploits Cotten's stiffness both to satirise the blundering incomprehension of Americans abroad (whether individually or en uniformed masse) and to contrast this well-meaning interference with the conscience-free capitalist cynicism of Orson Welles's urbane villainy. In many ways, Cotten is the embodiment of one of his own Western heroes, who rides into town only to discover that his old-fashioned frontier morality has no place in the brave new urban world.

But, for once, the audience is much more interested in the man in the black hat and the picture is undoubtedly more compelling whenever Welles is on the screen. No wonder Reed rejected Selznick's numerous alternative suggestions for the role and then put up with Welles's frequent absences (as he tried to raise funding for an adaptation of Othello) and his typically conceited attempts to direct his own scenes. Indeed, without such foresight, we would not be marking the 66th anniversary of The Third Man with quite the same reverence if Noël Coward, David Niven, Robert Taylor, Kirk Douglas or Robert Mitchum had played Harry Lime.

Medical emergencies of a more mundane kind dominate Thomas Lilti's sophomore feature, Hippocrates. Drawing on his own experiences as the son of a leading doctor trying to make his way as an intern in a busy city hospital, Lilti makes sly references throughout this darkly comic tale to American TV series like House that romanticise healthcare by centring on brilliant physicians with irresistible bedside manners who overcome any staff or supply shortages in order to save the day and earn the awed admiration of their underlings and the undying gratitude of their patients. In striving to show that reality is infinitely more complex and markedly more deficient in happy endings, Lilti marbles the action with a vein of dark humour. However, he also allows the main story strands to descend into melodrama, with the result that this never quite compels or convinces as it should.

Twenty-three year-old Vincente Lacoste arrives at the Parisian hospital where father Jacques Gamblin is a senior consultant and is presented with a stained white coat that is two size too big for him. He is shown around the wards by supervisor Marianne Denicourt and quickly realises that life is going to be tougher than he had anticipated when he has to be helped to perform a lumbar puncture by fellow intern Reda Kateb, an older and better qualified Algerian doctor, who he is forced to work his way up the French health system because of his nationality.

Unable to afford proper digs, Kateb lives in his room in the duty quarters, whose walls are daubed with a mix of politically provocative and sexually juvenile graffiti. Lacoste is amused when Kateb is sconced for talking shop over lunch and is surprised when he storms out of the dining hall when Félix Moati hands down his forfeit. But he fails to appreciate how humiliating it is for Kateb to be treated like a novice when he has plenty of experience back home and is only in Paris to earn better money for the wife and child he rarely sees.

On duty that night, Lacoste jokes around with nurses Carole Franck and Philippe Rebbot and is annoyed to be summoned from his bed to treat Thierry Levaret, a homeless man with cirrhosis who is complaining of abdominal pain. As the electrocardiogram is broken, Franck suggests that Lacoste prescribes some painkillers and gets some sleep. But, when he wakes the following morning, he discovers that Levaret has died of a heart attack in the night and Lacoste is taken aback when Denicourt orders him to lie about a benign ECG reading if anyone inquires about the case.

Although several colleagues joke about Lacoste losing his first patient so quickly, Kateb proves more sympathetic. However, his mood changes when Levaret's estranged wife, Julie Brochen, begins asking awkward questions and Lacoste informs her that her husband was being treated by Kateb when he died. His suspicions aroused, Kateb goes through the files for the ECG report and berates Lacoste for dissembling about his own incompetence and trying to pass the buck. Terrified of the truth embarrassing his father, Lacoste goes to see Gamblin, who insists that medics stick together in such circumstances. Thus, he reassures Brochen that everything possible was done to save Levaret and opines that such was the severity of a condition exacerbated by his own drinking that his demise was only a matter of time.

Relieved to be off the hook, Lacoste parties hard with Moati and the other juniors. But Kateb is singularly unimpressed with his behaviour and criticises him when he tries to avoid night shifts over the Christmas period. However, Kateb is also at loggerheads with Denicourt over the treatment of octogenarian Jeanne Cellard, who is in such distress that Kateb requisitions a morphine pump from another ward so she can self-medicate her pain. She thanks him for sticking his neck out for her and begs him not to prolong her suffering. But, even though Kateb inserts a note advising against resuscitation, a paramedic unit led by Alain Dzukam Simo brings Cellard back from the brink after she suffers a cardiac arrest and Kateb is forced to endure an awkward conversation with her children, Thierry Gary and Isalinde Giovangigli.

Furious that Denicourt recommends the removal of the pump, Kateb forces her to witness the agony that Cellard experiences without the morphine. He also persuades Gary and Giovangigli that it would be kinder to let their mother slip away. Lacoste concurs with Kateb's course of action. But, because it negates Simo's efforts to save the old lady, Kateb and Lacoste are charged with malpractice and summoned to a disciplinary hearing with senior management. Gamblin speaks up for them both, but Simo's superiors and hospital administrator Bertrand Constant (who has recently transferred from Amazon) find Kateb guilty and he knows his future prospects have been severely compromised.

Embarrassed by the nepotism that saved him and aggrieved by the injustice of the system, Lacoste gets roaring drunk and confesses to Brochen that he failed her spouse. Moreover, he causes a disturbance on the ward and threatens to jump from a ledge before charging down a staircase and into an oncoming car. Next morning, when Gamblin comes to inform his staff that Lacoste will be fine once his broken leg has healed, they challenge him and Constant about the broken ECG that had been weighing on his conscience. They also threaten to go on strike unless Kateb's demerit is removed from his record. As the film ends, Lacoste is starting work on a new ward and, while his new white coat actually fits, it is still deeply stained on the back.

Filmed with restless intensity by Nicolas Gaurin on wards familiar to Lilti from his own training, this laudable, but unadventurous saga sticks to the formula that has been serving screen medics well since Lew Ayres first essayed Dr Kildare in the 1930s. Lacoste brims with a fitful arrogance that contrasts effectively with Kateb's starchy integrity. But, while the Levaret and Cellard cases have their moments of intrigue, the denouement feels like something ripped from a mini-series rather than real life. Indeed, the easy way in which Gamblin and Constant buckle in the face of righteous fury rings so hollow that it threatens to drown out the pertinent points that Lilti makes about the living and working conditions that interns have to put up with while making momentous decisions under extreme duress.

The asides about the medical profession closing ranks to protect its own have little new light to shed. But more might have been made of the reckless socialising and the fact that so many young doctors are shown smoking. Lilti might also have dwelt longer on the fact that so many administrators lack medical experience and often try to run hospitals as they would a profit-making business. But the welcome bleak wit takes the curse off proceedings that tend to reinforce preconceptions rather than provide too much fresh insight.

Although its title suggests it could be another medical opus, Joseph Bull and Luke Seomore's Blood Cells is a road movie that explores the toll taken on farming families trying to earn a livelihood in the face of imposed quotas, restricted prices and contagious diseases. Making their feature debut after producing a couple of factual shorts and the 2009 documentary, Isolation, Bull and Seomore seem so keen to tap into the sombre brand of rural realism perfected by Duane Hopkins in Better Things (2008) and Bypass (2014) that they signed up cinematographer David Procter, who suffused the latter picture with natural light and a palpable sense of place. The visuals are affectingly memorable, especially as the picture only supposedly cost £119,000. But the flashbacking structure conceived by the directors and co-scenarist Ben Young struggles to disguise the sketchiness of the scenario, the atonality of much of the dialogue and the first-timer's natural tendency to strive too hard for symbolic significance and artistic effect.

Approaching his thirties, Barry Ward is still haunted by the impact of the 2001 Foot and Mouth epidemic on the family farm in the Yorkshire Dales. Having lost everything, father Francis Magee had wandered through the empty cattle sheds to drive his last remaining cow to slaughter and the young Ward had stood alongside him to watch the carcass burn on an enormous bonfire. Now, over a decade later, Ward walks to work in the grey dawn of an industrial morning and spends his evenings drinking in a working men's club.

One morning, he gets a phone call from younger brother Joe Doyle reminding him that he is about to become an uncle and he urges Ward to comes home and rebuild some bridges. Battling his demons, Ward decides to head north and takes a bus to Rhyl, where he tracks down old flame Chloe Pirrie. She is surprised to see him after some eight years and makes it clear that he would not be welcome to stay. He asks after her son (who could well be his), but shuffles off to the amusement arcades on the seafront after a politely affectionate hug.

As he wanders, Ward catches the eye of holidaying teenagers Lauren Goodwin and Hannah Hornsby, who ask him to buy some beer from the nearby off licence. They sit on the promenade drinking and Hornsby demonstrates her ballet steps before Ward dozes off. Goodwin lingers after Hornsby returns to her parents and tries to flirt with her eyes. But Ward walks her home as the sky lightens and he returns to his boarding house to burn some letters in the sink.

Having been slipped a few quid by former employee Silas Carson, Ward sets off to visit his Irish cousin Keith McEarlean. En route, he drifts back into his memories of following Magee into the woods and McEarlean tries to coax him into forgetting the past, as they sip beer and reminisce about their idyllic childhood summers. However, Ward's mood darkens and he cuts his palm in a contretemps over some late-night washing-up and McEarlean decides to pack him off in a taxi to his evangelist friend Jimmy Akingbola, who offers him a bed for the night and a sermon the following morning about the need to reconnect with his kin, as they are the most important part of his life.

Frustrated at being preached to, Ward leaves at the earliest opportunity and calls recent girlfriend Hayley Squires and asks if he can visit her in Sheffield. She seems pleased to see him and he befriends her dog, Ely, as they drink vodka and snuggle on the bed. However, Squires breaks the news that she had an abortion after he disappeared without warning and they fall silent. The next morning, she announces that they are going to earn some money together by putting on a live sex show at the local sauna and Ward looks decidedly uncomfortable as he strips off to cavort with Squires in front of a naked group of flabby old lechers.

Feeling disgusted with himself, Ward gets drunk at a nightclub. As Squires sleeps, he allows his mind to drift back to the day his father shot himself in the woods and remembers how he helped him die as he lay wounded against a tree trunk. Sobbing to himself, he grabs Ely's lead and they go for a long walk. Ward falls asleep on a brow overlooking the twinkling lights of the city. He wakes to discover that the dog has run away and, in his distress, finds a bull blocking his path as he tries to find his way home. Realising he has hit rock bottom and that the only way is up, Ward makes for the hospital and receives a warm greeting from his brother as he shows off his new son.

Rooting the action firmly in the social realist tradition that has propped up British cinema for the last 55 years, Bull and Seomore take few dramatic chances with a meandering narrative that requires the audience to invest in far too many transient and poorly limned characters. They all clearly mean something to Ward, but his own remorseful drifter is given such a slender backstory (which is delivered in a series of increasingly manipulative flashbacks) that it is only when he hooks up with Squires that he ceases to be an elusive cipher.

The exchanges with Pirrie and McEarlean just about ring true, but the encounter with Akingbola is so dreadfully overwritten and so overwroughtly played that it overbalances the entire picture. The sauna sequence also strains credibility, while the surfeit of poses that Ward is required to strike against photogenic rustic or neon-abstract backdrops becomes as wearying as Darren Baldwin's fussy and self-consciously meaningful editing.

However, Ward holds the attention and Squires (who is already renowned as a playwright) appears to be a real discovery. As for Bull and Seomore, they fall into several of the same traps that undermined Bryn Higgins's equally ambitious journey of self-discovery, Electricity (2014). But, with Seomore also doubling up as the composer of the largely effective score, the pair do enough to suggest that they have bright futures ahead of them.

Another farming crisis has much more explosive consequences in Pablo Fendrik's The Burning. Unlike his previous outings, Blood Appears (2007) and The Mugger )2008), this rainforest Western combines tribal mysticism with gung-ho heroics and offers Gael García Bernal copious opportunities to remove his shirt and flex his abs. But, while Julian Apezteguia's views of the Argentine jungle are wonderfully atmospheric and Fendrik means well in highlighting the plight of hard-working paisanos threatened by ruthless landowners, this lacks the depth to convince as an eco-political parable and the dynamism and suspense to work as an action picture.

Tobacco farmer Chico Diaz tries to make a living on the banks of the Rio Parana in the depths of the Argentinian jungle. However, mercenaries representing an avaricious cabal that wants to plant soya and pine trees and erect a processing plant descend with land transfer documents and force Diaz into signing away his livelihood. But charismatic machete-wielding villain Claudio Tolcachir is not content with stealing the soil. He also slaughters those who get in his way and abducts their womenfolk to abuse and sell into slavery. When Alice Braga is kidnapped, the villagers implore the river to send a spirit to deliver them from their misery and their prayer is granted in the form of the much-tattooed Gael García Bernal.

As he has witnessed Diaz's murder from the undergrowth, it is pretty obvious that Bernal is not a watery sprite, but the scion of a family whose own lands were misappropriated. Indeed, he is as much interested in revenge than he is in recovering Braga. But his tune changes when he gets up close and personal during her rescue and he realises how beautiful she is. Braga is slightly put out that Bernal did nothing to protect her papa, but the pair make passionate love as the rain cascades through the shimmering treetop canopy.

Braga also has reason to be grateful to a jaguar that attacks Tolcachir's goons when they attempt an ambush, as, while this man-eater has been terrifying the locals, it appears to have formed a symbiotic relationship with Bernal, whose Tarzan-like skills also extend to knowing how to make a poultice out of herbs and a boiled snake to heal the shotgun wounds suffered by farmer Lautaro Vilo. Bernal also understands the potency of the leaves he smokes in order to prepare himself for a showdown with Tocachir. But, while he prangs some with wooden spears, peppers others in a rowing boat and dupes more into running into his carefully prepared booby traps, he is fully aware that their controllers will not give up easily and that more thugs will arrive to do their bidding.

Despite setting the scene for a possible sequel, it seems unlikely that we shall witness the further adventures of Bernal's stealthy avenger. This has all the subtlety of a Rambo or El Mariachi movie, with some of the support playing being hilariously inept. Bernal and Braga have undeniable chemistry, but Fendrik cocoons them in too many meaningful silences for them to develop a real relationship. Moreover, despite taking the action at a snail's pace, he struggles to generate much suspense, as it is inevitable that Bernal will triumph in the climactic showdown.

Fendrik also overplays the folklorish guardian of the forest aspect of Bernal's character in his clumsy bid to equate him with Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name in the 1960s spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone. But, what is most frustrating, is the fact that Bernal keeps passing up obvious opportunities to dispatch the members of Tolcachir's gang, as though Fendrik has had a quiet word and urged him to leave as many of them standing as possible for the final against-the-odds rearguard. In fairness, Apezteguia's camerawork is never anything less than striking, while Sebastian Escofet and Julian Gandara's propulsive score strives to impart some much-needed dramatic impetus. But there's no escaping the fact that this is often cumbersome, pompous and, on occasion, unintentionally hilarious.

The consequences of greed also loom large over Lee Chatametikool's directorial debut, Concrete Clouds. Best known for editing the works of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Anocha Suwichakornpong (who team up here as producers alongside Taiwanese actress Sylvia Chang), Chatametikool imposes a steady pace on a prodigal drama that is set in Thailand during the 1997 economic crisis. However, some of his screenwriting choices are less felicitous and, as a result, this esoteric soap opera is allowed to drift aimlessly towards its decidedly underwhelming conclusion.

On learning that his father has jumped from an office window because his business has failed, 30 year-old Wall Street currency trader Ananda Everingham leaves girlfriend Kate Reilly in New York to attend to family affairs back in Bangkok. Considering the shocking circumstances, Everingham appears remarkably phlegmatic about his loss and 18 year-old brother Prawith Hansten seems equally reluctant to grieve. Having barely seen Everingham in a decade, he resents his suggestion that they sell their well-appointed apartment and use the funds to put Hansten through school in the United States, as he is obsessed with neighbour Apinya Sakuljaroensuk, who lives with her prostitute sister and devotes her days to getting stoned on ya ba pills and plotting ways to avoid following in her sibling into the bar hostess game.

Everingham disapproves of the liaison, but he has a crush of his own to resolve, as he still holds a torch for high-school girlfriend Janesuda Parnto. She used to be an actress, but is now working in market research and, judging by her luxury riverfront condominium, she appears to be doing very well for herself. But Parnto is actually deep in debt and is about to have her home repossessed. Thus, when Everingham suggests rekindling the flame, she tuts that he is only in love with the idea of love and declares that she is prepared to abandon her dreams in order to bag a rich husband.

Chatametikool opens the picture with a quote from Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: `the only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past'. But he seems far too preoccupied with recreating the sights and sounds of the late 1990s to delve beneath the superficial surface of his elliptical saga. Production designer Akekarat Homlaor deserves credit for the contrasting interiors and Chatametikool and co-editor Kamontorn Eakwattanakij cut in archive footage of unfinished building projects and small-screen ephemera to reinforce the curious sense of meltdown nostalgia. But, while the gaudy hues that cinematographer Jarin Pengpanich bathes in bubblegum light give the karaoke video inserts an effective retro feel, these reveries (complete with on-screen sing-a-long lyrics) that Hansten daydreams while mooning over Sakuljaroensuk feel more like affectation than psychologically acute insights into the teenager's lovesick mindset. Indeed, the sequence in which he reads Sakuljaroensuk a letter from a client and replaces insulting phrases with complimentary ones much more effectively conveys his quaintly puppyish devotion.

Despite the best efforts of Everingham and Parnto, the flipside love story fails to ignite, as he lounges in a chic gentleman's club with his school pals and she tries to revive past glories by doing some modelling. The asides on the political instability that contributed to the crash are also unconvincing, as Chatametikool primarily utilises them as dramatic shorthand. He and Pengpanich achieve some nice images of the principals in vulnerable isolation, but the characterisation is disappointingly thin and the air of ambiguity derives more from hesitant scripting than any conscious artistic decisions. Taking directorial cues from Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Fun Bar Karaoke (1997), Kongdej Jaturanrasamee's Midnight My Love (2005), Suwichakornpong's Mundane History (2009) and Aditya Assarat's Hi-So (2010), Chatametikool seeks to assert his Thai New Wave credentials. But this often has more in common with the lakorn soaps that play on TV screens at various intervals during the film.

Finding one's feet in a new city is the theme of Patrick Brice's sophomore outing, The Overnight. Like his debut thriller, Creep (2014), this droll comedy of sexual manners has been produced by brothers Jay and Mark Duplass and bears the hallmarks of such mumblecore titles as the siblings' own Baghead (2008), Lynn Shelton's Humpday (2009) and Charlie McDowell's The One I Love (2014). Yet, while it keeps threatening to recall the simmering intensity of Roman Polanski's Carnage (2010), this irresistibly feels like an update of Paul Mazursky's Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), which saw Los Angeles sophisticates Natalie Wood and Robert Culp coax conservative friends Elliott Gould and Dyan Cannon into exploring their sexual fantasies. What raised eyebrows at the fag end of the Swinging Sixties will seem pretty tame to the Tinder and Grindr generation. But, even though he resorts to some outlandish prosthetics in order to raise a few cheap laughs, Brice keeps things short and bittersweet and, in the process, generates a little unexpected tenderness.

Having recently relocated to California from Seattle, thirtysomethings Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling are not enjoying the fact that social isolation is exposing the fissures in their marriage. They are first seen enduring an unsatisfactory bout of half-hearted love-making that is interrupted at the most embarrassing moment for Scott by young son RJ Hermes bursting in and bouncing on to the bed. However, by palling up with Max Moritt in a neighbourhood playground, Hermes allows his folks to make the acquaintance of desalinised water executive Jason Schwartzman, who chats happily with the couple and invites them over for a play date with pizza.

Arriving at the Spanish-style mansion in a gated community in Silver Lake, Scott and Schilling immediately regret bringing a cheap bottle of wine. But they are warmly welcomed by Schwartzman and his French wife, Judith Godrèche, and agree to stay for a few drinks after the boys are packed off to bed. Initially, Schilling is glad to be able to discuss her problems with another woman. But, as the alcohol flows, she gradually starts to have her doubts that Schwartzman and Godrèche are solely interested in the companionship of fellow parents.

As Godrèche lets a hand fall casually on his knee, Scott seems less uptight about where the evening is heading, even when Schwartzman boasts about his multi-coloured collection of erotic acrylic `portals' and Godrèche starts discussing a possible return to acting and offers to show them one of her breast pumping videos. But, while he becomes increasingly intrigued by his new friends, Scott has such a complex about the modest size of his genitals that he is in no hurry to share his inadequacy with complete strangers.

Schwartzman has no such hang-ups, however, and persuades Scott to go skinny dipping in the pool. Suddenly feeling comfortable in his own skin, Scott waives the fact that his host is ridiculously well endowed and joins him in a full-frontal dance that has Schilling turning scarlet. However, her inhibitions only make Godrèche more amorous and, as the bromance heads towards an unexpectedly intimate climax, Schilling succumbs to Godrèche's Gallic charms.

The poolside shenanigans are bound to distract some from the sly acuity of this study of socio-sexual insecurity. But Brice boldly assets here that most people are still innocents, in spite of the supposedly growing popularity of swinging, graphic online disclosure and cybersex. The flamboyantly attired Schwartzman gives the impression of being a man of the world, but he and Godrèche are just as tentative about making the first move as Scott and Schilling are about responding to it. Indeed, following the lead given by their 1969 forebears, the starring foursome display considerable courage in rising to the challenges that Brice sets them. Schwartzman and Scott may take the greater physical risks during their knockabout dance routine, but Schilling and Godrèche go out on an emotional limb that proves even more affecting, as they surrender to their suppressed desires (and even slip out to a massage parlour).

Production designer Theresa Guleserian does a splendid job of dotting the respective domiciles with telltale clues to the couples' status and personalities, which are picked out with insouciant alacrity by husband John's roaming and discreetly intrusive camera. Composer Julian Wass proves equally politic with his score, while Brice avoids sniggering smut in contemplating adult themes in a laudably grown-up manner. Moreover, he keeps switching the conversing combinations and confounding audience expectations, as he sets up situations only to send them spinning off at tangents. Consequently, while it never quite escapes feeling like an elongated sitcom, this provides plenty to smile and think about.

The hipster air that permeates Brice's comedy is markedly more apparent in Doug Aitken's Station to Station, a record of a transamerican train journey that is comprised of 61 separate one-minute films. This is something of a companion piece to Sarah Turner's Perestroika (2010), which combined footage shot on the Trans-Siberian Railway between Moscow and Irkutsk in 1987 and images from a repeat journey made two decades later. But, while Aitken periodically gazes at the view through the window and savours the ambience inside the compartment, he is more concerned with packing each vignette with turns performed by talents from across the artistic spectrum. The results are nowhere near as mesmerising as Turner's. Indeed, they are often self-conscious and calculated. Yet, such is the brevity of the individual pieces that audiences don't have to wait too long for something new if an item fails to pique their interest.

Setting off from New York on 6 September 2013, the locomotive decked out to form a `kinetic light sculpture' called in at Pittsburgh, Chicago, Minneapolis-St Paul, Santa Fé, Winslow, Barstow, Los Angeles and Oakland before rolling into San Francisco 23 days later. En route, Aitken welcomed numerous guests aboard and hosted several happenings in and around the stopping stations. His aim was to take artists out of their comfort zones and treat them to a `journey through modern creativity'. So, together with fellow cameraman Corey Walter, he switched between colour and monochrome to record images that were either left as long takes or precisely cut into minute montages that not only captured the spirit of the subject matter, but also personality of its protagonist.

Ranging from musicians to photographers and eccentrics to critics, the forever changing travelling troupe included Patti Smith, Jackson Browne, Mavis Staples, Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, Thurston Moore, Cold Cave, William Eggleston, Ed Ruscha, Cat Power, Giorgio Moroder, Suicide, Savages, Urs Fischer, Christian Jankowski, Ernesto Neto, Dan Deacon, Gary Indiana, Paolo Soleri, Stephen Shore, Lawrence Weiner, Mark Bradford, No Age, Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Christian Jankowski, Thomas Demand, Sasha Frere-Jones, Lucky Dragons, Eleanor Friedberger, Scott Dadich, The Congos, Aaron Koblin, Sun Araw, Liz Glynn, Yoshimio Trio, White Mystery, THEESatisfaction, Sam Falls, Black Monks of Mississippi, Cornbread Harris, Bloodbirds, The Conquerors and Destruction Unit.

The majority of the aforementioned names will mean nothing to many viewers and Aitken does little to rectify matters. Instead, he keeps his camera trained on these disparate creatives in the hope that something artistically significant or quirkily diverting will occur. Several pieces are simply too busy or chaotic to leave an impression, while others say more about the ego of the subject than they do about their ability. Some of the bigger names crop up in more than one segment, with Beck performing a snippet of a song in one and waxing lyrical about the relationship between travel and time in another. The most beguiling are the contemplative interludes that focus on the play of light on the passing scene and they come as a welcome relief from the braying cacophony of the intellectuals on the trip and the energetic efforts of the various marching bands and flamenco dancers to get themselves noticed. Everyone will have their favourite bit, but the standout centres on artist Olafur Eliasson and his Kinetic Drawing Machine, which responds to the jolting rhythms of the engine to bounce a ball of ink across a piece of paper suspended by springs. Ingeniously simple, but curiously spellbinding.

Strength comes through mutuality in Denny Tedecso's outstanding rockumentary, The Wrecking Crew, which recalls the cabal of West Coast session musicians who backed some of the most famous tracks of the 1960s. Over a decade in the making and originally released in 2008, this has been expanded by the inclusion of a clutch of new interviews for an overdue UK theatrical release. Guaranteed to set toes tapping and jaws dropping at some of its behind-the-scenes revelations, this is essential viewing for anyone with a record collection.

Resisting the temptation to train the spotlight on his late guitarist father Tommy, Tedesco gives such talents as bassist Carol Kaye (the only woman on the force), drummers Earl Palmer and Hal Blaine (who played on eight Grammy Records of the Year), guitarists Al Casey and Bill Pitman, saxophonist Plas Johnson and pianist Leon Russell their long overdue credit. He also affords Glen Campbell (who is now suffering from Alzheimer's) plenty of time to reminisce about the times he strummed along with Frank Sinatra and The Mamas and the Papas. But, while the individuals come across as charismatic and committed, it was their combined talents that helped Phil Spector create the Wall of Sound, Brian Wilson to realise his studio ambitions for such mid-60s Beach Boy projects as Summer Days (And Summer Nights) and Pet Sounds (which included the mould-breaking masterpiece, `Good Vibrations'), and Herb Alpert to perfect the sound of his Tijuana Brass. No wonder the latter calls the Crew the `established groove machine'.

Elvis Presley, The Association, Jan and Dean, Jimmy Webb, Nancy Sinatra and David Cassidy and The Partridge Family and are just some of the acts who benefited from the tight professionalism of musicians who abandoned their jazz and classical roots to cash in on the rock`n'pop boom and often sacrificed their personal lives in the process. Cher recalls being in complete awe of the band when she and Sonny Bono recorded `The Beat Goes On' and `I've Got You Babe'. But Peter Tork of The Monkees is still peeved that he wasn't allowed to play on the discs that bore his face on the cover. By contrast, Brian Wilson reveals that his fellow Beach Boys knew when they were in the presence of greatness and were more than happy to take the credit for the Crew's genius.

More focused than Paul Justinian's Funk Brothers study, Standing in the Shadows of Motown (2002), and less fawning than Morgan Neville's Oscar-winning homage to unsung backing vocalists, Twenty Feet From Stardom (2013), this glorious blend of anecdotes and hits is not just a nostalgic treat. It is also a riveting insight into the workings of the American music industry in the aftermath of the British invasion, when guitar groups who wrote and performed their own material were still viewed with suspicion by record company bosses used to buying in bulk from Tin Pan Alley and handing the tunes over to anonymous producers to spin into musical gold for their biggest stars. The are apparently snatches of over 100 classic songs tucked away here and sound mixer Bob Bronow and editor Claire Scanlon merit mention for making the medley so slick and joyous.

The rapumentary is fast becoming a staple of the music actuality scene and Mike Todd's Hustlers Convention is bound to entice students of the history of hip-hop. Released in 1973 on the Celluloid Records label, Lightnin' Rod's 12-track album has been cited by many as the prototype rap platter. Indeed, Todd has corralled the likes of Grandmaster Flash, Ice-T, Immortal Technique, KRS One, MC Lyte, Ice T, Chuck D and Melle Mel to discuss the debt they owe to a largely forgotten Muslim poet who took street rhyming into the recording studio and fused it with jazz, funk and the black prison slang known as toasting to produce a distinctive sound that sparked a musical revolution.

Alafia Pudim was born in Brooklyn in 1944. Having been forced to join the US Army as a way of getting out of jail, he served as a paratrooper before getting into trouble for refusing to salute the Stars and Stripes. Following a spell as a banker on Wall Street, he recorded the poem `E-Pluribus Unum' on Axiom records and converted to Islam. Converting to Islam, he changed his name to Jalaluddin Mansur Nuriddin and developed the art of spiel, a variation on the ad hoc percussion rhythms created by African-American prisoners.

He dubbed his technique `spoagraphics' and employed it when he joined The Last Poets in the late 1960s, alongside Umar bin Hassen, Abiodun Oyewole and percussionist Nilija. Various line-ups of this pivotal combo existed around this period. But this quartet was responsible for the 1970 album, The Last Poets, that created a ground swell in African-American music that became even more seismic when Nuriddin adopted the pseudonym Lightnin' Rod to work on the Hustlers Convention project, which began when producer Alan Douglas persuaded Nuriddin to record a poem he had written about brothers Sport and Spoon that culminates in the former winding up on Death Row.

Reflecting the state of African-American society in the wake of the Civil Rights campaign, the proto-gangsta lyrics pulled no punches in describing life in the ghetto, the temptations of hustling, the pleasures and perils of drug-taking and gambling, and the stark fact that most black males learned how to cope with life while behind bars. But these hard-hitting words only came to life when Nuriddin jammed with such major artists as Tina Turner and the Ikettes, Bernard Purdie, Billy Preston, Cornell Dupree and Kool and the Gang.

Joining the 70 year-old Nuriddin on a tour of his old haunts, Todd strives to recreate the socio-political and cultural landscape in pre-rap America. He makes innovative use of archive footage and animation to convey the bitter realities of a milieu in which poverty and prejudice ran rampant. Nuriddin proves an accomplished raconteur, but the energy levels rise when Todd consults those who came after about the importance of Hustlers Convention, whose reputation was spread by word of mouth alone.

Nevertheless, much more could have been made of the way in which street poetry was used to educate, empower and rabble-rouse disenfranchised blacks, who didn't recognise their own experience in the more manufactured sounds of soul and disco. Similarly, Todd could have gone into greater depth in outlining the problems associated with releasing the LP (when United Artists threatened legal action because Kool and the Gang were signed exclusively to them) and in explaining the part that it subsequently played in the evolution of hip-hop, with `Sport', for example being sampled in such tracks as `Eggman' by The Beastie Boys, `Method Man' by Wu-Tang Clan and Nas's `Sekou Story'. But for those coming to this epochal disc for the first time, this is a respectful and respectable introduction.

Changing tack entirely, Patrick Mark indulges in a little objet porn in Fabergé: A Life of Its Own. Narrated by Samuel West and reverential to the nth degree, this is the history of a proud family firm whose iconic name has often been taken in vain since it was appropriated by American businessman Sam Rubin in 1937 and sold as just another brand by the same man in 1964. Numerous family members and experts have been assembled to sing the praises of the original enterprise and to decry the later adventures into toiletries and cosmetics. But, in spite of his extensive experience in making documentaries (that includes a five-year spell with Christie's) Mark seems far too awed by his subject to produce anything other than a glossy infomercial that takes itself far too seriously.

Inheriting the St Petersburg jewellery firm founded by his father Gustav, Carl Fabergé and his younger brother Agathon caught the eye of Tsar Alexander III at the Pan-Russian Exhibition in Moscow in 1882 when they produced an impeccable replica of a 4th-century gold bangle held in the Hermitage. Given rare access to the collection, the siblings began to specialise in pieces influenced by the 18th-century French goldsmiths Jean-Jacques Duval and Jérémie Pauzié. But they became world renowned when, in 1885, Alexander commissioned a bejewelled Easter egg for the Tsarina Maria and the famous Hen Egg proved such a success that a tradition was established that continued into the reign of Nicholas II, who ordered two eggs each year, for his mother and his wife, Alexandra.

In all, 54 Imperial eggs were made and 42 are known to have survived. The missing pieces were lost after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which saw the House of Fabergé confiscated and nationalised. Carl managed to escape to Latvia, while his wife, Augusta, had to endure a nightmare flight by sledge to Finland. Shattered by the loss of his home and his purpose, Carl died in 1920 and Augusta five years later. By this time, however, sons Eugéne and Alexander had opened Fabergé et Cie in Paris, where they sold and repaired jewellery, as well as restoring original designs. This firm remained in business until 2001, although it lost the right to use the Fabergé trademark for jewellery in 1984 in a legal battle with Fabergé Inc.

This company began life in 1937, when ardent collector Armand Hammer urged his friend Samuel Rubin to re-register his Spanish Trading Corporation as Fabergé Inc. Six years later, Rubin trademarked the name for his new perfume business and, the following year, he extended it to market jewellery. Aghast that someone was using the family name, Carl's sons took legal action, but had to settle for a compensation payment of $25,000. In 1964, Rubin sold the company to Rayette for $26 million and, under the leadership of George Barrie, it began to sell a number of popular household lines, including the Brut range of toiletries for men. A line of hair products sponsored by Farrah Fawcett and the Babe fragrance boosted by Margaux Hemingway followed, as Cary Grant and Roger Moore took seats on the board and Barrie even moved into film-making with Melvin Frank's A Touch of Class (1973) earning an Oscar for Glenda Jackson.

Everything changed, however, when Meshulam Riklis bought Fabergé Inc. for $670 million in 1984. In addition to discontinuing some of the more workaday products, new company president Mark Goldston merged it with Elizabeth Arden and its value had reached $1.5 billion when it was acquired by Unilever in 1989. Yet, while the emphasis remained on toiletries and cosmetics, the new regime was keen to restore the links to the glorious past. Therefore, in 1989, German jeweller Victor Mayer was allowed to produce watches and eggs bearing the Fabergé name. Geza von Habsburg played a key role in ensuring that former standards were maintained and the first egg of this second wave was presented to Romanov heir Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich in 1991.

As Mark points out during the film, Carl Fabergé made more than just fabulously crafted eggs. His hardstone carvings of animals, flowers and people, for example, became a particular favourite of British royalty and there are over 250 items in the Royal Collection. Some 200,000 objects were made in the four-storey workshop at Bolshaya Morskaya between 1882 and 1917. But the primary interest falls on the Imperial eggs and Mark's camera swoons over the precious metals and lustrous gems as it captures them in a series of laboriously choreographed glides and zooms.

Talking heads including Tatiana Fabergé, Sarah Fabergé, Géza von Hasburg, Katharina Flohr, John Andrew, Olga Vaigatcheva, André Ruzhnikov and Miranda Carter are as effusive as Guy Farley's score. But, while their knowledge is unimpeachable and their devotion is achingly sincere, such earnestness makes this feel like a film that demands levels of unquestioning admiration that it in no way deserves. Consequently, for all its moments of artistic beauty and corporate intrigue, this keeps viewers at a distance, while constantly reminding them of how lucky they are to be allowed to gaze upon such treasures in the company of such refined specialists.