Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 2/7/2015)

On 16 September 1890, Louis Le Prince was waved off on the Dijon-Paris express by his brother Albert. He was never seen alive again and many have claimed that his disappearance prevented him from becoming the man who invented motion pictures. Two years earlier, Le Prince had made a series of short films in Leeds using a camera of his own design. For over 30 years, Loiner David Nicholas Wilkinson has been convinced that these are the earliest moving images shot in continuous sequence and, in The First Film, he sets out to test his thesis and see if he can find out why Le Prince vanished without a trace in such suspicious circumstances.

Born in Metz on 28 August 1841, Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince was educated in Paris and studied chemistry and physics in Bonn and Leipzig before trying his hand at painting and photography. He was invited to Leeds in 1866 by brass foundry owner John Whitley, who was hoping to expand his business into Europe and hoped that Le Prince could provide some useful contacts in France. However, having married Whitley's sister, Elizabeth, he decided to remain in Yorkshire and together they founded the Leeds Technical School of Art in 1871 after he returned from fighting in the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Le Prince became an active member of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society and also perfected a technique for superimposing photographs on to ceramics. Indeed, his portrait plates of Queen Victoria and Prime Minister William Gladstone are supposed to have been deposited in the time capsule secreted within Cleopatra's Needle on Westminster Embankment.

In 1881, Le Prince was dispatched to the United States. However, as Whitley began to experience financial difficulties, his brother-in-law became involved with a group of French artists who produced panoramic paintings for display in the major East Coast cities. It was during this period that Le Prince became intrigued by the notion of producing moving photographic images and, in November 1886, he filed his first patent for an apparatus `For Producing Animated Pictures of Natural Scenery and Life'.

Manufactured in Paris and requiring 16 lenses to shoot a sequence of still images that gave the illusion of movement when run together, this camera is now on display at the National Media Museum in Bradford and Wilkinson spends a good deal of time in his native county tracing Le Prince's movements, with the aid of researcher Irfan Shah, Daniel Martin from Armley Mills Industrial Museum and film critic Tony Earnshaw. Indeed, Le Prince was back in Leeds when his US patent was granted on 10 January 1888 and he filed for a British version on the same day and it is believed that he used this device to take sequence photographs of a man walking around the corner of Rue Bochard de Saron and Avenue Trudaine in Paris.

By this time, however, Le Prince was already working on a single-lens machine and, in October 1888, he used this to film three scenes: his son Adolphe playing the melodeon; members of his family dancing in the garden of Oakwood Grange in Roundhay; and traffic passing over Leeds Bridge near Hicks the Ironmonger. Letters confirm that the second item was recorded on 14 October, but it wasn't until July 1889 that Le Prince claimed success in projecting the images from gelatine positives mounted on glass at his workshop in what is now the BBC building in Woodhouse Lane. However, he recognised that he would have greater success with the new celluloid film perfected by Sheffield-born John Carbutt and he sent Adolphe to New York to arrange a public exhibition of his new invention in the Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights.

Before crossing the Atlantic himself, Le Prince went to France and travelled to Dijon to see his estranged brother. However, he never made it back to Paris and, because no body could be found, he was only declared legally dead in 1897. This delay allowed Thomas Alva Edison to file his own patents for a moving picture camera and, in 1894, this Kinetoscope was used to make the short strips that recreated photographic movement when cranked through a Kinematograph viewer. Le Prince had never been alone in pursuing the dream of making motion pictures and Wilkinson considers the claims of such competitors as Wordsworth Donisthorpe, Eadweard Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey and William Friese-Greene, as well as Auguste and Louis Lumière, who would give what has been accepted as the first projected cinema show to paying customers in Paris on 28 December 1895.

Lizzie Le Prince was in no doubt that her husband had been murdered by an unscrupulous rival and her finger pointed squarely at Edison. However, a number of theories have since spring up and Wilkinson asks former detective superintendent Quentin Dowse to assess the evidence. Echoing Le Prince's great-great-granddaughter, Laurie Snyder, he quickly rules out fratricide, even though Albert had an opportunity while accompanying his sibling to the station. Similarly, he rebuffs film historian Stephen Herbert's contention that Le Prince committed suicide because he was heavily in debt and his research had hit a brick wall. Dowse also dismisses the idea that Edison ordered Le Prince's abduction or assassination and he is backed in this conclusion by film historian Mark Rance, who notes that the Wizard of Menlo Park was renowned for using legal loopholes to confound his opponents rather than strong-arm tactics (although he did resort to these during the Trust War of the late 1900s).

Ultimately, Dowse avers that Le Prince simply died of natural causes and was buried without ever being identified. Having discounted an 1890 photograph of a drowning victim that was found in the Paris police archive in 2003, Wilkinson seems happy to go along with this deduction. But he is most content with being able to provide plentiful proof that - as there is no physical evidence to demonstrate conclusively that he filmed first in New York - the moving images that Le Prince shot in Leeds in October 1888 are likely to be the earliest ever produced with a practical motion picture camera. Rance muses about the aesthetic intentions of these short snippets, while others discuss the family's efforts to push Le Prince's claim to have been the inventor of cinema during the 1898 patent trial between Edison and the American Mutoscope Company - which Adolphe didn't live to see resolved, as he died of an accidental or self-inflicted gunshot wound near his summer cottage on Fire Island in July 1901. However, the main interest for casual viewers and most film students will lie with the episodes involving his father.

Actor Tom Courtenay and screenwriters Ronald Harwood and Joe Eszterhas are roped in to give the cast list a bit of star wattage, while other useful contributions come from Adrian Wootton, Michael Harvey and Tony Pierce-Roberts. Also adding to the allure is Sarah Lancashire's delivery of the extracts from Lizzie Le Prince's correspondence. But this is very much Wilkinson's project and he makes a genial on-screen guide to the unfolding story, as well as a meticulous scholar. Although he made a point of not consulting the film or book version of Christopher Rawlence's The Missing Reel (1989), he somewhat inevitably follows in his footsteps for much of the odyssey. But the new evidence he uncovers undoubtedly pushes the story along and he succeeds triumphantly in ensuring that his labour of love is also enlightening and entertaining.

Chuck Workman revisits much more familiar territory in Magician: The Astonishing Life and Works of Orson Welles. But, while this workmanlike tribute leaves a good deal to be desired in its exploration of the iconic actor-director's private life and psychological make-up, it more than atones with the rarity and quality of the clips unearthed from archives across Europe and America. Indeed, this could be described as a cine-archaeological masterclass and it marks Orson Welles's centenary with an affection and an enthusiasm that is refreshing at a time when most biodocs strive to expose their subject's feet of clay.

The facts of an extraordinary life are well enough known for a précis to suffice here. Born in Kenosha, Wisconsin on 6 May 1915, George Orson Welles endured a tough childhood after his parents divorced and his mother died when he was just nine. His alcoholic father refused to settle in one place and Orson's education suffered until he came under the benign influence of Todd School teacher, Roger Hill, who fostered his nascent love of acting and fascination with the possibilities presented by radio. Yet Hill refused to act as his guardian when his father died in 1930 and Welles rebelled against his advice to go to Cornell College and set off for Ireland, instead.

Arriving in Dublin, Welles convinced Gate Theatre manager Hilton Edwards that he was a Broadway star and he cast the upstart as Duke Karl Alexander of Württemberg in an adaptation of Jew Suss in October 1931. However, after he failed to find work in London, Welles returned Stateside, where he joined the repertory company run by actress Katharine Cornell and her director husband, Guthrie McClintic. He also began appearing on radio and made his first film, The Hearts of Age, in 1934. The same year, the 19 year-old Welles married actress Virginia Nicolson and began his fabled partnership with theatre producer John Houseman on Archibald MacLeish's verse play, Panic.

They made their mark, however, within the Federal Theatre Project with such landmark productions as the voodoo version of Macbeth (1935), Marc Blitzstein's political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock (1937), and a bold interpretation of Julius Caesar (1938) set in Fascist Italy. Buoyed by their success, Welles and Houseman formed the Mercury Theatre troupe with actors like Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, William Alland, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Río, Erskine Sanford and Everett Sloane, who would become familiar to millions of listeners through such productions as Les Misérables (1937) and The War of the Worlds, which caused a panic on 31 October 1938 when audiences thought they were listening to a news bulletin describing a Martian invasion.

As was often the case, Welles refused to let the facts stand in the way when rehashing a good story. But the broadcast did bring him to the attention of Hollywood. RKO president George Schaefer promised Welles complete artistic freedom, in spite of the fact that the only prolonged shoot he had been involved in had been for an unused film-within-a-play for a 1938 stage revival of William Gillette's Too Much Johnson. However, he nixed his plans to make a subjective camera version of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Welles turned his attention to a film à clef inspired by the life of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst.

Unsurprisingly, he took offence at Citizen Kane (1941) and did his best to sabotage the release. Its disappointing box office did nothing to reassure the RKO front office, however, and, when Welles went to South America to make It's All True at the behest of US Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs Nelson Rockefeller, the studio ordered Robert Wise to make drastic cuts to Welles's ambitious adaptation of Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and its lukewarm critical reception and poor commercial performance ensured that Welles wasn't entrusted with another picture until Sam Spiegel asked him to step in for John Huston on The Stranger (1946). Welles also played the fugitive Nazi villain in this underrated thriller and Columbia boss Harry Cohn was persuaded to allow Welles to co-star with and direct second wife Rita Hayworth in The Lady From Shanghai (1947). However, the twisting noir failed to find an audience and Welles started acting in pictures like Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) in order to fund such personal projects as Macbeth (1948), Othello (1952) and Mr Arkadin (1955), which were made during a prolonged period of European exile.

On his return to California, Welles made the short teleplay, The Fountain of Youth (1956), for Lucille Ball's Desilu production company and its warm reception led to Charlton Heston convincing Universal to let the now corpulent Welles direct, as well as co-star in Touch of Evil (1958). We shall revisit this fine film and its shameful treatment by the studio next week. But it did little to improve Welles's standing and he was forced to return to Europe to adapt Franz Kafka's The Trial (1962) and combine several Shakespeare plays into Chimes at Midnight (1966). However, having made The Immortal Story (1968) from a Karen Blixen short story for French television, Welles started to find funding harder to come by and cherished projects like Don Quixote, The Deep, The Merchant of Venice, The Other Side of the Wind and The Dreamers were left in various stages of incompletion.

Now living with Oja Kodar and no longer as prolific as an actor for hire, Welles was as likely to be seen on chat shows or in commercials as he was in one of his own films. But the spellbinding documentary, F For Fake (1973), about art forger Elmyr de Hory and biographer Clifford Irving, proved to be his swan song, even though he lived until 10 October 1985. Ultimately, the Boy Wonder had failed to fulfil the promise he had shown in his early stage and radio performances and there are critics who believe he never found his métier in cinema, despite Citizen Kane being hailed for as the most stylistically ambitious and influential film of all time.

Workman is very much a fan and he is joined cheering on the sidelines by such high-profile devotees as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Paul Mazursky, Costa-Gavras, Walter Murch and William Friedkin. It might have helped make Welles more relevant to younger audiences to have had more trendy contributors like Richard Linklater, although the most useful interjections come from the likes of Peter Bogdanovich, Buck Henry and Henry Jaglom, who knew Welles in his later years. The contrasting recollections of Norman Lloyd and Robert Wise are also worth noting.

But, while Workman proves himself to be an intrepid archive delver and canny editor, there's little new in this strictly chronological survey and it pales beside The Orson Welles Story (1982), which was made for the legendary BBC series, Arena. Serious cineastes will miss some in-depth assessment of Welles's achievement from the likes of actor-biographer Simon Callow, while more might have been done to tone down the taller tales. Welles was a maverick who was always going to find the strictures of the studio system a burden, but he could also be arrogant and headstrong and Workman does him a disservice by adhering too closely to the persecuted genius line. As Roger Hills's daughter Jane confides, Welles was the only person she knew with `absolutely no empathetic skills'. But more is needed on his complex domestic life than a digression on the fact that he fathered director Michael Lindsay-Hogg with actress Geraldine Fitzgerald.

However, Awesome Orson was a phenomenon and Workman amusingly alludes to the impact he has left on American cinema by playfully including clips from films that include Welles as a semi-fictionalised character, including Woody Allen's Radio Days (1987), Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994) and Richard Linklater's Me and Orson Welles (2008). As Sir Peter Brook shrewdly puts it: `One thing one can be sure of is that there wasn't before him an Orson and there'll never be a second.'

Welles made a tidy sum in later life by boosting Paul Masson wines and Domecq sherry and former sommelier Jonathan Nossiter is keen to point out the similarities between viniculture and film restoration in Natural Resistance. Having taken the French wine industry to task for its drift towards standardisation in Mondovino (2004), Nossiter turns his attention to Italy to laud the dwindling number of vineyard owners who refuse to use pesticides or tinker with their kegs, in spite of directives imposed by the local authorities and the European Union. But, while he meets some doughtily devoted die-hards in traversing Chianti country, he never quite ties his arguments together, with the result that this meandering rumination often proves more diverting than illuminating.

Opening with a complete reading of WH Auden's `Musée des Beaux Arts', this beautifully photographed amble through Tuscany and Piedmont centres on four vineyards that are bucking the trend towards the McDonaldisation of the industry by doing things their own way. Based in a converted 11th-century monastery that has been in the family for six generations, Giovanna Tiezzi and Stefano Borsa work 10 hectares in the commune of Castenuovo Berardenga near Siena in a bid to produce wine, fruit and grain that have a connection to the Tiezzis Etruscan past. By contrast, Corrado Dottori and Valerio Bochi made the conscious decision to leave Milan in order to revive their grandfather's land in Le Marche.

Former librarian Elena Pantaleoni also inherited her estate, La Stoppa in Emilia-Romagna, after her father died and her mother moved to Chile. She has spent 23 years striving to produce wines with a unique personality and has great respect for Stefano Bellotti, who began farming at the age of 18 and has dedicated his life to expanding a vineyard that occupied only one hectare of a 35-hectare estate when he took over in 1977. Hidden in the Piedmontese hills near Novi Ligure (about an hour from Genoa), the Cascina degli Ulivi plot now has 22 hectares of vines and Bellotti, who is something of a firebrand poet, shows Nossiter the difference between the fully nourished soil on his land and the dried, crumbling stuff in an adjacent field that has been treated with EU-approved chemicals.

Sidetracking from his assault on homogenisation, Nossiter also spends time with Gian Luca Farinelli, the director of the Bologna Cineteca, who has identified a connection between the wine-making and film preservation processes. As each is prone to its own variation on the `vinegar syndrome', he may have a point. But it is made in such a tangential manner that the clips from Pier Paolo Pasolini, Nagisa Oshima, Robert Bresson and Mario Monicelli sometimes feel like a sideshow, although it is always a pleasure to revisit such gems as Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush (1923), Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City (1945) and Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954), as well as make new discoveries like Chi legge?, a 1960 documentary short on rural illiteracy that was produced by neo-realist pioneer Cesare Zavattini and director Mario Soldati and and scored by the peerless Nino Rota. Indeed, Nossiter also finds room for a witty animated sequence by Chiara Rapaccini mocking city slickers struggling to get back to the land.

The lush vistas captured by Nossiter and Paula Prandini are a joy to behold. But, while Nossiter captures the gentle bustle of farm life (complete with a goodly number of eager dogs and basking cats), there is no escaping the sobering statistic that only three per cent of the Italian population is now involved in agriculture, compared to 66% in the period immediately after the Second World War. Similarly, Nossiter decries the way in which the Denominazione di Origine Controllata (or DOC) label that has adorned Italian wines since 1968 has become a cheap marketing tool and can no longer be taken as a guarantee of individuality and quality. His passion for the craft and the people who practice it is undeniable. But the blend of oenophilia, ecology and cine-archivism doesn't quite gel.

If moderation is the watchword of Nossiter's thesis, excess is key to Marco Ferreri's scathing satire, La Grande Bouffe (1973). As it was denied a certificate because of its perceived perversions and affronts to good taste when it was first submitted to the BBFC 42 years ago, this enduringly controversial picture has never been on general release in the UK. Arrow are to be commended, therefore, for righting a cinematic wrong that is all the more mystifying for the fact that censor Stephen Murphy took his stance at a time when he was blithely passing copious amounts of softcore pornography (a good deal of which found its way to Studio X on Walton Street). However, he was not the only one to take offence at the picture. Marcello Mastroianni's then-partner Catherine Deneuve was so dismayed by his participation that she reportedly refused to speak to him for a week after she saw the picture.

After seeming to fall out with his wife, chef Ugo Tognazzi has decided to commit suicide. His judge friend, Philippe Noiret, is no more content with life, as he is so under the thumb of childhood nanny Michèle Alexandre that she uses him to ease her sexual frustrations, while prohibiting him from seeing other women. Rakish Alitalia pilot Marcello Mastroianni has no problem finding dates and it is clear that the stewardess carrying a large Parmigiano off his plane is one of his recent conquests. He is heading for a weekend at Noiret's villa, where the party will be completed by effeminate TV producer Michel Piccoli, who is tired of existence after struggling to get over his divorce.

Caretaker Henri Piccoli has filled the house with ingredients for a grand feast and the quartet are left alone after Noiret politely declines a post in China offered to him by visiting embassy official Simon Tchao. Left to their own devices, the friends raid the provisions, with Mastroianni and Tognazzi stuffing themselves with oysters. However, they quickly decide that they need a little female companionship at their banquet and they make arrangements for three prostitutes to join them.

The following morning, breakfast is interrupted by middle-aged teacher Andréa Ferréol, who wishes to show her class the lime tree in the garden that was reputed to have inspired a French poet. Seeming to welcome the distraction, the four men show the guests around the grounds and invite them to lunch. They takes a shine to Ferréol and ask her to stay for dinner and she agrees, even though Noiret feels it would be inappropriate for her to share her table with working girls Solange Blondeau, Florence Giorgetti and Monique Chaumette.

As Tognazzi prepares the meal, Noiret tries to flirt with Ferréol and proposes marriage. However, events take an unpleasant turn when Piccoli becomes so bloated with food that he causes the waste pipe from the toilet to explode and the entire villa is flooded with excrement. The incident causes the prostitutes to flee at first light. But Ferréol seems aware that the friends have made a bizarre pact and, after some discreet negotiation, she agrees to help them.

Mastroianni spends the day repairing an old Bugatti roadster he has found in the garage. Yet, despite enjoying the challenge of working on the car, he vows to drive out into a snowstorm in the dead of night and the remaining trio find him frozen in the driver's seat the following morning. They debate whether to bury him, but Noiret says it would be illegal to inter him without the proper documentation and they decide to prop him up in the cold room in full view of the dining table, so he can continue to be part of things. He soon has company, however, as Piccoli gets the giggles thinking about the toilet episode and collapses on the terrace during an excruciating bout of flatulence.

That evening, Tognazzi reveals a magnificent model of St Peter's basilica made from three types of paté. However, Noiret and Ferréol are reluctant to indulge and Tognazzi announces that he will consume the entire dish himself. Noiret retires to bed in disgust, but he is roused some time later when Ferréol pleads with him to help her stop Tognazzi eating himself to death. He refuses to listen to them, however, and eventually succumbs while being genitally and gourmetically satiated on the kitchen table. Ferréol suggests leaving him in his domain and sets about baking a cake for Noiret in the shape of a pair of breasts.

She feeds him a slice under the shade of the lime tree and the diabetic magistrate dies in her arms. As Ferréol looks up, a truck arrives with another delivery of meat. She orders the men to leave the animal carcasses in the garden, as, understandably, she doesn't want them to see the cold storage, and the picture ends with chickens and geese strutting around between dogs attracted by the aroma of the discarded sides of pork and beef.

From the moment a fight broke out during its Cannes premiere

Marco Ferreri's critique of society's suicidal folly has divided audiences. Some found the focus on bodily functions to be unnecessarily sordid, while others accused the provocative Italian of shocking for shock's sake. This is certainly a film with something to offend everyone. Its bleak, bawdy humour is anything but subtle, with each character carefully designed to reflect what Ferreri considered to be modern evils - the injustice perpetuated by the corrupt judicial system; the cultural inanity encouraged by television; the greed of the developed world when much of the planet was starving; and the restless urge to travel, both to escape from domestic reality and to bring about a global village that could be more easily conquered and exploited.

No wonder Pier Paolo Pasolini was inspired by the erupting bottoms and toilets to create his own savagely scatalogical assault on the Fascist mentality in Salò, or The 120 Days of Sodom (1975). The ensemble performances are truly remarkable and whether they're world-wearily cursing their lots or engaging in food fights, Mastroianni, Piccoli, Noiret and Tognazzi abandon their egos and place implicit trust in Ferreri's audacious design. Yet, the impious Mastroianni (in the fourth of his seven collaborations with Ferreri) inevitably stands out, as his controlling sensuality continuously overcomes his despondency and he fetishises over the statue in the garden and the vintage Bugatti before indulging himself with both the prostitutes and Ferréol. Indeed, it's with something approaching relief that his comrades bundle his corpse into the fridge to resume their funereal repast in peace. But his impish charm is much missed and there is something processional about the final phases of this lethal Buñuelian bacchanal.

Clearly the occupants of Noiret's villa aren't too preoccupied with additives and preservatives. But Australian actor Damon Gameau is so keen for viewers to take a long hard look at what they are putting into their mouths that he follows Morgan Spurlock's lead in Super Size Me (2004) and subjects his body to a stunt eating regime in order to prove that supposedly healthy products are just as deleterious as fast-food junk in That Sugar Film. While Spurlock identified fat as a major cause of obesity and such related conditions as diabetes and heart disease, Gameau points the finger squarely at sugar and warns that even those adhering to diets recommended by nutritionists are at risk of fatal over-indulgence.

Consuming only low-fat foods that are supposed to benefit the body, Gameau (who swore off refined sugars aeons ago) works out a two-month regimen that will ensure he swallows the equivalent of 40 teaspoons of sugar each day, which is the intake of the average Australian. However, such is the lack of scientific rigour surrounding the experiment that it is difficult to take the copious facts and figures that flit across the screen with much more than a pinch of salt.

Naturally, Gameau begins to pile on the pounds and starts to feel the physiological and psychological effects of guzzling down endless soft drinks in order to meet his daily quota. The only surprise is that he is so surprised by the effects such reckless eating is having on his body. What makes this undertaking all the more ridiculous is the fact that it coincides with the imminent arrival of a new baby and one can understand why actress girlfriend Zoe Tuckwell-Smith is as miffed as David Bond's wife was when he chose the later stages of her pregnancy to try and vanish without trace in the 2010 documentary, Erasing David.

The attempts to inject humour by comparing Gameau and Tuckwell-Smith's expanding bellies fall as flat as the digital animations and the big musical number that are supposed to add a little thought-provoking jollity, alongside the potted history of sugary foods presented in the style of a music-hall entertainer by Hugh Jackman and the dismal cod-Shakespearean doggerel that Stephen Fry was somehow persuaded to recite. Of course Gameau means well in seeking to highlight the dangers of stealth sugars, as do such participating experts as Gary Taubes, Michael Moss and Kimber Stanhope and cameoing pals like Brenton Thwaites and Isabel Lucas.

Amidst the more cartoonishly gonzo sequences that sees Gameau climb a rope up his own nose and experts attempt to deliver serious messages from inside a milk carton, Gameau visits an aboriginal community in the Northern Territory where kids are suffering from a form of sugar addiction and flies to the States to learn about the grim dental condition nicknamed `Mountain Dew Mouth'. But he fails to land many blows when he confronts a Big Sugar lobbyist in San Francisco, who is sponsored by Coca-Cola to promote the caring side of the company and keep legislators sweet. But a little of Gameau's smug mugging to the camera goes a long way and, by the end, one is forced to conclude that this is more of a narcissistic bid to become the Antipodean Russell Brand than it is to alert the presumably adolescent target audience about the perils hidden within the breakfast cereals, yoghurts, smoothies, fruit juice and muesli bars they scarf without a second thought.

Another arrogant Aussie with much to be modest about is excessively to the fore in How to Lose Jobs & Alienate Girlfriends, a vanity project if ever there was one, in which director Thomas Meadmore spends as much time turning the camera on himself as he does the boss and partner whose efforts to make it in the music business he is supposed to be chronicling. In fact, this is a study in mutual exploitation, as both subjects rather hope that the film will increase their chances of success by raising their profile. However, everyone starts blaming each other when things start to go wrong and Meadmore appears to have blown the entire project by offering frank opinions to people he should have known were too insecure to hear anything approaching the truth.

The trouble with egotists is that they want to be adored as much for their faults as for their talents and Meadmore quickly discovers this in 2008 when he persuades boss Tony Jackson and girlfriend Amanda Medica to participate in his debut documentary. A former actor on Neighbours who was written out because of his cockiness and penchant for marijuana, Meadmore has landed as job as an editor at Lonely Planet in Melbourne and seems thrilled to be learning so much about film-making from Jackson, an executive producer who has made small-screen actualties around the world. However, the 40 year-old also has a hankering to become a rock star. He claims he merely wants the public to hear his music, but a brush with Oasis in the United States gave him a glimpse of the true fame that has eluded him since the album he recorded with his band, Speed Orange, failed to sell more than a few dozen copies.

As Jackson agrees to mentor Meadmore as he films the recording of a second LP, the twentysomething starts dating singer-songwriter Amanda Medica. When not waitressing, she plays small venues across the city and Meadmore is amazed that someone so gifted has so little drive to progress. It bothers him so much that she rarely practices her guitar playing that he challenges her about the depth of her ambition and she admits that she has rather lost the will to write songs because she always feels he is judging her whenever she performs. The pressure of playing the dual role of girlfriend and film subject begins to tell and Medica appears to be on the verge of abandoning her dream when she wins a competition that affords her the opportunity to impress some major music mavens in Berlin.

Meanwhile, Jackson has informed Meadmore that he is allowing his film to drift and that he needs to structure it around a cogent storyline. However, when he sees a draft outline that accuses him of having a terrible singing voice (something he has already conceded on camera), Jackson feels betrayed and cuts off all contact with Meadmore outside office hours. Suddenly, the novice is facing project implosion and he seeks the reassurance of his mother and sister Kelly, as well as Jackson's architect ex-wife Annabel Mazzotti. Needing to justify his approach, Meadmore also conducts interviews with musicians Tim Rogers, Monique Brumby, Jess McAvoy and Tom Pitts, surfing champion Tom Carroll, actress Bojanna Novakovic, writer Anne O'Hoy and TV producer Brendan Lee in a bid to determine whether Jackson is actually any good. This exercise convinces Meadmore that he has stumbled across an inspirational topic and he does a long piece to camera about the fact that everyone has insecurities and fears of failure that they have to overcome if they want to achieve anything.

As a result of this eureka moment, Meadmore vows to put Jackson and Medica's journey towards their eventual triumph over adversity at the heart of his film. Only he doesn't, as the subtextual subject remains his own insensitivity towards those around him as he strives to fulfil his own goals. Consequently, shortly after Medica's trip to Europe is cancelled, she breaks up with Meadmore because she can no longer cope with what she perceives to be his negative energy. She consents to remaining in the film and Meadmore finds himself back on track when Jackson returns to the fold after making progress with his album. Naturally, Meadmore tries to take a little credit for this, as he likes to think that Jackson has lowered his singing pitch because of his constructive criticism. But, just as he thinks he is approaching the finishing line, Medica withdraws her co-operation because she feels she has been portrayed in an unflattering and often under-garmented light in the rough cut.

After five years and almost 600 hours of footage, Meadmore is confronted with a potential failure of his own. However, the very fact that the film has been released proves that Medica changed her tune and even followed Meadmore to London when he relocated to Fulham. Their own story doesn't have a happy ending, as they are barely on speaking terms, even though Medica has resumed her singing career. Jackson, however, has gone some way towards realising his ambition. Tracks from Speed Orange's second album received some much-cherished radio play and the band even got to perform live on a local Melbourne station. But, while a closing caption informs us that he is recording again, one is left with the impression that everyone feels a degree of disappointment with the way things have turned out on both a personal and a professional level. Meadmore reveals that he has found his niche in London and that he marches on regardless with a new French girlfriend. But, judging by the periodic confessional inserts, he seems to have learned little from either his experiences in making this film or from his mistakes as both an artist and a human being.

What comes across most clearly in this raw, turbulent portrait of three desperately needy people is the excellence of Meadmore's editing, which had already helped the TV show, The Amazing Race Australia (2012), win an Emmy. By contrast, the camerawork is amusingly rough-and-ready and Meadmore frequently flounders as he struggles to make sense of his material and the mayhem he is creating within his own life. But the mosaic he pieces together from fragments as different as live performance snippets, close-ups of feet, tête-à-têtes and confidential pieces to camera is always propulsively slick. He can also credit himself (whether intentionally or not) with having had a catalytic effect on Jackson and Medica's fortunes. However, his narcissistic inability to appreciate the crises of confidence he was causing his friends is deeply disconcerting and one hopes Meadmore displays a touch more tact in his next venture, as he obviously has the tenacity, technique and chutzpah to become a decent director.

Growing pains are distressing enough without the extra pressures that body issues can bring and it's striking how few overweight students there are in Keva Rosenfeld's All American High Revisited, which tags an all-too-brief coda on to the end of a remastered edition of a 1986 documentary that had lain in storage until the director decided to revisit Torrance High School in California three decades after he had spent a year on campus. Although Rosenfeld's inspiration was Amy Heckerling's cult teen hit Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), this fly-on-the-wall chronicle undoubtedly owes much to the Direct Cinema approach that Frederick Wiseman employed on High School (1968). However, Rosenfeld also pulls the vérité stunt of enlisting a Finnish exchange student to be the focus of his film and her outsider insights into the educational, communal and sporting aspects of school life give this astutely observed snapshot an irresistible charm.

Seventeen year-old Riikkamari Rauhala may take a while to fit in with her new classmates at Torrance High, but she is far smarter and more mature than the various queen bees, jocks, stoners and nerds she meets on her first day. If there are any bullies and mean girls, Rosenfeld chose not to train his cameras on them, as he follows the predominantly white, middle-class kids preparing for a pep rally and the annual homecoming parade. Indeed, such rituals seem as big a part of the Torrance calendar in 1984 as lessons, homework and examinations. Rauhala is immediately struck by the fact that the school supplements the core curriculum subjects with classes in surfing, automotive repair and `Modern Lifestyles'.

Yet, notwithstanding its mock marriages and discussions on home-making and how to make the best out of a divorce, this latter option is taken as seriously by the faculty as the maths, literature, history and biology lessons that Rosenfeld eavesdrops upon. The dissection of frogs is always good for the odd extreme reaction and the camera lingers on the face of a girl viewing the entrails with vomitous dismay. But the academic side of things interests Rosenfeld less than the way staff and students rally behind the American Football team and applaud the band and the cheerleaders as enthusiastically as the players. Indeed, he is fascinated by the rituals that are re-enacted with a reverence that Rauhala finds both eccentric and quaint.

By the mid-point, she has found her feet and regularly hangs out at the mall with her best friend. She also speaks frequently to the camera to confide her surprise at how many boys blow dry their hair, her amusement at the language her classmates use and her confusion at their attitudes to sex, as Finns think nothing of losing their virginity at 15 and speaking openly about their emotions and urges. Such frankness clearly endears Rauhala to her peers and she is elected a princess alongside the prom queen. But there are numerous house parties besides these formal functions and Rosenfeld spends time with a budding entrepreneur who hopes to make a profit of over $1000 by hosting a keg party while his parents are away. The sight of the beer barrels floating in the swimming pool and the climactic punch-up are offset by scenes of dancing and smooching, as the seniors let their hair down before they sit their final exams and look forward to graduation.

The original film ended with Rauhala heading back to Finland and Rosenfeld flies out to Karjaa to let her watch the film that temporarily made her a local celebrity with her husband and three children. The two teenage girls feign shock at some of their mother's more outspoken opinions and it is touching to see how fondly she looks back on her experience, even though she has failed to keep her promise to attend a class reunion. Sadly, the other catch-ups work less well, as Rosenfeld was seemingly only able to track down some of the more peripheral characters. Footage of a Q&A session with Heckerling after a dual screening is also rather superfluous, even though a couple of students make themselves known in the audience.

Much more might have been made of Mr Harris the surfing coach and the unnamed Modern Lifestyles teacher. But a disappointing air of 7 Up Lite pervades the meetings with Cesar (the slacker who became a cop), William (the party animal who is now a builder), Michelle (the vehement Republican who now most certainly is not), Kimmi (the good-time girl who retains her beer-fuelled fond memories) and Derek, the mock marriage groom who got the daughters he always longed for, but was too much of a workaholic to keep his wife. One suspects Rosenfeld failed in his bid to persuade Rauhala to return to Torrance and this segment would have worked much better if he had recorded her reaction to seeing how her old friends had changed.

Besides the fashions and the hairstyles, the most arresting thing about the original study is the importance of human contact in forging relationships. At one point, we glimpse a classful of computers, while business seems brisk at the computer game arcade that operates during lunchtime as an offshoot of the engineering class. But the absence of mobile phones and social media forces the kids to get to know each other up close and personal and develop the communication skills that will be vital for later life. Rauhala jokes that `high school here prepares more for social life than work life', but at least these kids get off their beds and mingle. They also have a refreshing lack of awareness and attitude that makes so much modern reality television a chore. Their views on the Cold War doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction may not be too enlightened and they are far too awed by the trio of US Army recruiters who are allowed to make a direct pitch to the impressionable. But their superficial wholesomeness makes them seem like decent, if docile kids and makes the 80s seem light years away. Consequently, a film that would have appeared subtly critical when it was first screened has almost accidentally acquired a nostalgic patina that changes its tone completely.

Also making their debut this week are Max Barron and Michael Woodward, the London-based writer-director duo known only as Jones, whose left-field character study, Everyone's Going to Die, owes a sizeable debt to Alex Holdridge's charming anti-romcom, In Search of a Midnight Kiss (2007). However, it is also possible to detect the influence of Hal Hartley's The Unbelievable Truth (1989), Richard Linklater's Before trilogy (1995-2013), Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) and Shane Meadow's Dead Man's Shoes (2004) in a winningly droll comedy that perhaps a little too polished for its own good.

Waking on an inflatable mattress in her underwear and sporting a dubious moustache, German twentysomething Nora Tschirner is feeling the effects of a wild house party. She came as Charlie Chaplin, but has little recollection of the night before and gets the bus home with friend Kellie Shirley after another unsatisfactory phone call with artist fiancé Brett Goldstein (who remains a voice on the phone throughout), who makes furniture out of other pieces of furniture. Her sole source of income is babysitting his niece and she goes to a café for breakfast after another question-filled walk to school.

Tschirner is 20p short when she tries to buy a sandwich and some coffee and is grateful to accept a sub from stranger Rob Knighton. He has recently been turfed out of the house by the wife who destroyed his wardrobe and he now resembles a Reservoir Dog who failed to make the final cut. Having spent a night in a hotel room with the TV stuck on a gay chat channel, Knighton is glad of the company, as he is a hitman who has returned to his native Kent on sombre business. However, his target fails to materialise and, having wandered around a large house overlooking the sea, he drops into an amusement arcade to kill some time.

Tschirner recognises him and repays her debt. But they get talking and establish a rapport, as they wander around Folkestone and learn a little bit about each other through the exchange of confidences and dares such as shoplifting. Still at a loose end, Knighton decides to call on Wiccan sister-in-law Stirling Gallcher to offer his condolences on the passing of his estranged bother. She is surprised to see him and introduces him to nieces Madeline Duggan and Eliza Harrison-Dine (who only speaks backwards), who are delighted that Knighton and Tschirner can participate in the play that Duggan has written as part of her grieving process. However, he is glad to be called away midway through by a phone call, although he still has time to be introduced to the stray cat into which his sibling's soul has supposedly transmigrated.

An accident with Knighton's gun causes the pair flee with a furry corpse in a plastic bag in the boot. But Duggan is also keen to get out of the house and introduces Tschirner and Knighton to her friends for a game of football on the beach. Knighton returns to his hotel, but can't get Tschirner off his mind and, having spent the day in places he hoped he might bump into her, he calls at the house where Goldstein's sister lives. She is horrified to find a stranger in her kitchen and Knighton runs over her pet dog in his haste to get away. Having discovered that Goldstein is probably having an affair with gallery owner Kylie Hutchinson, Tschirner slips into the passenger seat and they spend the night sharing confidences about their past before dancing the night away and returning to his room.

They chat on the bed until Tschirner gets a call from Shirley, who also seems to have slept with Goldstein. That night, she starts work as a roller-skating beaver waitress and is abashed when she has to serve the smarmy Hutchinson. Consequently, when she meets up with Knighton by the seafront, she jumps into the water and he plunges in to rescue her. They bob in the water and she tells him that she is going back to Germany. Shortly afterwards, he gets a call from Duggan to meet with him in the local church. She wonders if her father might have lived if she had loved him more and asks where Tschirner is. Knighton shrugs and admits they are not a couple. But they find themselves travelling on the same train as the story ends.

Although they never quite click as a couple, Tschirner and Knighton display plenty of deadpan nous in holding together a fitfully witty odd couple saga that loses its way on occasion before settling for an overly cosy conclusion. The mix of sassy one-liners and slapstick calamity is nicely judged, as is the gentle mockery of BritCrime convention. But too many sequences smack of calculation and, even though cinematographer Dan Stafford-Clark avoids prettifying the setting, there are moments when a rougher edge might have made proceedings seem a little less winsome. Fleeting moments suggest that Jones knew exactly what kind of film they wanted to produce. But they appear to have been too aware of its antecedents to trust themselves to make it in their own way.

A similar problem undermines debutant Sam Esmail's Comet, which attempts to disguise how deeply it is in thrall to Linklater's Before triptych by sprinkling the action with borrowings from such quirky romcoms as Marc Webb's (500) Days of Summer (2009) and Drake Doremus's Like Crazy (2011). Everyone works remarkably hard here to salvage something from the overwritten script and it says much for the efforts of the cast and crew that this is much more enjoyable to watch than it would be to read. Like most first-timers, Esmail has a point to prove if he is ever going to be entrusted with the funding to make a second movie. He cannot be faulted for his ambition or for the confident manner in which he structures the fractured scenario. But even if the action does take place, as the opening caption suggests, `a few parallel universes over', it's unlikely that anyone's everyday speech would be so preposterously florid.

While at the Hollywood Forever cemetery to watch a meteor shower, post-doctoral scientist Justin Long learns over the phone that his mother has terminal cancer. As he reels from the news, he is saved from being hit by a car by Emmy Rossum, who has come to witness the celestial phenomenon with boorish date Eric Winter, who not only believes that New York is passé, but also that football is a thing of beauty and that The Beatles ceased to be a worthwhile band the moment Pete Best left.

Convinced that Rossum is wasting her time with such a schmuck, Long turns on what passes for his charm. But rather than charting the development of the romance, Esmail jumps forward to a chance meeting on the street after the couple have already broken up. As they reminisce, the subject drifts on to a fateful night in a hotel room in Paris, where they had gone to attend a mutual friend's Louis L'Amour-themed wedding. This is clearly the moment the relationship started to fall apart, but Esmail has no intention of wasting it by allowing it to play out in real time. Consequently, he drops flash points into a jumble of incidents that take place over six years and involve a random reunion on a train that prompts them to consider patching things up, a heated argument down a transcontinental phone line (complete with an ill-advised confession) and a teasingly bittersweet rendezvous in Rossum's apartment that holds out hope for a reconciliation.

What will bemuse many is why Rossum bothers having anything to do with such a toxic twazzock as Long (who is a Marmitean screen presence at the best of times). He makes a big deal of the fact he is suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder, but this is no excuse for the torrent of self-regarding nonsense that spews out whenever he opens his mouth. However, because Rossum's role has been so shamefully underwritten, she is given little with which to counter Long's smarmy array of callous insults, ignorant opinions and sweeping generalisations. Yet, curiously such is the chemistry between the pair that the uneven exchanges come amusingly close to banter, even with their surfeit of throw away pop-culture references that seem to have been included to make their author look smart rather than the characters. Indeed, one wonders how this might have turned out if Esmail had taken a few notes on his gushing purple prosifying and resisted the meta-allusions that pepper the dialogue and goad the audience into wondering whether Long was hit by the car and whether what we are witnessing is a dream, a premonition, a figment of an expiring imagination or simply an alternative reality occurring in one of those pesky parallel universes.

Eric Koretz's sinuous and occasionally disarmingly angular photography, Annie Spitz's cannily restrained production design, Franklin Peterson's controlled editing and Daniel Hart's catchy, if over-insistent score probably deserve to be in a better movie. But even these expert craft credits betray Esmail's eagerness to establish his maverick indie credentials and the resulting preciousness is likely to alienate more viewers than it entices. So, while it has its moments, this too often feels like an extended application to script the next Aaron Sorkin series.

The cinema of Naomi Kawase is also something of an acquired taste. Since becoming the youngest winner of the Caméra d'Or for Best New Director at Cannes in 1997 for Suzaku, she has divided critics with documentaries like Hotaru (2000), Letter From a Yellow Cherry Blossom (2003) and Tarachine (2006) often being better received than such fictional features as Shara (2003), The Mourning Forest (2007), Nanayo (2008), Hanezu (2011) and An (2015). Set on the sub-tropical island of Amami-Oshima, Still the Water takes Kawase to her ancestral home for a treatise on life, love and death. But any poignancy the story of two teenagers striving to belong might have had is swamped by the onerous symbolism, mannered naturalism and excessive length of the kind of film that gives Slow Cinema a bad name.

Lying in the archipelago between Okinawa and Kyushu in Southern Japan, the island of Amami-Oshima is home to 16 year-old Nijiro Murakami, who has a fear of the sea that is far from eased by the discovery of a tattooed man floating off the shore. The police recover the body and begin an investigation to determine how the victim died, but any hopes that Murakami has of discussing the situation with mother Makiko Watanabe are dashed by the fact that she no sooner returns from work than she is out with one of her many men friends.

Classmate Jun Yoshinaga has no hang ups where the sea is concerned and she defies the sanction against bathing by going for a swim in her school uniform. She lives in a beach bistro with father Tetta Sugimoto and her shaman mother Miyuki Matsuda. But the latter is being nursed through a terminal illness in hospital and she decides to die at home after Yoshinaga brings her a message from the ageing chief shaman, who says everything twice. Happy to back on her porch, Yoshinaga communes with the 400 year-old bamyan tree and makes her peace with Nature, while her neighbours ease her spirit with `shima-uta' incantations that are accompanied by a stringed sanshin.

Needing to get away from Watanabe, Murakami takes a trip to Tokyo to visit his father, Jun Murakami, who works in a tattoo parlour. He is pleased to see his son and tries to treat him like a pal during a long drinking session. However, as the alcohol starts to take effect, he rambles on about the role that fate plays in human affairs and he explains at interminable length how he and Watanabe simply couldn't remain married.

Romance is also playing on the boy's mind, as he and Yoshinaga are supposed to be dating. However, they spend much of their time in the company of fisherman Fujio Tokita, who tells them about the cyclical nature of existence and shows them how to sacrifice a goat - twice. On Murakami's return from the capital, Yoshinaga suggests they consummate their relationship. But he declines her invitation and everyone battens down the hatches for a long-expected typhoon.

Notwithstanding the atmospheric photography of Yutaka Yamakazi, this is a very difficult film to admire, let alone like. Having discovered her family connection to Amami, Kawase seems intent on padding her slender story with comprehensive ethnographical records of local rituals, songs and dances. These might have been fascinating if used sparingly. But Kawase keeps the camera rolling for the duration and applies a similar logic to her scene-setting shots of crashing waves or sun-dappled tree tops. However, while such pretentious procrastination can just about be forgiven, the meandering discourses delivered at regular points through the narrative cannot, if only because they are strewn with platitudes rather than considered philosophy. It is almost a relief, therefore, when the focus shifts to Yoshinaga and the non-professional Murakami, as while they have even less of interest to impart, their conversations are almost monosyllabic by comparison.

As is often the case with this kind of film, the critic runs the risk of appearing philistinic by taking exception to the pedestrian presentation of sights and sounds outside their quotidian experience. However, Kawase has form when it comes to self-indulgence. So, even though some of the aerial views of the mountains and mangrove forests are as glorious as the shots taken under the sparkling sea and there are some touching moments around Matsuda's demise, this evidently personal meditation on the mysteries of life feels insubstantial and stylised.

Changing the mood markedly, Gerard Johnstone's Housebound was one of the undoubted gems of FrightFest 2014 and it has now been given a cinematic release. But what makes this raucous haunted house romp all the more impressive is that it marks the New Zealand writer-director-editor's feature debut following his stint on the TV series, The Jaquie Brown Diaries (2008-09). Too many comedy horrors fall between two stools, but this tale of a delinquent heroine giving a ghoul as good as she gets is full of hilarious set-pieces that are studded with unexpected scares. Splendidly designed, photographed and scored, this surpasses all recent mainstream attempts at macabre humour and should, if there is any justice, make a star of its feisty female lead.

Arrested after bungling a sledgehammer raid on a cash machine, Morgana O'Reilly is sentenced to eight months' detention in her childhood home by judge Ian Mune because all previous custodial attempts to reform her have failed so dismally. Psychologist Cameron Rhodes is appointed to conduct regular counselling sessions, while Glen-Paul Waru is dispatched by the security company to maintain O'Reilly's electronic ankle tag. However, what makes her incarceration so unbearable is the fact that mother Rima Te Wiata never stops talking and is hell bent on making a connection with the daughter she feels she has neglected since marrying milquetoast second husband, Ross Harper.

Already seething with fury, O'Reilly becomes even more irate when Te Wiata announces that she thinks the house is haunted. However, a series of whispers, creaks and bumps in the night leads her to suspect that something may indeed be lurking in the basement. She tries to convince Rhodes that paranormal activity would be detrimental to her rehabilitation, but he refuses to take her claims seriously. Waru, however, snaps into action the moment she mentions ghosts and produces a Polaroid camera, a tape recorder and other paraphernalia to catch the malevolent spirit in the act.

In the course of their investigation, however, O'Reilly and Waru learn that her bedroom was the scene of the brutal murder of a teenage girl and they conclude that the dentures worn by oddball neighbour Mick Innes hold the key to the mystery. But the spectre has no intention of going quietly and the intrepid duo have to make unconventional use of a laundry basket, a corkscrew, a xylophone and a cheese grater before they can conquer evil.

Inspired by the 1990s British reality show Ghostbusters and taking its cues from such pictures as John Hough's The Legend of Hell House (1973) and Peter Medak's The Changeling (1980), this is a slick mix of jokes and jolts that suggests Neighbours is incredibly fortunate to have secured the services of the excellent Morgana O'Reilly. Whether kicking against the system, hunting for clues or putting herself at reckless risk, she fizzes with angst and energy. But she is at her most effective when realising that the garrulous Te Wiata is very much on her side and not the cause of all her rebellious rage.

However, for all the poignancy of their rapprochement, the emphasis is placed firmly on the wit and weirdness of a story that throws up endless surprises without once feeling corny or contrived. Waru provides droll support as the amateur spook slayer whose choice of weapon never ceases to amuse. Credit here must go to production designer Jane Bucknell, who fills the cluttered interiors with unlikely objects for Simon Riera's widescreen camera to detect. But it's the sheer ingenuity and tonal control of Johnstone's script that keeps this gleeful deconstruction of old dark house tropes moving briskly along to the accompaniment of Mahuia Bridgman-Cooper's propulsive symphonic score. Maybe Kiwi horror has finally found the longed-for heir to the young Peter Jackson.