When the 15 Minutes Are Over

Having failed to secure a bank loan to pay off their mounting debts, brothers Raghubir Yadav and Omkar Das Manikpuri return to the tiny village of Peepli facing the prospect of their farm being put up for auction. Bed-ridden mother Farrukh Jaffer lambasts them both as failures. But when Manikpuri's shrewish wife, Shalini Vatsa, adds her ten rupeesworth, Jaffer accuses her of being a witch who has brought misfortune upon her household. All is not quite lost, however, as there is soon to be an election and the siblings hope that thakur Sitaram Panchal will employ them for the campaign. However, he dismisses them as losers and jokes that the only hope they have of making any money is for one to commit suicide and claim state compensation of 100,000 rupees.

The bone-idle Yadav likes the sound of this proposition and, even though Manikpuri has a wife and three children, he talks him into ending it all for the greater good of the entire family. However, local newspaper reporter Nawazuddin Siddiqui overhears their plan and calls glamorous TV anchor Malaika Shenoy in the hope of selling her the story. With tension growing between the political parties and Shenoy in need of a scoop to prove she's not just a pretty face, she comes to the country and sets up camp. Most disregard Manikpuri's plight as a publicity stunt. But rival journalist Vishal Sharma spots its human interest potential and Peepli is soon the centre of a media circus, with opportunists arriving hot on their heels with fast food kiosks and fairground rides to cater for the throng.

The army is called in to keep the peace and Agriculture Minister Naseeruddin Shah finds himself dragged into the fracas, as party and caste bigwigs compete for votes by attempting to ameliorate Manikpuri's situation. But, at the height of the furore, the would-be suicide disappears and an entirely new blame game breaks out that prompts federal, state and local politicos to acquiesce in the notion that Islamic fundamentalists are responsible. However, the truth is more affecting.

Shanker Rahman's photography unfussily establishes a sense of place, while Rizvi and editor Hemanti Sarkar deserve great credit for keeping this cutting farce brisk and clear. The montage sequences depicting the frenzied media activity are particularly astute and ably lampoon the vacuity of rolling news techniques. The vagaries of the Indian political and caste systems are also exposed, as is the shameful poverty into which so many farmers have been plunged in the decade since the economic emphasis shifted away from agriculture.

Yet Manikpuri is far too taciturn to make much of an anti-hero and neither the rivalry between Shenoy and Sharma nor Siddiqui's gradual realisation that he's ill-suited to his scurrilous profession fires the imagination. The mockery of the calculating philanthropy and ad hoc policy-making of the ruling classes is more intriguing, but it is always more of a sideshow. Thus, while this is lively, perceptive and amusing, it's never quite as slick, acute or witty as it might be and it's left to the last image of a building site for some luxury apartments to really drive home the tragedy of the eight million farm-workers who were sacrificed to progress.

The residents of a West Bank village lying in the proposed path of the Israeli separation barrier put up a sterner fight in Julia Bacha's documentary, Budrus, which recalls the 2003 stand-off that made headlines around the world. Despite occasionally bordering on agit-prop, this heartfelt record makes such solid use of interviews and eye-witness footage that it's almost impossible to watch without a rising sense of outrage.

Heading the bid to protect the village's olive trees are Ayed Morrar and his 15 year-old daughter Iltezam, who organise their neighbours to rise early and make such a nuisance of themselves in the olive grove on which their livelihood depends that the contractors detailed to uproot the trees have little option but to withdraw. However, the interlopers arrive before dawn the following day and not even Iltezam's efforts to sit in a hole and obstruct the diggers can prevent the pillage. But the protests continue and, as the Palestinians place women in the front line of the demonstrations, the Israeli Defence Force becomes increasingly frustrated in its bid to defuse the situation and restore some order.

Eventually, the troops are given permission to use greater force and an advance is planned. But a stand-off ensues and, as Palestinian children throw stones at the heavily armed IDF unit, tear gas gives way to live ammunition. When Hassan Mohammad Hassan is arrested, an heroic attempt is made to free him (with little backing from the local Hamas officials). However, several women are struck by soldiers, as houses are occupied and resistance seems to have been broken. But, during the night, youths set about dismantling the wire fence and Bracha informs us that Budrus (which had already lost 80% of its land in 1948) was finally reprieved when, 10 months later, a decision was taken to place the barrier along the line of the 1967 Green Line.

Ayed and Iltezam's dignified campaign of passive resistance contrasts starkly with the strident self-righteousness of soldiers Doron Spielman and Yasmine Levy, whose arrogant assertion of rectitude - Spielman at one point opines that the spoliation of the landscape is `unfortunate for the people of Budrus, but less unfortunate than the death of an Israeli citizen.' - is a far cry from the calls for tolerance expressed by Jewish anti-occupation activists like Kobi Snitz. But while Bracha admirably conveys the courage of those determined to prevent the Wall from passing through their property, she fails to impose a timeline. Consequently, it becomes increasingly difficult to judge the tide of events. So, while this is undeniably effective, it's also highly emotive and just a touch confusing.

The same problem recurs in spades throughout Mei Hu's sprawling biopic, Confucius, which stars Chow Yun-Fat as Kong Qui, the mayor of Zhongdu in the Kingdom of Lu, who became one of the greatest sages in human history. Handsomely photographed by Peter Pau, lavishly costumed by Chung Man Yee and CGI'd to epic proportions by Andy Chen, this is a laudable attempt to familiarise modern-day audiences with the thoughts and deeds of a Daoist master who was committed to tolerance, peace and justice and education for all. Yet, for all its ambition and scale, this remains little more than a loosely linked series of grandiose set-pieces that singularly fail to convey the very attributes for which Confucius is famed.

Asked by Lu Dinggong (Yao Lu) to reform his realm, Kong Qui earns the enmity of the leaders of Lu's three noble clans - the Jishi, Shushi and Mengshi. The Jishi's Ju Sunshi (Chen Jianbin) is particularly hostile after Kong offers sanctuary to an escaped burial slave from his father's tomb. However, his attempt to use general Gongshan Niu (Zhang Xingzhe) to intimidate him backfires and Kong speaks at the assembly to outlaw the barbaric practice and wins plaudits as a wise philosopher, as well as a skilled politician.

Content to do his duty, Kong lives with his wife Quigan (Kai Li), daughter Kong Jiao (Chen Rui) and son Long Li (Qiao Zhenyu), and devotes his time to instructing loyal disciples Zilu (Li Wenbo), Yan Hui (Ren Quan), Gong Boliao (Ma Yong), Ran Qiu (Ma Qiang), Zeng Dian (Wang Qingyuan) and Zeng Can (Chen Weidong). They accompany him when he joins Lu Dinggong on a peace mission to the neighbouring kingdom of Qi. But Kong suspects that Duke Jing (Ma Jingwu) and minister Li Chu (Wang Huichun) have lured them into a trap and he uses peasant carts to fool them into thinking that he has a massed army waiting in the mountains to swoop down and decimate the troops waiting to ambush them.

Kong's fame spreads following this diplomatic triumph and Nanzi (Zhou Xun), the consort of King Ling (Bi Yanjun) of Wei, sets her heart on meeting him. Though known throughout China as a scarlet woman, she is also intelligent and sensitive to the beauty of poetry and she hopes that Kong can be lured to court to teach Crown Prince Kuaikui (Li Huan). However, Kong is preoccupied with domestic matters and secures Lu Dinggong's permission to raze the walls of the clan capitals. He used fire to repel Gongshan Niu's attack on the citadel of Qufu, but Lu Dinggong loses his nerve, as he fears that Qi will invade if he weakens the clans too much.

Consequently, in 497 BC, Kong takes the gift of a broken jade ring as an invitation to leave Lu and he spends the next 14 years wandering between the various kingdoms, often in the direst poverty, despite being feted by rulers who hope they can exploit his wisdom. On arriving in Wei, Kong agrees to meet (the purely fictional) Nanzi and is enchanted by her beauty and learning. But he senses that civil war is about to erupt and Nanzi is assassinated as he beats his retreat. Surviving exhaustion, near-starvation and the loss of Zilu (who is killed fighting to restore order in Wei) and Yan Hui (who drowns attempting to save Kong's manuscripts from an icy lake), Kong eventually returns to Lu at the dying Lu Dinggong's invitation in 484 BC and dies five years later at the age of 73, having just completed the work that he hopes will inspire the world.

This Spring and Autumn saga is impeccably staged and Chow Yun-Fat brings a subtle steeliness to Confucius's serenity. But the emphasis on action rather than thought leaves this feeling intellectually slight. Indeed, it made more impact in China for causing Avatar to be withdrawn early than it did for marking the 2,560th anniversary of Kong Qui's birth. With Cong Su's score heavily underlining every word and gesture, little is left to the imagination and while there's no denying the sincerity of the exercise - despite the occasional contrived link between Confucian and Communist ideology - this is too leaden and lumpen to enlighten or entertain.

There are those who have similar reservations about Fred Zinnemann's adaptation of James Jones's bestseller, From Here to Eternity (1953). However, what should never be forgotten, some six decades on, is how ground-breaking this picture was on its original release. Coming just 12 years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that finally drew the United States into the Second World War, it presented the American fighting man as anything but heroic and exposed the seedier side of domestic bliss that the Production Code has been so doggedly trying to prevent audiences from seeing since 1934.

Almost as well known today for reviving Frank Sinatra's flagging career as for its dramatic or cinematic qualities, this is a very shrewd reissue by the estimable Park Circus company and one hopes the criticial focus this time round falls on something other than the shocking nature of a Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr's torrid swimwear kiss in the Hawaiian surf.

Busted from corporal to private after quitting the bugle corps for the infantry, onetime boxer Montgomery Clift arrives at the Schofield Barracks in Honolulu determined to keep his head down. However, commanding officer Philip Ober is keen to see him representing the company and allows the men to subject Clift to a round of punishments and humiliations. Life is equally tough for scrawny private Frank Sinatra, who has fallen foul of uncompromising sergeant of the guard, Ernest Borgnine. But it's not a happy camp all round, as Deborah Kerr's marriage to Ober is on the rocks and her growing friendship with first sergeant Burt Lancaster seems as likely to end in tears as Clift's fondness for dance club hostess, Donna Reed.

Having pleaded with Columbia chief Harry Cohn to land the role of Angelo Maggio (reportedly using mob contacts to ease Eli Wallach out of the picture), Sinatra gave an Oscar-winning performance that now seems more than a little mannered. Clift's Method torment also feels a touch over-earnest, especially in comparison with Borgnine's thuggish sadism and Reed's reluctant promiscuity. But Zinnemann makes as much a virtue of the clashing styles - in a way that Joseph L. Mankiewciz would never be able to do when Sinatra came up against Marlon `Mumbles' Brando in Guys and Dolls (1955) - as he did of the social differences between Lancaster's soft-centred martinet and Kerr's haughty housewife. He also coaxes superb supporting turns from Joan Shawlee, as one of Reed's good-time galpals, George Reeves (who was the screen's first Superman), as Lancaster's fellow sergeant and Philip Ober as the cuckolded captain, who allows discipline to lapse in order to retain the good opinion of his men.

However, the pace is occasionally allowed to slacken and Daniel Taradash's script too often slips into passages of self-conscious army argot, during which one finds oneself wondering how different a film this might have been had it not been so calculatingly stellar - after all, Cohn wanted Aldo Ray and Julie Harris for the Clift-Reed roles and hoped Joan Crawford and Edmond O'Brien would play the adulterous lovers. It also manages to make the Tora! Tora! Tora! raid of 7 December 1941 feel like an anti-climax after Sinatra's (off-screen) beating at the hands of Borgnine and Clift's tantrum at Reed and his much-resisted return to the ring. However, you only have to remember Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor (2001) to see how dismally it could so easily have turned out.

Finally, there's a rather oddly timed release for Guillaume Ivernel and Arthur Qwak's Dragon Hunters, an animated spin-off from a popular French TV series whose Studio Ghibli-like CGI visuals look more manufactured than lovingly created.

The rather convoluted story boasts the vocal talents of Forest Whitaker and Rob Paulsen as Lian-Chu and Gwizdo, a pair of unlikely heroes who accompany the fairytale-obsessed Princess Zoe (Mary Marilyn Mouser) to the edge of existence in order to vanquish the World Eater, a dragon that returns every 30 seasons to go on a feeding frenzy. Despite so much of the dialogue being couched in an urban argot that feels wholly anachronistic in what is ostensibly a period quest, this is a lively adventure that offers a few lessons on loyalty and honour, alongside the rousing encounters with critters like a monster made up of terrifying red bats.