All Our Yesterdays

Beautifully made, but scrappily scripted, this rousing animated lampoon of the clichés of the Second World War movie is a real family affair. Written and directed by the debuting siblings Edward and Rory McHenry, designed by their father David and numbering brothers Dominic and Jack among the puppeteers, it's clearly a labour of love and the work of genuinely inspired film-makers. But the jokes range from the crude to the banal and, for all the witty allusions to classic pictures and the odd moment of dark camp, this is nowhere near as funny as its brilliant visuals deserve it to be.

With troops trapped at Dunkirk and the RAF beaten in the Battle of Britain, Blighty is left defenceless against the marauding Nazis. In Berlin, Himmler (Richard O'Brien), Goebbels (Tom Wilkinson) and Goering (Richard Griffiths) plan an invasion using a giant mole to dig under the English Channel that will bypass the coastal defences being erected in Kent by such stalwart yokels as Tom (Stephen Merchant) and Chris (Ewan McGregor), an outsider whose unfeasibly large hands so repulse the local vicar (Richard E. Grant) that he refuses to let him date his innocent daughter, Daisy (Rosamund Pike).

All is not lost, however, even as tanks surface on Trafalgar Square and trundle towards Downing Street, as Winston Churchill (Timothy Spall) is defended by a crack unit of Indian troops led by Major Rupee (Sanjeev Bhaskar) and a maverick American volunteer, Billy Fiske (Dominic West), who is convinced he is fighting the Communists. But the Prime Minister still needs to be rescued by Chris at the throttle of a clunky old steam engine, which beats a hasty retreat to Hadrian's Wall in order to mount a rearguard.

As Hitler (Alan Cumming) settles into Buckingham Palace by donning one of Queen Elizabeth I's dresses, a ragtag corps of farmers, workers and a womanising French Resistance fighter named Gaston (Hugh Fraser) dig in on the border of Scot Land and send Chris into the fearsome hinterland in search of reinforcements. Wearing redcoats left behind centuries before, the plucky Little Englanders prepare to confront the Wehrmacht might. But Chris is about to unleash a far more terrifying force upon the unsuspecting nation.

Filmed in Glorious PanzerVision and riffing on everything from Thunderbirds and Michael Bentine's Potty Time to Spitting Image and Team America: World Police, this is hugely enjoyable and audaciously politically incorrect fun. The nods towards films like Ice Cold in Alex, Zulu, Independence Day and any number of Ealing gems are neat, while the vocal cast fully enters into the madcap bulldog spirit, with Grant particularly relishing the opportunity to play a foul-mouthed clergyman, Moreover, the largely inanimate puppets - which are essentially a cross between Action Man and Barbie - range hilariously from the caricatured to the kitsch.

But too many gags fall wide of the mark. The constant references to Matron Rutty (Pam Ferris) and her First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY) quickly become tiresome and the surfeit of Mel Gibson cracks after Chris enlists the support of a Braveheart with an Australian accent compound the lameness of the disappointing denouement. Despite the technical ingenuity involved, the combat sequences also rely more on excess than acuity and, as a consequence, they sit awkwardly with the overall tone of gleeful iconoclasm.

Destined for instant cult status, this pitches somewhere between Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo's It Happened Here (1965) and Peter Richardson's Churchill: The Hollywood Years (2004). But, with a couple more rewrites and a few less post-modern wisecracks, this could have been something very special, indeed.

Produced using the good old-fashioned technique of stop-motion animation, Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar's A Town Called Panic is equally low-tec. However, this is a much more madcap venture that feels like a cross between Wallace and Gromit and South Park, with a touch of Monty Python, Yellow Submarine and SpongeBob SquarePants thrown in for good measure. Brilliantly bizarre and endlessly entertaining, this would make a fine introduction to foreign-language film for younger viewers, as the subtitles are easy to follow and rarely distract from the often idiosyncratic visuals.

Cowboy and Indian live with Horse in a little village that has its own policeman, postman and school for animals. Their neighbours are farmer Steven and his wife Janine, whose livestock are taught by a red-headed mare named Madame Longrée, who has a crush on Horse and wants him to take piano lessons so she can get closer to him.

Horse's birthday is coming up and Cowboy and Indian decide to build him a barbecue. However, they order 50 million bricks online instead of 50 and have to dispose of the excess before Simon arrives with his mobile bar to throw Horse a surprise party in Cowboy and Indian's basement. After a wild night of carousing, the villagers go to sleep. But, the weight of the bricks stacked on the roof of the house causes it to collapse and Horse has to supervise a rapid rebuild next morning.

Despite the fact that Cowboy and Indian are easily distracted, the work goes reasonably well. But someone steals the new walls during the night and Policeman arrests Steven for the crime. However, a series of eccentric events lead the friends to discover that the real culprit is Gérard, an odd-looking underwater creature from L'Atlantide, who has purloined the structure for a new family home and much frantic action ensues before normality (if there is such a thing in this delightfully dotty world) can finally be restored.

Spun off from the cult Belgian TV show, Pic Pic André, this is a deliriously demented mix of whimsy, slapstick and surrealism. The characters resemble the immobile plastic figurines on painted bases that were once popular pocket money toys and little art is wasted on animating them in a realistic manner. Instead, the imagination is piled into the giving the hopping, waddling or galloping critters plenty of zany things to do. Thus, whether it's depicting the barnyard buddies forming a rock band or Cowboy, Indian and Horse plunging to the centre of the earth through a garden pond or escaping from a titanic mechanised penguin by hiding in a giant snowball, the action is fast, frenetic and fun.

Provided by Aubier (Cowboy), Patar (Horse) and Bruce Ellison (Indian) - as well as such established stars as Benoît Poelvoorde (Steven), Bouli Lanners (Postman, Simon and Cow) and Jeanne Balibar (Madame Longrée) - the rather shouty voice-overs take a time to get used to. But they not only enhance the ebullient mood, but also add personality to the surprisingly expressive facially inanimate characters. Kids reared on Toy Story may be taken aback by the seeming lack of sophistication here. However, they might just recognise something of their own penchant for flights of fancy in a neverland that owes nothing to computer-generated imagery.

Back in the real world, a starkly contrasting picture of combat is provided by Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington in their acclaimed documentary, Restrepo. Filmed over 15 months in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan that was dubbed `the most dangerous place in the world' by CNN, this is a graphic insight into the near-impossibility of the Allied mission against the Taliban and the apolitical attitude of American troops who fight not for a cause, but for their own lives and those of their comrades in arms.

The focus falls on the Second Platoon, Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade as it arrives in Korengal in June 2007 under the command of Captain Dan Kearney. He is keen to win the hearts and minds of the locals, who not only endure countless friendly fire casualties, but also reprisals from an essentially invisible enemy. However, Kearney is also determined to erect an outpost on a key Taliban weapons route and he catches the counter-insurgents by surprise by dispatching a nocturnal detail to dig in while conducting frequent fire fights. The OP is named after Juan Restrepo, a 20 year-old medic who was the unit's first KIA, and the esteem with which he was held by his buddies makes them all the more intent on holding their position and making a difference in the war.

However, it soon becomes clear during Junger and Hetherington's subsequent visits that precious little progress is being made by the platoon and that as much time is being spent sitting around waiting for the next firearms exchange as it is building bridges with the dirt poor peasants whose weekly meetings with Kearney reveal only their growing suspicion of the Americans and their constant terror of the Taliban. However, the soldiers have little regard for the people they're supposed to be winning over. As they have such scant knowledge of the terrain, its inhabitants and their cultures, they treat everyone as a potential terrorist and dismiss claims for compensation for lost belongings with a high-handedness that betrays their indifference to the geo-political significance of their cause.

Indeed, it's only when they mount Operation Rock Avalanche, in a bid to root out the jihadists being succoured by the villagers, that they risk coming face to face with a foe they despise rather than respect. Consequently, when the death of a much-loved sergeant provokes a furious backlash, there's an almost triumphalist sense of vengeance when one trooper watches a target fall through his gunsight. It's warfare as computer game and it's only when brutality lands on their own doorstep that many of these young men recognise it as the hideous reality it is.

Respectively the author of The Perfect Storm and an experienced photojournalist, Junger and Hetherington succeed in capturing the nightmarish conditions experienced by civilians and combatants alike. Yet, by interspersing vérité footage with the talking-head recollections of veterans Kevin Rice, Brendan O'Byrne, Aron Hijar, Kyle Steiner, Misha Pemble-Belkin, Mark Patterson and Miguel Cortez, they have been criticised for lacking a coherent narrative. Yet the whole point of this uncompromising record is surely to expose the lack of a plan in Korengal and there's a chilling irony in the closing caption, which reveals that the outpost was abandoned with nothing tangible achieved.

Sophie Fiennes alights in an equally desolate landscape in her documentary, Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow. Anyone unfamiliar with Anselm Kiefer or the thinking behind his industrial artworks is likely to find little enlightenment in this stately profile. Viewers may also find themselves struggling to acclimatise to the ear-piercing compositions of György Ligeti and Jörg Widmann. Nevertheless, it's impossible not to be impressed by the ambition and scale of Kiefer's achievement at the abandoned La Ribaute silk factory at Bajac in the Languedoc region of southern France.

The picture opens with Remko Schnorr's CinemaScope camera performing stealthy tracks and elegant crane shots around the labyrinthine estate that the 65 year-old Kiefer has pocked with caves and tunnels and decorated with disconcerting giant objects. But, for all the sensitivity of Fiennes's approach to light, shape, texture and tone, the real fascination lies more in the artisanal than the artistic, as Kiefer and his assistants daub, burn, smelt, smash and winch materials with a precision that's mesmerisingly compelling.

But this is always more of a contemplation than an explanation of Kiefer's installations. Indeed, the practical consistently proves more intriguing than the theoretical, as Kiefer references Heidegger's treatise on boredom in scrupulously avoiding insights into either his artistic philosophy or the source of his inspiration during a lengthy interview with German journalist Klaus Dermutz (parts of which are later replayed over more challenging visuals than the pair sitting at a kitchen table). But he becomes much more animated when instructing the operator of the mechanical digger constructing the next underground grotto or the driver of the crane piling buildings to form perilous edifices that suggest the clutter and fragility of modern life. He is equally energetic when spraying paint, placing fragments of shattered glass or covering pieces in ashes. Moreover, Fiennes herself seems much happier watching and admiring, as she deftly assembles her own cinematic artefact. Thus, this is a film to be experienced rather than explained.

Finally, owing more to the kind of tough crime movie produced in the 1970s than the recent spate of BritCrime pictures, Freight is an uncompromising insight into people trafficking and gangland brutality. Making gritty use of locations around Leeds, writer-director Stuart St Paul raises several troubling issues in depicting a seedy side of city life that few will know exists.

Just days before daughter Laura Aikman's wedding, businessman Billy Murray gets a phone call from her Asian fiancé Stephen Uppal saying he's been abducted in a portaloo stolen from a rock concert venue. Using a device in Uppal's phone, Murray and associate Craig Fairbrass track the trailer to the remote premises where Romanian Danny Midwinter billets the illegal immigrants he forces to work in the sex trade and cage-fighting game until they have paid for their passage. Determined to avoid trouble, Murray reclaims his property. But Midwinter vows to make him pay for crossing him.

Following a series of attacks on Murray's properties, Midwinter kidnaps Aikman. Moreover, he also has Murray's estranged son Matt Kennard killed during a vicious cage fight with Zsolt Nagy, a former soldier who is obeying orders in order to secure the release of his wife, Natalie Anderson. Restraining sons Sam Kennard and Luke Aikman, Murray plans his revenge with Fairbrass and eliminates both Midwinter's sadistic henchman, Andrew Tiernan, and his brothel-keeping girlfriend, Aleksandra Kobielak. However, a final showdown doesn't go entirely to plan.

Despite sharing several themes and cast members with Steven Lawson's Dead Cert, this is a much more controlled feature that reveals the contemptuous attitudes that underpin the turf rivalries between homegrown and immigrant gangs. St Paul stages the combustible action with an emphasis on the ferocity of the violence, while Midwinter delivers a snarling display of ruthless cruelty that contrasts tellingly with Murray's more urbane brutishness. Never easy viewing, this is also a sobering exposé of exploitation and the basest human instincts.