Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 22/9/2011)

Audaciously filled with lingering silences, this considered adaptation of Eric Holder's novel brings a new sensitivity to a familiar scenario and even alludes to David Lean's classic study of urbane adultery, Brief Encounter, in its train station finale.

Lindon is a builder in an unnamed provincial town, who takes pride in both his craft and his family. Married to factory worker Aure Atika, he is close to son Arthur Le Houerou and ailing father Jean-Marc Thibault. But he becomes distractedly smitten following a chance meeting with Kiberlain (who is Le Houerou's teacher) and offers to do odd jobs simply to be around her. Taken by his craggy courtesy, the prim Kiberlain slowly begins to reciprocate his feelings. But neither acts upon them and it's only when Atika watches the expression on her husband's face as Kiberlain plays some Elgar for Thibault's birthday that she realises her relationship is in danger.

Using Antoine Héberlé's camera to dwell on the spaces between Lindon and Kiberlain and the confused signals they send each other, this is delicate drama that not only explores how opposites attract, but also how deep emotions can be conveyed by more than mere physicality. Kiberlain offers tantalising glimpses of the fiery passion that burns beneath the freckled fragility of her demure exterior, while Lindon gauchely attempts to appreciate classical music and not look out of place in her tastefully decorated rooms, as he struggles to contain his own feelings, while also facing the prospect of losing his father.

However, Atika's revelation of a second pregnancy tilts the climax towards melodrama, as Lindon and Kiberlain finally have to resort to actions and words instead of meaningful looks. But while the railway platform finale is ably acted and edited, it feels like an onrush of gratuitous sentiment after so much exemplary discretion.

The American newspaper business is deep in crisis, with the blogosphere, social networks like Twitter and aggregator sites like Gawker and the Huffington Post causing advertising revenues to plummet as fast as circulation figures. Even iconic titles like the New York Times have been forced to cancel columns and lay off staff, as they come to terms with the fact that the days are gone when the likes of Daniel Ellsberg would bring the Pentagon Papers to the Gray Lady and that big news stories are now more likely to be broken by online outlets like WikiLeaks with the single click of a mouse than with the romantic roar of a printing press.

Still hailed in certain quarters as the country's journal of record, the Times took significant hits to its prestige with the Jayson Blair and Judith Miller affairs. Yet, unlike the majority of their instant news counterparts, print journalists still take inordinate pride in the sourcing and checking of facts and, throughout the timely, if hardly inquisitory documentary Page One: A Year Inside The New York Times, Andrew Rossi delights in capturing the aura of authority that is still the hallmark of a publication with 106 Pulitzer Prizes to its credit.

In a neat twist, Rossi decides to centre his investigation on the Media Desk that has been forced to chronicle the dawning of the electronic age that is threatening its very existence. But, while he elicits choice comments from blogger-turned-newsman Brian Stelter and thrusting reporter Tim Arango, he strikes luckiest with David Carr, a onetime crack addict and welfare-drawing single parent who became the poster boy for tried-and-trusted news gathering methods after exposing corruption at the rival Tribune group and whose demolition of Newser's Michael Wolff during a panel discussion provides one of this picture's undisputed highlights.

Editor-in-chief Bill Keller, ex-reporter Gay Talese, the New Yorker's David Remnick, Gawker's Nick Denton and WikiLeaks's Julian Assange all make telling contributions. But, while Rossi makes adept use of archive footage of editor Turner Catledge from the paper's heyday, he seems not to have noticed during his 14 months within the Times's hallowed walls (during which time he was even allowed to sit in on editorial meetings) that journalists are master manipulators of a story. Consequently, he never quite manages to secure any scoops, even missing much of the drama on a day when 100 staffers were presented with their pink redundancy slips. Nevertheless, he does recognise the irony of the celebrations that greet the launch of the new iPad app in wondering just how successful such token gestures of modernity will be in the long run.

Just as Page One flirts with providing an in-depth account of life on a daily newspaper, so Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston is less a profile of American couturier Roy Halston Frowick and more a pretext for director Whitney Sudler-Smith to appear on camera as often as possible in as many different hairstyles as he can muster while hanging out with several garrulous celebrities and fashionistas. Nevertheless, while it is short on facts and analysis of what actually made Halston and his clothing great, this brisk, engaging documentary offers a rousing ride through the period between the creation of the pillbox hat that Jackie Kennedy wore at JFK's Inauguration and the designer's death from AIDS-related cancer at the age of 57 in March 1990.

Born to socialite Patricia Altschul in Des Moines, Halston worked as a milliner for Bergdorf Goodman before his designs for the First Lady gave him the clout to launch his eponymous label in 1968. Quickly establishing a reputation for cashmere evening gowns, jersey sarongs and Ultrasuede shirtwaist creations that challenged the stuffy formalism of traditional American chic, he not only became a friend of A listers like Liza Minnelli, Lauren Bacall, Bianca Jagger and Elizabeth Taylor, but he also took Paris by storm, headed a major trade mission to China and created uniforms for airlines. Indeed, he changed the public perception of what a fashion designer should be, as he put his name on luggage, carpets and fragrances.

But, while he was the toast of the runway, Halston proved to be a poor businessman. His decision to sell the rights to his own name to Norton Simon in 1973 was followed by the calamitous mass-market association with JC Penney that cost him contracts with high-end retailers and ultimately led to the Fashion Institute of Technology refusing an archive that was eventually deposited with Lipscomb University in Nashville - a Christian college that was a highly ironic choice given the notoriety of Halston's Studio 54 heyday (which Sudler-Smith amusingly sums up with a couple of clips from Tinto Brass's 1979 romp, Caligula).

Making punchy use of archive material, Sudler-Smith and editor Anne Goursaud piece together the highs and lows of a remarkable career. Ignoring Liza Minnelli's advice, he also dwells momentarily on Halston's ill-advised romance with Venezuelan hustler Victor Hugo and his bitchy friendships with Andy Warhol and Truman Capote. But he never delves beneath the impeccably tailored surface and, consequently, Halston will remain as much a mystery to non-aficionados after watching this entertaining piece of self-promotion as he probably was beforehand.

We get to know that he filled his Paul Rudolph townhouse and Olympic Tower office with mirrors and orchids and dressed in the same simple suit and shades whether he was posing with his Halstonettes or frittering away his talent in a blizzard of hedonistic excess. But Sudler-Smith never really explains the reasons for his hero's success or gauges the extent of his impact on world fashion. He speaks to all the right people, including Vogue's André Leon Talley, GQ's Jim Moore, Interview's Bob Colacello and Glenn O'Brien, models Pat Cleveland and Anjelica Huston, critics Harold Koda and Cathy Haryn, party pals Benjamin Liu and Richard and Robett Dupont, and fellow designers Ralph Rucci, Nicky Haslam, Naeem Kahn and Diane von Furstenberg. He even discovers Halston's contribution to such songs as Billy Joel's `Big Shot' and Chic's `Le Freak'. But the man himself proves elusive - unlike Sudler-Smith himself, whose ubiquitous presence opposite his guests or behind the wheel of a vintage Trans Am consistently begs the question `who he?'

As he did in the impressive North American travelogue Routes: Dancing to New Orleans (2008), Alex Reuben wisely keeps himself behind the camera in Newsreel 1. Consequently, he is able to concentrate on his subjects, as they demonstrate the musicality of daily life in a lyrical record of London that irresistibly recalls the classic Humphrey Jennings shorts Spare Time (1939) and Listen to Britain (1942). Formerly a DJ at venues like Those Rhumba Nights and A Night in Havana, Reuben believes film-making is more like football management than an artistic enterprise. But there's undoubted poetry in this observational snapshot that also packs something of a political punch.

The opening segment focuses on an Eritrean wedding and switches deftly from the formality of the church service to the joyous dancing of the guests at a traditional reception. The top shots down on the swaying, chattering figures may not be as intricate as anything devised by Busby Berkeley, but they are infinitely more charming, with the dehumanising tendencies of the great Hollywood choreographer being replaced by the vivacity of people genuinely enjoying themselves.

The same sense of pleasing leisure informs the images of long tables laid out beside the Thames and people milling around the water's edge in morning and dusk light. It's also present in the sing-song at a traditional boozer, which sees the customers join in the chorus of a variation on `Oh My What a Rotten Song' that satirises Tony Blair's relationship with George W. Bush.

But protest is as much part of this featurette as song and dance. Consequently, we see footage of musicians encouraging protesters thronging outside the Houses of Parliament and marching through the centre of the capital to protest against bank excesses and austerity cuts. Indeed, Reuben will return to demonstrations to stand amongst the drummers accompanying a rally in Oxford Circus and to watch a female violinist playing outside the Chinese Embassy on Portland Place to remonstrate against the detention of artist Ai Weiwei.

However, sights and sounds are always in perfect harmony here and Reuben allows his camera to alight on the textures and shapes of brickwork, girders, rivets, tree lines, windows, chimneys and even manhole covers. He also captures the tranquility of the countryside, as small clusters on a common perform an interpretative dance that seems to be about being blown by a gentle breeze. But the meaning is not important. It's the participating that counts and this message is emphasised in the sequence centring on an arts market in Arnold Circus in Shoreditch, in which people play fairground games, swivel in hula hoops, buy bric-a-brac, ride bicycles or enjoy a nice cup of tea to the funky accompaniment of a brass brand playing `Sweet Dreams Are Made of This'.

A moment of arty eccentricity provides a coda before the big finale, as Reuben films white and translucent balloons bouncing on their string tethers in an installation inside a vast warehouse that culminates in a volley of off-screen popping and shots of punctured rubber. Whether this is a reference to Britain's deflated economy is uncertain. But it links neatly into the aforementioned drum and violin events, which take markedly different approaches to making a point.

Lindsay Anderson and Karel Reisz captured the spirit of British indignation in the Richard Burton-narrated short March to Aldermaston (1959) and it will be fascinating to see whether Reuben decides to examine the less wholesome side of active opposition in a second newsreel chronicling this summer's riots and looting.