Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 6/10/2011)

George was always known as the Quiet One. However, he speaks with eloquence and conviction in this epic tribute, which achieves the remarkable feat of finding new angles on one of the most oft-told tales in modern showbiz, while also delving into the personality and philosophy of the Beatle who grew most as a man through his experiences in the best band popular music will ever know.

Despite having access to George's brothers Harry and Peter and his fellow Liverpool Institute alumnus Paul McCartney, Scorsese rather skates over the formative years and the influence of Harold and Louise Harrison's strict Catholic regime in such lower-middle-class addresses as 12 Arnold Grove, Wavertree and 25 Upton Green, Speke. No mention is made, either, of The Rebels, the skiffle group with whom George was playing when McCartney persuaded him to play the tricky and much-covered instrumental `Raunchy' on the top deck of a bus for a suitably impressed John Lennon. However, once George was accepted into the ranks of The Quarrymen, he became as key as Lennon and McCartney to sound that would be tempered during hundreds of badly paid gigs across Merseyside and the German port of Hamburg.

The section on the Reeperbahn phase of The Beatles's odyssey is among the most revealing of the entire film, as musician-cum-artist Klaus Voormann and photographer Astrid Kerchherr reflect on the endless live sets that so tightened the band's technique and the impact that the sudden death of bassist Stuart Sutcliffe had on the friendship between Lennon, McCartney and the 17 year-old Harrison (who was ended up being deported for performing underage). The moment when Kirchherr snapped John and George in the room where her lost lover used to paint is truly poignant and suggests the first stirrings of the spirituality that were to become so crucial to Harrison's music and existence.

Once Pete Best was jettisoned in favour of Ringo Starr in the autumn of 1962, The Beatles took off under the eager, but often naive management of Brian Epstein and the astute musical stewardship of Parlophone producer George Martin. Indeed, it was Harrison's remark about not liking Martin's tie that sealed the deal that led to the recording of `Love Me Do' and the start of Beatlemania. Yet, as Paul and Ringo recollect, while it was exciting being a Mop Top, it was rarely fun and the Fabs only really began to mature as musicians once they ceased touring in 1966 and the media furore died down. However, the camaraderie of the road had essentially been holding the combo together and the pressures of producing consistently innovative music began to take their toll, especially once Harrison had established his own artistic identity and no longer found being the creative balance between Lennon and McCartney rewarding.

Accounts of the break-up of The Beatles always make for dismaying viewing, as, for all the feuding in the studio, the foursome remained closer than siblings. Indeed, Eric Clapton notes that the disgruntlement he witnessed during the recording of `While My Guitar Gently Weeps' owed more to artistic frustration than any deeper antipathy. Yet Scorsese tactfully avoids prying too deeply into the ménage that led Harrison to divorce Pattie Boyd, who had inspired his and Clapton's respective classics `Something' and `Layla'. But the split was part of an overall re-directioning of Harrison's life that had started when he began studying the sitar with Indian maestro Ravi Shankhar and transcendental meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

Scorsese discusses Harrison's religious beliefs with touching sincerity, although he does draw on an anecdote by Joan Taylor (the wife of the band's publicist Derek Taylor) to make an amusing contrast between his search for God and the temporary enlightenment he got from LSD in the mid-60s. However, Scorsese elects not to mention Harrison's arrest for the possession of cannabis in March 1969 or his subsequent drug use and only alludes in passing to his tendency to infidelity after he married Mexican-born Olivia Trinidad Arias in 1978. This revelation is both frank and courageous and speaks volumes for her love for her husband and their son, Dhani, who became something of a musical collaborator in George's later years.

The limited coverage of Harrison's solo career is perhaps the sole flaw of a film that is also now available on DVD. Much is made of the backlog of songs that George had amassed during the three years between Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road and the since-jailed Phil Spector's memories of the All Things Must Pass sessions are generous and valuable. Scorsese also pays due heed to the significance of the Concert for Bangladesh (which initiated the all-star charity benefit), the critical failure of the 1974 American tour and the glorious success of The Traveling Wilburys, with Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne. But he ignores the albums produced between Living in the Material World (1973) and Cloud 9 (1987), as well as the posthumously released Brainwashed (2002). He even scarcely mentions the reunion with Paul and Ringo to record `Free As a Bird' and `Real Love' using John's old demo tapes.

Instead, Scorsese concentrates on the formation of HandMade Films that enabled him to save Monty Python's Life of Brian, the fixations with motor-racing, the ukulele and gardening at his Gothic retreat of Friar Park that gave him endless pleasure and the survival of both a cancer scare and a knife attack that brought him back into the headlines before he finally left his body (after many years of preparation) in Los Angeles on 29 November 2001. Consequently, Scorsese manages to establish that while Harrison relished his independence after 1970, he always enjoyed collaboration more than solo responsibility and celebrity. Moreover, he succeeds in finding the man behind the songs and, thus, this thoughtful, honest and fond appreciation is a fitting tribute to a decent if sometimes conflicted Liverpudlian who always suspected that, for all his earthly achievements, the best was yet to come.

While Harrison was still at the peak of his powers, British reggae was developing a distinctive new style, as Menelik Shabazz reveals in the fascinating documentary, The Story of Lover's Rock. Many of those who lived through its heyday will have been ignorant of the existence of this mellow sound, as Radio One and Top of the Pops all-but ignored it, even though it spawned some of the biggest hits of the late 1970s and early 80s and influenced bands as significant as The Police, UB40 and Culture Club. However, the record is finally put straight in this shrewd mix of interview, concert footage and comic sketch.

The latter feature the likes of Robbie Gee, Eddie Nestor, Glenda Jaxson, Wayne Rollins, John Simmit, Mr Cee and Rudi Lickwood and offer nostalgic recollections of slow `rub' or `scrub' dances, first love and the socio-cultural significance of Lover's Rock to first-generation Black Britons who wanted something that reflected their own experience more keenly than imported reggae from Jamaica. Moreover, it also gave shy boys a way to conveying their feelings without losing macho face, while girls could empathise with the emotions being expressed by female singers who were every bit as crucial to the style's popularity as their male counterparts.

The brains behind the sound were producer-musicians Dennis Bovell and John Kpiaye, who handled the Lover's Rock imprint for Dennis Harris's Dip Records following the success of 14 year-old Louisa Mark's `Caught You in a Lie' in 1975. The girl group Brown Sugar launched the label with `I'm in Love With a Dreadlocks' and Lover's Rock was soon dominating the reggae charts. However, breakthrough hits like Janet Kay's `Silly Games' (1979) and Trevor Walters's `Stuck on You' (1983) were comparatively rare - which seems a criminal shame, given the quality of the music show in tantalisingly brief clips here. Any one of Peter Hunnigale's `Be My Lady', Paul Dawkins's `Natural Woman', Sandra Cross's `I Adore You', Sylvia Tella's `Spell', Jean Adebambo's `Paradise', Winsome's `Am I the Same Girl', Lorna G's `Gotta Find a Way' and Carroll Thompson's `I Am So Sorry' should have graced the mainstream charts and it exposes the blinkered attitude at the time of the BBC and the UK record industry to music of black origin that wasn't soul or disco.

One of the intriguing aspects of the scene that Shabazz discusses is the limited nightlife options open to black kids and the importance of house parties in spreading Lover's Rock and forging a sense of community against a backdrop of SUS laws, unchecked racism, the 1981 New Cross fire massacre and the Brixton riots sparked by Operation Swamp 81. He also considers the role played by sound systems and dub plates in refining the tone and how the resulting reliance on bass became a cornerstone of DJ and Remix culture. In addition, he explores the extent to which Lover's Rock influenced Jamaican artists like Dennis Brown, Gregory Isaacs and Sugar Minott and how, after Maxi Priest scored reggae's first US No1 with `Close to You' in 1990, it even developed fan bases in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela.

Much of the genuine insight comes from Dennis Bovell and John Kpiaye. But Shabazz also includes contributions from actor-singer Victor Romeo Evans, Pauline Thomas and Paul Dwyer (Natural Touch), entrepreneur Levi Roots, Sylvia Tella, Astro and Earl (UB40), writer Neferatiti Ife, drummer Patrick Cann (drummer), social anthropologist Dr Lez Henry, Mykael Riley (Steel Pulse), dub producer Neil `Mad Professor' Fraser, Kofi (Brown Sugar), comedienne Angie La Mar, Tippa Irie, Maxi Priest, Hugh Francis, Lovella Ellis, Dean Marsh, actress Paulette German-Harris, poet Linton Kwesi Johnson and choreographer H' Kwame Patten, as well as such white adherents as writers Snoppy and John Masouri, Fashion Records duo John MacGillivray and Chris Lane and songstress Ava Leigh. What is striking about all the soundbites is the affection the talking-heads share for Lover's Rock and the gratitude they have for helping them forge an identity and find a place in a gradually more cosmopolitan and accepting Britain.

Staying in documentary mode, Marc and Nick Francis provide another perceptive perspective on the state of the global economy in When China Met Africa, which examines the ramifications of the 2006 Sino-African summit to increase aid to and investment in the planet's poorest continent. Maintaining a detached vérité stance, the sibling directors establish that the former colonial powers have failed to make good their promises to improve living standards and economic opportunity in Africa's newly independent nations. However, they also cast considerable doubt on the intentions of the Chinese ministers and entrepreneurs who have vowed to be a `good brother of Africa'.

The main focus falls on Liu Changming and Li Juango. Liu is a former office worker, who relocated to Zambia in 2001 in order to set up the Tian Xiang farm. However, he seems more intent on creating a legacy to bequeath to his family than stimulating growth in the local economy by providing steady jobs for the indigenous workers. Indeed, he has nothing but contempt for a labour force he considers lazy and unreliable and the mutual dislike inevitably precipitates a crisis when he withholds half the wages due because he reckons that the Zambians deserve nothing more and should be grateful to him for anything they do get.

Li is less confrontational. But he is a company man who unquestioningly puts loyalty to his employers above responsibility to the navvies building a new road in Luapula province. Indeed, this sense of superiority colours the reception accorded Zambian trade minister Felix Mutati, when he leads an unsuccessful mission to Beijing to convince the Chinese that there is more to his country than vital resources, cheap land and plentiful labour. The reaction he gets when he tries to promote tourism says much about Communist motives for dealing with Africa. But, even though it's pretty obvious where the film-makers's sympathies lie, they strive to remain objective amidst the accusations of sloth and exploitation.

The focus falls squarely on the standards maintained inside Gitmo camp in Luc Côté and Patricio Henríquez's Four Days Inside Guantánamo, which draws on seven hours of security camera footage recently declassified by the courts to show how Omar Khadr was interrogated by Canadian intelligence agents after the 15 year-old Pakistani-Canadian was captured in Afghanistan in 2002.

Having alone survived a relentless American aerial bombardment, Khadr became the first child soldier to be prosecuted for war crimes since the Second World War after allegedly throwing the grenade that killed special forces sergeant Christopher Speer. He was tortured at Bagram Air Base before being sent to Guantánamo, where he endured seven years of incarceration before finally getting his day in court. But it was his ordeal at the hands of ruthless CSIS operatives between 13-16 February 2003 that brought his name to international attention and this gruelling documentary examines its political, legal and psychological elements.

Making harrowing use of the released surveillance imagery in split screens beside the guest speakers, Côté and Henríquez also include contributions from the teenager's mother and oldest sister, Maha Elsamnah and Zaynab Khadr, and fellow detainees Moazzam Begg, Amdouh Habib, Ruhal Ahmed, Omar Deghayes and Richard Belmar. They also elicit comments on the questioning tactics from psychiatrists Raul Berdichevsky and Stephen Xenakis, Craig Mokhiber (the Deputy Director of the Office of the UN High Commission on Human Rights), Gar Pardy (the retired Director General of Canadian Consular Affairs), ex-Foreign Minister Bill Graham and Toronto Star journalist Michelle Shephard. But the most revealing insights are provided by defence lawyers Dennis Edney and Nathan Withling, US Navy lawyer Lieutenant Commander William Kuebler (who acted Khadr's military counsel from 2007-09) and Specialist Damien Corsetti, who was serving with the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion at Bagram during Khadr's inquisition.

Avoiding the temptation to re-try Khadr on film or delve into his father Ahmed Said Khadr's connections with al-Qaeda, Côté and Henríquez concentrate on the dynamics of the CSIS sessions, as the questioning grew increasingly aggressive as the responses became more frustrated and desperate. Thus, they are able to allow his eventual coerced confession to speak for itself and make his guilty plea bargain to reduce a potential 40-year sentence to eight seem all the more shockingly unjust.

While the case of Omar Khadr is worthy of genuine indignation, the furore that has erupted around the fictional incarceration depicted in Lucky McKee's The Woman seems a little excessive. However, this is not to trivialise the very serious issues raised by this latest exercise in the eminently resistible horror sub-genre known as `torture porn'.

The reputation of McKee's harrowing and provocative film goes before it, as a member of the Sundance audience declared it should be burned for its moral bankruptcy and scabrous degradation of women. However, while it shamelessly adopts the old Cecil B. De Mille tactic of depicting as much sin and depravity as possible before denouncing them in the final reel, this is not quite the exercise in gross sexism that has been claimed. It's certainly more than a little disingenuous to call a movie with such a misogynist villain a feminist tract, but it's not impossible to see this slick assault on American hypocrisy as both a savage satire on post-9/11 foreign policy and a link in the macabre screen chain that began with Psycho.

Indeed, in having the outwardly respectable Cleek clan capture and abuse a feral creature plucked from the Maine backwoods, McKee and novelist Jack Ketchum have consciously courted controversy. Moreover, they dwell so lasciviously on the maltreatment that their climactic denunciation of the hideous domestic tyranny and wanton persecution lacks sincerity. But the grotesque sitcomedic mood is determinedly maintained and McKee reinforces the good impression made with May (2002), The Woods (2006) and Red (2008).

Having been raised by wolves, Pollyanna McIntosh has learned to look after herself. But she is powerless to avoid capture by Sean Bridgers, a calculatingly self-assured court official who rules with a rod of iron over wife Angela Bettis and their children Lauren Ashley Carter, Zach Rand and Shyla Molhusen. However, such is his arrogance that even though he cruciform binds her against the wall of an outhouse cellar she still bites off his ring finger with her gnashing fangs and he is still seething when he introduces her to his family and declares that civilising her can be a project they can all enjoy.

Bettis clearly has her doubts, but knows not to cross Bridgers and ensures that Carter and Rand do their bit towards feeding McIntosh and keeping her clean. The adolescent Rand is more than a little curious about the naked savage and Bridgers defends him when his mother catches him pleasuring himself and insists that the stranger wears a dress. Carter, however, has other things on her mind, as she is pregnant and trying to hide her changing shape beneath baggy clothing and convince teacher Carlee Baker that she is fine, despite the early morning nausea and a need to miss gym class.

Eventually, Baker's concern gets the better of her and she comes to the house just after Bridgers has slugged Bettis cold for daring to tell him she is tired of his reign of terror and intends leaving with the girls. Having explained that Carter doesn't have a boyfriend, Bridgers implies that Baker has accused him of incest and attacks her and drags her to the kennels where he keeps a second wild woman chained in a cage. But, in his fury, he fails to notice that McIntosh has broken free and he pays for his brutality before McIntosh wanders back from whence she came with her fellow victim, the trusting Molhusen and the resigned Carter following in her wake.

There's no escaping the sickening chauvinism that Bridgers exhibits in dealing with his wife, his teenage daughter and his secretary (Lauren Schroeder), let alone the hostages he hunted down and trapped. But, while he allows Alex Vendler's camera to linger o'er long on McIntosh's breasts and refuses to flinch from the removal of her teeth with a pair of pliers, McKee is clearly denouncing such callous patriarchal certitude and almost adopts a sitcomedic tone in ridiculing the hackneyed suburban truism that father knows best. Moreover, in cutting sequences to the knowing lyrics of Sean Spillane's song-track, he also castigates the neo-con egotism that saw US service personnel treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib like sub-human trophies.

As the recurring references to gingerbread men testify, this is anything but subtle satire and it's worrying to note that not all audiences will appreciate the political points that McKee and Ketchum are trying to make in commending the indomitability of the human spirit. Indeed, there is a real danger that many fans of the more reprehensibly fetishistic forms of torture porn will derive sordid pleasure from McIntosh's ordeal. But this semi-sequel to Andrew van den Houten's Offspring (2009) - a tale of everyday cannibalism that also starred McIntosh and was also adapted by Ketchum from his own novel - is worth seeing for the primitive ferocity of the remarkable McIntosh's expressions, the quiet courage of Bettis's self-loathing revolt, the touching shame of Carter's abject secret and the Bush-like bullet-headedness of Bridgers's conviction in his right to do whatever he wants. But, be warned, this relentlessly graphic study of pitiless inhumanity as likely to arouse fierce controversy as Tom Six's The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009) and Srdjan Spasojevic's A Serbian Film (2010).

Finally, this week, Ewan McGregor reunites with Young Adam director David Mackenzie for the under-scripted and underwhelming science-fiction romance, Perfect Sense. Narrated by Katy Engels in a wistful manner that places more emphasis on cod poetics than an explanation of the global pandemic that is robbing people of their senses, the action lacks the urgency and trepidation expected of an apocalyptic scenario. More fatally, however, despite a surfeit of naked physicality, there is precious little chemistry between McGregor's commitment-phobic chef and Eva Green's epidemiologist, who is closely guarding her emotions after suffering a broken heart.

When not confiding her woes to older sister Connie Nielsen, Green is helping doctor Stephen Dillane cope with the outbreak of olfactory cases at their Glasgow hospital. But she allows herself to become distracted by McGregor, who just happens to work with best buddy Ewen Bremner in Denis Lawson's restaurant across the courtyard from her apartment. He can't sleep with anyone else in his bed and she seems happy for their fling to have a reckless impermanence.

However, when they also begin to lose their sense of smell after enduring an unbearable sadness, Green and McGregor become increasingly reliant upon each other, as they savour the senses left available to them before they also vanish. As news broadcasts report the ramifications of identical incidences on other continents, the pair freewheel around the city and listen to busker Anamaria Marinca before gorging on soap and other inedibles after losing the ability to taste.

Lawson's business briefly seems to be in jeopardy, but patrons eventually begin eating out again to enjoy the ambience of the surroundings and the presentation of the food rather than its flavour. But, as the action succumbs to silence following humanity's mass loss of hearing, McGregor launches into a room-smashing fury that drives Green away and the lovers are only reunited for a brief time before the planet is plunged into darkness.

Taking the premise of Fernando Meirelles's 2008 adaptation of José Saramago's novel Blindness to its logical conclusion, this might have been a fascinating treatise on our relationship with senses we too often take for granted. However, Dane Kim Fupz Aakeson's screenplay never delves beneath the surface of the science or the fiction. Consequently, while Mackenzie and cinematographer Gilles Nuttgens bring a disconcerting gloom to proceedings (which is evocatively reinforced by Max Richter's mournful score), the storyline strands McGregor and Green as polar opposite personalities whose passion never takes on the desperation that the end of sensual days would seem to demand.