Parky at the Pictures (DVD 30/6/2011)

When her father is gunned down on the streets of Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1878, Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) vows to bring his killer to justice. But, while Judge Parker (Jake Walker) isn't averse to a hanging (as the Coen's show in a chilling denunciation of capital punishment and the period's racist bigotry), he has no intention of pursuing Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) across Choctaw territory. So, Mattie seeks out bibulous lawman Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) and he agrees to track Chaney down for the price on his head. Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) is equally keen on securing a share of the reward money and the unlikely trio set off across harsh terrain with the vague inkling that Chaney is laying low with an outlaw band led by Lucky Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper).

Having fought her corner with an Irish undertaker (Jarlath Conroy), a boarding house landlady (Candyce Hinkle) and a sharp horse dealer (Dakin Matthews), Mattie soon proves to be nobody's fool and Rooster and LaBoeuf's patronising attitude towards her gradually becomes more paternalistic. But they have little time for each other, with LaBoeuf clearly considering himself to be superior after serving in the Civil War with the Virginia Regiment, while Rooster rode with Quantrill's infamous Raiders. Moreover, he clearly considers that Cogburn disregards the law as much as upholding it, as suspects often have a habit of dying in his custody. But Mattie manages to keep the pair focused on the task in hand and invokes the Protestant work ethic to remind them of their responsibilities. However, LaBoeuf finally tires of Rooster's taunts and he is forced to tackle Chaney and the Pepper gang alone - albeit with a little unexpected assistance.

Much has been made of the Dude playing an iconic Duke role. But Bridges's creation is entirely fresh, with his mumbling delivery owing as much to Brando as Wayne. Moreover, while Wayne had no qualms in upstaging Kim Darby and Glen Campbell, Bridges self-deprecatingly shares scenes with Steinfeld and Damon and, in the process, makes this a more intriguing character study than its predecessor. It's also a much subtler evocation of the Old West, with Jess Gonchor's production design and Roger Deakins's cinematography evoking the art of Thomas Eakins and Carter Burwell's score borrowing liberally from contemporary hymns.

The Coens tend to avoid overt political messages. Consequently, the points made about gender, age and race are either playfully clichéd or subversively deft. Yet, while they succeed in demythologising both the period and the genre, the 1903 coda has a wistfulness that invites the conclusion that, for all the troubles associated with Civil Rights and Vietnam, the time when True Grit was first filmed seems better than the present day.

Although it's set in the 1990s, David O. Russell's The Fighter recalls the noirish boxing pictures that Hollywood produced in the decade after the Second World War. Charting the relationship between half-brothers Dicky Eklund and `Irish' Micky Ward, this blue-collar domestic drama invokes the spirit of John Garfield in Body and Soul (1947) and Robert Ryan in The Set-Up (1949). But, in profiling a pug seeking love while awaiting his big break, it most specifically invites comparison between Mark Wahlberg and Paul Newman in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956).

Inspired by the HBO documentary High on Crack Street, which showed how onetime contender Dicky Eklund had become an addict in his home town of Lowell, Massachusetts, the action has the unpredictable feel of an actuality. Indeed, Russell even shoots the boxing sequences like sportscasts rather than allowing the camera into the ring to capture every wince and grimace as the punches land. Consequently, the story has a haphazard quality that often recalls a fighter lurching between blows.

Ward (Wahlberg) is recovering from the latest setback in his pursuit of welterweight glory when Eklund (Christian Bale) and his mother-manager Alice (Melissa Leo) agree to him fighting a much heavier opponent in an ill-advised, eleventh-hour.match. Ward is soundly thrashed and finds solace in bartender Charlene Fleming (Amy Adams), who was a promising college athlete before she dropped out. However, Alice and her seven daughters (who have become accustomed to sponging off Ward) insist she is a bad influence and try to talk him out of both the romance and an offer to take up with a new trainer in Las Vegas.

Eklund promises to match any financial rewards the relocation might have entailed, but succeeds only in getting himself arrested when he sets up his girlfriend as a prostitute and tries to steal the john's car while impersonating a police officer. Consequently, he is in prison when the HBO show airs and he is so ashamed of his fall from grace that he vows to clean up his act. Meanwhile, Ward's father, George (Jack McGee), has encouraged him to sign up with new manager Sal Lanano (Frank Renzulli) and he is soon training for his comeback.

On a visit to Eklund, Ward tells him about breaking from the family grasp and accuses him of exploiting his potential to fulfil his own shattered dreams. But, when the bout begins to turn against him, Ward remembers the advice that Eklund gave him about his opponent and he scores a shock victory and earns a tilt at the title. However, his gratitude only extends so far and he loses his temper with Eklund when he gets out of jail and tries to muscle into his preparations for the big fight. Yet, even though Eklund gets whooped by Ward during a sparring session, he pleads with Charlene that he remains a key member of the team and that Ward will only win in London if he is in his corner.

Christian Bale and Melissa Leo won Best Supporting Oscars for their sterling performances. Undergoing another of his trademark physical transformations, the former particularly impresses as the extrovert loser still trading on the moment when he floored Sugar Ray Leonard and refusing to face up to the true extent of his sorry decline. But Leo's display is less nuanced and she was exceedingly lucky to triumph over co-star Adams, the estimable Hailee Steinfeld, the charming Helena Bonham Carter in The King's Speech and the terrifying Jackie Weaver in The Animal Kingdom.

But, solid though the acting is, the film's credibility comes from Judy Becker's interiors and Hoyte Van Hoytema's handheld camerawork, which makes the intense moments of domestic dysfunction feel more like brutal physical confrontations than the bouts themselves. Nevertheless, Russell and his screenwriters rely too heavily on white trash caricature (no wonder the sisters have protested about their depiction) and, even though they are being led by actual events, cannot prevent melodrama from intruding in the latter stages.

If The Fighter is about making the most of life, John Cameron Mitchell's reworking of David Lindsay-Abaire's acclaimed stage play Rabbit Hole is about coming to terms with death. Carefully scripted and enacted, this is never as harrowingly intrusive as François Ozon's Sous le Sable (2000) or Nanni Moretti's The Son's Room (2001). But it nevertheless approaches the subject of grief with a similar mix of sensitivity, insight and wit as Shana Feste's The Greatest (2009), in which Susan Sarandon and Pierce Brosnan's struggle to accept the loss of teenage son Aaron Johnson is only partially eased by the presence of his pregnant girlfriend, Carey Mulligan.

Eight months have passed since Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart's four year-old son ran into the road after the family dog. They haven't had sex since and attend group therapy sessions to rationalise their feelings. But, while Eckhart finds solace in the tales of woe, Kidman can't resist mocking the simpering Christians who attribute their bereavement to God's greater plan and die-hards like Sandra Oh, who continues to attend meetings years after their initial anguish has been assuaged.

Kidman's pain is hardly eased by younger sister Tammy Blanchard's revelation she is pregnant by black musician Giancarlo Esposito or by the fact that mother Dianne Wiest insists upon comparing her grandson's death with his 30 year-old uncle's fatal drug overdose. However, a chance encounter with Miles Teller, the teenager whose car caused the accident, sets Kidman on the path to recovery. But her sudden urge to give away her child's clothes and move to a new house clashes with Eckhart's desire to surround himself with things that remind him of his lost boy.

Despite opening out his play, Lindsay-Abaire retains the emphasis on Kidman and Eckhart dealing with their emotions in isolation rather than as a couple. Fascinated by Teller's homemade comic-book about a parallel universe and the concept that somewhere her alter ego could be having a nice life, Kidman follows him from school and meets secretly with him in parks before his ill-advised visit to the house prompts Eckhart to lose his temper and nearly blunder into a fling with the sexily sympathetic Oh.

Lindsay-Abaire is less successful, however, in making the audience care about Blanchard (a spoilt brat who stole Esposito from a friend) or Wiest, whose neglect of her living children to mourn a worthless scoundrel feels more than a little contrived. Furthermore, towards the end of the story, Lindsay-Abaire and Mitchell clumsily insert a slow-motion flashback to the moment of the crash that smacks more of soap opera than modulated melodrama.

Yet there are several well-judged scenes, among them the opening that sees a well-meaning neighbour trample on the flowers that Kidman has just planted in the garden in a bid to restore some normalcy and Eckhart's choked effort to show prospective buyers around his son's bedroom. However, Mitchell - who is best known for more outré projects like Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001) and Shortbus (2006) - overdoes the use of close-ups and deprives the viewer of reading into the principals' performances. Anton Sanko's strings and piano score proves similarly coercive. But an air of authentic sadness pervades the picture and, if the photogenic Kidman and Eckhart and the idyllic Westchester County setting occasionally seem a touch too upmarket for the material, it certainly makes for affecting viewing.

On 7 October 1955, Allen Ginsberg got to his feet in the Six Gallery on Fillmore Street in San Francisco. The words he spoke over the next few minutes changed his life forever and significantly altered the course of American literature. However, in recreating this landmark reading in Howl, veteran documentarists Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman allow themselves to be caught up in the moment and struggle to convey either the psychological angst that prompted the eponymous poem's composition or its ramifications after Lawrence Ferlinghetti was charged with obscenity after publishing it through his City Lights imprint.

In addition to reconstructions of the atmospheric premiere and the 1957 trial, Epstein and Friedman also rely on animated sequences by former Ginsberg illustrator Eric Drooker and a vérité interview with James Franco as the 29 year-old poet that draws on actual transcripts. Moreover, they also chart his interaction with such Beat icons as Jack Kerouac (Todd Rotondi), Neal Cassady (Jon Prescott) and Peter Orlovsky (Aaron Tveit).

Yet the harder the pair try to make the verses seem dangerous and relevant to a modern audience, the more the arguments become drily academic, while the ingenious structure grows more formally rigid. Even the courtroom exchanges between Judge Clayton Horn (Bob Balaban), Ferlinghetti (Andrew Rogers), prosecutor Ralph McIntosh (David Strathairn), defence counsel Jake Ehrlich (Joe Hamm) and expert witnesses David Kirk (Jeff Daniels), Gail Potter (Mary-Louise Parker), Mark Schorer (Treat Williams) and Luther Nichols (Alessandro Nivola) seem staged to expose (and even ridicule) the homophobia and artistic repressiveness of the Eisenhowerian Cold War times.

So, only Franco's nervously garrulous responses to his off-screen inquisitor make much impact, as he frets about his mother's mental condition, his poet father's attitude to his work, his sexuality and desire to life an unconstrained life and his determination to speak and write freely on any topic of his choosing. Yet, even here, it's clear that we are only being allowed to see aspects that show Ginsberg in a favourable light, while all who challenge him inhabit a moral and intellectual darkness.

Edward Lachman's monochrome and colour photography, Thérèse DePrez's period designs and Carter Burwell's score could scarcely be improved upon. But in seeking to break from the traditional informational style that Epstein utilised to such good effect in The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), the co-directors risk alienating those unfamiliar with Ginsberg and his poem's socio-political context. Consequently, this hypnotic, but erratic anti-docudrama has to be deemed a noble failure, as both a biographical study and a condemnation of an era.

Sadly, Spike Lee's Miracle at St Anna is little better. So stuffed with good intentions that it sprawls to over 160 minutes, this cumbersome adaptation of James McBride's novel about four Buffalo Soldiers trapped behind enemy lines in 1940s Tuscany lacks discipline and focus. The activities of African-American troops in war-torn Italy were first commemorated on film in Paisà (1946). But, while Lee has clearly designed this flashbacking drama to be an earnest tribute to service personnel who had to endure the humiliation of segregation as well as the dangers of combat, it has none of the perception or precision of Roberto Rossellini's masterly series of vignettes.

The action opens in 1983, as ageing post office worker Laz Alonso is arrested for gunning down a customer. In searching for clues as to why the Purple Heart-winning Puerto Rican would resort to such shocking violence, cop John Turturro and journalist Joseph Gordon-Levitt find a segment of the Renaissance Ponte Santa Trinita behind his wardrobe and this prompts a return to Northern Italy in 1944, when Corporal Alonso was part of the 92nd Infantry Division alongside Staff Sergeant Derek Luke, Sergeant Michael Ealy and Private Omar Benson Miller.

Treated with contempt by Captain Walton Goggins, the quartet are ordered to hold the line during a perilous river crossing near the Santa Trinita bridge - which is superbly staged and chillingly accompanied by a radio broadcast by Axis Sally (Alexandra Maria Lara) that highlights American attitudes to race. Typically, they get left behind and seek refuge in the medieval hillside settlement of Colognora, where the hulking Miller tends to seven year-old orphan Matteo Sciabordi, who had been spared by deserter Jan Pohl after his entire family was slaughtered during a Nazi attack on the neighbouring village of Sant'Anna di Stazzema.

They are sheltered by local Fascist Omero Antonutti and his beautiful daughter, Valentina Cervi (who attracts the attention of both Luke and Ealy). However, resistance leader Pierfrancesco Favino and his lieutenant Sergio Albelli are keen to get the Americans out of the vicinity as quickly as possible and they begin plotting a route through the surrounding German forces. But Pohl knows that one of the partisans is a traitor and his death sparks an internecine struggle that brings Goggins to the village just as the Wehrmacht launch a counter-offensive.

The final Italian sequence is ably staged and combines heroism, self-sacrifice and sentimentality in a manner reminiscent of so many Hollywood war movies produced to boost Home Front morale. But Lee allows too many longueurs and digressions to sap the narrative momentum as the strangers become acclimatised to life in Colognora. Moreover, he trades in too many stereotypes for the drama to feel wholly authentic, with the hissable Goggins being particularly clumsily drawn whether he's treating the foursome as cannon fodder or threatening to court martial them for refusing to abandon Sciabordi and his protectors to their fate. Thus, instead of feeling imposing and noble, this seems prosaic and melodramatic.

If the title of Miracle at St Anna may not seem entirely apt, there's no doubting the validity of the one selected by Jen and Sylvia Soska for Dead Hooker in a Trunk, as it follows the example of Snakes on a Plane and Hobo With a Shotgun in summing up the essential action to a T. Shot on a shoestring with more technical nous than narrative cogency, this is destined for cult status, especially as the Soskas are identical Canadian twins who not only wrote, produced and directed this manic slice of Z-grade mayhem, but also starred in it and helped out with the shooting, editing and effects under the watchful eye of their former film school tutor and fellow low-rung auteur, CJ Willis.

Sylvia and Jen are identical twins with very different attitudes. Jen's best friend (Willis) is a devout member of the local church community, while Sylvia's addict pal Rikki Gagne is part of a punk band. The morning after a particularly riotous gig, the Soskas wake to discover the corpse of prostitute Tasha Moth in the boot of their car. They have no idea how it got there and Jen wants to call the cops.

Instead, they take the cadaver to a nearby motel to wash it and allow manager David Barkes to have his sick way with it in return for a free room. Evading the cops (after Sylvia does a striptease), the friends fall foul of some nasty dealers while Gagne scores some dope and Jen has her eye poked out with a baseball bat. Some time later, Gagne loses an arm and seems none the worse for having it inexpertly stitched back on. Indeed, she seems on mellow form after they dig a grave and then build a campfire after deciding not to bury Moth. But danger is always lurking somewhere, as cowboy pimp John Tench and priest Loyd Bateman take an inordinate interest in the girls' addled antics.

There is absolutely no point in trying to detect plot logic or character development in this gleeful exercise in knowing absurdity and bad taste. Often feeling as though Eli Roth and Sion Sono had teamed on a madcap remake of The Trouble With Harry, this is violent, bleak and as much misanthropic as it is misogynist. It sometimes makes no sense and often smacks of self-conscious quirkiness, while the handheld camerawork is nausea-inducing and the sound quality is occasionally execrable.

Yet it is amusingly scripted and, as the Soskas were able to call on the services of Hollywood stunt crews who were idle during the 2007 writers' strike, the action sequences are surprisingly polished for a first-time outing. Moreover, for all its flaws and excess, this also has something of a melancholic heart (which is unusual for what is often dismissed as grindhouse fare) and an offbeat morality that is reinforced by Carlos Gallardo making a cameo appearance as God.

Remaining on the film-making margins, the debuting Keith Bearden examines the fate of discarded porn stars in Meet Monica Velour, a rite-of-passage comedy that also manages to avoid (albeit only just) lapsing into egregious chauvinism. This may not always be original or adroit. But it features a standout turn by Kim Cattrall, who gained 20lbs for the role. Moreover, it has been designed and photographed with an affectionate degree of taste-defying sleaziness by Lou A. Trabbie III and Masanobu Takayanagi.

High school graduate Dustin Ingram is content to exist in his own little world. He lives with his dotingly grumpy grandfather Brian Dennehy and divides his time between hanging with 12 year-old neighbour Daniel Yelsky and classmate Jee Young Han and adding to his collection of 1930s Tin Pan Alley classics and 1980s porn movies. When Dennehy bequeaths him his hotdog cart, Ingram embarks reluctantly upon his new career. However, collector Keith David is prepared to buy the vintage wiener truck for $5000 on the proviso that Ingram can transport it from Washington to rural Indiana.

Initially, he isn't keen. But, when he discovers that porn pin-up Kim Cattrall will be making a guest appearance at a strip club close to the delivery address, he girds his loins and heads off across country. Unfortunately, Cattrall has lost the figure that made her such a video vixen and Ingram gets into a fight with a couple of hecklers during her striptease. But his act of chivalry earns him an invitation to her trailer-park home and he is soon her only ally in a battle to win custody of her eight year-old daughter from her vicious ex-husband.

Evidently revelling in the opportunity to play against the sophisticated sensuality that became her speciality as Samantha Jones in Sex and the City, Cattrall gives a courageous, if calculating display as the embittered and foul-mouthed fiftysomething who appreciates the adoration of a much younger fan, but knows (mostly) where to draw the line. She is particularly amusing in the camp heyday clips shown in the opening montage, although she also conveys a touching wisp of vulnerability beneath her brassy exterior. The gawky Ingram is also nerdily effective (if slightly creepy), as he realises that the woman of his dirty dreams is self-obsessed, demanding and all too human.

Although it most closely resembles Christian Hallmann and Magnus Paulsen's 2002 documentary Desperately Seeking Seka - in which Swedish journalist Stefan Nylén crosses America in the hope of meeting his porn idol Dorthea Hundley Patton - this derivative dramedy also contains elements of Boogie Nights (1997), Ghost World (2001) and Napoleon Dynamite (2004). But in striving to show the folly of the virginal Ingram's lustful crush, Bearden fails to emphasise the exploitation and seediness of Cattrall's past and the grinding awfulness of her impoverished present.

The humour is equally politically incorrect and often just as misjudged in West Is West, writer Ayub Khan-Din's long-delayed sequel to his 1999 culture clash comedy, East Is East. Despite focusing again on Om Puri and his bickering mixed-race family and reuniting several of the original cast members, this feels more like an afterthought than the essential continuation of an unfinished story. Consequently, not even the best efforts of the ever-watchable Puri can stop this well-meaning, but calculatingly populist plea for greater understanding between Britain's different ethnic groups from resoundingly misfiring.

It's 1976 and five years have passed since Salford housewife Linda Bassett stepped in to adjudicate between her chippy-owning Pakistani husband and their entirely assimilated offspring. Now only 15 year-old Aqib Khan remains at home and when he is arrested for truancy and shoplifting in reaction to being racially bullied at school, Puri decides to accompany him to his country village so that he can learn about his heritage. However, Puri hasn't been home himself since the 1940s and he has to suffer the frustrations and indignities of being an outsider in his own land. Moreover, he also has to make his peace with first wife Ila Arun, while Khan learns a few valuable life lessons from sagacious holy man Nadim Sawalha and passes them on to his naive brother Emil Marwa, who is desperately trying to find a suitable bride.

As though realising that his plot was heading nowhere slowly, Khan-Din suddenly decides to jet in Bassett and her best mate Lesley Nicol to ramp up the multicultural misunderstandings and slip in a few laboured asides on the current location of British Asian loyalties. But the lame jokes about sanitation, camels and language barriers continue to come thick and fast and not even poignant encounters between Puri and his wives can stop this from feeling like a 1970s sitcom.

Cinematographer Peter Robertson capably contrasts the cramped northern backstreets with the lush rural landscapes (which were actually shot near Chandigarh) and the cast couldn't work any harder. But the narrative mix of smiles and tears is too obviously contrived, while the wit is often strained. Moreover, the debuting Andy De Emmony's overstated direction too often betrays his determination to eschew his small-screen roots.

Another teenager goes on a life-changing odyssey in Chris Kennedy's Doing Time for Patsy Cline (1997), a genial mix of road movie, prison buddy drama and coming-of-age saga that is enlivened by the odd burst of song. However, by inserting flashes forward at strategic points from around the mid-point, Kennedy risks fragmenting the action simply to disguise its more blatant generic conventions. Moreover, he also emphasises the more sentimental aspects of the storyline once it shifts from the wide open spaces of rural Australia to the more forbidding confines of Nashville, Tennessee.

Teenager Matt Day has always wanted to be a country singer. So, despite their misgivings, farming parents Anne Byron and Roy Billing save up to buy him a plane ticket to America. However, they can't afford his fare to Sydney and Day hitches a ride with chancer Richard Roxburgh and his vibrant redheaded girlfriend Miranda Otto. Being somewhat sheltered and naive, Day is smitten at first sight and willingly agrees to share the rap when Roxburgh is arrested for stealing a car and possessing drugs. But he is soon distracted by the presence in the next cell of Tony Barry, Kiri Paramore and Laurence Coy, whose belie their tough guy exteriors by proving to be sensitive musicians.

Just as the plot seems to be settling down behind bars, Kennedy jolts it forward Stateside and gives away a whole raft of information about Day and Otto recording a song together, Otto being diagnosed with cancer and Roxburgh perishing in a plane crash. Then he returns to show how kindly cop Tom Long uses his honeymoon to help Day fulfil his ambitions and how he realises there is no place like home on hearing that Billing has also fallen ill and Byron needs him back on the farm.

Much will depend on whether the viewer finds this narrative dislocation inspired or infuriating. Many will find it contrived and will resent the way it robs a formulaic, but still engaging drama of any suspense. But others will applaud Kennedy's attempt to show how Day's eventual success is rooted in tragic circumstances that owe much to the all-too-short life of Patsy Cline herself. He is greatly assisted by Peter Best's music - which follows the rules of the integrated musical by using lyrics to comment on the action - as well as Roger Ford's astute production design and Andrew Lesnie's contrasting use of Australian daylight and American darkness. But it's Roxburgh's roguish charm, Day's guileless gaucherie and Otto's enticing fragility that allow this modern-day fairy-tale to overcome its structural affectation and touch the heart.

Sadly, Rachel Perkins's Bran Nue Dae is more likely to entice those who remember the 1990 Jimmy Chi stage production than anyone coming to it for the first time 20 years later. Oscar winner Andrew Lesnie's photography is handsome enough, but the clumsy staging and lamentable shortage of memorable songs means that this represents a disappointing follow-up to Perkins's engaging featurette, One Night the Moon (2001).

It's 1969 and Rocky McKenzie is about to leave the west coast port of Broome to return to his Catholic boarding school in Perth, where evangelical mother Ningali Lawford hopes he will find his vocation to the priesthood. However, baseball bat-wielding Germanic padre Geoffrey Rush has put McKenzie right off that idea. So, when he's caught raiding the fridge for a midnight feast, McKenzie heads for home in the company of hobo Ernie Dingo (who insists he's his uncle) and hippie tourists Missy Higgins and Tom Budge.

With Rush in hot pursuit, all sorts of misadventures befall the travellers en route, with Dingo being lured under a condom tree by Deborah Mailman and man-eating Magda Szubanski proving handy with a fly swat at her roadhouse. But the harder the cast tries, the hammier and the less amusing its antics become and not even McKenzie's crush on church chorine Jessica Mauboy can perk things up. With the exception of `Nothing I Would Rather Be (Than to Be an Aborigine)', Cezary Skubisevski's numbers are anything but show-stopping. Yet the mildly subversive lyrics too often get lost amidst Stephen Page's blocky choreography and Rachel Oshlack's fussy cutting. Indeed, the only genuine musical highlight features a truckload of Aborigines doing the Zorba the Greek dance to Mikis Theodorakis's famous bouzouki theme.

Nothing so flamboyant happens in Praise (1998), Andrew McGahan's adaptation of his own novel that has been turned into something akin to Last Tango in Brisbane by debuting director John Curran. Grunge movie fans might also detect traces of Betty Blue and Dogs in Space (both 1986) in this intense and courageously played study of mental fragility and substance abuse, while also spotting the influence it had on Heath Ledger and Abbie Cornish's doomed romance in Candy (2006). But a serious dramatic flaw in the final third prevents this from being as renowned as the aforementioned.

Bored with his job in a back street bottle shop, introverted asthmatic slacker Peter Fenton heads home to drink himself into oblivion with the old boys who share his crummy apartment hotel. He is interrupted, however, by Sacha Horler, a garrulous, overweight barmaid with serious eczema, who tells him she is having a party while her parents are away. On arriving, Fenton discovers he is the only guest. But, being too idle to leave and too easily misled to waste the drink and drugs Horler has laid on, he stays and they spend hours chatting about anything and everything until the real purpose of her plan becomes clear.

The sex scenes that follow are as graphic as they are desperate and sad. Fenton is completely ill-equipped physically or psychologically to help the insatiable Horler, while her realisation that he is the best someone with her bulk and attitude can attract makes her all the more determined to keep hold of him. She also needs him as an excuse to avoid moving to Darwin with her soldier father. But, just as Horler declares her love, a combination of Fenton's chain smoking and his dread of being trapped in a relationship he is too passive to escape aggravates his condition. Moreover, his ex-girlfriend, Marta Dusseldorp, decides she wants him back.

Such is their preoccupation with Fenton and Horler's differences that neither McGahan nor Curran seem particularly interested in the things they have in common. Thus, they make little effort to put their ennui into a tangible social or emotional context. They also place too much emphasis on the couple's compulsive and self-destructive tendencies at the expense of their unexpected tenderness. But the drama stalls once the focus falls on Fenton's lassitude, as his unmotivated waster is nowhere near as compelling a character as the abrasive, libidinous and yet tragically vulnerable Horler. Thus, having burned brightly and occasionally threatened to rage out of control, this daring and sometimes darkly humorous drama rather fizzles out.