Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 9/10/2013)

In this article, we shall take a look at the English-language pictures on view, while subsequent offerings will peruse the European and World Cinema slates. As this is the UK's biggest screen event, it makes sense to kick off with the British titles and few have garnered more advance attention than Stephen Frears's Philomena, an adaptation of Martin Sixsmith's book The Lost Child of Philomena Lee, in which Steve Coogan plays the onetime BBC journalist who decides to help Irish Catholic Judi Dench track down the son she was forced to give up for adoption by nuns in Roscrea in 1955. Culminating in the White House revelation, the picture combines outrage at institutionalised conservatism in 1950s Ireland and 1980s America with plenty of odd couple humour and some genuinely potent pathos.

Victorian gender politics come under the spotlight in The Invisible Woman, Ralph Fiennes's handsome take on Claire Tomalin's 1992 account of 18 year-old actress Ellen Ternan's affair with married father of 10, Charles Dickens. Flashing back from an 1883 Margate school production of Wilkie Collins's No Thoroughfare to the 1857 Manchester premiere of The Frozen Deep, the action reveals how Ternan (Felicity Jones) met Dickens (Fiennes) and coped with the reaction of her mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Collins (Tom Hollander) to a furtive affair that would ultimately cause the novelist to leave wife Catherine (Joanna Scanlon). Joanna Hogg examines another creative relationship in crisis in Exhibition, as artists Viv Albertine and Liam Gillick decide to sell the modernist house in London they have occupied for the past 18 years and are afflicted by the pressures of the upheaval and the memories, dreams, anxieties and disappointments is disturbs. 

The problems start for Ed Stoppard and Sophia Myles when they move with eight year-old son Isaac Andrews to a new house in the country in Adam Wimpenny supernatural debut, Blackwood. However, college professor Stoppard (who is recovering from an emotional breakdown) senses that something is not quite right about the place and, while investigating a mysterious disappearance, comes to suspect that war veteran Russell Tovey may know something about the spectral visions he has been experiencing of a masked boy. A quest of a more innocent, but nonetheless risky nature occupies Bel Powley and Alfie Field in Arthur Landon's Side By Side, as a promising teenage runner insists on accompanying her younger game-mad sibling in his bid to track down the grandfather in Scotland who can prevent nan Diana Quick from being sent to a home and Powley's agent, Sara Stewart, from becoming Field's guardian while Powley attends a boarding school to develop her athletic prowess.

Three more youths have uncertainty hanging over them in Bruce Goodison's Leave to Remain, the culmination of a three-year project to present a fresh perspective on being a teenage asylum seeker that sees experienced actors like Toby Jones guiding Zarrien Masieh, Naoufal Ousellam and Yasmin Mwanza develop their characters in a credible manner in the face of an often hostile reception. The impact that immigration can have on individuals and families alike is explored by Destiny Ekaragha in Gone Too Far, an opening out of a 2008 Bola Agbaje play that centres on Malachi Kirby's efforts to flirt with trouble-making temptress Shanika Warren-Markland while trying to help Yoruba-speaking brother OC Ukeje settle in Peckham after arriving from Nigeria. The problem of finding room for romance in an already busy life preoccupies a a twentysomething Reading graduate in Justin Hardy's Love Me Till Monday, as Georgia Maguire finds herself uncertain whether to commit to quirky boss Tim Plester or dashing workmate Royce Pierreson after casting a divination spell from an old book of English magick.

If this genial romcom offers a few insights into the state of the nation, Xiaolu Gu presents several more in Late at Night: Voices of Ordinary Madness, a patchwork vox pop documentary that uses sobering recent news stories to link pronouncements by such diverse residents of a gentrified East London as beggars, financiers, street gang members, café owners, market traders, decorators, newsvendors and party girls. The changing face of the capital is also the theme of Paul Kelly's How We Used to Live, which utilises colour footage from the BFI National Archive to chronicle the `New Elizabethan' age and assess how the cautious optimism of the postwar austerity era seeped away as the nation missed its opportunities in the 1960s and paid a heavy price in the divisive period of retrenchment heralded by Thatcherism.

Saint Etienne's Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs respectively contributed to the script and score. But the spotlight falls on a very different aspect of the London music scene in Gracie Otto's The Last Impressario, which profiles impresario Michael White, whose 1970 West End revue, Oh! Calcutta! scandalised an establishment that hadn't been quite as liberated by the Swinging Sixties as it had thought. John Lennon contributed a sketch to the show and he had another reason to be grateful to White, as he brought Yoko Ono to London, along with Merce Cunningham and Pina Bausch. Recalling shows like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and The Rocky Horror Show and films like Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), this is a fitting tribute to an old trouper. And Ryan White pays equally fulsome tribute to an unsung heroine in Good Ol' Freda, which reveals how a teenage typist's life was changed forever by a lunchtime visit to a subterranean club in a Liverpool city centre side street. Smitten the moment she saw The Beatles at The Cavern, Freda Kelly spent the next decade running their fan club, while also working as a secretary to their manager, Brian Epstein. A self-effacing witness to the triumphs and trials of the most important band in musical history, Kelly (who is still tapping away in her late 60s) remains fiercely protective of the Fabs and their legacy. But few saw them perform more often (around 190 times) and her affectionate, but clear-sighted insights into their dealings with each other and the enigmatic Epstein make for compelling viewing.

George Harrison was a big fan of motor-racing and two pictures cover the sport at LFF 2013. In 1, Paul Crowder traces the history of Formula One from the inaugural World Championship in 1950, through the deadly era that claimed the lives of Jim Clark, Jochen Rindt, François Cevert, Ronnie Peterson and Gilles Villeneuve, to the modern era when safety became more paramount following the 1994 death of Ayrton Senna. Harrison wrote the song `Faster' as a tribute to close friend of Jackie Stewart and there is a chance to see the Scotsman at the peak of his powers in a restored and expanded edition of Roman Polanski and Frank Simon's 1972 documentary, Weekend of a Champion. Filmed as the Formula One world champion prepared for the 1971 Monaco Grand Prix, this is an intimate portrait of a sporting superstar that also serves as a fascinating reminder of the dangers that drivers faced at a time when they literally took their lives in their hands each time they took to the track. Polanski, of course, began his career behind the Iron Curtain and Mark Cousins travels to Albania in Here Be Dragons to discover the effect that the Communist dictatorship of Enver Hoxha had on life and art in one of Europe's most inscrutable countries.

The lingering impact of the past is further considered by Chloe Ruthven in The Do Gooders, as the director travels to the Palestinian territories where her grandparents had been aid workers and discovers through her driver-cum-fixer Lubna that the resources on which so many are dependent aren't always welcome, let alone beneficial. And the ripples caused by outsiders are further analysed in Alan Gilsenan's Eliza Lynch: Queen of Paraguay, which draws on a biography by Michael Lillis and Ronan Fanning and stars Maria Doyle Kennedy in a series of dramatic reconstructions as the Cork woman who became the mistress of Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano López around the time that he launched a cataclysmic war against neighbours Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. The conflict had claimed López and two-thirds of his subjects by the time it ended in 1870 and Gilsenan seeks to clarify whether Lynch was a war-mongering adventuress or a misunderstood philanthropist in this compelling profile of Paraguay's Evita.

Otto is a member of a distinguished Australian acting dynasty and one of the country's finest new directors, Ivan Sen, is represented at LFF 2013 by Mystery Road, a simmering outback thriller that accompanies Aboriginal cop Aaron Pedersen, as he returns home after a spell in the city to discover that ex-wife Tasma Walton and daughter Tricia Whitton are as much suspects in the throat-slashing of a 15 year-old girl as aggressive kangaroo hunter Ryan Kwanten, sneering colleague Hugo Weaving and enigmatic boss Tony Barry. The disappearance of three kids puts 11 year-old New Zealander Demos Murphy on edge in Daniel Joseph Borgman's The Weight of Elephants. But, while grandma Catherine Wilkin and depressive uncle Matthew Sunderland try to reassure him, it takes free spirit Angelina Cottrell moving in next door with young sister Hannah Jones for Murphy to understand why adults behave the way they do.

This poignant rite of passage was inspired by Sonya Hartnett's novel Of a Boy. But, in returning to films after a three-decade absence, South African Andrew Worsdale recalls the 1980s crimes of Charmaine Phillips and Pieter Grundlingh in Durban Poison, which teams Brandon Auret and Cara Roberts as the white working-class lovers who murdered four people during a drink and drug-fuelled spree that shocked a nation still under the yoke of apartheid. However, a very different picture of the now Rainbow Nation emerges in Roberta Durrant's Felix, as 14 year-old Hlayani Junior Mabasa defies church-going mother Linda Sokhulu to track down jazz musicians Royston Stoffels and Thapelo Mofokeng so he can fulfil his dream of playing the saxophone as well as his late father.

Moving into the American part of the programme, Tom Hanks has the distinction of appearing in both the opening and the closing films of LFF 57. In Paul Greengrass's Captain Phillips, he plays the skipper of the MV Maersk Alabama that was attacked in 2009 by Somali pirates en route to Mombasa. However, during the four-day stand-off between Hanks and fisherman-turned-buccaneer Barkhad Abdi, it becomes clear that the fate of each man depends upon forces beyond their control. But Greengrass keeps the focus on the vessel and not only draws on Richard Phillips's memoir, A Captain's Duty, but also on such diverse films as Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo (1959), Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966), Costa-Gavras's Z (1969) and Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon (1975). And Hanks is almost hijacked again in John Lee Hancock's Saving Mr Banks, as he plays a Walt Disney struggling to reassure novelist PL Travers (Emma Thompson) that his studio will not trivialise or sentimentalise her beloved novel about a nanny who comes to care for the children of a stuff London banker. Flashing back to a difficult relationship with her father (Colin Farrell) in northern Australia, Travers takes out her anxieties on screenwriter Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford) and the songwriting Sherman Brothers (Jason Schwartzman and BJ Novak). But, just as his 20-year effort to secure the rights seems to be ending in disaster, Disney finds inspiration in his own childhood.

If Joel and Ethan Coen's Inside Llewyn Davis is to be believed, around the time these events were happening in California, a folk singer was struggling to make it as a solo artist in the clubs of Greenwich Village. Such a musician did exist and his name was Dave Van Ronk. But the Coens reshape the myth to have Oscar Isaac splits from English partner Marcus Mumford and promptly get chanteuse Carey Mulligan pregnant while sessioning for her guileless husband, Justin Timberlake. A trip to Chicago with wizened blues man John Goodman promises much and culminates in an audition with legendary club owner F. Murray Abraham. But, as in Barton Fink (1991), it seems that success is too precious a commodity to be entrusted to the deserving. Alexander Payne is no stranger to Coenesque quirkiness, but his own distinctive voice comes through loud and clear in Nebraska, as sons Will Forte and Bob Odenkirk trek through Wyoming and South Dakota with alcoholic father Bruce Dern to claim the $1 million prize he is certain he has won in a sweepstake. As dunce nephews Driscoll and Devin Ratray and old liggers like Stacey Keach crawl out of the woodwork on scenting a handout, Dern shows his boys a side of their old man they never suspected existed.

Dern springs the odd surprise along the way to Lincoln, but Joseph Gordon-Levitt isn't sure whether sharing represents the best approach in his directorial debut, Don Jon. When not with parents Glenne Headly and Tony Danza or with pals Rob Brown and Jeremy Luke, Gordon-Levitt is pumping away to online porn. Indeed, he has become so desensitised by smut that none of the girls he meets ever live up to his objectifying expectations. That is, until he is swept off his barstool by Scarlett Johansson and he realises he hasn't got a clue how to woo her. With Julianne Moore cameoing as a night school sage, this may not have gone down well with the Italian American One Voice Coalition, but it finds a fine companion piece in Drinking Buddies, the latest improvisational offering from prolific mumblecore alumnus Joe Swanberg, in which Chicago brewery co-workers Olivia Wilde and Jake Johnson come to question whether Ron Livingston and Anna Kendrick are really their ideal mates when they have so much fun together making and downing beer. 

An even closer bond exists between vampires Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston in Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, as they have been lovers for centuries. As the action opens, she is devouring books in a library in Tangiers with John Hurt (playing Christopher Marlowe) and he is in Detroit making grunge music with Anton Yelchin. But they are reunited when Swinton begins having premonitions about sister Mia Wasikowska, who not only has designs on the couple's blood supplies, but also some of their human friends. This classy twist on a generic staple finds echo in Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, which revisits the classic `lost in space' theme in stranding astronaut George Clooney and medical engineer Sandra Bullock in a craft fatally damaged during a space walk by hurtling wreckage from a self-destructing Russian satellite. Determined that his final trip will not also be rookie Bullock's last, Clooney has to figure how to descend 375 miles in a busted shuttle, with diminishing oxygen supplies and the imminent prospect of another debris shower.

Boasting cutting-edge SFX by Tim Webber and the London-based Framestore, this sci-fi thriller is matched for tension by Kelly Reichardt's poetically political Night Moves, which examines the effects of an act of eco terrorism on its perpetrators, as a media storm breaks around the sabotaging of a hydroelectric dam and radical activist Jesse Eisenberg and ex-marine Peter Sarsgaard become increasingly concerned about the mental state of co-conspirator Dakota Fanning.

Psychological fragility is also key to Labor Day, Jason Reitman's adaptation of a Joyce Maynard that is narrated by Tobey Maguire, as he harks back to the summer of 1985 when his younger self (Gattlin Griffith) starts to come out of his shell after mother Kate Winslet, who has been struggling since breaking up with Griffith's father (Clark Gregg), takes pity on a wounded Josh Brolin and offers him sanctuary over the holiday weekend. Even though it soon seems that Brolin is a fugitive killer, Winslet becomes increasingly enamoured of him, while Griffith readily responds to his tutelage. But this is a story that can never have a happy ending and the same is true of James Franco's adaptation of William Faulkner's 1930 novel, As I Lay Dying, as widower Tim Blake Nelson makes life hell for offspring Jim Parrack, Logan Marshall-Green, James Franco, Ahna O'Reilly and Brady Permenter, as they trek for two days from their remote farmstead to the town of Jefferson, Mississippi with the body of their late mother (Beth Grant) on a horse cart.

An even bleaker period in American history is recalled by Steve McQueen in 12 Years a Slave, which recalls the kidnapping and imposed bondage Solomon Northup, a free black man and accomplished violinist, who was duped into joining a travelling show and sold to a number of owners. However, having been treated reasonably well by Benedict Cumberbatch and Bryan Batt, Chiwetel Ejiofor is acquired by the sadistic Michael Fassbender, whose brutality is matched by his lascivious attitude to the hard-working Lupita Nyong'o. Painting a very starkly contrasting picture to the one presented in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, this harrowing recreation of the period 1841-53 is captured in distressing detail, while the fine ensemble includes such notables as Brad Pitt, Paul Giamatti, Sarah Paulson, Paul Dano, Garret Dillahunt and Alfre Woodard.

Sadness of a different kind is bound to surround the screening of Nicole Holofcener's Enough Said, as this was the penultimate picture made by James Gandolfini before his untimely death earlier this year. He plays the new television archivist boyfriend of divorced massage therapist Julia Louis-Dreyfus. However, he also just happens to be the ex-husband of her new best friend, Catherine Keener, and she comes to rely on erstwhile BF Toni Collette to help her negotiate the ever-more complex circumstances. Friendship is also at issue in Azazel Jacobs's Doll & Em, which riffs on the real-life relationship between actress Emily Mortimer and personal assistant Dolly Wells that has since inspired a six-part TV series. Replete with cameos by the likes of Susan Sarandon and Andy Garcia, this is a keenly observed treatise on the pair's personal and professional bonds that also doubles as a sharp satire on modern movie-making.

The future of film is posited in Ari Folman's sleek animation, The Congress, which stars Robin Wright as an actress who signs away her image rights to studio executive Danny Huston and, two decades later, finds herself the biggest star in the virtual Hollywood firmament, thanks to the Rebel Robot Robin franchise. Steven Knight also tinkers with the traditional feature format in Locke, a US-UK co-production that centres on Tom Hardy, as he gets caught in a traffic jam on the M6 and sees his life unravelling in a series of phone calls, as he first has to confess to wife Ruth Wilson that he is going to the bedside of pregnant mistress Olivia Colman and then admit to workmates Andrew Scott and Ben Daniels that he might not be on site for the concrete pour of a towering skyscraper.

Robert Redford is similarly the only character on screen in JC Chandor's All Is Lost, as his 39-foot yacht Virginia Jean is damaged in a nocturnal collision with a shipping container and he has to carry out running repairs as the Indian Ocean does its best to prevent him reaching port. Rick Rosenthal and Bernard Rose also make the best of small casts in Drones and SX_tape, respectively. In the first, Matt O'Leary is joined in a bunker in the Nevada desert by general's daughter Eloise Mumford to manoeuvre unmanned drones across the plains of Afghanistan. However, when they are ordered to target an unarmed terrorist suspect, a difference of opinion arises. The second seeks to rejuvenate the found footage format by sending budding artist Caitlyn Folley and her voyeuristic boyfriend Ian Duncan into an abandoned hospital to find a suitable venue for a new exhibition. But, when they are joined by Daniel Faraldo and Diana García, the intruders find themselves fighting for their lives as they realise they are not alone. 

Daniel Radcliffe is, of course, no stranger to the ethereal after his stint as Harry Potter. But he takes on the challenge of playing the young Allen Ginsberg in John Krokidas's Kill Your Darlings, which recalls how the poet befriended William S. Burroughs (Ben Foster), Jack Kerouac (Jack Huston) and Lucien Carr (Dane DeHaan) during his freshman year at Colombia in 1944. Andrew Bujalski puts a wry spin on genius in Computer Chess, an existential comedy shot on monochrome video and set in a cheap 1980s hotel that follows the fortunes of Wiley Wiggins; Robin Schwartz, Myles Paige and Patrick Riester as they try to perfect a computer programme that can beat a human at chess. However, in order to ensure that all work doesn't make Riester a dull boy, mumblecore veteran Bujalski has him bump inot a free love encounter group that just happens to have booked into the same hotel.

An equally unlikely encounter sparks the comedy in Jill Soloway's Afternoon Delight, as thirtysomething Jewish housewife Kathryn Hahn ignores the advice of shrink Jane Lynch and follows the suggestion of gal pal Jessica St Clair to spice up her love life with entrepreneur husband Josh Radnor by going to an LA pole-dancing club. But, instead of picking up tips, Hahn vows to rescue fallen blonde Juno Temple and tries to pass her off as daughter Sawyer Ever's nanny. The best-laid plans also go awry in Bryan Poyser's The Bounceback, as Michael Stahl-David does a bit of Facebook stalking and decides to surprise long-distance girlfriend Ashley Bell by flying across the States to bump into her in Austin, Texas. However, his chances of rekindling the romance seem shot when Bell becomes embroiled in the break-up of her buddy Sara Paxton and his boorish pal, Zach Creggar. What's more, their arrival coincides with the Air Sex World Championships.

Drew Tobia pushes the envelope even further in his feature debut, See You Next Tuesday, which lives down to its title in subjecting viewers to the vile antics of heavily pregnant grocery store clerk Eleanore Pienta, her alcoholic mother Dana Eskelson and her punk lesbian sister Molly Plunk, whose idea of foreplay is to force girlfriend Keisha Zollar to re-enact the scenes between Scarlett O'Hara and Mammy in Gone With the Wind. Comparisons with John Waters are ridiculously flattering and few will find much to smile at in Tobia's treatment of such issues as mental health, race, feminism and poverty. Andrew Dosunmu handles the subject of maternity with infinitely more discretion in Mother of George, which is set amidst Brooklyn's Nigerian community and opens with newlyweds Isaach De Bankolé and Danai Gurira receiving traditional Yoruba fertility blessings on their wedding day. However, tongues begin to wag when Gurira fails to become pregnant and mother-in-law Bukky Ajayi advises her to sleep with her restaurateur husband's younger brother Anthony Okungbowa (who is dating her best friend, Yaya Alafia) to ensure the continuation of the blood line. 

Brooklyn also provides the setting for Eliza Hittman's It Felt Like Love, in which 14 year-old Gina Piersanti feels so left out by best friend Giovanna Salimeni going steady with Jesse Cordasco that she throws herself at arrogant college hunk Ronen Rubinstein after spotting him at the beach, only to soon discover that she is playing a dangerous game in trying to pander to what she thinks will be his sexual expectations. The scene shifts to Rockaway Beach in Queens for Sam Fleischner's Stand Clear of the Closing Doors, a fact-based odyssey that recalls Morris Engel's landmark indie, Little Fugitive (1953), in its pursuit of autistic 13 year-old Jesus Sanchez Velez as he makes his way around the New York subway system in a conscious act of rebellion at those forever telling him what do to. But, while he is revelling in the sights and sounds he experiences on his adventure, Mexican mother Andrea Suarez Paz is well aware that the family is in the United States illegally and tries to rally father Tenoch Huerta Mejia and daughter Azul Zorrilla into helping her find Velez before the authorities intervene.

Lost kids of another sort populate Destin Cretton's Short Term 12, which draws on his own time as a youth counselor in showing how twentysomething Brie Larsen begins to confront the problems of her own childhood when she discovers she is pregnant by co-worker John Gallagher, Jr. and can see so much of herself in charges like Keith Stanfield, who writes rap lyrics about his drug-pushing mother, and Kaitlyn Dever, whose children's story about being abused by her father strikes a chilling chord. Upbringing also proves pivotal in Roberto Minervini's Stop the Pounding Heart, a distinctive drama documentary that completes the Texan trilogy started with The Passage (2011) and Low Tide (2012). At its core is are the Carlson and the Trichell clans. The former are God-fearing goat farmers who have home schooled their 12 children, while the latter are less puritan and passionate about riding the bulls in the rodeo. However, when Sara Carlson falls for Colby Trichell, neither family seems prepared to indulge this heartland Romeo and Juliet.

A working-class neighbourhood in Athens, Georgia provides the backdrop for James Ponsoldt's adaptation of the Tim Tharp novel The Spectacular Now, which sees bookworm Shailene Woodley fall for class party animal Miles Teller after he is dumped by girlfriend Brie Larson. Hoping to impress him by tutoring him in geometry, Woodley allows herself to be seduced, as Teller faces the prospect of a reunion with estranged father Kyle Chandler, which has been arranged by mother Jennifer Jason Leigh and sister Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the hope that he will recognise where he could end up if he doesn't buck up his ideas. The road to hell is paved with more good intentions in Lucky McKee and Chris Sivertson's All Cheerleaders Die, which opens with mean girl Felisha Cooper meeting her high-jumping end and leaving a spot open on the Cali Blackfoot High ra-ra squad. However, replacement Caitlin Stasey is only interested in avenging her best friend's demise and has jock boyfriend Tom Williamson and new leader Brooke Butler in her sights. But, when Stasey sets out to corrupt the latter at a party, jealous lover Sianoa Smit-McPhee decides to use her Wiccan magic powers to resurrect a ravenous army whose hunger can only be satiated by footballing palookas. 

The landscape of American horror was transformed by the discovery of a plentiful supply of slaughterable adolescents and Matt Wolf explores how popular culture has reflected the surge of youth in Teenage, an adaptation of a Jon Savage book that is narrated by Jena Malone, Ben Whishaw, Julia Hummer and Jesse Usher and includes a wealth of archive material to chronicle a phenomenon that barely existed until the 1940s and now seems to be the driving force in so many facets of modern life. The inimitable Frederick Wiseman also ponders the future of social change in At Berkeley, as he sits in on lectures and management meetings to discover how the Californian university that has had its funding cut by more than half over the last decades is maintaining its standards and its standing in the local community.

Wiseman has been a fearless observer of American life in his 39 features and his fascination with institutions recurs in Jason Osder's Let the Fire Burn, which recalls the 1985 stand-off between the Philadelphia police department and the radical African-American MOVE organisation, which resulted in the torching of 61 homes and the death of 11 people. Wiseman has also turned his attention on the military and Greg Barker and Dan Krauss respectively follow suit in Manhunt and The Kill Team. The former relies on Peter Bergen's book, Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden From 9/11 to Abbottabad, to reveal how a unit of female CIA operatives nicknamed `the Sisterhood' attempted to keep tabs on the leader of Al-Qaeda after their warnings about 9/11 were ignored, while the latter takes testimony from whistleblower Adam Winfield in exposing the crimes of four members of a US Army infantry platoon who boasted of killing for sport in Afghanistan.

This horrifying story sounds like something that might have been brought to the screen by a movie brat like John Milius, whose career is analysed by directors Joey Figueroa and Zak Knutson in Milius. Now best remembered as the writer of Apocalyse Now (1979), Milius enjoyed his share of directorial success with distinctive pictures like Dillinger (1973), The Wind and the Lion (1975) and Big Wednesday (1978), as well as more generic actioners like Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Red Dawn (1984). But his gun-toting macho antics and right-wing politics cost him his place among the easy riders and raging bulls and he refused to make life easy for himself on his return to the fold with the mini-series Rome (2005-07). Francis Ford Coppola, Richard Dreyfuss, Clint Eastwood, Sam Elliott, Harrison Ford, Bob Gale, George Hamilton and James Earl Jones help spin the yarn. But this account of blown chances has to go it some to match the tale told by Alex Gibney in The Armstrong Lie, which exploits unrivalled access to Lance Armstrong in seeking to get inside the head of a cancer survivor whose desire to win was so strong that he took drugs, disgraced his sport and was stripped of his record seven Tour de France wins.

Excess also rears its head in Zachary Heinzerling's Cutie and the Boxer, which was filmed in New York over five years and presents an affectionate portrait of Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, whose diametric characteristics have enabled them to stay married and creative over 40 often tempestuous years. Whether watching recovered alcoholic Ushio create one of his famous boxing paintings or the 21 years younger Noriko painstakingly drawing the comic strip that reflects their up-and-down relationship, this unflinching insight into the travails of being an artist is made all the more poignant by the fate of their hard-drinking son, Alex. Another odd couple emerge in Mistaken For Strangers, as Tom Berninger takes advantage of the fact that older brother Matt is the lead singer of the indie rock band The National to film them on their 2010 tour. However, in amassing over 200 hours of footage, Tom starts to feel alienated from his subject and his sibling and it is only when Matt suggests that he makes himself the focus of the film that a sense of perspective returns.

Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong similarly proves a dominant figure in Doug Hamilton's Broadway Idiot, which presents an access all areas behind the scenes look at how Michael Mayer created a musical from the combo's 2004 album, American Idiot. One of the princes of the Great White Way is profiled in Don Berinstein's Marvin Hamlisch: The Way He Was, which includes contributions by Ann-Margret, Liza Minnelli, Lucie Arnaz,, Melissa Manchester, Carole Bayer Sager, and Alan and Marilyn Bergman in charting how the six year-old Juilliard prodigy had won 4 Grammys, 3 Oscars, a Tony, an Emmy and a Pulitzer Prize by the time he was 31 and then found surpassing his achievements almost impossible. 

If Hamlisch lived in the spotlight, the backing vocalists who appeared on so many of his recordings tended to stay in the shadows. However, Morgan Neville brings them stage front and centre to take their bow in Twenty Feet From Stardom, which finally allows such luminaries as Mick Jagger, Stevie Wonder, Bette Midler, Sting, Sheryl Crow and Bruce Springsteen to give the likes of Darlene Love, Lisa Fischer, Merry Clayton and Judith Hill their overlong due. One wouldn't imagine too many doyennes of the riot grrrl movement of the early 1990s having much time for doo-wops and co-ordinated dance routines. But the integrity of Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna comes across loud and clear in Sini Anderson's The Punk Singer, which reveals why this fierce opponent of the sexist, heteronormative music scene withdrew from the public eye in 2005.

There's no keeping Broadway's favourite diva away from the footlights, as Chiemi Karasawa demonstrates in Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, which combines a little retrospective (she debuted in New York in 1946) with copious evidence that the-then 87 year-old actress is in no hurry to take her final curtain call. Sadly, the subject of Nicholas Wrathall's Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia died in July 2012 at the age of 86. But this distinguished novelist, polemicist, wit, bon vivant, intellectual and radical journalist remained eloquent, acerbic and combative right to the end and this summation of his life and work is peppered with spiky observations on the turbulent history of postwar America.