Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 5/6/2014)

In the early hours of New Year's Day 2009, a number of African-American men in their twenties were removed from a train on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system at Fruitvale Station in Oakland, California. Several onlookers recorded what happened next on their phones and the film opens with grainy footage of BART officers yelling at four men huddled against a low wall before a brief contretemps culminates in a single gunshot ringing out.

A cut to the early morning of 31 December, shows Oscar Grant (Michael B. Jordan) promising girlfriend Sophina Mesa (Melonie Diaz) that his philandering days are over and that he is devoted to her and their four year-old daughter, Tatiana (Ariana Neal). Sneaking a snack that her mother had denied her, Oscar drops Tatiana at her kindergarten and calls his mother, Wanda Johnson (Octavia Spencer), to make arrangements for her birthday party that evening. He drops into the Farmer Joe's store to pick up some crabs for a celebratory gumbo and calls up Grandma Bonnie (Marjorie Crump-Shears) to ask her to advise a stranger named Katie (Ahna O'Reilly) on the best way to fry fish. But Oscar also has an altercation with Emi (Victor Toman), the boss who fired him for repeated tardiness and a flash of his temper is fleetingly evident as he begs unsuccessfully for a second chance that will enable him to quit selling drugs. 

Arriving home, Oscar takes a call from sister Chantay (Destiny Ekwueme), who can't make the party and asks if he can help with her rent and whether he can pick out a card for her mother that has black people on it. Amusingly, Oscar selects a card depicting a twee white family before he goes for petrol. He pets a pit bull mooching around the forecourt and is appalled when it is run over by a speeding motorist and nobody comes to help him as he comforts the dog as it dies. Leaving the carcass by the side of the road, Oscar goes to the coast to meet with regular customer Marcus (Herman Tsui) and thinks back a year when Wanda came to visit him in San Quentin and witnessed him get into a fight with racist prisoner Daniel Cale (Joey Oglesby). Suddenly remorseful at his mother's despair of him ever being a good father, Oscar impulsively empties a bag of marijuana into the ocean and apologises to Marcus for a wasted journey.

Oscar meets Sophina from work and has a sun-dappled, slow-motion game of tag while collecting Tatiana from her playgroup. They drop in on Sophina's mother and Oscar confesses that he has lost his job. However, he also insists that he has turned a corner and he and Sophina make love before heading to Wanda's house for supper. As the menfolk talk football, the women cook and Wanda says grace. Sophina wants to see the fireworks in San Francisco and Wanda urges Oscar to take the BART so he isn't tempted to drink and drive. Texting his pals to meet at the station, Oscar drops off Tatiana with Sophina's sister and fusses over her before bedtime. He promises her a treat the next day and they hug.

Jumping the ticket barrier, Oscar and Sophina hook up with Cato (Keegan Coogler), Kris (Julien Keyes), Brandon (Trestin George), Jason (Kenny Griffin), Tim (Thomas Wright) and Vanessa (Bianca Rodriguez III). There's a jovial atmosphere on the train, as people drink, smoke dope and flirt. Indeed, when a delay getting into Frisco is announced over the tannoy, somebody hooks their mp3 player to some speakers and a party breaks out in the carriage as the new year chimes. They just catch sight of the fireworks across the Bay and head into the city. But Sophina and Vanessa need the loo and Oscar sweet-talks the security guard at a convenience store into letting them use the staff restroom. He also gets the pregnant Steph (Caroline Lesley) inside and chats with her husband Peter (Darren Bridgett), who tells Oscar not to let poverty prevent him from marrying Sophina and admits that he stole Steph's wedding ring, as he was so broke. However, he doesn't recommend that Oscar should break the law.

On the ride home, Oscar bumps into Katie. However, he is also recognised by Cale and a scuffle breaks out. As the train pulls into Fruitvale, BART officers Caruso (Kevin Durand) and Salazar (Alejandra Nolasco) order those involved in the fracas to disembark. Oscar tells his buddies to split up, but they are hauled off the train by the fuming Caruso, as Salazar radios for back up. Katie starts filming the stand-off, as Oscar and his friends insist they have done nothing wrong. Oscar also uses his phone to capture evidence and the newly arrived Officer Ingram (Chad Michael Murray) barks at him to desist. When he takes a call from Sophina, Oscar gets punched by Caruso and an exchange of racist insults only enrages him further. He pushes Oscar down and a foot presses on his head. As he struggles, a shot is fired and Oscar looks up in dismayed horror that he has been hit.

Caruso sends the train away, as Oscar pleads with Ingram to get help, as he has a daughter to live for. Panicking at not being able to get through to Oscar, Sophina calls Wanda and she starts to feel frightened as she sees Jason being led away in handcuffs and an ambulance arrive on the concourse. Wanda flinches as she hears Sophina realising that Oscar is on the gurney. But no one offers to take her to the hospital and she has to ask Wanda to collect her en route.

They arrive at Highland as Oscar is rushed into surgery and Wanda tells her son's furious friends that she wants only upbeat energy to help pull him through. The doctor informs her that he had to remove a lung and is worried by the amount of internal bleeding, but Wanda still insists that prayer and positivity will save him. Sadly, Oscar dies and Wanda blames herself for suggesting he took the train as she views his body through a window, as she has not been able to hold him as she might corrupt evidence in a suspected homicide. As morning comes, Sophina collects Tatiana and doesn't have the words to break the appalling news as they stand in the shower together.

A closing caption reveals that the shooting sparked a mix of peaceful and violent protests in the days that followed. Senior BART officials resigned and the officer who killed Oscar (who is not named here, but who was, in fact, Johannes Mehserle) was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter after he convinced the jury that he mistook his gun for his Taser, as he sought to restrain an uncooperative suspect. He served 11 months of his two-year sentence and Coogler questions whether justice has been served by showing the real Tatiana at a vigil for her father outside Fruitvale in 2013. Although it has no bearing on the enormity of the loss she suffered, Coogler opts to omit mention of the fact that the family filed a $50 million wrongful death suit that resulted in Wanda receiving $1.3 million and Tatiana having $1.5 million being placed in trust until her 30th birthday. Such compensation is token in the circumstances, but it might have been listed in the interests of full disclosure.

Sidestepping the other contentious aspects for a second, it has to be stated that this is a remarkably assured first picture. Ryan Coogler, cinematographer Rachel Morrison and production designer Hannah Beachler deftly capture Oscar's milieu and the changing moods he experiences during the course of a day packed with mundane incidents and momentous decisions. Michael B. Jordan excels as the rogue trying to reform and he is supported with considerable finesse by Octavia Spencer and Melonie Diaz, as Coogler puts a senseless killing into its cosy socio-domestic context.

Of course, there are times when he allows sentiment to cloud his judgement and one wonders why, given the strength of the story, he felt the need to invent the scenes with the dog, the bag of weed and the train-board party. Even the Katie character seems to be a contrivance, although Oscar's grandmother did recall him once phoning for some cooking tips for a customer. It is also doubtful that this woman was on the train and accidentally alerted Cale to Oscar's presence. He is based on a real person, David Horowitch, but he claims not to have had a brawl with Oscar on 1 January 2009 and eyewitness accounts of what actually happened on the train and the platform vary alarmingly.

The use of music is frequently as manipulative as the melodrama. But the clumsiest aspect is the presentation of the actual slaying, as Coogler and editors Claudia Castello and Michael P. Shawver attempt to recreate the chaos and confusion that led to tragedy. However, given that so much first-hand footage of the arrest exists, it is extremely disappointing that the principal BART officers (with Mehserle, Tony Pirone and Marysol Domenici all being granted anonymity in Coogler's screenplay) are reduced to seething ciphers.

Clearly, Coogler has an agenda and he is wholly entitled to it. Indeed, his bid to stress the humanity of someone so ignobly slain is entirely commendable, especially when so few films provide such a tender insight into black family life. But it might have been more instructive to have contrasted the experiences of Oscar and his killer in the hours leading up to the meeting, as it is highly unlikely that Mehserle woke that morning intent on destroying so many innocent lives. The death of a young man with so much to live for would be just as shocking even if he had been a bad lad (and Coogler skirts the fact that Grant had been arrested five times and spent two years behind bars). But Coogler fails to trust the integrity of his material and the intelligence of the audience, with the result that this often touching and ultimately disconcerting feature is never quite as powerful or convincing as he had undoubtedly intended it to be.

The week's second depiction of pointless violence is much less honourable or successful. Written and directed by its 26 year-old Canadian star, Matt Johnson, The Dirties adapts the `found footage' gambit to a school shooting scenario in a bid to understand what would drive a bullied teenager into exacting pitiless revenge on his tormentors. Gus Van Sant has already explored similar territory in Elephant (2003), while Antonio Campos's Afterschool (2008) and Denis Villeneuve's Polytechnique (2009) are the best of several imitators. But, whereas Julia Loktev blurred the line between fact and fiction in having 19 year-old suicide bomber Luisa Williams mix with ordinary people in New York's Time Square in Day Night Day Night (2006),  Johnson makes less discomfiting use of the real students in a lampoon of movie nerdism that often owes more to Jean-Luc Godard than Quentin Tarantino

High schoolers Matt Johnson and Owen Williams are obsessed with cinema and delight in bumping into Padraig Singal and Ross Hill while filming on location, as they have written their own screenplay and remind Johnson of their younger selves. He is bent on making a genre movie for David Matheson's media class that will expose the cabal of bullies he dubs `the dirties' and insists that he and Williams are miked up at all times in case they deliver any zinger lines. An unnamed camera operator follows them around, as they re-enact the Royale with cheese scene from Pulp Fiction (1994) in the school corridor before Johnson is humiliated once again by Jordan Foster and his pals Josh Boles, Alen Delain and Brandon Wickens.

Even the class dork, Paul Daniel Avotte, feels entitled to take a pop at the pair. Yet, cool girl Krista Madison has a soft spot for Williams and he is keen to get to know her, even though best friend Shailene Garnett is a dirty. Johnson, however, sees Madison solely as someone to exploit for his project and dupes her into uttering phrases he cuts into his scenario to make him and Williams look like heroes resisting locker area tyranny. Matheseon is similarly lured into delivering bowdlerisable dialogue. But he takes exception to the rough cut of Johnson's gaudy exploitation effort and orders him to come up with a PG-13 version so it can be screened in class.

Naturally, the dirties don't take kindly to a mishmash that Matheson accidentally calls a `gender bender' instead of a `genre bender' when he introduces it to the class. The sight of Johnson in drag singing a song whose sole lyric is the word `Malkovich' hardly helps matters and classmate Sean and Michael Spiering pelt him with rocks on his way home. Dismayed by the reception accorded his picture, Johnson hits upon the idea of killing the bad guys for real in The Dirties 2 and comes up with all sorts of props, costumes and ideas that could turn him and Williams into cultish Catcher in the Rye anti-heroes.

However, reality kicks in next day when Johnson has to call home after his clothes are stuffed down the toilet during a gym lesson. But this appears to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, as Johnson secures blueprints of the school from the local council office and begins formulating a plan of action. Williams is more sympathetic after he is embarrassed in front of Madison in the canteen. However, he feels uneasy when Johnson starts measuring corridors and blithely informs Madison that they are preparing a serial killing. She laughs indulgently and suggests they take out hated teacher Jay McCarrol. Much to his amazement, she also promises to call Williams about some biology homework and the duo hilariously fake up party sounds when she phones that evening to give the impression they are at a happening bash.

Williams is beside himself when Madison greets him in the corridor next day, but he hardly has time to enjoy his triumph before he is swept away for a gun-shooting weekend with Johnson's cousin. He feels more confident, however, when a girl at a bonfire party encourages him to play Madison a love song on his guitar. But Johnson persuades him to steal a cake from a home economics class and offer her a piece, instead, as this is more of an outlaw gesture that incriminates her in his miscreancy. Deciding to bake his own, Williams is charmed by her enthusiasm and snaps back at Johnson when he mocks her for asking Williams what `arbitrary' meant when she spots him while working in the library.

He still hangs out with Johnson that night and is amused by the footage of him riding his bike into the back of a parked car. But he dislikes the way his phone call with Madison has been cut into the story and accuses Johnson of taking a silly movie a bit too seriously when he shows him the blueprints and the information he has amassed on where the dirties will be at any time during the school day.

Williams watches a rehearsal in the theatre, while Johnson pans a balcony spotlight across the stage like a machine gun. He seems more intent than ever on targeting his foes after Foster attacks him in the corridor, but Williams fears he is losing his grip on reality as he films himself doing martial arts moves on the edge of an escarpment. Back home, Johnson watches footage of himself and confides to camera that he scarcely recognises himself on screen. However, when he marvels at how close his own personality is to the definition of a psychopath in a book he is reading, Johnson finally succeeds in alienating Williams, who tells him he is going crazy after they have a fight and he storms off home.

The episode seems to bother Johnson, however, and he acquires a stash of guns and wonders whether he should wear a yellow rubber glove on his shooting hand when he teaches the dirties their lesson. He also asks mother Alison Arnot if he is weird and she humours him before he returns to the basement to cut a sequence celebrating his unbreakable bond with Williams that even he admits is a bit cheesy. Yet, when Williams phones later that evening, he ignores the call to work on the graphics for the title sequence and asks the unseen cameraman if he can choose the best ones when all the filming has been completed.

Next day, Johnson places mini cameras around the locker area and composes himself before picking up a bag of guns and going after Foster and Wickens. There are screams as he shoots them down and Johnson is dismayed to notice Williams among those running away. He follows him into a darkened classroom and, as Williams frantically tries the handle of a locked door, Johnson asks him why he's fleeing because they are friends and always will be. The screen goes black and the picture ends with stylised credits based on great Hollywood crime and exploitation movies of the past.

In fairness to Johnson, this is a laudably ambitious way to begin a screen career. He and co-writer Evan Morgan stuff the action with movie references and bits of self-reflexive business and come up with plenty of droll insights into the teenage psyche, the influence that cinema has on impressionable minds and the cruelty of enclosed societies like schools. But there is a lack of novelty in their thinking and the majority of opinions and ideas are superficial at best. There are a number of technical-cum-narratorial problems, too, as Johnson cheats the found footage concept far too many times, while any humour intended in the refusal to acknowledge the existence of a second camera operator falls resoundingly flat.

Nevertheless, Jared Raab's handheld footage has a suitably jerky guerilla amateurishness to it, while Johnson's effusive and often improvised ramblings are admirably witty and energetic. Williams also plays the straight man with aplomb, although his romance with Madison quickly becomes a tedious digression, especially as the script fails to identify the extent to which Johnson is jealous of a rival or is simply unable to understand that his sole friend is growing apart from him. Indeed, things tend to lurch towards the inevitable once Johnson is left to his own devices and the playful satirical digs at school, adults, the media and gun laws become more blatant and marginalised. Yet, there is enough here to suggest that Johnson has the makings of a decent film-maker, providing he lets someone with a tad more experience take a look at the script and talk him out of some of the more glaringly smug excesses.

A transformation of a more calculatingly devilish sort is wrought upon a transfer student in Shin Su-won's deeply disconcerting thriller, Pluto. Those familiar with Korean and Japanese films like Yoon Sung-hyun's Bleak Night (2010) and Yeon Sang-ho's The King of Pigs (2011) and Tetsuya Nakashima's Confessions (2010) will know how vicious life can get at high school, but Shin takes things to hideous extremes in a story that exposes the class fissures in a society where doing what it takes to succeed is seemingly regarded as shrewd rather than sinister. Maybe Michael Gove should take a look at this to see what happens when one tinkers with the exam system in order to create an educational elite.

Da-wit Lee arrives at the prestigious Se Young High School under something of a cloud, as he is replacing recent suicide, Kim Mi-jeong. He is determined to break into the cabal whose achievements are posted for the rest of the school to admire and tries to ingratiate himself with its leader, American-raised roommate Sung June, who has access to additional tuition and crib sheets designed to keep his ranking high. As he is aware of the benefits that the top 1%.can reap, Sung regards hard work as a privilege and Lee is willing to do all that is asked of him, much to the dismay of his hacker pal Kim Khob-bi, who views the clique with deep suspicion, as she holds them responsible for roommate Kim's death.

However, Lee soon learns that being studious is not enough to earn his place. He is also required to sabotage those threatening to break into the upper echelon. But he is not immune from the taunting of his peers, as he discovers when he speaks on a debate about the demoted planet Pluto in a science debate. Some time later, Sung is found clubbed to death in the woods behind the school and acolytes Kim Kwon, Sun Ju-ah, Yu Kyung-soo and Nam Tae-boo concur that Lee is the likely killer.

He is arrested by detective Cho Sung-ha, but he is swiftly released for insufficient evidence. But Lee is bent on avenging himself on those who were prepared to scapegoat him for their own ends and he returns to the campus with a clutch of nitroglycerine bombs and a hostage situation is set in motion in the basement that had once served as an interrogation chamber during the dark days of the South Korean military dictatorship.

Having studied at the same Seoul National University that the pupils here are selling their souls to attend, Shin Su-won spent a decade as a middle school teacher, during which time she wrote two novels about teenagers and the competitive nature of Korean education. She changed direction on enrolling at the Korean National University of Arts and made an impression at Cannes with her short, Circle Line. But her feature bow made waves in Korea and Japan, as the action was sufficiently rooted in recognisable realism to make the rapes, murders, car bombings and kidnappings seem feasible, if not entirely plausible.

Some of the characterisation is slight and the plot skips the rails in a few places. But the satirical bleakness is hugely persuasive and Shin scripts and directs with great confidence. She is abetted by a bravura cast, in which the parents are every bit as monstrous as their offspring, as well as by Yun Ji-un's chilly cinematography and Ryu-ah's modish score. Special mention should, however, be made of Lee Do-hyun's editing, as he manages to keep the intricate flashbacking action reasonably cogent and unbearably tense.

A violent education of another sort dominates When I Saw You, Annemarie Jacir's follow-up her sombre treatise on exile, Salt of This Sea (2008). Set during the aftermath of the Six Day War in June 1967, which saw Israeli forces seize the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, this rite of political and personal passage is perhaps inflected a tad too much with the spirit of the Summer of Love to convince entirely. But Jacir and French cinematographer Hélène Louvart make evocative use of the forbidding landscape to contrast the wistful dreams of a 11 year-old boy and the harsher realities appreciated by his adult companions.

Driven out of their homeland by the Israeli advance, Mahmoud Asfa and his mother Ruba Blal seek sanctuary in the Harir refugee camp in Jordan. Such was the chaos caused by the conflict that Blal lost touch with her husband and she keeps having to reassure her son that he will find them. Handsome and alert, but unable to read or write and highly fussy about his food, Asfa is a difficult child. Blaming Blal for driving his father away, he smashes up their meagre belongings during a tantrum and teacher Anas Algaralleh has no qualms about excluding him from the camp school, even though he has a natural affinity for mathematics.

Thus, after listening to Yasser Arafat on television and having seen classmate Fadia Abu Ayash's older brother, Waleed Ramahi, leave the camp with fedayee Saleh Bakri, Asfa convinces himself that he also has to escape if he is ever to return to his village and find his father. While Blal is working as a seamstress, Asfa wanders out of the camp and into the desert beyond, using the shadow cast by a stick as his compass. He is given some pomegranates by a kindly old lady and follows a flock of sheep in the hope that all roads eventually lead to Palestine. But he is taunted by a trendy Jordanian twentysomething whose car has broken down in the middle of nowhere and is, thus, on his guard when Bakri finds him sleeping rough on the edge of the Dibeen Forest and escorts him to a covert fedayeen encampment.

Asfa immediately feels at home among the guerillas and sternly taciturn commander Ali Elayan takes a shine to him and lets him to stand at his side during training drills, as Asfa has an eye for a shirker. But he is determined to press on and has to be persuaded by Bakri that he would be better off as part of a unit than alone. A campfire sing-song seems to settle the boy, who is also relieved to see Ramahi among the recruits. Moreover, he quickly becomes adept at playing cards and impresses fellow warriors Ruba Shamshoum, Ahmad Srour, Firas W. Taybeh, Husam Abed, Ammar Abu Shawish, Bashar Al Khallaylleh, Shereen Zoumot and Ossama Bawardi with his quick wits.

They are disappointed, therefore, when Blal tracks her son down and demands that he returns home with her. Elayan reassures her that Asfa is safe and is not only good for morale, but has also found his purpose in life. She watches him interact with his comrades-in-arms and is amused when Elayan ticks them off for playing cards and listening to bourgeois music on the radio. Bakri (who has developed a crush on Blal) also convinces her that Asfa is fine and that she is better protected here than she would be at Harir. But this sense of security frustrates Taybeh, who thinks they should be engaging with the enemy and he sounds off in front of Asfa when they go on a mission to collect a sackful of grenades from a secret contact.    Back at the camp, Asfa starts learning the oud and demonstrates a talent for painting propaganda pictures. Blal is touched when he presents her with a portrait and lets herself to be coaxed into dancing with Bakri around the campfire. She also allows herself a smile when Asfa joyously discovers that Elayan is also illiterate. But she frets that he is still too young to be fetching the grenades and learning how to make bombs. After all, he is still a child, as his game with bullets dressed as soldiers testifies. Moreover, danger is never far away and the camp has to be hurriedly struck one morning and refuge sought in some nearby caves when an army patrol comes perilously close to finding them.

Yet nothing seems to faze Asfa and he has to be ordered to stay behind when Elayan selects a small group to carry out the first military assault. He takes out his frustration on Blal after he sees her chatting with Bakri and accuses her of making his father so miserable that he has no intention of coming to fetch them. That night, he slips out of the tent and strikes out across country. He reaches the border and hides behind a rock to calculate how long it takes for an Israeli jeep to complete a circuit. As he turns round, he sees Blal, Bakri and Elayan taking cover further up the hillside and signals with his eyes that he knows what he is doing, as he makes a dash for the unguarded wire fence. Blal runs after him and catches him by the hand. But, instead of stopping him, she hurries on with him until a climactic freeze frame leaves their fate undecided.

There seems to be little ambiguity in this final shot, but Jacir laces the action with a sense of undaunted hope and defiance that is personified by the mettlesome Asfa. With his wide eyes and the dash of devilry that leavens his intensity, the 13 year-old debutant makes a compelling hero. But his reckless naiveté contrasts starkly with Elayan's cautious bellicosity and sombre realisation that the Palestinians can only offer rearguard resistance rather than reclaim their ancestral territory. Jacir clearly recognises this, yet, by viewing things from Asfa's perspective, she runs the risk of romanticising the situation. She also keeps the female fedayees very much in the background and sidesteps the issue of maternal control by making Blal so passive in the face of Asfa's revolt against her authority. But, driven on by a breezy selection of period Arab pop songs, this makes an accessible introduction to the complex topic of deracination and the way in which displaced children so readily took up a cause that remains just as important to their grandchildren.

Another unconventional community comes under scrutiny in Ti West's The Sacrament, the Delawarean horror specialist's sixth feature, after such widely acclaimed shockers as The House of the Devil (2009) and The Innkeepers (2011). In between times, West has contributed to such portmanteaux as V/H/S and The ABCs of Death (both 2012) and, unfortunately, this variation on the infamous Jonestown Massacre feels like an over-expanded short story. Back in 1978, all but two of the 909 members of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project committed suicide in a remote location in northern Guyana on the orders of leader Jim Jones. This found footage mockumentary can't match that tragedy for either intensity or scale. But, most disappointingly, it also falls far short of West's previous outings in terms of both establishing senses of place and dread and then delivering chills and jolts.

AJ Bowen is a reporter for the VICE multimedia company and, when fashion photographer friend Kentucker Audley receives a mysterious letter from sister Amy Seimetz, they decide to fly to the remote religious community she had joined to see if there is a story. Cameraman Joe Swanberg makes up the trio that are dropped by chopper pilot Christian Ojore Mayfield in the middle of a dense forest. Slightly surprised to be met by armed guards, the three men are taken by truck to Eden Parish, where Seimetz is surprised to see her brother has company, but still extends a warm welcome.

Audley is billeted in the main house, while Bowen and Swanberg have to make do with one of the bijou shacks that dot the perimeter of the compound. They take a stroll, with Swanberg keeping the camera rolling, as they that a leader known as Father (Gene Jones) has built with funds raised by the believers selling everything they own. Elderly Shirley Jones Byrd echoes Seimetz in saying that Father changed her life and Australian artist Kate Lynn Sheil, nurse Donna Biscoe and African-American brothers Lashaun Clay and Dale Neal confirm that they have found a socialist utopia that they have no intention of leaving.

Bowen suspects it is all too good to be true and is keen to interview Father and expose what he feels is a brainwashing con. His suspicions are confirmed when mute tweenager Talia Dobbins wanders up to their cottage and mother Kate Forbes hurries her away with enough trepidation to suggest that some of the residents are being held against their will. Around 5.30pm, Seimetz informs them that Father has agreed to an interview in the open-air pavilion, after which there will be music and dancing. She also gives them a welcome pack and Bowen reads the introduction about Eden offering an escape from imperialism, consumerism and racism with scarcely concealed contempt.

Yet, he is taken by the warmth of the rapturous greeting the residents accord Father as he wanders to the dais and admits in his opening question to being impressed by what the community has achieved. Father extols the virtues of togetherness and denounces the greed, immorality and violence that has destroyed America and claims to have founded Eden so believers could live their faith as God would want them to. He chides Bowen for dwelling on the negative when he asks about the security arrangements and whether he pays any taxes on his bequests. Moreover, while retaining his charismatic geniality, Father also suggests that Bowen would do everything to protect his pregnant wife and he feels decidedly uncomfortable that a stranger should know so much about his situation.

Deciding that he has answered enough questions, Father calls on the band to start playing and Bowen curses that he gave him such an easy ride. However, the visitors soon find themselves enjoying the gospel music and the fact that it is so easy to have fun without artificial stimulants. Around 11.30pm, however, Dobbins rushes up to Bowen and thrusts a note into his hands begging for help. He returns to the pavilion trying to find Forbes, but there is no sign of her or Audley. He and Swanberg venture in Father's office and notice everybody's passports in the safe. When Seimetz finds them, they explain that they are looking for Audley and she says he is sleeping with two of her friends because they are hoping to persuade him to stay so that their parents will make a donation to the parish. Bowen questions the Christian ethics of such a methods, but he is stopped short when Father calls Seimetz inside and warns the interlopers not to put their hands in the dog's bowl.

Angry at being threatened, Bowen wants to make a fuss, especially when Forbes comes to show them the bruises that Dobbins has received for defying Father and begs them to take her with them the next morning. However, after a guard comes to escort Dobbins home, Swanberg insists that they lay low and forget any scoop, as they will be risking their necks to get it. His fears prove well founded at dawn, when they discover that a rebellion has broken out among the parishioners. Clay and Neal are among those demanding to be set free and Seimetz is furious with Bowen for sewing dissent. He sends Swanberg to ask the pilot if there will be room for Dobbins in the helicopter, but he is shot at as he heads into the forest and Mayfield is badly wounded.

As Swanberg dodges guards in the trees, Bowen and Audley are taken prisoner and Father tells Seimetz to pick up the spare camera and make a record of what is about to happen, as he begins inviting everyone to gather in the pavilion because he has something important to say. He regrets that the strangers have compromised their situation, as they will either return home to spread lies about Eden or, if they are killed, the government will send troops to avenge them So, he implores everyone to drink a poisoned red liquid and take their place in a better world with the Lord. Some resist, but they are persuaded by family members and friends into participating in what Father calls a sacrifice rather than a suicide. Babies are injected with the fluid in their mother's arms, while Father offers words of consolation as the agonising potion starts to take effect.

Swanberg returns to the compound to find his friends. Machine guns rattle in the distance, as the guards finish off those dying in excruciating agony and Biscoe surveys the scene with horror, as Father shuffles between the bodies of his flock. Swanberg discovers Forbes and Dobbins hiding in their cottage, but only just manages to hide under the bed when a guard bursts in and riddles Forbes with bullets as she slits her daughter's throat. Aghast, Swanberg staggers into the office to see Seimetz dousing everything (including Audley's corpse) with petrol before immolating herself. Her screams ring in his ears as he goes looking for Bowen and tracks him down to Father's quarters. He bursts in time to see Father lament the failure of his bid to change the world and shoot himself through the mouth. Swanberg uncuffs Bowen and leads him to the waiting chopper and the aerial view of the smouldering buildings gives way to a caption stating that 167 perished in one of the biggest mass suicides in history.

An opening intertitle states that the new form of all-media journalism is known as `Immersionism'. But there is nothing immersive about this hoary saga, which strives to use modern technology to invoke the spirit of 1970s American horror. Mercifully, this resists the kind of torture porn with which producer Eli Roth made his name, but it errs too far the other way and winds up feeling like a brutal companion piece to Sean Durkin's Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011). Comparisons with the Jonestown tragedy don't make the material any more palatable, but they also render the already flimsy plotline increasingly convoluted, as Bowen and Swanberg are allowed to uncover sedition in paradise with almost parodic ease. There is also a rather sneering undercurrent to the depiction of the community, which is most evident in the line of questioning that Bowen pursues during the interview. Consequently, the ideas that Father espouses are made to seem both crankily left-wing and dangerously fundamentalist.

But the characterisation is even less persuasive, with all three of the intrepid triumvirate seeming sardonic and dismissive of everything they witness because it doesn't conform to their insular metropolitan viewpoint. By contrast, the parishioners are made to seem gullibly idealistic, with Bowen convincing himself that Seimetz is not only Father's mistress, but is also still using the drugs she came to Eden to escape. With his folksy southern accent and dark glasses, the leader himself is dismissed from the outset as a charlatan who preys on the vulnerable, even though his hopes for the community don't seem that outlandish or sinister. He is cannily played by Gene Jones (who has been referred to by his character name above to put a bit of distance between Father and the Jonestown eminence), but he struggles to avoid seeming like a bogeyman in a B movie and West struggles to sustain any suspense once he gives the game away that all is not tickety-boo.

The implosion of the idyll is more potently staged, as West allows the possibility that Father might be genuinely distraught that his dream has been shattered. But, even though the readiness with which the disciples accept their doom is deeply disturbing, attention is ruinously deflected away from the tragedy by the need for Swanberg and Bowen to flee. Equally distracting is the found footage gambit, with the decision to have Seimetz take up her brother's discarded camera being as whoppingly contrived as the inclusion of a score by Tyler Bates. Moreover, it seriously undermines any pretence at documentary realism achieved by Eric Robbins's slick photography and Jade Healy's chillingly authentic production design. Thus, while the subject matter is well worth serious exploration and West shows flashes of fiendish intelligence and cinematic nous in broaching it, this feels overly familiar (especially to anyone who has seen Stanley Nelson's 2006 documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple) and far too scornful to convince, especially as it overlooks the possibility that Forbes is the only malcontent and she has used the outsiders for her own ends.

Thai newcomer Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit makes much more inventive use of imagery while providing a revealing snapshot of modern Asian youth in 36. Taking its title from the number of shots used in its execution, this was co-produced by Aditya Assarat and Soros Sukhum and was composed with an eye for a telling detail and a fascination with life beyond the edges of the frame by Thamrongrattanarit, cinematographer Khumwan Pairach and production designers Treesanga Itthisak and Sookkarn Rasignet. Although close-ups are used, the bulk of the action is captured in static long shots that fix the characters in their environment. But Thamrongrattanarit is less interested in ideas and interaction than in space and our place in a rapidly changing society, whose shifts from photochemical to digital imperil the very memories that shape our past, present and personality.

Scouting locations for a future project, Koramit Vajrasthira and art director Wanlop Rungkamjad take a series of photographs with a new digital camera. They chat to Sirima Aksornsawang, the landlady of a building that catches Vajrasthira's eye and discuss such mundane issues as rental fees and ease of access. As they walk and work, Vajrasthira and Aksornsawang strike up a rapport and she tells him that she has recently made the transition from shooting on celluloid and likes the idea of being able to challenge Buddhist notions of impermanence by safely storing images in digital albums on her computer.

Shortly after Vajrasthira persuades the bashful Aksornsawang to have his photograph taken, the pair come across a derelict love hotel dating from the 1960s and its condition becomes all the more ironic as the action fast forwards two years to reveal that Vajrasthira's hard drive has broken and that she cannot access any of the pictures she needs to show director Sivaroj Kongsakul. Flatmate Siriporn Kongma suggests she takes the drive to Nottapon Boonprakob, who has a knack of fixing supposedly defunct computers. Yet, while she is keen to retrieve her archive, Vajrasthira is equally content to retrace her steps and soon comes to wonder what happened to Rungkamjad and regret the fact that she didn't act upon her unexpected feelings for him.

Prompting viewers to consider their own attitude to keepsakes and the events that make them special, this is a mesmerising exercise in style, whose visual and aural rhythms focus the gaze on seemingly insignificant gestures, expressions, items and edifices that cast the mind outside the diegesis. A particularly poignant moment has a woman come to Boonprakob's shop and express disappointment that he has been able to recover some of the data, as she had rather been hoping to have to rely on her own recollection of something contained therein rather than have it confirmed or contradicted by physical (or, at least, pixellated) evidence.

Aching with nostalgic yearning, yet never remotely sentimental, rigorously minimalist, but teeming with tiny pleasures, this enchanting debut found an equally clued-in companion piece in Mary Is Happy, Mary Is Happy, whose action is based on the 410 consecutive tweets that Thamrongrattanarit found on the @marylony Twitter account belonging to teenager Mary Malony. One wonders whether this will get a theatrical release, too.

James Rouse's Downhill is rather fortunate to have found a slot in a busy release schedule, as its more natural home appears to be the small screen. Unkindly reviewed by national newspaper critics who rarely accord films of this calibre more than 100 glibly tossed off words, this may not be the most original or uproarious study of the male mid-life crisis. But, for all its faults, it is infinitely preferable to Aussie Boyd Hicklin's cricket romp, Knocked for Six, which covers much the same territory and will be discussed next week.

Local news cameraman Richard Lumsden has arranged to revisit Alfred Wainwright's Coast to Coast Walk with stonemason friend Karl Theobald. However, a chance remark leads to Lumsden inviting teacher Jeremy Swift to join the expedition, which he plans to film as a fly-on-the-wall documentary with the help of his 20 year-old son, Rupert Simonian. However, Swift can't help mentioning the trek to louche bachelor Ned Dennehy, whom Lumsden and Theobald haven't seen since they were at school together. So, amidst some blurry home movie footage of the foursome's past camping trips, they travel to St Bees in Cumbria for a night of boozy reminiscences before striking out for Robin Hood's Bay in North Yorkshire.

No longer as fit as they once were, the late fortysomethings initially find the going tough and doubts soon arise about Lumsden's map-reading skills. They also get into trouble when Dennehy crashes a golf buggy after a night's carousing and they have to fork out for its repair. But tempers fray on the second day when Swift starts to feel the pace after traversing some rough terrain and is ready to quit after just 30-odd miles. However, Dennehy produces a joint and he winds up gamboling among the lambs in a mountain field.

Swift apologises over breakfast the next morning and Dennehy admits to putting expensive wine on the communal tab. Indeed, spirits remain low as Simonian asks his elders to explain their philosophy of life, but no one has anything particularly enlightening to say until Theobald comes out as gay during a tearfully drunken confession in a crowded pub. Lumsden tries to put a positive spin on the situation on the next leg, as he lists famous gay people while walking along. He also gives Theobald a chance unburden himself and consider where this leaves his marriage. But Dennehy can't resist some cheap shots and teases Theobald when attractive younger walkers Emma Pierson and Katie Lyons pass them on the path.

As day five dawns, Lumsden gets grief from wife Madeleine Bowyer on the phone and Simonian lingers with the camera, as he suspects that all might not be well at home. During a rest stop, he asks the friends to say a little bit about their passions and Dennehy claims to be a patron of the arts. He also fellates a banana in the background as Theobald describes the joys of quarrying stone and he keeps up the litany of homophobic cracks into the night. As a consequence, Theobald and Lumsden set off alone the following morning and Swift, Dennehy and Simonian hitch a lift to the next stopover. While taking tea, they bump into Pierson and Lyons and, on discovering that they are actresses from Los Angeles, they introduce them to the delights of English beer and invite them to join their party.

Lumsden welcomes them with mumbling grace when he arrives after a hard day's walking, but he clearly sees them as a source of potential trouble. Swift confides to camera that he enjoyed his goodnight kiss from Lyons and wishes he had sewn more wild oats. But it's Dennehy who fancies himself as the lothario and he makes a crude bet for a case of wine with Swift that he can bed Lyons before they reach the North Sea. He believes his chances have increased after they strip off to their underwear to swim in a river and exploits every opportunity to belittle his pals. However, he oversteps the mark when he mocks Theobald's sexuality in the pub that night and Lyons and Pierson make their excuses for an early night. Undeterred, Dennehy knocks on Lyons's door and she gives him the polite brush-off before the girls announce next morning that they would rather go on alone.

Dennehy blames Lumsden for boring them away and Swift ticks him off for being a bully. But he remains unrepentant and accuses them all of being tedious family men with petty problems. His temper finally snaps when they miss a hotel booking and have to camp out in tents and Simonian throws a punch at Dennehy to protect his dad. Tired and emotional, Swift is ready to go home, but Lumsden and Theobald convince him to go on and he explains next day that Dennehy is the product of his father's tyranny. As the home truths tumble out, Lumsden reveals that he is deep in debt because work has dried up and he seems likely to lose his home. But the others rally round and agree to finish the walk so they can salvage some sense of achievement from their efforts.

Even Simonian urges Lumsden to see it through and they reach Robin Hood's Bay to find Dennehy sitting outside a pub. The quartet make their way down to the beach and paddle in the sea. But Theobald will still have to go home and resolve his marital problems, Lumsden will have to confront his cash crisis and Dennehy will have to face up to his bitterness and lack of purpose. Yet, even after 192 miles, few viewers will be that bothered about what waits in store for these decent, but unremarkable blokes. As the performances are so skilled, this is largely the fault of Torben Betts's screenplay, which fails to provide sufficient backstory to pique the audience's interest in the men as a group or as individuals. But the documentary conceit also makes the characters seem more remote, as half of them appear to be complete strangers to Simonian and his efforts to engage them in conversation are either resisted or interrupted. Similarly, his attempts to eavesdrop on phone calls feel intrusive, although his decision to intervene in the scuffle to protect his father from the loathesome Dennehy is well judged.

Comparisons have been made to Edgar Wright's sci-fi pub crawl comedy, The World's End. But, with its sketch pad chapter headings and bantering dialogue, this owes more to Jerome K. Jerome and his Three Men novels. There is also a hint of Mike Leigh's celebrated teleplay, Nuts in May (1976). But there's no denying that the humour is mild and the insights into the modern emasculated male are largely superficial. Calling the shots on a feature for the first time, advert specialist James Rouse resists the temptation to dawdle and makes the most of Alexander Melman's pleasing vistas. But the faux doc approach retards character development and prevents Rouse and Betts from exploring some pressing issues in any worthwhile depth.

After so many recent horror movies have been set in the great outdoors, it's something of a relief to see the countryside being reclaimed for more everyday pursuits and Stewart Alexander and Kerry Skinner similarly take pleasure in the beauty of wide open spaces in Common People, an even lower-budget enterprise that marks the duo's directorial debut. Filmed around Tooting Common in South London, this bears a passing resemblance to Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor's 2004 short, Who Killed Brown Owl?, a Bruegel-inspired entry in the Civic Life series that flitted between disparate characters enjoying a sunny day in Enfield Park. Indeed, Alexander and Skinner seem to reference that film by employing a similar unchained camera technique to approximate the vantage point of an escaped bird. But, while this serves as a neat linking device, the vignettes themselves turn out to be much more earthbound.

Easing through the door of her open cage, Princess Parroty flies through a window and heads for the parakeet paradise that is Tooting Common. She settles in a tree to get her bearings before swooping down to investigate the locals making the most of a beauty spot in the middle of the city. Pensioners Sam Kelly and Diana Payan amuse themselves by putting words into the mouths of passing dogs, as they share a picnic and enjoy the fact that they are still together after so many years. Sadly, widower Iarla McGowan has been left to raise young daughter Melody Weston Shaw on his own and he watches her play as he struggles to get through to his bank in order to explain why he is having something of a cash flow crisis.

Such problems no longer concern Michael Ballard, who is homeless and has come to regard the common as a sanctuary. He is joined on his favourite bench by the heavily pregnant Kerry Skinner, who explains how a one-night stand with an American soldier changed her life forever. She deduces that Ballard might also once have been in uniform, but he prefers to listen as she chatters away about nothing in particular. They are passed by Jeff Mash and Tom Gilling, who are leading a troop of Intrepid Adventurers, whose ranks include Freddy Tolcher, Corrigan Griffiths, Robert Green and Charlie Derecki. While birdwatching in the trees, one of the yellow-shirted tweens spots Princess Parroty, as she takes to the skies again to hover over cycling alcoholic Stewart Alexander and drinking buddies Sidney Cole and Alec Urgoff. Fond of shooting the breeze and discussing their varied ethnic backgrounds, this trio is frequently joined by black Muslim Eleanor Fanyinka, who has a crush on Alexander, but he is too self-conscious and sozzled to notice.

Eventually, Alexander comes to realise that he has a shot with Fanyinka and promises to clean up his act. But things start moving apace elsewhere across the common. Josh Herdman allows his dog Trevor to run free and McGowan picks a fight with him after Shaw gets poop in her eyes. Asian vigilantes Ravi Aujla, Dharmesh Patel and Satnam Bhogal step in to settle the dispute, while coppers Alana Ramsey and Simon Lyshon are called into action when Harlan Davies shows off in front of pals Connor Catchpole, Brandon Benoit-Joyce and Rhys Yates by stealing Ballard's phone. But the biggest emergency surrounds Skinner, who goes into labour and Mash dispatches a couple of Intrepid Adventurers to fetch an ambulance.

In seeking to capture life as it is lived, Alexander and Skinner have admirably avoided soap operatics. But the incidents chronicled in Alexander's script are just a touch too small to sustain audience interest, especially as the characters are so thinly sketched and largely devoid of identifiable backstories. Kelly and Payan suggest an inseparable devotion that makes their inevitable parting all the more poignant in a coda that centres on the excellent Skinner showing off her baby to those who helped with its birth. Things appear to be looking up for most of the common regulars by the close and this sense of optimism is affectingly unforced. Nevertheless, one suspects that this well-meaning and carefully made picture (which has been evocatively photographed by Andrew Johnson) will find that its natural constituency lies almost exclusively within SW17.

In one of those curious quirks of fate that one suspects is entirely deliberate, this ensemble piece is released in the same week as a documentary about the Sheffield combo whose anthem just happens to be `Common People'. Capturing the buzz around a much-anticipated homecoming concert, PULP: A Film About Life, Death and Supermarkets has been directed by New Zealander Florian Habicht, who forged his reputation with such actualities as Kaikohe Demolition (2004), Rubbings From a Live Man (2008) and Land of the Long White Cloud (2009) before scoring a festival hit with the brilliantly imaginative vox pop romcom, Love Story (2011). Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker is clearly familiar with the latter and probably hoped that this blend of band and fan recollections would prove equally enchanting. However, it comes nowhere near to matching the magic that Baillie Walsh and his talking heads generated in Springsteen & I (2013) and, as a consequence, this often feels a little precious and parochial.

The opening shot rather sets the tone, as a trendily dishevelled Jarvis Cocker ambles into view to change a tyre on an unflashy vehicle against the backdrop of some rundown tenements. It's an arch way of both establishing Cocker and Pulp's connection with the `common people' who first came to their gigs and bought their records and of indicating that the wheel (albeit a little deflated over time) has come full circle to the final show of a UK reunion tour that will be held at the Motorpoint Arena on 8 December 2012. Cocker claims the fans deserved a better ending to their own odyssey and keyboard player Candida Doyle and drummer Nick Banks agree. Yet, while she seems nervous about playing in front of so many familiar faces after such a long time away, he is more preoccupied with his daughter Jeannie's football team, whose shirts are sponsored by the band.

As Maria Ines Manchego's camera surveys the scene around the Castle Market, longtime fan Josephine Cooper claims Pulp are superior to Blur and Cocker recalls the social downside of having a Saturday job on a fish stall. Bassist Steve Mackey reckons it's hard to impress Steel City folk, while Cocker ponders the oddities of sharing intense emotional moments with thousands of strangers. News vendor Terry Hunter proudly proclaims that he'll be at the show, as will Melina Morris, a nurse and single mom who has come all the way from Atlanta, Georgia to be at the farewell show. She is queuing in the cold outside the venue with lots of other girls and, as if to prove that Pulp appeal to kids who weren't even born during their heyday, Habicht interviews youngsters Rio Brookes and Liberty Brown in their front garden and the members of the U-nique dance troupe in their rehearsal hall.

Doyle was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when she was not much older than these kids and she recalls spending much of her late teens in hospital and later fretted about whether a bona fide pop star could have an old people's disease. Bomar Faery has also had a tough time of it, whether being mugged in London or being confined to a mental institution. But he is grateful that he had Pulp to pull him through. Academic Owen Hatherly empathises with the band's ability to communicate with its core audience and eulogises Cocker's understanding of his own roots and those of his listeners. However, while noting that he still uses public transport, guitarist Mark Webber claims to be unsure whether the bookish and geekily chic Cocker is quite as common as he used to be.

Cutler Stan Shaw holds a terrifying blade up to the camera and expresses his pride in a profession that has seen him make knives for Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. He doesn't state if he is a Pulp fan and neither do the members of the Sheffield Harmony choir. But they perform a charming version of `Common People' in their blue spangly dresses, while Cherie Mattock props herself up at the end of a swimming pool to declare that she has Pulp knickers and has trained her husband to accept that Cocker is the third partner in their marriage. Some girls back at the arena start singing `Underwear' to pass the time and Habicht cross-cuts between their rendition and Cocker posturing on stage.

Local legend Richard Hawley used to share a house with Cocker and he complains that he never once saw him do the washing-up. But he flicks through the Pulp discs in his record collection and concedes they weren't a bad band (although he has little option, as he is guesting at the gig). Cocker opines that surroundings don't usually influence his imagination, but `Sheffield: Sex City' reflects the city of his adolescence and a gaggle of interviewees concur that few people write about sex and the everyday better than Cocker. Tour manager Liam Rippon reveals that the band need to be caged like lions in order to do a great show and Cocker harks back to the 1988 extravaganza `The Day That Never Happened' when anything that could go wrong with dry ice machines and back projections did and embarrassingly badly. But, now, Doyle is more worried whether her hands will get through a performance and Webber admits it has taken him a while to enjoy playing live again, as he found the pressures of fame very difficult.

Habict cuts to a rendition of `Babies' from Live at Brixton Academy (1995) before asking a couple of older ladies if they are going to the show and they speculate about whether Jarvis is related to another Sheffield rock icon, Joe Cocker. Bomar explains how he met Carina Duperouzel in an asylum and discovered a mutual love of serial killers. He recalls how he escaped and had to listen to Cocker's Sunday Service radio programme to calm down. Back on the steps outside the venue, Lowri Jones admits to loving Cocker and being turned on by him thrusting on stage. Yet, as he sits in his dressing-room, he seems to be anything but a sex god, as he explains about the need to have a cup of tea before he goes on and how he keeps a range of medical supplies in his trunk in case of emergencies. Mackey jokes that Cocker has become more of an exhibitionist as he has aged and Habicht asks if there is ever a time when he is not performing. But Cocker insists it's the reconnection with the music that excites him rather than fame or being somebody's fantasy.

Amusingly, a cut reveals Cocker thrusting on stage in a far from erotic manner during  `F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.'. But, rather unfortunately, Habicht cuts from this grotesque display to a close-up of Liberty Brown advising parents not to let their children grow up too fast, as she wants to remain a little girl as long as possible. The U-nique dancers also seem to be well grounded, as they consider themselves normal children and remind viewers that even famous people were kids once. But Habicht seems keen to emphasise how sour celebrity can go, as he takes Doyle and Mackey back to the This Is Hardcore era in the late 1990s, when Cocket was bent on exposing the darker side of an industry with which they had all become disillusioned. He compares becoming famous with being dumped in Portugal and avers that being a star agreed with him as much as a nut allergy.

A middle-aged librarian reads the lyrics to `Help the Aged' and Habicht cuts to the seasoned members of Victoria Live at Home performing the song while reading gossip and true crime magazines in a dingy café setting. Cocker says he wrote the track on realising that his generation didn't have anything like `My Old Man (Said Follow the Van)' and wanted them to have something better to hark back fondly upon than Real 2 Real's `I Like to Move It'. He also conceded that he doesn't enjoy getting old, as it's a road with only one destination. Josephine agrees life goes far too fast; but what counts is making the most of it and she feels she has after raising seven children alone after losing her husband 25 years ago.

Such reality will mean little to the fans arriving for the swan song in t-shirts emblazoned with iconic lyrics and one wonders how much they appreciate of the words of `This Is Hardcore', as they watch Cocker strut across the stage, or `Bar Italia', as they follow his instruction to sway from side to side. There is no wonder he feels like he is at the centre of the earth when he performs, as all eyes are on him and he is very much an idol to those to whom he dedicates `Common People' before leaving the stage in slo-mo. Shivering outside afterwards, Malina admits her dream is coming to an end, while others remain inside hoping to pick up some souvenirs. Cocker finishes changing his wheel and he declares his pleasure at cheating the randomness of life by having Pulp finish where it started. As the credits close, he reappears to thank the audience for taking the time to watch the film and urges them to get back to normality.

Given that so many documentaries have been made about the South Yorkshire music scene, including Eve Wood's Made in Sheffield (2001) and The Beat Is Law: Fanfare for the Common People (2011), Habicht is wise to avoid rehashing the band's history. The deceptively bashful Cocker's private life was also exposed in a 2007 South Bank Show. But, while Habicht never shies away from the obligatory gig clips and sneak peaks behind the scenes, this self-consciously idiosyncratic profile is always as much about the people the members of Pulp could have been as who they actually ended up being. Thus, as in Love Story, the public shares centre stage with the stars and the result is a mishmash of the personal, the poignant, the amusing and the inconsequential.

Inevitably, the spotlight is over-trained on Jarvis Cocker, although this may be because he is most comfortable in its glare. He is now in his fifties and seems very sorted, but it might have been instructive to know how his bandmates view presents and futures that will always be prismed through their past. As for the devotees and the liggers, Habicht never quite coaxes them into espousing undying devotion. But, as one unnamed woman states early on, `they're alright' is high praise indeed around these parts.

Actors seemingly have to work a bit harder to earn praise, as the critics who have forgiven Cocker his more precious utterances have come down like a ton of bricks on Kevin Spacey and his company for their perceived luvviness in Jeremy Whelehan's NOW: In the Wings on a World Stage. Granted, the smug quotient is high in places, but this record of the world tour undertaken by the Bridge Project production of Shakespeare's Richard III depicts the cast as both professionals who take their craft seriously and ordinary people who can be bowled over by tourist landmarks like anybody else. Indeed, rather than betraying self-satisfaction, this documentary offers a decent insight into both the creative process and the individual and logistical challenges involved in mounting an enterprise of this ambition.

The brainchild of Spacey and his American Beauty director Sam Mendes, the Bridge Project claims to be the first transatlantic theatre troupe. As Whelehan introduces the mix of seasoned thespians and younger hopefuls who swell its ranks, it quickly becomes clear that the pair have selected performers for their team ethic as much as their stage prowess, as several months are to elapse between the workshopping sessions at the Old Vic in London in May 2011 and the closing night at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 198 shows later. Yet, while everyone is getting to know each other, Mendes begins to impose his vision of the text, while Spacey concentrates on finding his inner and outer Richard, as the tone of the entire play will depend on his approach to the Duke of Gloucester's scheming and deportment.

As the cast is still very much in awe of their director, co-star and location, it's perhaps natural that there is a good deal of gushing at this juncture by supporting players like Andrew Long (Edward IV/Bishop of Ely) and Isaiah Johnson (Lord Rivers/Scrivener). But even veterans like Gemma Jones (Queen Margaret) and Haydn Gwynne (Queen Elizabeth) are inspired by the prospect of performing at the home of theatre, the Epidaurus Ampitheatre in Greece, where Julius Caesar once sat in the audience. Whelehan and cinematographer Aadel Nodeh-Farahani ably capture the atmosphere of this unique venue, while associate director Bruce Guthrie explains that this detour was designed to give the cast the feeling that they could excel anywhere if they could hold their own in such a hallowed place.

Oxford Drama School alumna Annabel Scholey (Lady Anne) evidently felt the gambit worked, as she describes how everyone returned for the Old Vic run with confidence and conviction. She also reveals how she palled up with Katherine Manners and Hannah Stokely, who played Richard and Edward (the princes in the Tower), although no further mention is made of casting actresses in these roles. Instead, Whelehan shifts the scene to the Harbiye Mushin Ertugrul Theatre in Istanbul, where the contrast between Europe and Asia and the impact of the Arab Spring adds a new subtext to the play. However, this brush with the real world is slightly compromised by the revelation that the actors blindly pick an `angel card' each evening and have to shape their performance around a buzz word like `truth'. But, even if this does feel a touch affected, it shows how company members try to keep things fresh for themselves and the audience.

Scholey describes how she decided to make Lady Anne tougher than usual and how difficult she initially found the sequence in which Spacey has to try and seduce her. As the tour progresses, however, she begins to enjoy making this encounter more physically daring, as she has recognised that it is crucial for Richard's evolution as a villain that he feels emboldened by his conquest. Gemma Jones and Maureen Anderman (Duchess of York) similarly reveal how Mendes shaped their characters to emphasise their loathing for a man so evidently revelling in his devilry and it is noticeable how Spacey starts to implicate the audience more openly in his crimes from this point on. But it is one of the great frustrations of the film that we only get to see snippets of what appears to be a tour de force performance. Maybe a record of the play itself will appear in due course, as there is a sense that this documentary would be more useful as a DVD extra.

The tour arrives at the Teatro Politeama in Naples and Whelehan eavesdrops on a dress rehearsal to show how the cast becomes accustomed to the space and acoustics of a new venue. Guthrie and assistant stage manager Samantha Watson explain how there are four versions of the set in transit and setting up each time presents unique problems, especially when language barriers are involved. But, while they toil, the rest of the company heads to Pompeii, where Jeremy Bobb (Second Murderer/Sir William Catesby) admits that he has never been out of the United States before. Like the piano-playing Chandler Williams (George, Duke of Clarence), he enjoys learning while being given the freedom to suggest ideas. Moreover, they are revelling in the chance to see the world and Spacey concurs that theatre comes alive when the cast is being enriched by new experiences. Consequently, after the 100th show (and the last in Europe), he hires a yacht to sail to Capri for a night of luxury.

Amusingly, Whelehan debunks this moment of unashamed smugness by cutting back to Mendes recalling how he struggled to make Spacey seem sufficiently vulnerable during his Oscar-winning performance in American Beauty (1999) and he reveals that he had to go through a similar process to help him discover Richard. But Spacey insists that the real challenge lay in doing something original with such a well-known work and, as a result, he embraces the sense of danger involved in each performance and encourages his cast to react in character to whatever happens on stage, whether it be corpsing or a prop malfunction (however, he appears to have recently forgotten this piece of advice when he snapped at an audience member whose phone rang during his one-man Old Vic swan song in Clarence Darrow).

While the Americans in the cast seem delighted to be back on home soil, Gemma Jones remembers the Curran Theatre in San Francisco from her time in Peter Brook's acclaimed 1970 Royal Shakespeare Company revision of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bobb detects a rock star aura around the engagement and he lauds Spacey for following idol Henry Fonda in taking a decade out from cinema in order to commit to the stage. Jack Ellis (Hastings) is equally effusive, as he delights in the macabre comedy that Spacey invests in the sequence in which his head is delivered in a box and he knowingly plays on the moment in David Fincher's Seven (1995) when he sends a similar package to Brad Pitt. The use of a camcorder and a giant screen to record the moment Richard is offered the throne is even wittier and the cast speculates on how audiences at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing might react to such an edgy depiction of political paranoia and to the aggressive pageantry of the coronation, which is accompanied by 26 drummers.

However, this leg of the tour proves to be fraught with problems, as the hotel is undergoing major renovation and the cast members start to suffer from exhaustion and homesickness. Scholey concedes that it is impossible to be on top form every night and that the key to stage acting is not to let the audience notice. Spacey himself admits that touring is stressful, but appreciates the opportunity to experience the nomadic lifestyle of so many of his forebears. But trips to the Forbidden City, the Great Wall of China and a Buddhist temple revive spirits, with Stephen Lee Anderson (Sir Richard Ratcliffe) expressing particular gratitude after being diagnosed with breast cancer a year earlier to share such moments with new friends like Gavin Stenhouse (Marquess of Dorset), Chuk Iwuji (Buckingham), Michael Rudko (Stanley), Simon Lee Phillips (Sir James Tyrrel/Duke of Norfolk), Howard Overshown (Brackenbury/Mayor of London) and Gary Powell (First Murderer/Sir Francis Lovel).

The Libyan revolt against Colonel Gadaffi is making headlines as the troupe arrives at the Lyric Theatre in Sydney. Ironically, Spacey's costume as king is modelled on one of the dictator's excessive uniforms and he explains how the physical nature of his performance changes once Richard ascends the throne. He also hopes that audiences recognise the allusion to the corrupting nature of power and pick up on the fact that mischief is replaced by malevolence as he strives to retain control in the face of an invasion by Henry, Earl of Richmond (Nathan Darrow, who doubled as Lord Grey) and his mother's own hope that he will be overthrown.

Anderman recalls her own experiences of a war zone, when she performed in Vietnam in 1967, and she compares the camaraderie of troupes and troops. However, all have a sense of unease as they open in the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha, as the region has recent first-hand knowledge of dictatorship. Spacey again confesses to feeling the pressure of having to hold the play together eight times a week and Mendes suggests the tour has been something close to a heart of darkness for him. Yet, he is not looking forward to the company disbanding because he needs his appointments with Dr Theatre to cleanse himself of the anxieties and insecurities that are so essential to the later part of his performance, as the curses of two mothers gnaw at Richard and he is stricken with conscience on the eve of his defeat at Bosworth Field. 

As a last hurrah, the cast drive into the desert and bounce around the dunes in all-terrain vehicles. Spacey rolls down a slope and Anderson treasures the sense of liberation and unity they all felt before they settled into the Bam Harvey Theatre at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for the last leg. Mendes claims Spacey relishes the stage so much because he loves feeling the audience in the palm of his hand. But, as he presents the cast with little caricatures of themselves in costume (reciprocating a gift they gave him), it seems clear that he also takes pleasure from moulding actors and seeing them develop and, while the experience of performing and watching a play may be transient, the theatre exerts a powerful grip across the footlights and it is this sense of artistry, growth and togetherness that Whelehan captures so deftly.

Any backstage documentary is going to contain clichés and Spacey, Mendes and their cast succumb to them on a regular basis. There is also a surfeit of lyrical waxing about Spacey's genius and generosity. But, otherwise, Whelehan ably conveys the ordinariness of the actors as they gossip, reminisce and sightsee between shows. He also does well to capture some of the younger American actors rethinking their preconceptions about British thesps. The analysis of the play may not be as dense as it was in Al Pacino's Looking for Richard (1996), but that is not the primary purpose of this affectionate (if occasionally superficial) account of the mechanics of a global tour and the personal and professional effect it had on those taking part.