Parky at the Pictures (DVD 22/6/2017)

With Vincent D'Onofrio and Marisa Tomei providing the voices of the antagonists, this fascinating study draws heavily on Jacobs's 1961 tome, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. But the influence of Robert Caro’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974), Peter Laurence's Becoming Jane Jacobs, Alice Sparberg Alexiou's Jane Jacobs: Urban Visionary and Anthony Flint's Wrestling With Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took on New York's Master Builder and Transformed the American City also seems evident.

Tyrnauer opens with Jacobs's celebrated quote - `Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.' - before setting the scene by revealing the unprecedented amount of urbanisation currently taking place across the globe. His assembled experts indicate that this is a crucial time for the future of human civilisation and suggest that many important lessons can be learned from the way that Jacobs resisted Moses's bid to clear what he considered to be slum areas and replace them with gleaming edifices of concrete, steel and glass that would revolutionise the concept and practice of urban dwelling.

Theoretical physicist Geoffrey West and urban theorists James Howard Kunstler and Max Page join with architecture critic Paul Goldberger and urban planner Alexander Garvin in explaining the social chasm represented by the magisterial skyscrapers and crumbling tenements that defined New York for the first part of the 20th century. Emerging from the Progressive Movement, Moses had originally striven to alleviate some of the miseries of urban poverty by creating parks and beaches. But he also became convinced that the slums incubated disease and discontent and he vowed to replace them with high-rise structures modelled on the modernist masterpieces of the Swiss-French architect, Le Corbusier.

This, however, brought him into conflict with Jacobs. Friend Mary Rowe recalls how she adored New York and fed off the energy of its bustle and diversity. She lived in Greenwich Village and confides to an interviewer how the city gave everyone a chance to do something interesting and new from the humblest of origins. But, as author Steven Johnson notes, the postwar planners wanted to sweep away the stoops and sidewalks where the poorer people congregated and information films of the period reveal how the dream of urban renewal was sold to an unsuspecting populace that still trusted government to do the right and best thing. Research psychiatrist Mindy Fullilove and urban theorist Thomas J. Campanella declare that the planners wished to remove the cancer that was blighting the city and felt that applying the logic of the machine age would enable them to play God with the citizens.

As New York's parks commissioner, construction co-ordinator and head of a mayoral committee on slum clearance, Moses acquired the power to sign relocation and demolition orders and initiate building projects. However, he soon made enemies and architect Michael Sorkin regrets that he lost sight of his earlier utilitarian vision. Jacobs was the first to dare oppose the renewal tsar and she soon became a familiar face on television denouncing the `sacking of cities' in the name of progress and deriding the `marvels of dullness and regimentation' that had replaced the tenements where communities had once thrived. Architect Toni Griffin states that Jacobs understood how urban living worked and how small streets with lots of diversity was the key to ensuring interaction and integration.

Biographer Peter Laurence reveals that Jacobs began writing about the city when she was 18 years old and journalist Anthony Flint extols her drive to freelance while working as a secretary at a candy company. She placed many pieces with Vogue and started profiling New York's trade and residential centres. A recurring theme was the need to shape the city around people and not impose buildings and lifestyles upon them, although biographer Alice Sparberg Alexiou recalls that she also published an item on manhole covers (Jeremy Corbyn take note) before landing a staff job on the influential journal, Architectural Forum.

This post took her to Philadelphia in 1954, where she locked horns with Edmund Bacon, the executive director of the city's planning committee. Initially, she had applauded the ideas to regenerate Society Hill by restoring old properties alongside new ones. But she took exception to the council blaming the residents for failing to create flourishing communities in buildings that failed to meet their needs. Friend Roberta Gratz remembers how she similarly criticised developments in East Harlem. But, more importantly, she saw here how ethnically diverse groupings supported and supplemented each other and the mutuality of these systems of order became the keystone of her vision of urbanism.

The personality of neighbourhoods come from the bottom up, as residents spontaneously find ways to rub along. Economist Sanford Ikeda says Jacobs understood that living cities were dense and messy and worked because of an organised complexity that would cease to be wholly effective if it was understood too well. But renewalists like Moses failed to appreciate the significance of this ground-level vitality and, convinced by their ill-considered utopian fantasies, they sent in the bulldozers.

Although Le Corbusier had been inspired by a flight over Paris, the City of Light rejected his proposals for cruciform tower blocks and super highways. But they influenced the Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World's Fair in New York and convinced many that rebuilding to accommodate cars and steepling housing estates would make Americas cities more efficient and harmonious. But Jacobs's editor Jason Epstein and architects Robert A.M. Stern and Geeta Mehta point out that the planners misinterpreted Le Corbusier's intention of surrounding high-rise offices with seven-storey residential blocks and plumped for a corrupted variation that made greater commercial sense. But, as Goldberger notes, Jacobs realised that living in the air took people off the pavements and, thus, prevented them from interacting and sharing the experience of the neighbourhood vibe. They also ceased to police their own streets and turned the open spaces into dangerous no-go zones.

But Moses was too egotistical to listen to such logic and dismissed constructive criticism as a form of NIMBYism. He drew plaudits for successes like the Lincoln Centre, but they merely emboldened him to make ruinous mid-50s proposals like extending Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park. Future mayor Ed Koch stood alongside Jacobs, Shirley Hayes and Edith Lyons in their bid to save the park where their kids played and the community came together for social and cultural events. Rowe and friend Carol Greitzer recall how the force of her personality enabled Jacobs to enlist such supporters as Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Mead and Susan Sontag in exposing the hectoring tactics of Moses and his cronies, who were determined to sweep away the speakeasies and jazz clubs that they deemed dens of iniquity. But his biggest mistake lay in branding Jacobs a `housewife' and questioning why a bunch of mothers had a right to stand selfishly in the way of vital change.

Coming so soon after his defeat in Washington Square, Moses had no time for The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which he considered libellous. But the book was spurned by another of Moses's most vociferous adversaries, Lewis Mumford of The New Yorker, who ticked off Jacobs for suggesting `home remedies' when serious surgery was required. But she had no time for bandying barbs, as her own West Village neighbourhood had been earmarked for renewal. No one hazards whether this was Moses taking revenge, but Jacobs launched a campaign to win over Mayor Robert F. Wagner and he reversed the ruling that this was a slum area in need of demolition. But Flint and others agree that Jacobs was an articulate voice and resourceful pragmatist who borrowed tactics from the Civil Rights, feminist and green movements.

Yet, while President Lyndon Johnson called for all Americans to have a decent home, the projects that sprang up across the country concentrated poverty and social problems in out-of-the-way ghettos that quickly fell into disrepair and saw rates of crime, vandalism and drug use rise dramatically. Griffin, Mehta and Fullilove echo the contemporary claims of James Baldwin that this was part of a concerted bid to remove working-class blacks from city centres and architect Charles Correa says it came as no surprise when planners blew up the infamous Pruitt-Igoe estate in St Louis because there rejection of soulless blocks had been rejected so completely. A montage follows of other estates buckling and collapsing and there is something innately sad about seeing them fall. But one can only applaud the failure of the crypto-fascist spirit that inspired their construction.

Another aspect of modern life that was changing the US landscape was the rise of the motor car. Urban theorist Mike Davis highlights the consequences of Moses's commandment, `Thou Shalt Drive,' One of his most controversial projects was the Cross Bronx Expressway, which Jacobs opposed because she believed it was pavements that made communities not roads. Architect Donald Shiffmann denounces the route for tearing the heart out of the borough and Davis agrees it contributed massively to the social problems in the South Bronx. But Moses had no sympathy for those who were displaced and mocked the efforts of Jacobs to thwart him. The network of looping links took 17 years to complete, but it became gridlocked almost immediately and few mourned when the Lower Manhattan Expressway proposal fell through.

Moses argued his case in the 1964 short, This Urgent Need. But local priest Fr LaMountain was determined to preserve the 19th-century buildings in the SoHo district that had acquired the nickname Hell's Hundred Acres and Jacobs rallied to his call. She organised protests in Little Italy and friend Jane Goldin recalls how she called Moses out for accusing the residents of strangling the city to hang on to their rented slums. She also discovered he was trying to smuggle the legislation through City Hall and protested at a public hearing. When a stenographer panicked thinking a riot was about to break out, she dropped her tapes and Jacobs supporters picked them up and nullified the meeting because its minutes had been lost.

She was arrested and charged with three felonies for her actions, but she won the day and Moses realised politicians could no longer be bribed or bullied into doing his bidding. He was ousted by Governor Nelson Rockefeller and Jacobs followed her architect husband to Toronto, where he was building hospitals and their sons were escaping the Vietnam draft. Ironically, she had to fight another highway proposal in Canada, but she was largely left to write. But the urban sprawl situation remained unchecked and spread around the world. Political economist Saskia Sassen compares modern China to being like `Moses on steroids' and Mehta proclaims these new high-rise estates the slums of the future. They agree with Jacobs that such dormitory blocks don't constitute a real city and can never become so without an attendant public realm of shops and facilities.

Owing much to Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke, the closing montage of teeming street scenes seems overly stylised and trite. Moreover, it distracts from the closing snippet of Jacobs wisdom: `Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvellous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance - not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole.'

The poetic nature of this prose testifies to Jacobs's achievement as a writer. But it's her rabble-rousing and refusal to kow-tow to a tyrant that makes this such a rivetting watch. She went on to write eight more books before dying at the age of 89 in 2006. But, even though he sometimes makes Moses seem like a pantomime villain (when, in fact, he was an intellectual who descended into megalomania after being corrupted by power) Tyrnauer is right to play down suggestions that her activities form a blueprint for countering Trumpism in the United States. However, he might have made more of the machine behind Moses and explored his policies in the wider context of the Eisenhowerian ethos. Nevertheless, he conveys the scale and significance of the struggle with some superb archive material, which has been cogently assembled by editor David B. Thompson.

Britain can currently lay claim to two of the world's most prolific sports documentary makers in James Erskine and Daniel Gordon. Since making his name with The Game of Their Lives (2002), which chronicled the exploits of North Korea's 1966 World Cup squad, Gordon has reflected upon North Korean gymnastics (A State of Mind, 2004), the disgrace of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson (9.79”, 2012) and the rivalry between Mary Decker and Zola Budd (The Fall, 2016). But he will always struggle to surpass the achievement of Hillsborough (2014), which provided a devastating insight into how 96 Liverpool supporters were killed at an FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest on 15 April 1989.

Consequently, Best (aka George Best: All By Himself) feels like a missed opportunity to go further than Sharon Walker's There's Only One George Best (2002) and Ritchie Beacham-Paterson's George Best: The Legacy (2009) in profiling the greatest footballer these islands have ever produced. Aficionados will insist that the most revealing study of Best's mercurial talent is Hellmuth Costard's Football As Never Before (1971), which used multiple cameras to record his performance against Coventry City in a 1970 First Division match at Old Trafford. But, while Gordon (who grew up in Manchester) leaves Mary McGuckian's dismal biopic, Best (2000), in his wake, he and screenwriter Peter Ettedgui too often content themselves with retelling the familiar decline and fall tale rather than seeking to offer any psychological analysis. Using archive recordings to allow Best to narrate his own story, the first segment spends more time discussing the emotional impact of the 1958 Munich air disaster than the Belfast childhood that the 15 year-old left behind (after a homesick false start) to join Manchester United in 1961. However, the loss of the Busby Babes did much to shape the club's destiny in the ensuing decade, as manager Matt Busby sought to win the European Cup that his brilliant young side had perished while pursuing. Travelling companion Eric McMordie and new best mate Mike Summerbee (who played for Manchester City) remember the strain of being alone in the big city, while teammates Pat Crerand and Harry Gregg recall watching an audacious talent rise through the ranks to make his debut against West Bromwich Albion in September 1963.

As landlady's son Steve Fullaway recollects, it took a while for the 17 year-old to find his feet. But he was soon starring alongside Bobby Charlton and Denis Law in a championship win that afforded United another tilt at Europe's biggest prize. Veteran journalist Hugh McIlvanney notes that the campaign transformed Best into a superstar after he scored a quarter-final brace against Benfica in the Estádio de Luz in March 1966. But his good looks had also caught the eye of the lifestyle reporters, who even spotted him dancing to The Rolling Stones miming `The Last Time' in the Top of the Pops studio in 1965. Thus, when he returned from a trip to Spain sporting a sombrero, Best was dubbed `El Beatle' and the boutiques he opened with Summerbee caught the mood of the Swinging Sixties.

Although he started to date beautiful women like model-turned-screenwriter Jackie Glass (who is now Buddhist nun Ani Rinchan), Best was still deeply in love with football. But the romance began to sour after he scored the second goal in United's 4-1 victory over Benfica in the 1968 European Cup Final at Wembley. Part of the reason was that the 22 year-old had achieved his lifetime ambition. But Busby's resignation and the decision to move into his own luxury home deprived Best of the steadying influences that had helped guide him to the top. He could still rattle in six goals in a 5th Round FA Cup romp against Northampton Town in 1970 and produce iconic moments like the impudent lob over Northern Ireland teammate Pat Jennings against Tottenham Hotspur in 1971. But managers Wilf McGuinness and Frank O'Farrell failed to put an arm round Best when he needed reassurance and their refusal to build a new side around him, as the great 60s squad was dismantled, left him questioning his future.

Spending as much time partying and evading the paparazzi as playing, Best began missing training (once disappearing for a week to canoodle with Miss Great Britain, Carolyn Moore) and acquired a reputation for being temperamental after throwing mud at the referee during a Home International against Scotland in 1971. New United manager Tommy Docherty refused to pander to Best's tantrums, however, and he was suspended after another prolonged absence in December 1973. Despite appearing alongside Busby to apologise for letting everyone down, Best announced his retirement shortly afterwards, although he was lured back in April 1974 in a doomed bid to help United avoid relegation.

Cut adrift after 474 appearances, Best allowed Elton John to persuade him to sign for Los Angeles Aztecs in the North American Soccer League and journeymen Ray Hudson, Chris Dangerfield and Bobby McAlinden recall the excitement generated by stars like Pelé, Johann Cryuff and Franz Beckenbauer signing to US teams. But, as agent Ken Adam reveals, Best found love rather than fulfilment in California, as he met and married Angie MacDonald, who was working for Cher. However, as Lindy Dangerfield (Angie's sister) relates, the pair decided to open a bar and Best succumbed so hard to the inevitable temptation that it affected his play and the Aztecs sold him to Fort Lauderdale Strikers.

As agent Bill McMurdo states, this would be the first of many transfers, however, and the Bests became nomads as he turned out for Fulham, Hibernian, San Jose Earthquakes, Bournemouth and Brisbane Lions before finally quitting football in 1984 after a single game for Ulster minnows Tobermore United. This is a neglected period in Best's career and Strikers manager Tim Robbie reflects intriguingly on a spell in Florida, when he could still show flashes of the old magic. Hudson similarly recalls the rage with a referee that led to a slaloming goal for the Quakes (who had forced him into rehab) that was named the Budweiser goal of the season. But the night of the presentation saw Best fall off the wagon after 11 months and embark upon a 22-day binge that prompted Angie to concentrate on raising their son Calum rather than trying to cope with her husband's flaws.

McMurdo suggests that Best suffered from depression and went on benders out of guilt at having let people down. Among them was his mother, Annie, who drank herself to death in October 1978. Lindy opines that booze was in his blood, but Angie insists that alcoholism is not a disease because a drunk always has a choice and her successor, Alex Pursey, opines that she could never decide whether Best couldn't or wouldn't stop drinking as he sought something to replace the adrenaline rush of his golden era. But Gordon opts to gloss over the next 30 years and cuts to Calum announcing his father's death on 25 November 2005, with a sombre Denis Law at his side. Summerbee and Crerand confess they had no stomach for visiting him in hospital and old friend Malcolm Wagner admits that his circle let him down by failing to coerce him into formulating a plan of action to keep him sober.

As Gordon reruns Best's infamous inebriated interview with Terry Wogan, Alex suggests he was a gentle soul who was occasionally possessed by a demon. She admits that he sometimes beat her under the influence, but she sincerely hoped that his liver transplant would bring him to his senses. But, as agent Phil Hughes reveals, Best spent three years in agony longing to drink and his willpower eventually gave out. McMurdo admits that they exploited the situation to profit from press fascination with Best's struggle and Hughes regrets taking the deathbed picture that appeared in the News of the World (even though Best agreed to its publication to show what drink had done to him).

Over shots of the crowds lining the Belfast streets for Best's funeral, Hudson suggests that he had insisted on doing things his own way and this refusal to accept help shocked old friends like McMordie, who had known a very different individual when the odyssey began. Speaking on radio two months before his death, Best hoped he would be remembered solely for his football. But, while he wishes it was otherwise, McIlvanney laments that his reputation will forever be tarnished by the lapses that became a way of life.

Despite counting Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and Calum Best among its notable absentees (and Brian Kidd, Alex Stepney, Willie Morgan and Sammy Mcllroy among those left on the cutting-room floor), this portrait of a flawed genius builds on its predecessors without presenting much fresh evidence or insight. The boastful bluster of Paddy Crerand scarcely conveys the startling impact that Best had on English football in the mid-1960s and it's a shame that Gordon elected not to invite more opponents, pressmen and pundits to assess his contribution to the game and make comparisons with his peers. He is hampered to some extent, however, by the fact that so little football was shown on television in Best's heyday that only a handful of his finest moments were actually captured on camera. But even those with no interest in sport knew all about Georgie because he had been groomed to be the prototype Golden Balls by PR gurus who knew there was no such thing as a bad headline.

Ultimately, however, they turned Best's head and Gordon might have done more to put some of these liggers in the dock. Instead, he and Ettedgui coast through the highs and lows assembled with polished precision by editor Andy R. Worboys without offering any opinions of their own. Some may laud this objectivity, but others will wish that Gordon (who was at Sky Sports when Best served as an unreliable analyst) had delved a little more deeply into the reasons why this charismatic, but damaged maverick was allowed to hurtle `downhill on a toboggan'.

Such was the impact of Asif Kapadia's Senna (2010) that all subsequent documentaries about Formula 1 racing have found themselves in its slipstream. So, even though Roger Donaldson has handled a high-speed storyline before in profiling motorcylist Burt Munro in The World's Fastest Indian (2006) and has been given unique access to Bruce McLarens family and archive, McLaren finds itself among the also rans with Hannes M. Schalle's Lauda: The Untold Story (2014) and Seán Ó Cualáin's Crash and Burn (2016).

Born in Remuera in Auckland in 1937, Bruce McLaren was fascinated by the cars at his father Les's garage and childhood pals Phil Kerr (future director of McLaren Racing between 1968-75) and Colin Beanland (general manager of McLaren Engines between 1969-72) recall his obsession and how much Les taught them all. Pop McLaren had been a notable racing driver himself and feared that his son would not be able to follow in his footsteps when Bruce was hospitalised with Perthes Disease in 1948. Mother Ruth and Seddon Tech classmate Jim Anderton recall how he was forced to lie on a frame with weights on his legs to cure a problem with his hip. But, even though he always limped because one leg was shorter than the other, Bruce refused to give up on his racing dreams.

He crossed the country to enter events and Kerr and Beanland remember him competing in the New Zealand Grand Prix against drivers like Jim Clark, Jack Brabham and Stirling Moss, whom racing historian Michael Clark considers the Spitfire pilots of the sport. As Brabham kept his car at Pop's garage, he became a mentor and, after Bruce won six races in his Cooper-Climax, he was presented with a scholarship to train in Britain in 1958, He and Beanland spent the next seven years at the Cooper factory in Surbiton and they had to build his first car from scratch. But he quickly made an impact on the Fomula 2 scene and sister Jan recalls the excited letters and tapes that he used to send home.

Journalist Eoin Young recalls McLaren being entered in a combined F1/F2 race at the notorious Nürburgring in 1958 and astonishing everyone by winning the F2 competition and finishing fifth overall. Emerson Fittipaldi confirms the `the Green Hell' was a testing circuit and everyone suspected the sport had a new star at the tender age of 20. Indeed, the following seasons, McLaren began to pick up points and won his first Grand Prix at the Sebring Raceway in Florida in helping Brabham pip Moss to the world title. Along with racing boss John Cooper, they developed a faster car and McLaren finished second to Brabham in only his second full season.

Fellow Kiwi Chris Amon was among those to be inspired by him and the newsreel cameras followed him when during the Auckland Grand Prix. He is seen learning to water ski by rival Arnold Glass and wife Patty remembers him being a very dashing celebrity at the time she was Miss Caroline Bay. They only had a few dates before becoming engaged because he was always away and she smiles at the idea they fell in love by post.

Yet, as mechanic Wally Willmott suggests, for all his success on the track, McLaren was really an engineer at heart and was forever making sketches and models. When Brabham left Cooper in 1961 to design his own car, he felt a pang of envy. But he continued to have success on the circuit and saw off the challenge of Phil Hill in a titanic Monte Carlo Grand Prix in 1962, which culminated in him receiving his trophy from Princess Grace. However, as Jackie Stewart laments, this was a dangerous sport and several close friends perished due to mechanic failure or human error. Patty implies that losses hit hard because the drivers spent so much time socialising while they travelled the world. But, as McLaren stated in his autobiography, From the Cockpit, drivers had to forget tragedies as soon as they happened in order to keep competing.

Despite narrowly surviving his own smash at the Nürburgring, McLaren was determined to continue and future driver/constructor Dan Gurney notes that he began devoting more of his time to learning from the Cooper technical staff and the combination of his curiosity, intelligence and ability to think big enabled him to plan for the future. Artist Michael Turner designed the logo for a car of McLaren's own design, which bore the Cooper name at the 1964 New Zealand Grand Prix. Twenty-six year-old American team-mate Timmy Mayer drove the second string, as McLaren triumphed. But he was killed at Longford in Tasmania in the next race and McLaren returned to London convinced that he had to put the lessons into practice.

Driver Howden Ganley was the first to be recruited, as McLarens racing company was launched in the corner of a garage that repaired earth-moving equipment. He test drove for Ford and Firestone to raise funds and engineer Gary Knutson admits it was initially a seat-of-the-pants operation. But the team was young and enthusiastic and McLaren was just as ready to make sacrifices and take chances. Initially, he modified an American sports car and won a race in Canada before Teddy Mayer (Timmy's lawyer brother) joined up to put the company on a firmer business footing. They moved into a new facility at Feltham and colleagues smile on recalling the catchphrase `Whoosh! Bonk!' that McLaren uttered while designing the M1 prototype (which he sketched in chalk on the workshop floor).

Such was the success of this car in the States that it featured in the Elvis Presley picture, Spinout (1966). But McLaren had his sights set on Formula 1 and recruited Concorde designer Robin Herd to work on the new car. Willmott and Beanland admit it was gruelling work perfecting the new design, but future team manager Alastair Caldwell recalls the joy McLaren felt at being his own boss and changing the nature of his sport, while Herd recalls a practical joke involving a paint tin being fired through his office door using a homemade bazooka. But the 1966 F1 season was a disaster because the Ford engine produced more noise than propulsion.

Now the proud father of Amanda, McLaren needed to turn things round quickly. But he was also suffering from the after-effects of Perthes and needed to consult a doctor about hip surgery. So, he decided to enter the 24-hour race at Le Mans to give the team a boost, driving a Ford-sponsored variation of the GT40. Mario Andretti was test driving with him at the time and recalls his artistry behind the wheel. Chris Amon was chosen as his co-driver and McLaren defied Henry Ford II's instruction for this three vehicles to dead heat in first place and took the chequered flag alone.

He switched focus to the Canadian-American Challenge Cup and Mariyn Fox Halder recalls the family mood around the Can-Am circus. Andretti and Lothar Motshchenbacher praise the McLaren car that was entered for this series. But, while McLaren himself wanted to quit racing to focus on design, he needed to keep winning prize money to keep the operation afloat. Designers Gordon Coppuck and Bruce Harré suggest the F1 failure drained the coffers and sponsors wanted McLaren in the hot seat. He was disappointed when Amon joined Ferrari, but he replaced him with fellow Kiwi Denny Hulme for the 1967 season.

Astonishingly, McLaren made up an entire lap on the field to win at Mosport and went on to lift the Can-Am title as Hulme took the F1 crown for Brabham. Thus, when McLaren made the move back into FI, Hulme was more than happy to be his driver. At Spa in Belgium, however, Hulme was forced to retire and McLaren became only the second driver to win a Grand Prix in a car with his own name on the nose. But he thought he had finished second, as he was unaware that Jackie Stewart had run out of fuel. It was a proud moment and it has not been matched since.

According to Cary Taylor and Jim Stone, McLaren and Hulme spent their lives shutting across the Atlantic to race in Can-Am and F1. For the 1969 season, they added high wings to the Can-Am car to improve the down force and won all 11 races in their distinctive yellow cars, with McLaren taking six of them. He was also working on a street car and used to delight in taking the bright red trial model for spins around London. Now settled in a lovely big house, he even decided to take a tilt at the Indianapolis 500 after completing his 100th Grand Prix at the age of 32. However, Hulme's car caught fire and he sustained serious burns to his hands. As a consequence, he couldn't test the Can-Am car at Goodwood on 2 June 1970 and McLaren stepped in, despite being jet-lagged from the flight from the US.

A series of accidents in F1 had prompted the banning of high wings and McLaren was experimenting with a new lower fin when he ignored the Goodwood rule of breaking for lunch at noon to do one more lap. As he approached a marshal's hut that had long been due for demolition, the rear of the car lifted and McLaren lost control. The sudden silence prompted Caldwell and Stone to jump into a car and the former recalls McLaren's body being broken like a rag doll. Kerr went to tell Patty and phoned Auckland, where mother Ruth had had a premonition earlier in the day that something was going to go wrong.

But the workforce was imbued with McLaren's spirit and everyone turned up for work the next day to begin building a replacement car for the start of the Can-Am season at Mosport. Hulme defied the doctors to finish third, while Gurney stepped in and won. As Kerr reveals, the team went on to do the only double double of F1 (Fittipaldi and James Hunt) and Indycar (Johnny Rutherford x2) and the reputation of the factory was established and it now stands behind only Ferrari as the longest-running team in F1.

A closing flash montage of McLaren car designs is followed by acknowledgements of the passing of Patty, Kerr and Amon during the making of the film, which pays rich and fulsome tribute to a remarkable character and an indisputable sporting legend. Adhering to the Kapadia template, Donaldson and editors Tim Woodhouse and James Brown (who also co-scripted with Matthew Metcalfe) make solid use of the archive material, which is bolstered periodically by tasteful reconstructions and counterpointed throughout by a suitably stirring David Long score. But, for once, it's the talking head contributions that leave the deepest impression, as each contributor speaks with a quiet pride and an inextinguishable affection that makes this as moving as it is informative.

On 1 June, Beatle fans celebrated the quinquagenarial anniversary of the release of the landmark album, Sgt Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. Taking its cue from the opening line of the title track, John Sheppard's 1987 documentary, It Was 20 Years Ago Today, explored the making of the album and the cultural and political world that spawned it. Sadly, this is no longer available on disc or online and, thus, Fabs fans will have to make do with Alan G. Parker's undistinguished cash-in, It Was Fifty Years Ago Today! The Beatles: Sgt Pepper and Beyond.

Being the memorabiliaholics they are, most Apple Scruffs will fork out to see this cynical slice of nostalgia on the big screen before buying a DVD and/or Blu-ray copy to sit on the shelves alongside the various incarnations of the deluxe repackaging of the original LP. They will also put up with the fact that the producers failed to coax Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr into sharing their recollections, as they will know what key roles NEMS aide Tony Bramwell, fan club secretary Freda Kelly and Mersey Beat editor Bill Harry played in the Beatle story. Biographers Hunter Davies, Ray Connolly and Philip Norman are also well respected, while the presence of John Lennon's half-sister, Julia Baird, George Harrison's sister-in-law, Jenny Boyd, and first drummer Pete Best (whose grandfather's medals appear on the cover) will reassure those suspecting that this is little more than an opportunistic exercise.

But many will know as much, if not more about the genesis and impact of this Parlophone classic than the film-makers themselves, who spend the first third rehashing the `Bigger Than Jesus' controversy that Ron Howard covered in plentiful detail in Eight Days a Week. It's important to know how the decision to quit touring impacted on the 1967 agenda and Steve Turner (the author of Beatles `66) capably steers the viewer through the familiar territory. But Parker keeps jumping between topics like Paul being the Londoncentric bohemian while the supposedly avant-garde John lazed around in Weybridge, the effects on the quartet of drugs and the Maharishi, and masochistically homosexual manager Brian Epstein having less to do once there were no concerts to organise.

Amidst the endlessly recycled archive clips, it soon becomes clear why Parker has adopted such a circuitous approach. He has failed to secure the rights to a single note of Pepper music and, thus, is unable to assess the aesthetic value of the tracks in isolation or as a whole. Mention is made of the Liverpool concept album that was due to contain `Strawberry Fields Forever', `Penny Lane' and `A Day in the Life', while the anecdotes about the origins of `Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds', `Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite' and `She's Leaving Home' are dusted down for a fresh look. Merseybeats Tony Crane and Billy Kinsley also recall Paul playing `When I'm 64' during a power cut at The Cavern back in 1963, while Epstein's secretary, Barbara O'Donnell, remembers throwing away the handwritten lyrics to songs like `Within You Without You' after George had deciphered them for her. But, otherwise, the deafening silence prevents Parker from presenting any meaningful analysis of the innovative recording techniques employed during the Abbey Road sessions that lasted between November 1966 and April 1967.

Several cuts are not even mentioned by name, although much time is devoted to EMI's concerns about the contents of Peter Blake's seminal cover design and the cost of the packaging. Andre Jerreau (who spent almost a quarter of a century as George in The Bootleg Beatles) and Evan Jolly do what they can with a psychedelic pastiche score, but the embarrassing situation of making a movie about a record that cannot be heard ruinously undermines the entire project. Hence, the `Beyond' bit of the title, as this gives Parker the chance to ruminate at length upon Epstein's death in August 1967 when The Beatles were studying transcendental meditation in Bangor. Davies, O'Donnell and Simon Napier-Bell, who all knew Epstein well, revisit the tragic details. But no one will ever know whether he meant to commit suicide and there's something rather distasteful about Napier-Bell (who was in Ireland at the time) chuckling about his honourable folly in erasing the increasingly incoherent answerphone messages that his friend had left him during his tormented final hours.

With Epstein no longer there to protect them, the Fabs began taking expensive gambles like Apple, which was designed to give talented people a chance to express themselves. Napier-Bell and O'Donnell are right to lambaste the liggers who took the company for a ride. But loyal aides like Neil Aspinall, Peter Brown and Mal Evans are mentioned by first name only without any clarification and such carelessly cluttered thinking epitomises the whole film. Blithely ignoring the live recording of `All You Need Is Love' and its effect on the Summer of Love and the damage that The Magical Mystery Tour did to the Beatle brand in December 1967, Parker careers off to India in February 1968 and the Rishikesh sojourn that hastened a split with Maharishi before the Apple Boutique was closed in August during the making of the White Album.

How enviously Parker must have looked over the fence at Francis Hanly's hour-long BBC special, Sgt Pepper's Musical Revolution, which saw Howard Goodall draw on out-takes, instrumental and vocal tracks, and studio chat to examine the album's legacy. Goodall also cropped up in Radio 2's two-parter, Sgt Pepper Forever, which included an in-depth contribution by Giles Martin (the son of Fifth Beatle George Martin, who revisited the four-track tapes to create the new stereo mix), as well as interviews with Peter Blake, Mike Leander (who arranged `She's Leaving Home' at McCartney's request), Beatle press secretary Derek Taylor and Martin's assistant, Tony King. They even managed to get superfans like Brian Wilson, Adrian Mitchell, Jimmy Webb, Tom Petty, T Bone Burnett and Dave Grohl to share their enthusiasm. By contrast, the best celebrity Parker could rustle up is Buzzcocks guitarist Steve Diggle.

Radio 4 Extra also had a splendid day of programming planned for 3 June around the famous faces featured on the Pepper cover. But, before anyone levels any accusations of pro-BBC bias, it must be said that Paul Merton on The Beatles was markedly less enticing, as the comedian speculated on how the post-66 material might have sounded live and which tracks from John, George, Paul and Ringo's solo careers might made it on to a fantasy album. Even so, it was more imaginative than It Was Fifty Years Ago Today!, which resorts to dressing models as the Penny Lane nurse and Lovely Rita the meter maid. Yet, us Beatlephiles will cut it some slack and, to paraphrase George's comments on A Hard Day's Night on Another Beatle Christmas Record (1964), `spect a lot of you will see it more than once.

Over three decades on from Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap (1984), the vast majority of rockumentaries still trade in the conventions and clichés that were so mercilessly lampooned by Christopher Guest and his bandmates. Stephen Kijak's We Are X is the latest to tap into Tap. But this hagiographic profile of Japan's most iconic pomp-rock combo makes a virtue of its similarity to outings like Ramona S. Díaz's Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey (2012) to show how tragedy has shaped X Japan's trajectory and inspired lyrics that are often deceptively deep for five guys sporting big hair, glam duds and kabuki make-up.

Formed in Chiba by drummer Yoshiki Hayashi and vocalist Toshi Deyama, X became one of the first Japanese indie bands to achieve mainstream success when their first two albums, Vanishing Vision (1988) and Blue Blood (1989), caught the ear and the imagination of an alienated younger generation. Completing this classic line-up were bassist Taiji Sawada, rhythm guitarist Pata Ishizuka and lead guitarist Hideto `Hide' Matsumoto, whose power/speed style was key to X's success. The bulk of the songs, however, were written by Yoshiki, a sickly kid whose mother fretted he would never make old bones. His father had encouraged him to play the piano and trumpet and he was primarily interested in classical music until his mother bought him a drum kit shortly after the 10 year-old had discovered his suicide father's body. When he started writing songs, he asked best friend Toshi to sing them and a musical journey began.

Presuming that everyone is au fait with X's oeuvre, Kijak doesn't bother to identify the songs shown in the numerous concert clips pieced together by editors Mako Kamitsuna and John Maringouin (although the hit single `Kurenai' and the 29-minute `Art of Life' do merit a name check). Nor does he go into much detail about the origins of their trademark look or why they struggled to replicate their success in Japan elsewhere in the world. Kiss frontman Gene Simmons (who lived in Israel before moving to America) puts it down to good old-fashioned prejudice, especially as X began recording and performing in English after they signed to Sony in 1991 for the Jealousy album. But it might have been useful to place X Japan in their wider musical context and compare how other glam metal bands were faring in the same period.

Instead, Kijak recalls how Taiji quit shortly in the wake of the `On the Verge of Destruction' gigs at the Tokyo Dome in January 1992. He opts not to pry when Yoshiki proves reluctant to discuss the reasons, however, and concentrates instead on the health issues that kept causing the drummer to collapse on stage at the end of shows. Kijak also decides not to press him on why the band changed its name to X Japan on signing to Atlantic Records in 1993 and why the kei aesthetic was jettisoned around the same time.

He also soft soaps Toshi's announcement that `The Last Live' gig on 31 December 1997 would be the group's swan song, as he had grown tired of the rock`n'roll lifestyle. In fact, he had been lured by his girlfriend into a cult whose leader had convinced that his music was evil. But Toshi's decision had calamitous consequences for Hide, whose burgeoning solo career was cut short by his death in May 1998. Once again, Kijak elects not to press Yoshiki on the matter, as he prefers to think that his friend had accidentally killed himself while doing a neck-stretching exercise rather than committed suicide. But Kijak might have devoted more time to the personal projects that Yoshiki pursued away from X, including the 1993 classical album, Eternal Melody, which saw him collaborate with legendary Beatle producer George Martin and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and `Anniversary', which was composed to mark the 10th year on the Crysanthemum Throne of Emperor Akihito.

Moreover, Kijak might have gleaned more from Toshi about the `brainwashing' that left him powerless to defend himself from repeated cult beatings. But his return to the real world and the decision to reform X Japan in 2007 does give the film-maker a chance to catch up with Pata and new recruits Hiroshi `Heath' Morie and Yune `Suzizo' Sugihara, as the band prepares for a landmark 2014 concert at Madison Square Garden in New York. He also seeks the opinion of die-hard fans, who revere Yoshiki and credit his lyrics with helping them cope with the travails of their own lives. But this adoration has come at considerable personal cost, as Yoshiki is shown consulting doctors about the neck, shoulder and wrist injuries that now plague him after 30 years of head-banging.

Freely admitting in the press pack that he knew nothing about X Japan before he accepted the commission, Bijak offers a fleeting glimpse of the New York shows that confirmed the band's status as rock royalty. But little is made of Yoshiki's contention that he is driven as much by a desire to honour the memory of Taiji and Hide than he is to increase his own wealth and fame. Indeed, one is left with the impression that this introduction has barely scratched the surface and one has to wonder whether this has more to do with Yoshiki's terms for participating in the project than a lack of curiosity on the part of a director with the excellent duo of Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (2006) and Stones in Exile (2010) in his filmography. Yet, even though this glossy and frustratingly humourless essay tells us next to nothing about the group's private lives or why the likes of Stan Lee and Marilyn Manson are such huge admirers, there's enough evidence of the potency of X Japan's unique brand of `visual rock' to please fans and persuade newcomers to explore further.