Parky at the Pictures (DVD 7/1/2016)

Still basking in the critical glory of his debut novel, Join the Street Parade, rising New York literary star Jason Schwartzman has been assured by editor Daniel London that he will go stratospheric when his sophomore effort, Obidant, hits the shelves. However, from the moment he berates ex-lover Samantha Jacober for daring to be late for a meeting, it is clear that Schwartzman is an insufferable narcissist who takes obnoxious hubris to a new level. Indeed, he is so certain that he is about to be proclaimed a genius that he cancels a promotional tour at the eleventh hour, brushes aside the adulation of would-be groupie Dree Hemingway and retreats to the apartment he shares with photographer girlfriend Elisabeth Moss to await the cascade of plaudits.

However, as narrator Eric Bogosian reveals, the rave reviews simply never materialise. London cowers as he breaks the news that the New York Times is lukewarm at best. But Schwartzman dismisses the ignorance of the critic and accepts an assignment to profile fellow scribe, Keith Poulson, whose book The Exploding Head Trick has been warmly received. Yet, instead of fawning over Poulson, Schwartzman calls him out for a fight and the resulting fracas causes Poulson to take his own life when it becomes public knowledge.

Dismayed only that he didn't get the last interview with a dead celebrity, Schwartzman refocuses on himself. Brushing off Moss's accusation that he is no fun any more, he accepts an invitation to stay with his fallen idol, Jonathan Pryce, who is every bit as conceited and detached from reality. He invites Schwartzman to spend some time at his country home to and take advantage of the peace and quiet to write. However, Pryce (whose reputation has dipped since he tried to cap the landmark novel Madness and Women with A Woman's Perspective) is every bit as demanding of attention as his guest, especially when he has the wind taken out of his sails by adult daughter, Krysten Ritter, after she interrupts his sordid attempts to seduce a gullible middle-aged woman.

While Schwartzman finds himself in the middle of a domestic dispute, Moss tries to move on with her life. She tells sister Jess Weixler to sort herself out, gets a cat and sees her career prospects start to improve. Yet, for some reason, she can't get over a man who barely acknowledges her existence, let alone her achievements. Meanwhile, things go from bad to worse for her estranged beau, as Pryce finds him a position teaching creative writing at a liberal arts college and he rapidly alienate all of his students and his colleagues. French tutor Josephine de la Baume agrees to a date, but their tryst is not a success and Schwartzman returns to Brooklyn to discover that Moss has thrown him out of their apartment and that his novel has bombed so badly that he is as hopeless as he is homeless.

Philip Lewis Friedman is Schwartzman's best role since Max Fischer in Wes Anderson's Rushmore (2008). Indeed, they have much in common and Perry often seems to exploit the similarity, as much as he does the fact that Pryce's character, Ike Zimmerman, has a name that resembles Philip Roth's alter ego in The Ghost Writer, Nathan Zuckerman. References to Roth abound, although Perry has revealed that he borrowed the idea to rack focus away from Schwartmen and on to Moss and Pryce from William Gaddis's first novel, The Recognitions. Having previously modelled Impolex on Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, it is perhaps not surprising that Perry sprinkles his myriad cinematic homages with the odd literary cue. But, given the current state of print publishing, there is something affectionate and romantic about the reverence shown to books here, even by characters as reprehensible as these.

Allowing glimpses of the fragile vulnerability beneath their pomposity, Schwartzman and Pryce are magnificent. But there isn't a false performance from the splendid ensemble, who are forever being eavesdropped or spied upon by Sean Price Williams's handheld and restlessly intrusive Super 16mm camera. Moss does particularly well with an underwritten character whose loyal yearning for a pretentious braggart provides the screenplay's biggest stretch. Even the unseen Eric Bogosian comes close to matching Alex Baldwin's superb voiceover in Wes Anderson's The Royal Tennenbaums (2001). Perry indulges himself with the occasional quip that sounds like something someone would say in a Woody Allen satire on hipsterdom, while other scenes ramble in the manner of a John Cassavetes improvisation. But, while he periodically risks sounding as smug as his gruesome twosome, Perry lets them carry the can while he picks up the accolades.

The plot of Guy Myhill's debut feature feels as though it could have been lifted from a film made in the 1960s. Set in Norfolk and following the fortunes of a 16 year-old loner, The Goob contains traces of the cine-DNA found in the social realist studies of childhood produced by Ken Loach and Barney Platts-Mills in the 1960s and by Pawel Pawlikowski, Andrea Arnold and Clio Barnard in the present day. Myhill even plunders his own Channel 4 documentary on stock car racing at the Swaffham Raceway to add a little local colour. But his screenplay is far too fragmented to coax the audience into rooting for the characters, especially when so many of them exist solely to keep the cliché-strewn moving forwards.

Arriving home after his last day at school, teenager Liam Walpole tears off his uniform and faces the rest of his life without a shred of optimism. He lives with mother Sienna Guillory, who runs a greasy spoon abutting a pumpkin farm, and his older brother, Joe Copsey, who shares his distaste for Guillory's new boyfriend, Sean Harris. Notorious for his womanising and his short fuse, Harris races stock cars and he is furious when Copsey winds up in hospital after being chased through the narrow lanes winding through the flatlands while joy riding in his prize-winning motor.

With Copsey incapacitated, Guillory is short-handed at the café and she invites nephew Oliver Kennedy to help Walpole and waitress Hannah Spearritt, who is feeling blue because she has just broken up with Walpole's pal, Paul Popplewell. Kennedy delights in winding up Harris with displays of playful campness. But he also reveals to his cousin that he is not averse to dressing in women's clothing. Walpole is intrigued and senses that Kennedy has a crush on him. But Harris becomes so frustrated with him cavorting around the place that he humiliates Kennedy in public and he beats a hasty retreat.

Walpole grows increasingly resentful of Guillory for allowing this thuggish outsider to impose his rules on their previously happy household. But Harris is bent on making life as uncomfortable for Walpole as possible and persuades Guillory that she needs a nightwatchman on the pumpkin patch. Harris creates a low-lying camouflaged hide and orders Walpole to stay at his post or feel his wrath. But his initial disinclination quickly abates when Guillory hires some fruit pickers from the continent and Walpole finds himself enchanted by Marama Corlett, a French student who invites him to an illicit nocturnal party.

However, Walpole spends so much time with her that he starts neglecting his chores and matters come to a head at the end-of-season party when Harris makes a clumsy pass at Corlett and she refuses to spare his blushes in rejecting him. She asks Walpole to leave with her, but he insists he will only go if Guillory comes with them. When she opts to stay with Harris, Walpole departs with Corlett, as he realises that he can't afford to waste his time trying to protect her if she is going to let her heart rule her head.

Lustrously photographed by Simon Tindall, this may not be the most ground-braking rite of passage, but it certainly makes evocative use of its hot summer locale and the vast Norfolk skies. Myhill may plump for a few too many magic hour shots, while his depth of characterisation leaves a great deal to be desired. But, while he allows Harris (with whom he worked on the short Two Half Times to Hell in 1997) to gnaw the scenery as the testoserone-fuelled bully, he coaxes a splendidly natural performance out of 20 year-old non-actor Liam Walpole, whose skinny frame and vacant expression sometimes bring to mind John Gordon Sinclair in Bill Forsyth's Gregory's G|irl (1981).

Oliver Kennedy also makes an impression as the flamboyant cousin. But Myhill never solves the problem of why Guillory would be so attracted to an abusive thug like Harris that she would jeopardise her relationship with her disapproving sons. He similarly struggles with the subplot involving Popplewell and Spearitt (who will be familiar to many from her time with S Club 7), as it is allowed to drift into the margins, along with the seemingly forgotten Copsey. Yet Myhill has a good eye for detail and, with a little assistance with his storytelling, he should come up with something more original and rounded next time out.

The demarcation line between fact and fiction runs indistinctly through Michael Winterbottom's The Face of an Angel, a treatise on the events surrounding the Meredith Kercher murder case that rather dubiously arrived in cinemas in the week that an Italian court delivered the latest in an embarrassingly long line of verdicts on the guilt or innocence of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. Winterbottom is a questing and eclectic film-maker, who has previously mined the headlines for Welcome to Sarajevo (1997) and In This World (2002). However, he is also infeasibly prolific and, as a consequence, some projects feel less considered than others. Sadly, despite making some cogent points about the impact of rolling news and the elusive nature of truth in a confessional age, this always seems a little rushed. Moreover, thanks to the protagonist's obsession with Dante, it's also a bit pretentious.

German film-maker Daniel Brühl arrives in Siena in 2011 to prepare a TV-movie based on journalist Kate Beckinsale's account of the murder of British student Sai Bennett by her American flatmate Genevieve Gaunt. Brühl is reluctant to make a true crime saga and is already at odds with his producers back in London as Beckinsale shows him around the city and familiarises him with the facts of the case. She also introduces him to some of the reporters awaiting the next development in the appeal process and he is struck by the different stances taken by British tabloid hack John Hopkins, local stringer Corrado Invernizzi and American crusader Sara Stewart, who refuses to entertain any notion that Gaunt and her Italian beau may be guilty. Consequently, Brühl becomes fascinated with the media coverage of the story and the way in which the focus on the alluring culprit has resulted in the victim being forgotten.

Brühl has recently divorced and is struggling to cope with being away from nine year-old daughter Ava Acres, with whom he has long conversations on Skype. He is also using a good deal of cocaine and the effects quickly begin to cloud his judgement, as he decides to centre his screenplay on the media circus rather than the gory crime. His fixation with Dante's The Divine Comedy also begins to impinge upon the project, although Brühl is already passing through circles of his own, as he leaves the hell of the press frenzy for the purgatorial pursuit of Valerio Mastrandrea, a local blogger who claims to have inside information on Bennett's fate.

Beckinsale sleeps with Brühl, but becomes increasingly concerned that he is trivialising the case and her book. She loses patience with him when he becomes enamoured of English student Cara Delevingne, who works in a bar and, in his addled brain, becomes the living embodiment of what Bennett could have become had she not been slain. Moreover, she becomes his very own Beatrice and Brühl takes Delevingne to Ravenna to see Dante's tomb. But the combination of the drugs, his domestic anguish and his inability to get to grips with the crime or his scenario tips Brühl over the edge and he becomes plagued by violent fantasies, in which he convinces himself that he has stolen the murder weapon from the malevolent Mastrandrea.

A bruising confrontation with the Italian sees Brühl spend some time in the cells. But he is released in time to see Gaunt acquitted and learns shortly afterwards that the teleplay has been cancelled. However, rather than allow the vicissitudes of the movie business to get to him, Brühl is inspired by Delevingne to conclude his script by dwelling on the happier moments that Bennett must have spent during her time in Siena.

Although it takes its primary inspiration from American journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau's book Angel Face, this is also a deceptively personal picture, with the suffering Brühl experiences after his divorce appearing to contain echoes of Descent: An Irresistible Tragicomedy of Everyday Life, a novel written in 2004 by Winterbottoms ex-wife, Sabrina Broadbent, which chronicles the marital woes of a philandering film-maker. However, there are also moments when this feels like a serious version of The Trip to Italy (2004), with coke-fuelled hallucinations replacing the toothsome repasts in chic restaurants.

Winterbottom has gone to great lengths in the press to distance his film from the horrific events that occurred in Perugia in 2007. But this is clearly a rumination on the Knox-Kercher case and the culture clash involved in its coverage and no amount of bluster and blurring can alter the fact. Screenwriter Paul Viragh approaches the material from an intriguing angle and the sequences Beckinsale and Brühl share with the press pack are full of astute observations about the way in which stories are now covered by professional news outlets and citizen journalists. There is also much to mull over during Brühl's quaint chats with Acres. But the attempts to shoehorn Dante into the equation are less persuasive, while the subplot involving Mastrandrea and the coke-driven reveries feel like they belong to exactly the kind of cheap thriller that Brühl and Winterbottom are supposedly so keen to avoid making.

As always, Brühl gives a fully committed performance. But Beckinsale and Delevingne are less well served by a screenplay that often feels as restless as Hubert Taczanowski's skittish handheld photography. One suspects that actual events will overshadow the film's release. But, while it's undoubtedly flawed, this still forces viewers to reassess their response to news bulletins and the reports carried in print and online and the extent to which they

By all accounts, Brighton-based Dan Rickard had less than a thousand quid at his disposal when he embarked upon Darkest Day. But he has spent it wisely enough, as this is a lively zombie movie that is bound to draw comparisons with Marc Price's Colin (2008), which was purportedly produced for just £40. The use of special effects, however, recalls Gareth Edwards's Monsters (2010), while anyone familiar with Danny Boyle's 28 Days Later... (2002) will recognise the plot. However, the south coast town is developing a reputation for cut-price chills and, while this may not be on a par with Paul Andrew Williams's London to Brighton (2006), Ben Wheatley's Down Terrace (2010) or John Shackleton's The Sleeping Room (2014), it combines gore and gallows humour ably enough to suggest that Rickard might be the next name to watch.

Waking on a Brighton beach with no memory of how he got there, Dan (Dan Rickard) wanders into town and is rescued from a marauding maniac by a couple of strangers. The male is killed in the struggle, but Lisa (Christianne van Wijk) takes Dan back to the terraced house where she is holed up with fellow twentysomethings Sam (Chris Wandell), Kate (Samantha Bolter), James (Richard Wilkinson), Stephen (Christian Wise), Will (Simon Drake) and Adi (Adrienne Wandell).

Sam is immediately suspicious of the newcomer, as he has no idea what has been going on. Kate takes Dan to her room and he listens in shocked silence as she reveals that a neurological virus descended on Britain and turned the infected population into ravenous monsters whose actions are dictated solely by their need to kill and devour. Sheepishly, Dan admits to knowing nothing of the crisis or his recent movements. But Kate persuades the others to let him stay and everyone gets drunk on the copious amounts of beer they have managed to stash away.

As army helicopters hover over the South Downs and soldiers follow Dan's tracks, the housemates repel an intruder's attempt to get through the front door and only just evade more marauders when they dispose of his body. But the virus cannot be so easily kept at bay and Sam recognises the symptoms developing in Adi. All hell breaks loose when she suddenly turns from a frightened victim into a slavering ghoul, but they succeed in putting her out of her misery after she falls from an upper window into the courtyard.

After a while, supplies run low and Kate, Will, Lisa and Dan volunteer to scour the empty streets for food. Meanwhile, Sam tools himself up with some homemade weapons and goes on a furious killing spree in revenge for Adi's death. Lisa and Dan become separated from the others, who head home and hope for the best. But a military sniper takes out Lisa while aiming for Dan as he steals food from a corpse lying in the road and he only just makes it back to base in one piece.

Deciding it is no longer safe to stay in Brighton, the survivors decide to make for the countryside. They dispatch attackers with ruthless efficiency, but Stephen also becomes a casualty before the fugitives stop for the night around a campfire. As he gathers his thoughts, however, Dan realises that the soldiers may well be after him and his fears are confirmed the following day when they waylay a trooper (Matthew Dukes) and he informs them that Dan was given an experimental vaccine that it was hoped would cure the virus. However, it made the test subjects even more demented and Dan urges the others to go on without him, while he tries to distract their pursuers. But even self-sacrifice is not as easy as it seems in this crazy, mixed-up world.

It would be easy to criticise the mediocre quality of the acting here, but Rickard deserves enormous credit for getting this micro-budget horror to the screen. Started as a film school project, it was filmed over a four-year period and a further three years were required for the complex special effects. Although Rickard wrote the screenplay in tandem with Will Martin, he served as his own cinematographer and CGI artist and the results are highly impressive.

The use of light and colour filters inside the house is imaginative and atmospheric, while the visual contrasts between the coast and the countryside are also nicely handled. The handheld camerawork is a bit fidgety in places and too often draws attention to the fact that Rickard is trying to convey an impression he cannot afford to depict. Nevertheless, he does a better job of generating a sense of menace and mayhem than many an American indie with many times the resources and a good deal more technical nous.

Finally, Dutch director Tom Six completes one of the most abhorrent trilogies in screen history. There was a modicum of merit in The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009), as the concept of a mad scientist forcing three victims to share a single digestive tract by sewing them together mouth to anus was viciously original. However, the novelty had begun to wear off long before the end of The Human Centipede II (Full Sequence) (2011) and there really is no need for the sick saga to continue past The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence), which simply seeks to antagonise where its predecessors had sought to shock and amuse. Crassly scripted, sloppily photographed and smugly directed, this threequel will be remembered solely for the monstrous antics of its German star, who shames his fellow cast members with a contemptible display of foul-mouthed, bigoted misanthropy that makes a mockery of their own earnest efforts. The tagline gleefully proclaims `100% Politically Incorrect'. But it should have read `100% Unwatchable Bilge'.

Notoriously racist, chauvinist bully Dieter Laser is the warden of the George HW Bush State Prison. Demanding snivelling respect from his inmates, he meets with the facility's accountant, Laurence R. Harvey, to see if he can get any disciplinary tips from Tom Six's Human Centipede films. Secretary Bree Olson massages Laser's feet during the screenings and is subjected to a humiliating sexual assault after she dares to contradict his scathing condemnation of the pictures. However, they are interrupted by a phone message that there has been an incident in the cells. Laser and Harvey discover that one of the guards has been stabbed and Laser punishes the culprit by breaking his arm so badly that the bone is exposed.

Returning to his office, Laser opens a parcel containing some dried clitorises and he extols the African practice of female genital mutilation as he chomps on the snacks he claims give him strength. Suitably refreshed, he waterboards a Native American prisoner and seems pleased with the scarring effects of the boiling water. He receives a visit from state governor Eric Roberts, who warns Laset that he will be dismissed unless he improves his performance. But the only tactic Laser can devise is a mass castration of the inmates and he follows a grisly demonstration of what such a strategy would entail by eating the severed genitals for lunch. Hilariously, Olson mistakes one of the dried clitorises for a sweet and Laser forces her to fellate him in front of the embarrassed Harvey. He tries to attend to some paperwork.

That night, Laser has a nightmare about being raped by the inmate he emasculated. He is still feeling shaky, therefore, when Harvey suggests that they could coerce the prisoners into behaving by creating a human centipede to act as a deterrent. Laser mocks the notion, but is persuaded of its potential by Tom Six, who is invited to the prison by Harvey to reassure the governor that the scenes depicted in his movies are wholly medically viable. However, Six has one condition for allowing Laser to copy his idea - he is allowed to watch the procedure.

Unwisely, Laser decides to show the prison population the films before he calls in the surgeons and a riot breaks out in the canteen. Laser and Harvey try to barricade themselves in their office, but the rampaging thugs gain entrance and one beats Olson unconscious while another looks on lasciviously. Just as Laser escapes through a window, however, back-up arrives and the cons are returned to their cells. But the episode convinces Laser that he has no option but to implement the centipede policy immediately and he tours the wings and personally tranquillises each inmate. Those he deems unfit for the graft, he shoots on the spot. However, he orders that the dream rapist is attached to a man with chronic diarrhoea. Ironically, Six throws up as he watches some Death Row residents being dismembered. He is also dismayed when Laser murders a coprophiliac prisoner who can't wait to become part of the centipede. But, by now, everything Laser does is repugnant and he goes to his next extreme by rapid the comatose Olson in the sick bay after Harvey confesses to loving her.

Once doctor Clayton Rohner has finished stitching all 500 convicts together (with Olson in the middle), Roberts comes to inspect the giant centipede, as well as the caterpillar that has been assembled out of lifers who have had their limbs removed. He declares Lister criminally insane and threatens to take action as he leaves the jail. However, Lister is far from intimidated. He guns down Rohner and is about to take a pot shot at Harvey when Roberts returns unexpectedly and declares that the human centipede is just what the American justice system needs to bring the crime figures down. Laser is delighted at being feted and takes such exception to Harvey's attempt to take the credit that he blow him away. As the picture ends, the demented governor dances naked on the prison watchtower, as the centipede slithers excruciatingly across the exercise yard.

There's little need for critical analysis, as the précis pretty much says it all. One is left feeling sorry for exploitation stalwarts like Robert LaSardo, Tommy `Tiny' Lister, Jr., and Jay Tavare, as Laser rants and raves his way through one of the least accomplished screen performances of all time. He could argue that Six required him to bite such huge chunks out of the scenery, but anyone who signs up to deliver such pernicious dialogue has to take it on the chin when the brickbats are being thrown. Harvey, Roberts and Six himself should all expect invitations to next year's Razzie Awards, as should Olson, whose character's treatment is deplorable and the former porn star has done herself and her gender a great disservice by agreeing to participate in this sexist farrago.

On the technical side, David Meadows's photography is as serviceable as Rodrigo Cabral's production design, while Eilam Hoffman's chillingly authentic sound design is vastly superior to Misha Segal's tacky score and Joost Hagedoorn's visual effects are markedly inferior to the make-up efforts of Megan Nicol and her team. But the buck stops with Six, whose self-promoting meta-cameo sums up this entire franchise. He probably thinks he is being terribly daring and subversive in having the tiresome Laser spout all manner of racist obscenities and calumnies. But anyone who thinks female circumcision a fit subject for bawdy comedy deserves censure and one hopes that no UK distributor feels the need to give a DVD release to Six's earlier offerings, Gay in Amsterdam (2004), Honeyz (2007) and I Love Dries (2008).