It's best to come clean at the outset and admit to not having the foggiest when it comes to the life and legend of James Lavelle. He may well have been raised in Oxford and helped transform its music scene as a brash teenager, but the increasingly fragmented world of musical appreciation means it's entirely possible to share a city and remain in blissful ignorance of his achievements. Debuting director Matthew Jones seeks to fill in the gaps in his fizzingly informative and frustratingly overloaded documentary, The Man From Mo'Wax. But he presumes too much foreknowledge for this to be anything other than a cautionary tale for baffled outsiders and a mournful trip down memory lane for those who were there and bought the t-shirts.

Jones doesn't get off to the best of starts when he includes footage of punting on The Backs in Cambridge among the archive clips designed to set the scene for Lavelle's childhood. Indeed, he compounds the error by slapping the caption `Oxford, England' over an image of King's Parade looking towards the Senate House and the tower of St John's College. However, he pulls things round with a succinct recap of Lavelle's musical background, the impact on his psyche of his parents' divorce and the support he received from his mother, Jini, when he asked for a year's pocket money in advance to buy the turntables that enabled him to start gigging as a DJ at 14. 

His love of vinyl after buying Grandmaster Flash's `The Message' led to a friendship with Charlie Dark after he moved to Hoxton. Here, he started writing the Mo'Wax column for the magazine Straight No Chaser edited by Paul Bradshaw and collaborating with DJ Gilles Peterson at the club, That's How It Is! At the age of 18, Lavelle launched Mo'Wax Records and Dark, Pablo Clements of The Psychonauts, and Gift of Gab and Chief Xcel from Blackalicious laud him for taking the risk at such a young age. Office manager Heidi Fearon and graphics designer Swifty admit they were flying by the seat of their pants, but they made it work to the extent Lavelle could bring graffiti artist Futura over from New York to design record sleeves alongside Robert `3D' Del Naja from Massive Attack.

Having cornered the trip hop market, however, Swifty proved a casualty after Lavelle signed a deal with A&M Records and new co-owner Steve Finan had a ruthless streak that alienated several old friends, including Dark. But the new arrangement allowed Lavelle to forge links with Josh `DJ Shadow' Davis and we see home movie footage of them clambering over discs in the basement of Rare Records in Sacramento. In 1996, Lavelle released Shadow's debut album, Endtroducing, which prompted one critic to dub him `the Jimi Hendrix of sampling'. 

The pair also joined forces under the UNKLE banner, as Lavelle sought to combine music, art and film. He persuaded The Verve's Richard Ashcroft to guest on `Lonely Soul' and Kool G. Rap on `Guns Blazin'. Enjoying the party lifestyle and making guest slots on MTV and the BBC, Lavelle also worked with Damon `Badly Drawn Boy' Gough and featured Beastie Boy Mike D on `The Knock'. Moreover, he persuaded Radiohead's Thom Yorke to record `Rabbit in Your Headlights' at George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch in 1997. Jonathan Glazer directed the video, which featured Denis Lavant being hit by cars while walking through a tunnel. But MTV felt the action looked too realistic and UNKLE reaped the publicity benefits when the station banned it. 

However, Lavelle and Shadow fell out after the release of the Psyence Fiction album when the latter refused to share songwriting credits and the former felt he was being shortchanged when he had devised the UNKLE concept. The look on Shadow's face during joint interviews is priceless and much is revealed by the limited nature of Lavelle's mellotron contribution to the performance of `Be There' with Stone Rose Ian Brown on Top of the Pops. Initially, Lavelle seemed oblivious to any problems, as he branched out into clothing and toys. But, soon after the New Musical Express accused him of being an A&R man trying to pass himself off as a rock star, A&M was folded into Island Records and Lavelle found himself with a label with no acts and no back catalogue. Moreover, Shadow wanted nothing more to do with UNKLE and the 26 year-old Lavelle found himself having to start all over again in 2000.

Signing to XL, Lavelle formed a new UNKLE partnership with Richard File that saw them team with Brian Eno and Jarvis Cocker. However, producer Antony Genn and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age suggest that Lavelle's talents didn't like in songwriting, even though Keith Flint of The Prodigy guested on `No Pain, No Gain'. The album Never, Never, Land (2003) was slated, however, and XL lost £2 million from investing in Mo'Wax at a time when vinyl and CD sales were in steep decline. 

Deciding to make a clean break, Lavelle walked away from his label and took up a DJing residency at the Fabric nightclub. But his party lifestyle cost him his relationship with his daughter's mother, Janet, and Jini admits to being worried about him. But File stuck by him and producer Chris Goss agreed to work on a new UNKLE project that resulted in Ian Astbury of The Cult singing on `Burn My Shadow' and Joshua Homme fronting `Restless'. Lavelle also made his vocal debut on `Hold My Hand', which featured on the 2007 album, War Stories, on the Surrender All record label that he had founded with Rob Bevan.

Physical sales were disappointing, but a live tour sold out and UNKLE even played Sydney Opera House. Moreover, Lavelle started a new romance with film-maker Lorna Tucker (who directed Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist). But the pressures and excesses related to being on the road took their toll on Lavelle's friendship with File and they went their separate ways. Pablo Clements stepped into the breach and Spike Jonze and Ty Evans directed the video for `Heaven'. However, with Lavelle heavily in debt and being the sole act on the label, he had to record a new album to a tight deadline and, even with Goss producing and Gavin Clark among the guest singers, Where Did the Night Fall was release six months late in 2010. 

As Clements relocated to Brighton to run his own studio, Lavelle was left in limbo. Three years pass and Lavelle is seen rummaging through the contents of his storage unit in Somerset. Clements regrets that things ended acrimoniously, especially as Lavelle's marriage to Tucker also came to an end. Just when he seemed destined to slip into obscurity, however, Jane Beese invited him to curate the Meltdown Festival on the Southbank in 2014. Moreover, he co-wrote the title of the No.1 Queens of the Stone Age album, Like Clockwork, and Shadow took the olive branch and they worked together again. 

Ending on a positive note, albeit with four years left unaccounted for, this is a sobering study of what the music business can do to those who entrust their souls to it. While he clearly made mistakes and allowed his egotism to run riot, Lavelle does appear to have fallen prey to tall poppy syndrome, as there's nothing the British media likes less than a brash success. It says much that even those left trailing in his wake continue to speak of fondly of him and it might have been interesting to see Lavelle attempting to rebuild some bridges on camera. Nevertheless, the fact that he has opened his archive suggests he is not attempting to hide anything from either the glory years or the decade on the decline. 

Given the accusations of cultural appropriation levelled at Sam Phillips and Elvis Presley in Eugene Jarecki's The King, it's interesting that the phrase is never mentioned once in this profile, which was originally entitled Artists and Repertoire. Moreover, Jones (who was hired to document the 2006 tour) opts to quote contemporary criticism as captions rather than invite the writers to revisit their verdicts or place Lavelle's achievement in a retro perspective. This lack of analysis and a reluctance to place Lavelle in a wider socio-cultural context is undeniably frustrating, especially as it would have been nice to know more about the impact of downloading on indie labels. But, even while the film has its shortcomings, it's hard to fault Alec Rossiter's dynamic editing or Jones's desire to fete a flawed maverick who, to cite The Specials, had the temerity to do `too much much too young'.

Although the work of artist Yayoi Kusama is highly distinctive and not particularly similar to the pieces produced by Ushio and Noriko Shinohara, echoes of Zachery Heinzerling's Cutie and the Boxer (2013) nevertheless reverberate around Heather Lenz's Kusama; Infinity, a documentary profile of the 89 year-old avant-gardist, who left Japan for the United States around the same time as contemporaries Yoko Ono and Atsuko Tanaka, who are notable for their absence from this lively and visually striking, if factually selective and occasionally fawning profile of the queen of the polka dots. 

Following an opening caption, in which Yayoi Kusama declares that all art is a gamble, the red-wigged octogenarian is seen embarking upon a sketch in black marker pen. Guggenheim curator Alexandra Munroe and psychologist Judith E. Vida describe Kusama's childhood in provincial Matsumoto City, when she developed her habit of working quickly because her disapproving mother used to snatch drawings away from her. Tate Modern's Frances Morris and Miki Muto of the Matsumoto City Museum of Art explain that there were domestic tensions between her parents, as her father had agreed to give up his own surname in order to continue the Kusama name and that he had enjoyed numerous affairs to compensate for feeling emasculated. 

Art historian Midori Yoshimoto reveals that Kusama's mother had once sent her daughter to spy on her husband during one of his trysts and suggests that what she witnessed must have left sizeable emotional scars. Former Matsumoto City mayor Tadashi Aruga explains that the family owned a wholesale seed business and was very wealthy. However, around the age of 10, Kusama suffered a traumatic experience in a field of flowers and, despite being plagued by recurring hallucinations, she has subsequently attempted to recreate the sensation of disappearing into her environment. 

Taken with the work of Georgia O'Keeffe, Kusama wrote her a charming letter telling her how impressed she had been by `Black Iris' and how she hoped that the American would mentor her. While awaiting a reply, Kusama staged her first exhibition in a small gallery above a Matsumoto movie theatre and best friend Akira Iinuma remembers helping her set it up. Few came to see the pictures, however, and Kusama had to fight parental attempts to marry her off in order to follow her dream. O'Keeffe was intrigued by the watercolours that Kusama had sent her and wrote back to offer support. But she also issued a warning that it was difficult for a woman to become an artist in the United States and that she would have to overcome many obstacles to realise her ambitions. 

Helaine Posner of the Neuberger Museum of Art mentions how O'Keeffe tried to help Kusama find exhibition space and we learn that Kusama set light to around two thousand canvases before leaving for New York in 1958. Hanna Schouwink of the David Zwirner Gallery reveals that she arrived with dollar bills sewn into her kimono in order to beat currency regulations and Kusama recalls going to the top of the Empire State Building and vowing to channel the energy of the city into her work.

Author Eric La Prade, collector Hanford Yang and Glenn Scott Wright (of the Victoria Miro Gallery) reflect on Kusama's early frustrations, as women were rarely afforded solo shows at the time and she struggled to get her work seen. Lynn Zelevansky of the Carnegie Museum of Art explains that she had to start wearing American fashions in order to fit in and Kusama concedes that this was a difficult period because she had so little money. Nevertheless, it was also a period when she could dedicate herself to her painting and art historian Midori Yamamura reveals how she hit upon her trademark style of `infinity net' painting with `Pacific Ocean' (1958), which had been inspired by Kusama looking out of an aeroplane window and seeing some fishermen casting their nets. 

Artists Carolee Schneemann and Ed Clark reminisce about Kusama being aggressive in her efforts to find a patron and throwing in her lot with the Brata co-operative, which had previously shown Willem De Kooning and Franz Kline. Ultimately, she was discovered by critic Donald Judd, who helped her connect with Beatrice Perry of the Gres Gallery, who was curating an exhibition of contemporary Japanese artists like Kenzo Okada and Minoru Kawabata. However, Kusama was furious at being treated like a minor figure in the show and demanded the return of her paintings. Artist Frank Stella was so taken by one yellow dot painting that he agreed to buy it, even though he thought $75 was an exorbitant price. 

Around this time, Kusama met Surrealist Joseph Cornell, who lived with his mother and disabled brother in Utopia Heights. He wouldn't sell work to galleries and one owner had hoped Kusama would charm him into parting with a few pieces. Despite his initial caution, Cornell became obsessed with Kusama and she recalls phone calls in which he had refused to let her hang up and she would return to her apartment hours later to find that Cornell was still on the other end of the line waiting for her. She reveals that neither liked sex, so they had enjoyed a platonic relationship until his mother had poured a bucket of water over her when they were kissing in the garden. When Cornell apologised to his mother rather than Kusama, she announced that she was going to devote herself to painting and they broke up.

Among the net paintings that Kusama produced at this time was a 30ft canvas and Marie Laurberg of the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art opines that something this large ceases to be a picture and becomes a spatial happening. Arts presenter Beate Sirota Gordon remembers being concerned about Kusama's health and advising her to see an analyst. She admits to having an obsessive compulsive personality and Yamamura links this to the net paintings and accumulation pieces like the chair that was shown at the Green Gallery in June 1963, which was covered with stuffed pieces of fabric that had a provocative phallic appearance. Among the other items in the show was a papier maché suit by Claes Oldenburg and Kusama was appalled when he made the headlines later in the year with a soft sculpture exhibition that had so clearly been influenced by her work that his collaborator wife, Pat Mucha, later apologised to Kusama. 

She bounced back with the One Thousand Boats show at the Gertrude Stein Gallery and we see Kusama sitting in a soft sculpture rowing boat. Pop artist Andy Warhol was impressed by the fact that she had created an installation by covering the walls with photographs of the aggregation boat and, once again, Kusama was dismayed when he stole the idea for his Cow exhibit and the voices off suggest that she was often the victim of the sexism and racism that existed in American society and the art world in the mid-1960s. 

In November 1965 and March 1966, Richard Castellane hosted shows at his gallery that challenged the views on perspective that had held sway since the Renaissance. In the `Peep Show' piece, Kusama covered the walls with coloured light bulbs and the walls with mirrors to create a sense of infinity that Castellane compares to the images of the cosmos that were being captured by NASA's space programme. We see unattributed psychedelic footage of Kusama in the room and the effect is dazzling. But the segment also emphasises the shortcomings of the Lenz's documentary and its reluctance to identify works or go into critical detail about their genesis, meaning and lasting significance. 

Once again, however, Kusama's ideas were appropriated by another artist, this time Lucas Samaras, who exhibited a mirrored room at the Pace Gallery in October 1966. The voiceover claims that no one had used mirrored environments before Kusama, but this ignores hall of mirrors attraction frequently found at fairgrounds and the use made of them in films like Orson Welles's The Lady From Shanghai (1947). However, the strain of others having greater success with variations on her themes eventually took its toll and Kusama jumped from a window in 1966 and was only saved because she landed on a bicycle. 

Around this time, she started showing work in Europe and we see images of her in Amsterdam. Akira Tatehata of the Yaoshi Kusama Museum recalls her attempt to enter a piece called `Narcissus Garden' at the Venice Biennale, which was made up of 1500 mirror balls purchased from a workshop in Florence. She placed them outside the Italian Pavilion and donned a kimono to sell them at $2 a pop and was asked to stop by the festival organisers. So, Kusama removed her kimono and was photographed lying among the mirror balls in a red body leotard and the exhibit garnered more attention from her reaction being censured than it would have done if the bigwigs had not been so stuffy. 

Back in New York, Kusama took on the Museum of Modern Art by suggesting that there was nothing modern about its exhibits and criticised the American gallery scene for showing dead art by dead artists while living artists are left to die. As part of her protest, she had models pose naked in the Sculpture Garden. Runaway Jeannette Hart Coriddi remembers Kusama painting her body with polka dots and organising gay marriages long before anyone else came up with the concept. She also ventured into films with Self-Obliteration (1967), which was made by experimental film-maker Jud Yaklut. Gordon recalls going to the New York premiere and Kusama inviting audience members to undress so that she could paint their bodies, while a band played and people danced. Amusingly, while Gordon's husband had wanted to go home, her elderly mother had insisted that they stayed and had a marvellous evening.

As the Vietnam draft was introduced, Kusama staged a nudity protest and artist Joshua White and art historian Reiko Tomii trace her pacifism back to the Second World War when she had objected to sewing parachutes in a factory. They describe how her happening in New York was stopped by the NYPD and her family had disowned her when news of her antics reached Japan. The election of Richard Nixon in November 1972 ushered in a new conservatism and Kusama found it harder than ever to compete in a world that had been established to promote white men and her refusal to jump on the Modernist bandwagon further marginalised her. 

Having written the poem, `A Manhattan Suicide Addict', Kusama decided there was no place for her in the new landscape and, in 1973, she returned to Japan, where she had to start again from scratch. She felt so ostracised by the art world and the media that she attempted suicide following the loss of her father and voluntarily committed herself to a psychiatric hospital. One of the doctors favoured art therapy and Kusama found the supportive environment conducive and began producing collages like `Now That You Died', `Green Coloured Death', `War', `Soul Going Back to Its Home', `Tidal Waves of War' and `Graves of the Unknown Soldiers'.

Unfortunately, Kusama's critical stock plummeted after the Village Voice denounced her lust for publicity and two decades passed before Munroe went to Japan to find her and curate a major retrospective at the Centre for International Contemporary Arts in the 1989. It was a huge success and prompted Tatehata to put her forward for the 1993 Venice Biennale (although he opted to keep quiet about the fact that she was still living at the hospital) and Kusama became the first Japanese artist to be awarded a solo show in the national pavilion. We see her posing with Yoko Ono at the show (whose own work is ignored completely here, even though there are obvious parallels) and its success led to Zelevansky curating another career retrospective in 1998. 

In her 80s, Kusama walks to her studio from the hospital each day and is currently in a fantasy phase. Such is her appeal that she ranks as the most attended living artist in terms of gallery numbers, with the Pompidou Centre and Tate Modern among the venues to host blockbuster shows. She is also the top-selling living female artist and plans to devote the remainder of her life to creating. 

While it's good to see that Kusama has found peace and is able to express herself without needing to worry about the art market or her own psychological state, it has to be said that she is given a remarkably easy ride in this highly conventional chronological portrait, which seems have been a decade in the making. What is most striking is the lack of critical insight offered by experts who scrupulously avoid theorising about Kusama's childhood traumas and proclaim her greatness without making any attempt to discuss her methodology or the meaning of her oeuvre. 

It also seems odd for a film that harps on about the sexism and racism that Kusama endured to restrict mention of Yoko Ono to a couple of posed snapshots at a later retrospective. The subtext appears to be that Kusama did everything first, better and didn't need to marry a Beatle for publicity. But it's duplicitous to suggest that Kusama was pioneering in vacuum when Ono was branching out into literature and music, while also producing art, installation, filmic and performance pieces and protesting against the war in Vietnam. 

That said, this represents a solid introduction to Kusama and her unique approach to structure, perspective and materiality. Cinematographer Hart Perry does a splendid job in conveying the ravishing colour and tempting tactility of the artworks, while the footage of Kusama beavering away with undiminished energy and enthusiasm so late in her ninth decade is humblingly inspirational. With a few more facts and a lot less gushing, this could have been definitive. As it is, it's a fond tribute to a woman who has borne the slings and arrows with considerable tenacity and wit and one can only hope that she continues to create for many years to come.

As daredevilry is on the cinematic menu this week, courtesy of Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's Free Solo, it seems apt to recall a couple of similarly themed documentaries. Australian director Jennifer Peedom's Mountain is the middle section of a vertiginous trilogy by that started with Sherpa (2015) and will conclude in the next year or so with a biopic of Tenzing Norgay. A cross between an cine-essay and a travelogue, this Willem Dafoe-narrated meditation on humankind's relationship with the world's highest peaks takes its philosophical cues from Mountains of the Mind, a 2003 tome by Cambridge academic Robert Macfarlane. Its soul, however, lies in the majestic score performed by Richard Tognetti and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which combines pieces by the conductor himself, as well as Antonio Vivaldi, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, Edvard Grieg, Arvo Pärt and Peter Sculthorpe. 

By rights, the stars of this cinematic adrenaline rush should be the peaks themselves, as well as the mountaineers, ice climbers, free soloists, skiers,  snowboarders, mountain bikers, BASE jumpers, wingsuiters, heliskiers, parachute cyclists and tightrope walkers who seek to conquer them. But, as Peedom has opted not to identify any berg other than Everest, the spotlight should fall on cinematographer Renan Ozturk and aerial cameraman Anson Fogel, who contribute over two-thirds of the 2000 hours of footage (the rest coming from the Sherpas Cinema archive) that has been shaped into a brisk and breathtaking 70 minutes by editors Christian Gazal and Scott Gray. 

Cutting from monochrome footage of Dafoe and the ACO preparing to record their soundtrack to a shot of a tiny red-shirted figure on a sheer face, Peedom wastes no time in revealing what a dizzying odyssey this is going to be. As the camera exposes the peril the climber is in, Dafoe explains that those who don't get mountaineering will be baffled by such reckless folly. But there are just as many who are lured by the siren song of the summit and a slow montage of aerial passes over snow-tipped peaks certainly helps justify their allure. 

Yet, just three centuries ago, the notion of scaling mountains would have been considered lunacy, as they were places to be avoided because of the gods and monsters that dwelt there. As the camera swoops over moving specks in the wilderness, however, Dafoe opines that mountains came to be made of dreams and desire, as well as rock and ice, and their conquest became a challenge that could no longer be shirked. A goat makes light of a precarious ledge, as we see Buddhist monks praying in a mountain-top monastery. We are also shown archive footage of early expeditions, as Dafoe describes how reverence was replaced with a sense of adventure that drove the likes of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine to take on Everest. 

They perished in the attempt, but their intrepidity convinced others `to replace mystery with mastery', as the great powers sought to name and claim the highest places on the planet in the name of imperialism and progress. But the trailblazers were soon followed by soldiers and tourists, as ski resorts were made accessible by cable cars and the once forbidding terrain became the playground of the rich and leisured. Yet, it wasn't until Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay scaled Everest in 1953 that mountaineering really seized the popular imagination. 

Keen to escape the controlling confines of the city, people started to climb in order to experience sensations that existed solely on the time-warping summits that seemed to beckon and betray in equal measure. A series of images shows the physical strain involved in climbing, as athletes take on implacable obstacles with a mix of brio and bravery that is both humbling and numbing. Much depends on honed technique and, yet, the physical reality often proves more resistant than the image in the mind's eye. Consequently, some of the most experienced climbers have lost their lives in pursuit of their ambitions, and so have the countless anonymous locals who signed up for expeditions for pay packets that could mean the difference between starvation and survival. 

This was very much the theme of Sherpa and Peedom doesn't dwell on it here. But the point is well made through shots of climbers howling with the pain of their exertions, while others plunge downwards to be saved only by their ropes. Even safe zones like tents and caves can be inhospitable and the close-ups of stoves boiling hot drinks seem almost sensually reassuring. But, as Dafoe notes, the ranges are often spectacularly beautiful in the morning sunshine and a montage of inspiring vistas send the climbers on their way with a renewed vigour and purpose that is rewarded by reaching their destination and posing for that all-important photograph to show to the folks back home. One pair even have time for a joint with their feet dangling over the edge of an incline. 

But the conquest of the mountains has led to them being exploited and a timelapse sequence not only shows hundreds of holiday skiers making patterns on the piste, but also the clearance of woodland to make room for more chalets and parking lots. Dafoe wonders if we have ceased to acknowledge the power of the mountains when stunt skiers and snowboarders use them as the stage for exhibitions of gymnastic derring-do. As Vivaldi pulsates on the soundtrack, Peedom uses Go-Pro rigs and static cameras to juxtapose headlong point-of-view shots and slow-motion replays to showcase the skills of these seemingly fearless thrill seekers. 

Risk has become its own reward and some now actively seek danger as an escape from the conformity of daily life. They are even willing to pay to put themselves in peril, as the knowledge one is so close to death enhances the feeling of being alive. The need to do something no one else has achieved has driven people to tightrope walk across vast expanses, cycle to the peak of a crag, throw themselves off tethering rings or plummet of precipices in wingsuits. We see cyclists and skiers employ parachutes to hurtle through the air, as Dafoe describes how such athletes compare their need to prove themselves to feeding a rat with fear. Among the most ridiculous of these pursuits is heliskiing, although leaping from a giant seesaw seems equally preposterous. Dafoe (and, therefore, Peedom and Macfarlane) seem to tut in disapproval, as they regard adrenaline junkies who are `half in love with themselves, half in love with oblivion'. 

The supreme test for those wishing to prove themselves or banish their demons remains Everest. But thousands now pay for the privilege each year and Dafoe sneers that this is no longer climbing, but queuing, while exploration has been replaced by crowd control. Yet the mountain can still bite back, as it did with the 2015 avalanche that killed 22 people, the majority of whom were Sherpas. As Dafoe laments, there is no glory for those left behind to mourn. In such ways, mountains humble human instincts and expose our insignificance and a deeply moving timelapse shot of a starry night sky is complemented by the reminder that these forms existed long before life emerged from the slime and will continue to do so long after it has been extinguished. 

A truly awe-inspiring sequence follows showing molten lava cascading down the side of a volcano. A furious red against the darkness, it cools to an amorphous grey that bubbles and flumps in an almost comic fashion. But, as Dafoe reminds us, mountains are born of fire and force and, thus, they are forever moving in a unique symphony that accompanies the dance of life. Amidst the most beautiful shots in the entire film, we see water babbling through an ice cave and a waterfall steepling downwards under the unconcerned gaze of an owl and a deer. Remarkable close-ups reveal the shape of snowflakes as they land on the forest floor and timelapse sequences shows drifts and thaws and stretches of water freezing and melting to prove the earlier point about mountains being in motion. 

As clouds swirl around a lone peak and we see a party of two trek along a narrow ledge, Dafoe returns to the idea of the indifference of the Earth to our presence. Those who have scaled the heights often struggle to communicate the sensation of feeling time passing over them and leaving nothing behind but their shadows. But, while mountains don't need us, we need them to reconnect us with their wildness and revive our jaded sense of wonder. 

It's hard not to feel a touch inconsequential at the end of this assault on the senses. There are moments when the drone and chopper shots seem conspicuously flamboyant, while the prose can sound a little purple and preachy. Moreover, some of the high-rise antics seem to have been included simply to invite our disdain at the foolhardiness of those courting danger in order to delay the onset of humdrum mediocrity. But many will be awestruck by the dynamic athleticism on display in a panoply of audiovisual splendour that demands to be seen on a giant screen. 

For the record, the countries included in this often exhilarating treatise are Antarctica, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, France, Greenland, Iceland, India, Italy, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Scotland, South Africa, Switzerland, Tibet and the United States. 

Following on the heels of Mountain, Peter Bardehle and Sebastian Lindemann's A Symphony of Summits: The Alps From Above takes us on an aerial tour of the mountain range that stretches through eight European countries from France to Slovenia and is home to around 14 million people. Filmed entirely with a Cineflex camera mounted on a helicopter and narrated by Emily Clarke-Brandt, this blend of geology, history, geography and sociology needs the biggest screen you can find. But, awe-inspiringly stunning though the visuals are, this is also an informative travelogue that highlights the wide variety of Alpine professions and pastimes.

Formed by a shift in two tectonic plates, the Alps were transformed by Thomas Cook and the tourist trade some 150 years ago. Now, each year, the population triples during the skiing season and we see holiday-makers enjoying the delights of a resort in the Dolomites of the South Tyrol. Off-piste skiers risk life and limb on the Wildseeloder in Austria and a rescue helicopter is called in to airlift an individual who suffered a spectacular crash. As Clarke-Brandt reminds us, this may be a playground for the rich, but it's also a forbidding landscape that demands respect and uses gravity to upend those humans who treat it without due care. 

Swooping over the Matterhorn in Switzerland and all 4808 metres of Mont Blanc in France, we are whisked along the Aletsch glacier. However, Clarke-Brandt announces that the biggest stretch of ice in the Alps is fast diminishing and that half of the 5000 glaciers left in the range will disappear within the next 20 years. This will impact on the amount of drinking water available for cities like Milan and Munich, which also rely on the power generated by Alpine water. Tourist spots like the Stubai Glacier resort in the Tyrol will also suffer, as the ice will never return once it has melted. 

Much of the power in Austria and Switzerland comes from carbon neutral water sources. But reservoirs like Salza in Styria cause their own problems, as they cause rivers to dry up and threaten fish stocks, as they can no longer reach their breeding grounds. Another reservoir, the Reschensee in South Tyrol, was created artificially in 1950 at the expense of villages like Graun and Rechen. The tower of the latter's 14th-century church was left to rise above the surface and Clarke-Brandt perpetuates the myth that its bells can still be heard in the valley on stormy nights, even though the chimes were removed a week before the demolition of the church in July 1950.

Moving swiftly on past the 220m Verzasca dam where James Bond bungee jumped in Martin Campbell's GoldenEye (1995), we see herdsmen in the eastern Swiss canton of Grisons blasting their tiba horns across the verdant valleys, as cattle and sheep are driven to the high pastures where bees also thrive. A cable car carries milk churns down from the heights at Laufbichl Alpe in Allgovia, Germany, while helicopters carry concrete for a construction project at Grasjochalpe in Vorarlberg. A spectacular shot shows two engineers monitoring the smooth working of a cable car before the camera follows the 1000m route of the 80 year-old cable way on Mount Predigtstuhl in Bavaria. Another reveals how desolate Austria's highest ski resort on Pitztal Glacier looks out of season before we follow a mountain biker speeding down a slope at Planai in the Scladming region of Styria. 

Although the discovery of Ötzi the iceman in the Ötztal Alps proves that the mountains were inhabited as 3400-3100 BCE, it wasn't until Roman times that routes like the one across Austria's highest peak, Grossglockner, were established. These paths were also used by soldiers and we fly over the tunnels at Monte Plana and the blasted mountainside of Col di Lana while learning about the gruelling battles fought between Italian and Austro-Hungarian troops. In all, 150,000 men perished in these encounters, but Clarke-Brandt points out that conflict often prompted progress, such as the construction of the first mountain railway route in Austria's Semmering Pass. 

The Emperor Franz Josef was the first passenger on this service, which opened up the region, as villages were founded along the track. The most breathtaking scenic route, however, is the Bernina railway between St Moritz in Switzerland to Tirano in Italy. This boasts the highest railway crossing in Europe and the red carriages look majestic against the granite. Similarly, the snaking roads carved into the Stelvio Pass in Italy and the environs around Grossglockner represent remarkable engineering feats and there's no denying the beauty of the vintage cars glistening in the sun as they glide along the tarmac. The Europa Bridge over the Wipp valley is also magnificent. But Clarke-Brandt notes that the locals dislike the fumes the vehicles produce and installed a tollbooth to limit the traffic. She also laments the fact that the urban sprawl of Bolzano was allowed to ruin a beautiful valley before noting that only the rich can afford to live in places like Ticino on Lake Lugano and Ascona on Lake Maggiore. 

Back in the great outdoors, the camera picks up a couple of white-water kayakers in Venter Ache. But water has eroded the limestone in the mountains near Ferlach on the Austrian border with Slovenia. We also see a peak in the Dolomites that has lost its core. Yet tectonic shifts mean that the Alps continue to grow by 1mm each year, which is precisely the amount they lose to wind and weather. However, erosion loosens rock formations and we see the damage caused by an avalanche in northern Italy. Humans are to blame for the scarring of the landscape around the Erzberg ore mine in Austria, however, and Clarke-Brandt blithely announces that the seams will be exhausted in 50 years, which is a shocking statistic given that mining has been taking place her for centuries. 

A detour takes us to the canyon the Rhine has cut through the mountains at Ruinalta. However, the mighty river was tamed by the removal of its delta leading into Lake Constance and the camera picks out the line where cold mountain water meets the sun-warmed lake. In the southern foothills of Provence, a river has cut the 25km Gorges de Verdon and the camera half-heartedly joins a rafting crew on a rapid descent. The scene is more tranquil at the Linderlof Palace built by Ludwig II of Bavaria, who visited it regularly before being confined at Neuschwanstein. We also fly over Herrenchiemsee, his tribute to Versailles located in the Chiemsee, before sampling a selection of Alpine churches, such as the Cistercian Stams Abbey in the Tyrol and the Frauenchiemsee in Bavaria. 

While many go to the monasteries on retreat, some prefer cruising on the Königssee and others opt to sample a beer at St Bartholomew's Church near Berchtesgaden. For youngsters, nothing beats the Area 47 water park in the Tyrol or the sports offered on Lake Lucerne. There's no rest for Alpine hill farmers, however, as they struggle to match the prices of their counterparts in the valleys. We see hay being made on a steep slope before we inspect the pine harvest being taken on Villander Alp in South Tyrol and the apples being gathered on the banks of the River Estsch in Italy. As hailstones can ruin the crop, cloudbursting planes fly from Greisdorf in Austria to keep storms at bay. These forbidding images are followed by nocturnal shots of the Alps, with the stars twinkling above them in vast skies that are largely free of light pollution.

The sunrises are equally glorious and we see a team of huskies training on a summer morning. Even fleeter of foot are the Alpine ibexes coming down to graze, while a sure grip is also vital for those climbing Via Ferrata Pisciadù or the Eiger. Clarke-Brandt speculates why people risk their lives for a few moments of bliss on a summit. But we are whisked off again to view Aussarraschoetz in South Tyrol, one of the many crucifixes atop Alpine peaks, where she wonders whether a greater perspective can be achieved from such a lofty vantage point. An aquiline point-of-view shot is cross-cut with footage of wingsuiters in Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland before winter returns and wildlife battles to survive while the snow seekers play. 

While it couldn't be more visually entrancing, this remains a frustrating film. The commentary meanders between hard fact and flights of fancy, while Clarke-Brandt's enunciation is often irksomely indistinct. Moreover, the use of captions to identify places is infuriatingly intermittent. But Klaus Stuhl's photography is outstanding and credit should also be given to pilots Guido Baumann and Walter Rüscher for enabling him to get so close in one shot to an eagle on a promontory. Roland Possehl's editing is also solid, as are Thomas Knop's evocative sound design and a score by Rich J. Dickerson, Luigi Meroni and Clemens Winterhalter that keeps reminding you how fantastic this would look on an Imax screen.