cudas

This disarmingly fresh, utterly engrossing - and ultimately very moving - documentary takes as its starting-point the tragic tale of Chris McCandless. McCandless was the twentysomething American adventurer whose lonely death in the Alaskan wilderness also forms the focus of Sean Penn's fictional feature Into the Wild.

But as well as addressing the specific details of McCandless's controversial life (and even more controversial demise), director Lamothe covers a surprisingly expansive amount of geographic and thematic terrain as he journeys cross-county - driving, then hitchhiking - in McCandless's footsteps.

Indeed, the film becomes not so much about McCandless or Lamothe (though it's certainly to some degree a portrait of both) but a more general rumination on the ambitions and limitations of the generation to which both belonged (the picture is part-dedicated to 'Generation X') and also a celebration of rural America's more eccentric backwaters.

At various points Lamothe's path inadvertently intersects with that of Penn and his crew - producing some hilarious (and shaming) contrasts between Hollywood's methods and Lamothe's resolutely lo-fi approach. Not that budgetary and technical limitations make this any kind of rough-and-tumble affair: Lamothe, who provides genial, clear-eyed, articulate narration throughout, certainly knows how to frame shots and assemble a compelling narrative.

He also allows himself one bit of virtuouso show-offery in a hyperkinetic 'Gen-X' montage of found footage from America's turbulent recent past, turbo-propelled by Nirvana's raucously-anthemic 'Breed'.

For all its merits - and pretty much everyone I have recommended it to has responded with great enthusiasm once they tracked it down - 'The Call of the Wild' remains a bizarrely underexposed, off-the-radar title. But make no mistake - this is emphatically one of the best American documentaries of recent years.

Astonishing that this was the only British film reckoned worthy of a slot in the Tiger Competition at Rotterdam 2009. Programming the film at all was a baffling move, but to position it in such a prestigious slot is an embarrassment for all concerned.

It's a rubbishy, mirthless Brit-com that's opportunistic and exploitative, but without any of the positives of old-school "exploitation cinema."

Slim but convoluted plot hangs on the illicit sexual activity 'dogging' - semi-public in-car coitus - a practice that made some salacious UK tabloid headlines a couple of years back.

Here it becomes the saucy/seedy pretext for a sloppily-scripted, tut-tutting exercise in larkish prurience, involving various feckless young adults (one of them a priapic Geordie satyr played by newcomer Richard Riddell, who deserves much better material) in and around the Newcastle region.

NB : Given the location and subject-matter, surely 'Go Forth, Tyne Dogger' would have been a better title.

Thuddingly opportunistic yuppie-nightmare Brit-horror is unbearably gruelling to endure - but NOT in the way the filmmakers intended. Ludicrous (sometimes even hilarious) as a thriller, it has a crass fear-of-the-underclass subtext that's much more repellent than the (gratuitous) bloodshed on view.

Fans of Thomas Turgoose (who gets a misleadingly prominent billing in the opening credits) should go and see 'Somers Town' again instead: he's very much a minor background figure here and has hardly anything to do.

Everyone else should also steer well clear. I like harrowing shockers as much as the next gorehound - there's a niftily nasty little British movie at the moment called 'Mum & Dad' that shows how the genre can work - but pretty much everything about 'Eden Lake' stinks to high heaven (I'm tempted to say 'would you Adam and Eve it?')

Shame, shame, shame on you, James Watkins.