(Delamu, Murderball, The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse)
Not just a mere postcard-pretty travelogue into uncharted territory, Delamu observes with captivating intimacy and attentiveness the people who live around the periliously narrow and winding mountainside path of the ancient Tea-Horse Road in China. We hear moving personal stories from the villagers – including church pastors, mule wranglers, and a 104-year old woman – all revealing a unique history and way of life that make the sparingly glimpsed, awe-inspiring mist-covered landscapes all the more transporting and enthralling. The beautiful score – think Popol Vuh’s new age ambience meets Sigur Ros’ glacial beauty – doesn’t hurt either. File under: “If you enjoyed last year’s Story of the Weeping Camel...”

It’s clear from the heavy metal-backed, gladiator-style delivery of Murderball’s quad rugby sequences that it isn’t asking for back-patting pity. Instead Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro’s documentary on the Paralympic sport, in which players ram each other in modified battle chariot-like wheelchairs, seeks to vapourise stereotypes of disabled people, trumpet their resilience and independence while leaving room for some rousing competitive team-rooting (though the blatant American patriotism is a little much). Delving right into the heart of living with physical disabilities, the doco focuses on several memorable characters: Joe Soares, a tough-talking, hard-ass American quad rugby champ who “betrayed” his country to coach the Canadian team; Keith Cavill, a former motorcross racer whose sinking realisation of his paralysation when he returns home after months of rehab is among the film’s toughest moments to watch; and Mark Zupan, a fearsome, goateed, tattooed jock who looks like he should be fronting Pantera. An inspiring, utterly touching documentary, and a darn good recruiting video.

I can’t say I’m enough of a “fan” of The League of Gentlemen to be the best judge of its big screen translation on that level (I enjoyed every twisted moment of its first season, though inexplicably never progressed to the second). But if the riotous, vocal response from the crowd in the Civic on Sunday night was an indication of anything, then it probably served its one-for-the-fans purpose in spades. Bolstered by big studio backing, The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse doesn’t pull a fiendish Fire Walk With Me-style cult-TV-to-film about-face, but it does get uncontrollably drunk on throwing Royston Vasey’s favourite eccentrics into a Kaufman-esque, or more so New Nightmare-ish, mess of meta-movie gymnastics. The actors – Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith – are terrific in their multiple roles as always (with Pemberton’s Herr Lipp particularly standing out and given a humorously human dimension), but in marrying showy, stop-motion Harryhausen riffs and flaming Bruckheimer-sized CGI asteroids with its witty Python-esque whimsy and gallery of spoofy grotesqueries, the film seems to have sacrificed the subtly creepy and sinister edge – or at least what I perceived to be, in memory – of the TV series, and become more Zucker brothers, or even, dare I say it, Trey Parker and Matt Stone...—AY