Closed Curtain (12)

New Wave Films, £12

In 2010, acclaimed Iranian director Jafar Panahi was sentenced to six years in prison and banned from making films for 20 years for the crime of “making propaganda against the regime”. He appealed and underwent a period of house arrest during which time he made a film in secret, basically an extended solo piece in which he pads about his flat talking about his predicament.

Called This Is Not A Film, it was smuggled out of Iran hidden in a cake and shown at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. In it, his rage and frustration are palpable. Last month, a new Panahi film opened in cinemas: Taxi. Shot on the streets of Tehran this time, it finds Panahi once more showing two fingers to his “ban” but in rather more whimsical (and visible) style.

Closed Curtain, made in 2013, marks a midpoint of sorts between those two films. It's less angry, yet still focussed on issues of containment as a writer (played by regular Panahi collaborator Kambozia Partovi) hides out in a large house on the Caspian Sea with his dog. It's a satire, in part, on the ongoing attempts by Iranian legislators to ban dogs as pets so it's the pooch who's on the lam here, not the man. Into this blacked-out hideaway come two mysterious intruders, a brother and his suicidal sister (Maryam Moqadam) who are on the run from the police.

The writer isn't sure how they got in, so are they even real? When Panahi appears on camera playing himself a little later, we have to ask the same question of the writer. There's even more trickery when we begin to see Panahi's camera crew in shot.

Showing characters, author and film-makers all inhabiting the same space isn't new - the French New Wave did it - and in fact that's the least interesting aspect of Closed Curtain. Far better are the intriguing and tense scenes between the excellent Partovi and Moqadam, though they occupy only the central section of the film. Panahi isn't an actor and much of what he does on screen when he arrives feels like a reprise of his 2011 work. Still, a worthwhile curio - especially if you like dogs.

Manglehorn (12)

Artificial Eye, £15.99

David Gordon Green's film showed at this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival to no great effect, due in large part to its being bloody-mindedly downbeat in almost every department - the only exception being a gloriously over-the-top cameo from one time enfant terrible Harmony Korine, who seems keen to try to upstage star Al Pacino in every scene. And does. It's an odd state of affairs from a director who helmed both the riotous Pineapple Express and the pleasingly quirky comedy Prince Avalanche.

Pacino is the titular Manglehorn, a morose and curmudgeonly locksmith in a Texan town who grieves for a lost love and dotes on his cat. Holly Hunter plays Dawn, the kind-hearted bank teller who makes a half-hearted play for him while Korine plays a sleazy local club owner who once played Little League under Manglehorn and holds him in peculiarly high esteem. Part character study, part opportunity for Pacino to indulge himself and his sonorous voice, Manglehorn passes silently and is soon forgotten.

Makeup Room (15)

Third Window Films, £9

Makeup Room was billed as a low budget sex comedy when it screened at the Edinburgh International Film Festival this year, which makes director Kei Morikawa sound like a sort of Japanese Woody Allan. Far from it: he's a porn director with 1000 “AV” (adult video) films to his name, though Makeup Room is a very different sort of adult film from the ones he normally shoots.

Set entirely in one room, it follows make-up artist Tsuzuki (Aki Morita) as she arrives for work on a day-long porn shoot. The set consists of a couch, a coffee table and a desk at which Tsuzuki attends to each girl as she arrives. There are three, initially, though they're joined later by a fourth, a shy “newbie” making her “debut”. A harassed director tries to figure out on the hoof who's doing what scenes and with whom so as the girls wait, they talk: about their boyfriends, their mothers, love, food, pay and conditions. All the usuals, plus the ups and downs of having sex on camera.

It's a great idea, very simply rendered, and it allows Morikawa and his cast to present a warts-and-all view of the porn industry through a series of anecdotes and interludes which are by turns comic, gross and (occasionally) touching. Adding to the sense that this is truly an insider's view is the fact that two of the four actresses are actually porn stars. One of them - Riri Kuribayoshi - steals the show.

In the hands of an enterprising theatre director it would make a great stage production. That said, you're still left with the uncomfortable feeling that Morikawa's insider status cuts both ways. Sure, he brings knowledge and a certain veracity to the subject, but how impartial an observer is he? This doesn't feel like a damning broadside from a man turning his back on what a more innocent age called “skin flicks”.