HECTOR (15, 87 mins)

Director: Jake Gavin

4 stars

After something of a shaky year, every now and then comes a reminder that there are still good films capable of being made in Scotland.

Hector is one of the best in a while, and Peter Mullan takes the title role as a homeless man who sleeps rough round the back of a service station somewhere on the M74.

A vivid picture is painted of the hard life endured by Hector and his friends, cold and miserable and unsure if they’ll survive the night. There’s humour too among his crew of Dougie (frequent Mullan co-star Laurie Ventry) and Hazel (Natalie Gavin), who take the edge off with cans of strong lager, although Hector himself doesn’t drink.

He has to go to Glasgow for medical tests, and as a result takes to looking up old acquaintances from his past. There’s a brother he hasn’t seen in years and a sister whom he travels to England to try to find.

How he got into his situation, why he disappeared from the lives of his loved ones years before, and what’s going to happen going forward are the questions raised but not what drives the drama.

With his first film, writer and director Jake Gavin signals that he’s going to be one to watch. We first see Hector as he makes his way into the service station like he does every morning, and Gavin sketches his everyday life with careful details, as he washes in the service station toilets and treats himself to a cup of tea.

What’s most apparent is how the itinerant and disenfranchised are treated with compassion, both by the approach of the film, and in the kindness found in the shelters and hostels around the country, or in the service station cashier who gives Hector his tea for free.

It feels like the kind of thing you’re more likely to get from an American indie, with its open roads and hitchhiking and travelling the length of the country, yet also feels thoroughly British.

It speaks to universal truths of how difficult it can be to deal with families, offering no easy solutions and no sentiment or big dramatic moments. Instead there are straightforward scenes of conflict or anguish that achieve quiet but undeniable impact, not forced resolutions or realisations.

Of course having a star of the calibre of Mullan helps considerably, and he’s quite extraordinary here, imbuing Hector with humanity and patience and profound authenticity, and proving once again that he’s about the best there is.

GRANDMA (15, 79 mins)

Director: Paul Weitz

3 stars

The grandma of the title of this feisty comedy drama is recently bereaved Elle (Lily Tomlin), who tries to help her grand-daughter Sage (Julia Garner) when she comes to her to borrow the money she needs for an abortion.

As Elle seeks out the cash the film becomes an odd couple road trip of sorts that doesn’t get too overburdened with backstory while still managing to tease out the pertinent details as we go.

Slight and episodic, it threatens to hit a rut of variations on the same scene of the pair of them turning up somewhere and Elle causing a commotion with her outspoken ways, but as she mellows so does the film and it manages to dig out some emotional truths.

Nice performances across the board help, and while there's very little here, what is here is pleasingly executed.

ICE AND THE SKY (U, 89 mins)

Director: Luc Jacquet

2 stars

Claude Lorius was one of the first scientists to predict the danger and scale of global warming, and this rather plodding documentary is an account of his life and work that never comes close to rousing as an anti-climate change statement.

Narrated in French, we’re taken back to the 1950s when Lorius was a young man on an Antarctic expedition, where they had the foresight to shoot tons of home movie footage. In some ways we’re lucky to have so much access, but it really doesn’t make for a very interesting watch, and there’s little compelling reason for this to be screening in cinemas.

For a while we just watch them dig holes and boil soup before we’re eventually given some snow science, but without it ever quite being made understandable or illuminating or entertaining.

Despite the important subject matter, there’s not much to engage here, and it’s padded out to feature length with shots of Lorius in the present day looking pensively and wistfully at glaciers and penguins.

PEGGY GUGGENHEIM: ART ADDICT (15, 96 mins)

Director: Lisa Immordino Vreeland

4 stars

Art patron, collector and exhibitor Peggy Guggenheim is the subject of this sparkling documentary that’s comprised significantly of tapes recorded for a biography shortly before her death in the late 1970s.

It does slightly follow a template of “what was so-and-so like”, but while we hear much from her, and she’s thoroughly, entertainingly candid, we also get talking heads of friends and associates who remember her.

It’s a heady mix of history and gossip that provides fascinating glimpses into a world; these are great times and tales of the famous people she ran around with in Paris in the 20s, covering affairs, family tragedies (her father died on the Titanic), and the history of the Guggenheim family, their wealth and influence.

But it doesn’t forget this is mostly about art, leading on to her first foray into that world when she decided to open a gallery on a whim, just at the rise of modern art and the surrealists. With no training but an eye for talent, she befriended and championed the greatest artists of the 20th century, straddling Bohemian Paris and modernist New York, and this doc is a fine legacy for a remarkable figure.