Films in brief: Up There, The Pool, Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet Some way into this glum Scottish debut feature from writer-director Zam Salim, about a counselling service in the afterlife, I had the nagging sense it might have been better as a short. Lo and behold, it turns out to have been one: a 2006 effort called Laid Off. Salim is the latest homegrown hopeful to take this bulk-it-up route into full-length filmmaking, following in the shoes of Paddy (Tyrannosaur) Considine and Sean Ellis, of the rather less successful Cashback. Burn Gorman, doing his best impression of put-upon Martin Freeman, plays the newly-run-over hero, who loses track of his first client and ends up mooching around a seaside resort where everyone looks dead already. There's a bit of spark from Aymen Hamdouchi as his clingy confrère, Rash, but not nearly enough pulse or comic inspiration to sustain 20 minutes, let alone 80. The Pool 12A cert, 98 min Chris Smith, best-known for his documentaries American Movie (1999) and The Yes Men (2003), returned to fiction filmmaking for this wholly unobjectionable, likeably performed but faintly soporific drama in 2007. Distribution this late in the day is a kind gesture but hardly a pressing one, and the film is tragically willing to provide a metaphor for its own placid missability. A Goan bus boy offers his help to the owner of a walled estate, whose pristine pool everyone admires without wanting to take a dip. Jason Becker: Not Dead Yet 15 cert, 86 min Motor neurone disease quashed Jason Becker's dreams of being a rock guitarist in 1989, although more than two decades on he is still writing music. This humdrum documentary about Becker's life and work is content to wallow in feel-good platitudes and never really shows us what makes the man tick. Also Released Hit So Hard No cert, 103 min Docu-portrait of Patty Schemel, lesbian drummer from the rock band Hole.