Dolly Parton adds star power to this formulaic music documentary about Ed and Dean Roland’s band

Unless you are a big fan of what the American charts call “mainstream rock” and entering late middle age round about now, you may never have heard of 90s outfit Collective Soul. And yet this clearly band-endorsed documentary hypes them so much, you may question your own remembrance of things past. For instance, much is made of Collective Soul’s first big hit, Shine from 1993, which first broke out via airplay at an Atlanta college radio station, with the film giving the impression that everyone was humming this tune back in the day. This may not in fact have been the case: you might associate the time more with the likes of Whitney Houston, Nirvana and dancefloor fillers like Rhythm Is a Dancer.

It turns out that Collective Soul, named after a phrase in Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, is a classic rawk outfit with a guitar-heavy, chunky-riff and wailing-vocals sound, somewhat generic but enjoyable. The group is built around Stockbridge, Georgia, brothers Ed Roland (the lead singer and songwriter) and his rhythm guitarist brother Dean; they are the sons of a preacher man and father figures and old friends feature very heavily in their story. The film works its way through the band’s pre-history and story methodically, with Ed Roland dominant throughout as literally and figuratively the group’s loudest voice.

Ross Whitaker’s documentary using 1990s TV footage and interviews tells of Stefan Klincewicz and his crew of chancers – and an Ireland very different from now

Harking back to a simpler, more innocent, less gambling-saturated era, this Irish documentary tells the story of how a syndicate of entrepreneurs and semi-professional gamblers tried to game the Republic of Ireland’s national lottery in 1992. Mustachioed ringleader Stefan Klincewicz, interviewed here, looks exactly like the kind of provincial accountant he originally was, neither a smooth master criminal nor a geeky Moneyball-style statistical genius. Klincewicz merely worked out that the capital needed to buy a ticket for every possible combination of the six numbers in the Lotto game would cost less than IR£1m. That strategy would significantly lower the 1 in 2m odds a punter usually faced, but only if they could manage to buy all the tickets needed.

When a rollover weekend came around, making the pot worth the gamble, Klincewicz and his micro army of chancers, including teenage daughters and friends press-ganged into the effort, went to work. But the accordion-playing head of the national lottery at the time tried to foil their scheme by limiting how many tickets individuals could buy at once. The concern was that the public would feel discouraged from playing Lotto if they thought syndicates would usually win.