Going underground in NYC

This remarkable documentary is the directorial debut of New Yorker Marc Singer, a former model who befriended homeless people living in the train tunnels underneath the Big Apple. In the words of one of them, 'If you're homeless, this is the best spot.' And indeed, the tunnel-dwellers have makeshift shacks, electricity, TV, cookers. All mod cons, then, plus one mod incon - the campaign by rail authority Amtrak to move them on. Plus one incon as old as time - rats, everywhere.

Singer set up camp himself in the tunnels, spending two years down there and recruiting his sound, lighting and camera guys from among the crack-smokers, bagmen, panhandlers and the just plain mentally ill, some of whom have lived there for 25 years. If you buy the image of 'the street' that the movies sell, you're going to be surprised by the fact that the denizens of the deep are socially organised, rather than a snarling rabble, with time, between the daily grind of scavenging, for tenderness, jokes, fun and just hanging out.

With a great soundtrack by DJ Shadow and the most personal of political messages ? most of us are only a pay cheque away from destitution ? Dark Days makes the current wave of celebrity-chasing doc-makers look like bedwetters. All-change.