Not exactly a sequel (there’s already been four), but not exactly a remake either?at least not in the way Gus Van Sant remade Psycho. This hybrid only makes sense when you remember your average mall rat would rather stick pins in his eyes than watch anything made in the dark ages before T2. That puts the original Massacre off-menu, so here’s a modern version with all the pert titties, CGI slayings and MTV-style edits teens of today claim as their birthright.

The new plot: our vanful of teens (principal shrieker Jessica Biel and four expendables) pick up a massacre survivor and go to the local sherrif (Full Metal Jacket’s R Lee Ermey), only to find the whole town’s in the massacring business. They try to escape, but die instead, and it all builds to a decent crescendo as Biel faces off against Leatherface?in this version, a standard bogeyman with a daft back-story. But nothing can change the fact the original was terrifying, groundbreaking and notorious?and this isn’t.

OPENS NOVEMBER 14, CERT 15, 90 MINS

The alienating isolationism of the immigration debate’ is the context for this Kafka-esque tale of Paris-based Senegalese student El Hadj (Djolof Mbengue), and how an innocuous lapse on his visa thrusts him into a cycle of detention centres, court appearances and deportation proceedings.

Not quite as keen to eviscerate the state apparatus as the likes of Michael Winterbottom’s In This World, debut director Alain Gomis instead focuses on his tortured protagonist, shooting his expressive face in oppressive close-up while the intransigent Western World hovers uneasily behind. Mbengue, for his part, clearly relishes El Hadj’s transition from a naive espouser of post-colonial theory to a spirit-broken statistic, cracking his fists in rage against a shower wall.

The scenes with El Hadj’s Parisian girlfriend and the repetitive discussions on the nature of national identity become tiresome, but Gomis and Mbengue are generally skilful enough to fix a tough subject with a hefty emotional hook.

DIRECTED BY Ridley Scott

STARRING Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, Hatry Dean Stanton

Opened October 31, Cert 15, 115 mins

Scott’s franchise-launching 1979 future-shocker is one of those rare, pure, primal films that works as both highbrow modern myth and trouser-soiling midnight movie. Combining elements of horror, stalk’n’slash chase movie and sci-fi into one impeccably orchestrated space-age nightmare, Alien is a symphony in terror.

Scott’s new edit keeps the basic plot intact: the crew of a space mining ship pick up a chillingly grotesque face-hugging parasite on a remote planet, kicking off a deadly search-and-destroy showdown with a killer alien. Echoing its loose genesis in co-writer Dan O’Bannon’s script for John Carpenter’s 1974 astro-satire Dark Star, the crew’s semi-improvised dialogue establishes a mood of deceptively mundane realism before all hell breaks loose. Weaver’s career-making role as Ripley was originally meant to be male but switched because, she claims, audiences would not expect a woman to survive.

Remixing a near-perfect cult classic demands a light touch, as Scott learnt with his ponderous Blade Runner makeover. Aside from a little extra banter between Yaphet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton, the sole significant plot change here is the notorious “cocoon scene”, in which Ripley stumbles across several of the crew in alien gestation pods. Purists have protested that this addition screws with the hive logic of James Cameron’s 1986 sequel, to which there are two possible answers: (a) not necessarily, as lone aliens may still be programmed to prepare hosts for possible fertilisation; and (b) get a life, you sad fucks.

Any further changes are subtle technical tweaks sharpening up pace, image and sound. Minor stuff on paper, but on the big screen Alien is reborn as a pin-sharp composition. Especially well served are HR Giger’s Oscar-winning production designs, a Freudian military-industrial-Oedipal complex of tumescent starships, penile-headed beasts and moist vaginal openings. Weaver once claimed Alien is all about heterosexual man’s fear of penetration, and Giger’s timeless, suggestive, unnervingly organic designs certainly add an extra layer of intriguing body horror.

Scott initially wanted to end the film with Ripley being decapitated. Thankfully, wiser voices prevailed. Alien remains the Geordie director’s most powerful, haunting, memorably understated masterpiece.

OPENS NOVEMBER 14, CERT 15, 102 MINS

Ann (Sarah Polley) is 23 and works as a night cleaner. She lives in a trailer home in her mother’s backyard, along with two young daughters and an unemployed husband. She also, it turns out, has inoperable cancer, and a matter of months to live. And while on paper that might sound like Terms Of Endearment on a budget, this beautifully judged Canadian picture (produced by Pedro and Agustin Almod

FIRST PART OPENS NOVEMBER 14, CERT 15, 113 MINS

An ambitious undertaking from actor/director Lucas Belvaux, comprising three features that together form a complete, multi-dimensional picture. Although they can be viewed in any order, the way they’ll be appearing in cinemas tells the story best?crime thriller On The Run on November 14, marital comedy An Amazing Couple on November 28, and melodrama After Life on December 5.

The cycle rigorously explores narrative possibilities; characters in one film are supporting players in another, while scenes recur from different perspectives. Set in the city of Grenoble, the action centres on a tight ensemble of characters whose lives are affected by the escape from prison of anarcho-terrorist Bruno (Belvaux). The tense, terse On The Run focuses solely on Bruno; After Life has a similar force but is more emotional; and the sombre screwball of An Amazing Couple is less successful but remains crucial to the complete story. Compelling and unpredictable, this amply rewards six hours of your attention.

OPENS NOVEMBER 14, CERT 15, 93 MINS

In the spirit of The 400 Blows, This Boy’s Life and all heartfelt, quasi-autobiographical coming-of-age tales, we have Dagur K

OPENS NOVEMBER 14, CERT 15, 104 MINS

Director Keith Gordon (and producer Mel Gibson) keenly clarify that this is not their remake, as such, of Dennis Potter’s iconic 1986 TV series. Potter adapted the screenplay himself, condensing its nine hours and changing ’40s Britain into ’50s America. Thus the music becomes doo wop rock’n’roll (of the “At The Hop” and “Three Steps To Heaven” ilk), though the psychological traumas, flashback structure and fleeting hallucinations remain.

It’s an intriguing, brisk effort, but in truth Potter’s writing hasn’t aged well: his shock tactics have long become standard and his insights are now about as hip as Freud. Gordon seems intent on not treading on fans’ toes, so while pushing things along efficiently, he’s loath to bring anything fresh to the operating theatre. If this bursts into song, it’s down to the cast?chiefly that man Robert Downey Jr. Though mostly hidden under layers of psorias is as Dan Dark, Downey suggests more turbulence with his eyes than Michael Gambon did. And as his all-singing alter ego, he’s a vital force.

Robin Wright Penn counters him perfectly as Dark’s wife, Katie Holmes could never top Joanne Whalley’s finest hour, and Jeremy Northam is surprisingly vicious as the cad. Brief cameos from Gibson and Adrien Brody barely register. In tune, if quietly.

OPENS NOVEMBER 28, CERT 12A, 99 MINS

It sounds like the first line of a national-stereotype joke: a young Finnish sniper, a weary Russian soldier and a Lapp woman are thrown together in a remote corner of Lapland just as WWII is winding down. The punchline is that none of them speak a word of the others’ languages, yet somehow they forge a precarious harmony that transcends cultures and nations as they attempt to survive the coming winter.

Writer-director Aleksandr Rogozhkin’s nimble script generates honest comedy out of the trio’s mutual misunderstandings. Occasionally the peace fractures and the Russian tries to kill the “fascist” Finn (actually a peace-loving conscript left to die by his own army). Somehow he’s always saved by the Lapp’s feminine intervention, which reveals its mystical powers at the end. Despite it being a three-hander set almost entirely in the Lapp’s aboriginal compound beside a stunning lake, Rogozhkin generates taut drama simply out of the combustible characters themselves. Also, watch closely and you’ll learn how to make handy things with twigs and cured reindeer hides.

OPENS NOVEMBER 14, CERT 15, 111 MINS

This has had more than its share of notoriety thanks to the graphic sex scenes between sixtyish Anne Reid and Daniel Craig. But this has obscured Kureishi’s real interests?the unfairness of age, and the evils family can visit on one another.

When her husband dies on a trip to see their children, something snaps in May (Reid), and she insists on staying with them. She’s treated as an emotional (and eventually literal) punchbag by her resentful daughter, who obsessively chases strapping builder Darren (Craig). The discovery of May’s tea-and-blowjob sessions with the pliant Darren blows the family apart.

Reid’s shags are more appealing than anything Clint or Connery have managed lately, shattering gender prejudices. But the real shock is in the stale poisons her family have stored: director Roger Michell makes May’s first visit to her son’s home more hostile than the punch her daughter later unloads. It’s just a shame such energy doesn’t sustain longueurs elsewhere.

OPENS NOVEMBER 21, CERT 15, 108 MINS

You’d think a film in which two of the finest actors working today?Harvey Keitel and Lars von Trier regular Stellan Skarsg

OPENS NOVEMBER 7, CERT 15, 90 MINS

Miranda isn’t sure what it wants to be, but has an interesting time failing to make up its mind. Sort of a romantic comedy thriller (but then again nothing of the sort), it casts John Simm as a nerdy librarian who falls for mysterious femme fatale Christina Ricci, who may or may not be called Miranda. She’s a con artist mixed up with svengali John Hurt (who wants to keep her) and sleazeball multi-millionaire Kyle MacLachlan (who wants to bed her), but our boy’s too out of his depth to suss much of this. His innocence is what attracts her. Eventually, the worm turns, in a mix-and-match plot which judders awkwardly.

Yet the romance between Simm and Ricci is beautifully written (by Rob Young), with some insightful, funny lines, and director Marc Munden allows the two leads as much time as they like to deliver them. The resulting gauche pauses will scupper any chance of a wide audience, but let’s be grateful for a home-grown (clearly low-budget) film which places its faith in script, acting and a certain wobbly grace. Strange, clumsy, and weirdly truthful.

DIRECTED BY John Crowley

STARRING Colin Farrell, Kelly Macdonald, Cillian Murphy

Opens November 28, Cert 18, 106 mins

Like amores perros without the dogs or Trainspotting without the heroin, Intermission is a dazzling trip through a city’s ripped backsides. First-time director Crowley and debuting screenwriter Mark O’Rowe have strong theatrical backgrounds, but there’s no staginess apparent in their freewheeling format. Shot on DV and setting a frantic pace from its first jaw-dropping scene, this pulls Irish cinema kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Farrell takes top billing as a feral, shaven-headed petty criminal, out to recruit a team to stage one last job that will allow him to fund his dream of settling down. But in this ensemble piece the attention is equally divided across a wide-ranging ensemble cast. There’s Macdonald, who shacks up with a sleazy bank manager when she splits with her boyfriend, the immature and inarticulate supermarket shelf-stacker Cillian Murphy. Macdonald’s fantastically grumpy sister (Shirley Henderson) makes clear her contempt for her sibling’s behaviour, but hides a dark secret of her own. Then there’s the bank manager’s wife out for revenge, and the arrogant paraplegic barfly who gives forth on the advantages of immobility while cadging drinks off anyone who will listen. And so on. Together, they’re an expansive collection of individuals, each seeking some sort of completion.

O’Rowe’s ear for the one-liners and tart colloquialisms of his native city ensures the script has zest and sizzle. Crowley’s ability to interweave the story lines and present an unromantic in-your-face look at modern Ireland is impressive. But what really makes Intermission is Colm Meaney’s performance as Jerry, the maverick detective with his eyes set on Farrell but with a loathing of criminal lowlifes in general that gnaws at him like a cancer. Jerry also has an interest in Celtic mysticism and a naive documentary maker on hand to take note of his hardboiled philosophy. The most driven character in a film where simmering desperation is the order of the day, Jerry is enough to make Intermission a must see. But elsewhere the engaging story lines and intriguing characters provide a compelling blend of grim fun and unvarnished realism.

OPENS NOVEMBER 14, CERT 15, 90 MINS

Not even deserving a same-breath mention with Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark, which it desperately tries to evoke, this British-made horror film starts out suggestive and unsettling but quickly goes haywire. Director Marcus Adams (Long Time Dead) does a good job of establishing the eerie, lonely atmosphere of late-night motorways and service-stations?which is where we meet single mum Madeleine Stowe and pissed-off daughter Mischa Barton. They make the mistake of picking up hitchhiker Bijou Phillips (face it, you’re better off picking up a guy with a hook for a hand than Bijou Phillips), which leads to Barton being kidnapped by a camper van-driving vampire cult and Stowe setting off in hot pursuit. Adams, however, falls asleep at the wheel and collides with an entirely different film, one in which Jonathan Rhys-Meyers hosts a sexy dance party in a lorry, an enigmatic character called the Recovery Man (Norman Reedus) does stuff that makes no sense, and Stowe blows things up in a laboratory. Very silly and not a bit scary?see the first half-hour perhaps, but then imagine the rest for yourself.

DIRECTED BY Nick Broomfield

STARRING Aileen Wuornos, Nick Broomfield

Opens November 21, Cert 15, 89 mins

After the relative frivolity of Kurt And Courtney and Biggie And Tupac, documentary maker Nick Broomfield revisits the territory of his 1992 film about Aileen Wuornos, a lesbian hitchhiker prostitute convicted for the murder of six semi-truck drivers. Ten years on, Wuornos is due to be executed, and Broomfield is among a number of witnesses recalled to Florida, subpoenaed for a final court hearing.

In the first film, a sympathetic Broomfield found Wuornos to be a hapless victim not just of her upbringing but also of a hopeless, dope-smoking defence attorney and a police force riddled with opportunists who conspired to sell the movie rights to Wuornos’ life story. Wuornos had passionately screeched her innocence and Broomfield, looking at the track record of sexual offences of her first victim, was inclined to agree with her claims that in this instance, at least, she murdered in self-defence.

In 2002, however, Wuornos seems determined to be executed?with Florida’s oily governor, Jeb Bush, offering no objections?and in interviews with Broomfield retracts her original claims of innocence, supposedly to square things with her Maker. It soon emerges that, years on, Death Row has robbed Wuornos of her marbles?in her contradictory, paranoid rants she charges the police with letting her get away with her murders so as to up her value as a serial killer when selling the rights to her story. Aileen?Life And Death Of A Serial Killer is one of Broomfield’s more sober outings and it carries an explicit anti-death penalty message endorsed by Amnesty International. But, Broomfield being Broomfield, his hand-held camera and disingenuously bumbling interview approach don’t do his subject any favours, exposing her as a sad grotesque, diminishing sympathy for her terrible plight and unbelievably abusive upbringing. So spectacularly far gone is she by the end that you almost feel her life isn’t worth preserving. There also hovers the awkward question of whether Broomfield himself is guilty of exploiting Wuornos for his own cinematic ends. But his tireless legwork in search of the raw truth pays off?this is human nature in extremis up close, messy and ignoble: Broomfield’s grim forte.

OPENS NOVEMBER 7, CERT 15, 105 MINS

This semi-autobiographical tale by Jim Sheridan (co-written with his daughters) tells of a young Irish family relocating to New York in search of a new life?but the tragedy from which they flee still looms large in their lives. Paddy Considine is superb as the father who’s suppressed his grief over the death of his son to such an extent that he can barely feel anything; Samantha Morton plays his young wife, trying hard to shut off her pain for the sake of her two surviving children. And real-life sisters Sarah and Emma Bolger steal the film from under the noses of the more experienced actors as they set about charming the junkies and hoodlums in the Hell’s Kitchen apartment building the family settle in. Djimon Hounsou’s role as African aristocrat, conceptual artist and AIDS sufferer is perhaps a Manhattan clich

OPENS NOVEMBER 7, CERT 15, 92 MINS

Banned by the authorities in Beijing, this unsympathetic look at the shadier side of the mining industry provides a damning insight into the poverty and corruption rife in Chinese society.

Song and Tang are itinerant miners who make their living in northern China by luring ‘relatives’ to work in illegal mines, murdering them, then faking mine collapses and extorting money from the owners. Having dispatched one victim, they set their sights on Yuan, a 16-year-old peasant searching for work. The conmen take him under their wing and find him work in the mines?but when Song decides to make a man of Yuan before his murder, the crooks’ relationship begins to deteriorate dramatically.

Director Li Yang spent 50 hours filming in the illegal mines that dot China, adding a palpable edge to proceedings. The semi-documentary style highlights further the very real tragedy Yang is out to expose?in 2001, a major accident involving a collapsed mine in Nante in the Guangxi province resulted in the death of more than 40 miners. Tragic indeed.

OPENS NOVEMBER 7, CERT U, 138 MINS

Adapted from Erich Maria Remarque’s novel of life in the German trenches during WWI, this 1930 talkie, highly controversial upon its release and unsurprisingly banned in Hitler’s Germany, has lost none of its slow-burn power.

Lewis Milestone’s classic is effectively a series of vignettes detailing the disillusionment and degradation of a group of teenage Germans as they’re lured into fighting for the Fatherland by their jingoistic high-school teacher; battered by their sadistic training sergeant and then cast adrift amid the brutal horrors of the front line.

Bleak and unnerving, this movie is conspicuously devoid of those gung-ho moments that undermine even the most accomplished anti-war flicks. Milestone’s vision of the front is laced with terror, stupidity, drudgery, misery and painful, lingering death. It resonates with a sense of contempt for battle that has never been captured before or since.