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.

OPENS NOVEMBER 28, CERT 18, 98 MINS

When a deal goes bloodily (but not too bloodily) pear-shaped in Kiev, two American mafiosi, Settimo (Dan Hedaya) and mouthy young gun Gino (Danny Nucci), head for the UK. They plan to lay low in Glasgow in the ice-cream parlour-cum-fish and chip shop run by Roberto (Gerald Lepkowski), the hard-working, mild-mannered cousin they’ve never met. While the wiseguys behave in fish-out-of-water style, antagonism grows between Roberto and Gino over Alice (Shirley Henderson), the fish-fryer Roberto can’t admit he loves. But, when some Scousers hired by the Russian mob come to flush the visitors out, and loan sharks try to muscle in on Roberto’s business, the relatives unite. Director Don Coutts’ culture-clash comedy tries to find a middle ground between Local Hero and The Sopranos (Vincent “Big Pussy” Pastore has a small role), but ultimately it’s as damp as a Glasgow autumn. The saving grace is the chance to see the great Hedaya in something like a lead role for a change.

OPENS NOVEMBER 7, CERT 15, 90 MINS

The brief is simple, if a bit arcane:veteran Danish documentarian J