OPENED JUNE 27, CERT 12A, 101 MINS

Some people say Christian fundamentalists have hijacked American politics. But it’s worse than that. The Stateside success of Bruce Almighty is the mark of a culture gone completely, medievally God-mental.

Bruce (Jim Carrey) is a TV reporter who has such a bad day he curses God. God (Morgan Freeman) manifests, challenges him to do better and gives him the job for a week. In a series of over-played physical skits, Bruce uses his divine powers to part soup, blow wind up ladies’ skirts, answer the prayers of everyone in town and make a rival newsreader’s voice go all squeaky. Yep, he can do anything?except make his girlfriend (Jennifer Aniston) forgive his unfaithful ways. What to do? (Hint: it involves praying.)

In a more enlightened era, this could have been a subtle, open-minded look at free will, aspirations, limitations and all that good human stuff. Instead it’s a suffocatingly pious exercise in blinkered self-righteousness. There is a natural audience for this film, and the increasing number like it. But it’s not us.

OPENS JULY 25, CERT 18, 138 MINS

Fans of undercover cop movies frustrated by Hollywood’s insistence on casting Martin Lawrence in all of them should instead turn east for their fix. Among those refreshing the genre are the forthcoming Infernal Affairs (set for a Brad Pitt remake) and this Korean police-procedural.

Kang Woo-suk’s thriller features a rule-busting anti-hero, a ridiculously cold-blooded villain and relentless action (including a chainsaw climax). What’s not to love? Sul Kyung-gu plays Chul-joong, a jaded officer who rips off drug dealers. When internal affairs forces him to make a legitimate arrest for a change, Chul-joong finds himself trying to connect a pair of brutal murders to ruthless businessman Gyu-hwan (Lee Sung-jae).

It has the best weapons demo since Steven Prince’s in Taxi Driver, more gratuitous head-slapping than the Three Stooges, and the sort of verve and impact that’s been missing from US cop films for ages.

OPENS JULY 4, CERT 15, 140 MINS

Corey (Alain Delon) wears a rakishly tilted Fedora and a tightly belted trenchcoat. A cigarette hangs form his lower lip. He’s an ex-con with a daring diamond heist in mind. His crew consists of the hot-headed Vogel (Gian Maria) and ace alcoholic marksman Jansen (Yves Montand). It’s an easy steal. Enter the dogged Police Commissioner (Andre Bourvil)…

Le Cercle Rouge, the penultimate feature from crime auteur Jean-Pierre Melville (made three years before his death) simply shouldn’t work. It’s preposterously hardboiled for a movie made in 1970. It practically oozes Hammett, Chandler and 1940’s Warner Brother B-picture style. And it conspicuously conflates Melville’s own past noirish standouts: the heist from 1955’s Bob Le Flambeur, the suave protagonist from 1967’s Le Samourai, and the all-pervasive ‘cool machismo’ that defines the limits of Melville’s universe.

And yet it’s precisely this boldly un-ironic approach that gives Le Cercle Rouge its raw voltage. Like the best Howard Hawks westerns, Melville’s men are hardened professionals with Gary Cooper stares who’ll follow their own code right to the end, even if it means death. And, invariably, it does.

OPENS JULY 18, CERT 12A, 109 MINS

Brown Sugar’s hip hop credentials are established at the start, as key figures from Russell Simmons to De La Soul reminisce. Former Krush Rap publisher Michael Elliot’s script then uses the music’s history to frame the relationship between Sidney (Sanaa Lathan) and Dre (Taye Diggs), from their meeting as children at an ’80s rap battle onwards. Elliot and director Rick Famuyiwa subvert expectations by creating characters who’re not only black and bourgeois (Sidney is a successful rap journalist, Dre an A&R man) but believable?a rarity in a genre used to relying on stereotyping. When Sidney and Dre start dating other people, a conventional ‘happy’ ending seems in doubt. But the sex is more funnily frank than usual as, after years of expectation, Dre gives Sidney “the most beautiful… five minutes I’ve ever had”. Mos Def and Queen Latifah are on hand as best friends, and only the music, essaying hip hop’s romantic side, disappoints in this otherwise low-key success.

OPENS JULY 4, CERT 15, 100 MINS

Film-maker Sophie Fiennes here offers a view of South Central LA just as real as gangs, violence and drug culture. She focuses on the Greater Bethany Community Church and the mesmeric oratory of preacher “Bishop” Noel Jones, brother of singer Grace. Eschewing conventional narrative, Hoover Street Revival depicts local community life, ranging from the mundane (a man dressing his baby daughter) to the tragic (the aftermath of a shooting), and illustrates how Jones’ sermons relate to his congregation’s lives.

While some might be put off by its lack of normal documentary structure, in which conclusions and impressions are served up for us, this is the film’s strength. It’s like an exhibition of photography, where we’re free to arrive at our own intellectual and emotional responses. Two weaknesses: the strobe effects which artificially enliven the church scenes are jarring, and there’s no interview with the film’s main character, Jones himself. Otherwise, a thoroughly worthy venture.

OPENS JULY 25, CERT 18, 92 MINS

The incresingly narcissistic Catherine Breillat, whose Romance and A Ma Soeur! caused controversy for their ‘frank’ sexuality, rams her head irretrievably up her own backside here.

Modestly casting Anne Parillaud as herself, she gives us a peep behind the scenes of a film shoot, particularly the intimate scenes. How do an actor and actress, frosty towards each other in real life, prepare for an on-screen shag? How does the tortured visionary genius that is the director (guess who) psyche them and herself up? And what makes our fearless auteur drive on to realise her art against all odds? None of these questions are answered, but much time’s spent portraying the Breillat figure (played with style by Parillaud) as a modern-day Jeanne D’Arc. If you can stomach lines like, “I love post-industrial garbage dumps,” and, “We only love the men we despise,” and find hilarity in an actor quibbling over the size of his prosthetic penis, bonne chance to you. Truffaut’s turning in his grave.

OPENS JULY 11, CERT PG, 101 MINS

Pai’s Maori tribe believe once every generation a male heir will be born to continue her grandfather Koro’s line, which is reputed to stretch back to the mythical Whale Rider. When Pai’s twin dies during childbirth and the community starts to decay into jobless, pot-smoking indolence, Karo holds her responsible, forcing her to battle against his ingrained, patriarchal outlook and prove she might be the Rider herself.

Sociological inquiry and eco-fables (Pai does summon whales from the deep) are worn lightly in a script full of mercilessly earthy inter-family sniping. Modern Maori life is convincingly drawn: wannabe gangsta youths circle like sharks as Koro tries to instil traditional strengths in the tribe’s young boys, but his thuggish rejection of Pai shows that’s imperfect, too. As Pai, Keisha Castle-Hughes-with her spindly young body, hardly a Buffy-tough gatecrasher in boys’ town-gives a quietly heartbreaking performance. Though more serious in tone, it’s reminiscent of Bend It Like Beckham: a culturally curious, powerful girl’s story everyone can enjoy.

OPENS JULY 11, CERT 12A, 113 MINS

This concerns two unemployed 19-year-old boys living in the provincial Chinese city of Datong, their aimless, hopeless lifestyles and respective love interests. Bin Bin’s girlfriend is going off to college, while Xiao Ji is infatuated with a dancer called Qiao Qiao and pursues her regardless of her gangster boyfriend.

Reflecting the same ambiguity as the Joy Division album, Unknown Pleasures is about the unhappy lot of the young in modern China, whose new openness to capitalism and market forces hasn’t liberated them. Rather, they lead repressed, impoverished existences, taunted by a perpetual backdrop of TV, karaoke and distant, American-generated dreams of the good life.

All this is conveyed rather too well in this gruellingly downbeat movie through a series of miserably failed attempts at escape, deadpan expressions and lengthy pauses pregnant with sullen meaning. “There’s no fucking future,” remarks Bin Bin late on. Unknown Pleasures, which starts slowly before its pace slackens, offers no glimmer of suggestion to the contrary.

OPENS JULY 11, CERT 18, 102 MINS

You know you’re in twisted territory when a film’s key scene of tenderness consists of a brutalised college girl vomiting over the mute thug who forced her into prostitution. It’s at this point that controversial South Korean director Kim Ki-Duk’s film transforms itself from a grim drama into a sort-of love story, albeit one with the sort of sexual politics that may turn many viewers off.

Kim’s regular star Cho Jae-Hyun plays Han-Gi, a brooding hulk whose violent advances towards prim Sun-Hwa (Seo Won) are understandably rebuffed. He takes revenge by putting her to work in a seedy brothel, watching from behind a one-way mirror when she’s with clients.

Growing more obsessed, Han-Gi becomes Sun-Hwa’s protector and lover. What sounds like squalid male fantasy on paper is more complex on screen, where investigations of societal pressures and divides are folded into an increasingly dream-like narrative. The film’s confrontational title and unappetising surface represent a challenge, forcing viewers to dig deeper to uncover Kim’s true?if still enigmaticintent. Hard work then, but richly rewarding.

DIRECTED BY Gregor Jordan

STARRING Joaquin Phoenix, Ed Harris, Anna Paquin, Scott Glenn

Opens July 18, Cert 15, 98 mins

It’s been a long time coming, but Gregor Jordan’s pitch-black satire on Uncle Sam’s military machine finally gets a UK release after a string of setbacks. A huge hit when it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 7, 2001, its initial momentum was derailed by the 9/11 attacks. Five subsequent attempts to release it in the US were also aborted (most recently due to the war in the Gulf), while in the UK the collapse of the film’s production company, FilmFour, in July 2002 suggested it might never see the light of day over here.

Finally, Buffalo Soldiers has found a new home at Pathe, and we can see what the fuss is about. In a nutshell, it’s Catch-22 meets Three Kings. Set on a US air force base in Germany just weeks before the Berlin Wall comes down, it follows Special Fourth Class soldier Ray Elwood (Phoenix), an amoral hustler who seems to have studied from the Bilko book of military protocol. Willing to trade whatever he can get his hands on, Elwood and his brigade of misfits, losers and addicts hit the jackpot when they come across a consignment of hi-tech weapons in two abandoned trucks. The only obstacle stopping them from collecting huge profits is bull-nosed Viet Vet sergeant Robert Lee (Glenn), who develops an almost pathological obsession with bringing Elwood down. Pouring gas on the fire, Elwood soon starts seeing Lee’s teenage daughter Robyn (Paquin).

Phoenix is on mischievous form here, whether running illegal scams or sparking off Harris (Elwood’s weak-willed base commander) and Elizabeth McGovern (Harris’ two-timing wife). But the best performance comes from Glenn, who betters even his recent ensemble work in Training Day and The Shipping News, visibly enjoying himself as Phoenix’s detestable, gung-ho nemesis.

Buffalo Soldiers shares its bitter, black sense of humour with Jordan’s first film, 1999’s Australian heist thriller Two Hands, but this is driven by a far more devilish sensibility, and the screenplay (from Robert O’Connor’s 1993 novel) crackles with fiery, feisty wit and energy.

DIRECTED BY Tom DiCillo

STARRING Denis Leary, Elizabeth Hurley, Steve Buscemi

Opens July 18, Cert 15, 91 mins

It’s endured a troubled path to UK release, but within minutes of the opening you’re reminded why DiCillo’s unique blend of acid humour and wry pathos has been sorely missed since ’97’s The Real Blonde. He makes satire sting and romance rock. Some will say Hurley’s clunky acting holds the humour down like a ball and chain, but Leary and Buscemi fully understand DiCillo’s tightrope walking, and keep both the story and the asides nimble. Leary’s good bad cop is a credible, flawed anti-hero who deserves a better fate, and finds it.

NY detective Ray Pluto (Leary), recently widowed, is a loner with chronic back pain. When he fails to prevent a hold-up in a burger bar (instead, a little kid saves the day), the papers dub him “Loser Cop”. Only his partner Jerry (Buscemi) stands by him, veiling mixed emotions of his own. Ray withdraws from life, lying on his couch with a spliff and a bunch of cheerleader videos for company. Eventually persuaded by Jerry to visit a chiropractor, Ray engages with the world again upon finding she’s the attractive doctor Ann Beamer (Hurley). A comically steamy affair ensues, but while Ray thus has his eye off the ball, his friend and neighbour (Luis Guzman) is nearly killed. “Neighbour Stabbed While Loser Cop Sleeps” chortle the Manhattan media. Ray pursues the case in a last fling at regaining his self-respect.

This being DiCillo, there are numerous twists and kinks. Jerry confesses to Ray that he thinks he has a nice ass. “Uh… well, everybody’s gay to some extent,” mutters Ray, kindly. “Hey, I’m not!” shrieks Jerry. Leary and Buscemi work wonders with this. In another apartment in Ray’s block, two wannabe screenwriters are working through their “ultra-megarealist” script, which, echoing Living In Oblivion, comments on, and intertwines with, the main action. “We should call it ‘Suck The Monkey’,” chimes one, “that’s so in-your-face.” “Whoa, yo, bro, no!” protests his buddy. Hurley throws food at smokers in restaurants; Leary’s embarrassed-to-be-with-her-even-though-she’s-hot cringe is a sight to behold.

“I wanted to make an adult movie that you could enjoy without a lobotomy,” DiCillo’s said.

Your brain will laugh its socks off. Very splendid.

OPENS JULY 4, CERT 12A, 231 MINS

The title of writer-director Ron Maxwell’s prequel to his equally lengthy Gettysburg (1993) sums up his attitude to America’s Civil War?as a conflict between moral giants and holy armies. Like Spielberg’s recent hits inspired by Stephen Ambrose’s patriotic history books (Saving Private Ryan, Band Of Brothers), Maxwell suggests even this most terrible of America’s wars is part of a wider heroic narrative for God’s chosen nation.

Moving from secession through the Confederate successes preceding Gettysburg’s apocalypse, this is largely the South’s story, focusing on their brilliant General “Stonewall” Jackson (Stephen Lang). Though Jackson’s military faith in bayonets unfortunately recalls Corporal Jones, his higher trust in the Lord adds to a daringly Biblical tone, maintained in a mighty new Dylan theme song. But despite Lang’s driven performance and Robert Duvall’s almost mystical Robert E Lee, that spirituality is dully doubt-free and sanitised, as is slavery, and the bloody carnage wrought by these generals in their stirring chessboard battles.

OPENS JULY 4, CERT 15, 110 MINS

Eddie and Maria live in rural seclusion, scraping by on a small timber business and subsisting on home-grown vegetables. She is nervy and bird-like, he’s a gentle bear of a man. Although little is said, it’s clear that for this damaged couple, their home and the stoic simplicity of their existence is a refuge from other, wilder past lives.

Then a chance encounter brings Kullman into their world. A former acquaintance of Eddie, recently released from prison, he’s treated at first with hostility by Maria. The couple’s little world is disrupted and neither will be quite the same again.

This atmospheric Norwegian psychodrama is remarkably powerful, particularly given that the actors apparently improvised much of the dialogue. Director Marius Holst favours long, meditative takes and striking wide shots to build tension and create menace. With echoes of early Polanski, this first film contains some of the most fascinating performances that you’ll see all year from leads Maria Bonnevie and Kim Bodnia as Maria and Eddie. A totally absorbing experience.

OPENS JULY 25, CERT 15, 118 MINS

In these days of shock and awe we might all feel a twinge of nostalgia for the Cold War’s certainties, but Wolfgang Becker’s Goodbye Lenin! looks back on old East Germany with neither indulgence nor anger.

Hardcore socialist Christiane (Katrin Sass) falls into a coma when her son, Alex (Daniel Br

OPENS, JULY 4, CERT 12, 98 MINS

Veteran documentarian Tareque Masud’s Cannes award-winning feature is both a tender coming-of-age tale (button-cute boy realises that world is harsh place) and a continuous, meandering and essentially inconclusive debate on the nature of religious and political freedoms in late-’60s East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

Anu (Nurul Islam Bablu) is the wide-eyed pre-pubescent protagonist with a penchant for Hindi festivals and decadent Western ways who is sent by his angry fundamentalist father from the family home to a strict Islamic school, or madrasa. Here, Anu befriends the school patsy, Rokon (Russell Farazi), adjusts to the harsh new regime, and dreams of happier times spent with his kindly communist uncle Milon (Soaeb Islam). And yet, whenever the movie threatens to take off, and Anu’s journey hints at catharsis, Masud obscures the revelation with sermonising. Like Ken Loach on a bad day, we get passionate teachers, grumpy prefects, howling minstrels and wizened old boatmen all proffering their opinions on martial law vs democracy, Sufis vs mullahs and pacifism vs fundamentalism.

Ultimately quite wearing.

DIRECTED BY Paul Justman

STARRING The Funk Brothers, Joan Osborne, Bootsy Collins, Chaka Khan

Opens July 25, Cert PG, 108 mins

Detroit, 1959, and Berry Gordy gathers the best musicians from the city’s jazz and blues circuit and sets them to work as the house band on his fledgling Motown label. Holed up in the garage at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, these guys put the backbeat into Hitsville USA and, during Motown’s golden age, play on more hit records than The Rolling Stones, Elvis and The Beatles combined. Some feat, but The Funk Brothers are soul music’s unsung heroes?and director Paul Justman’s fabulous documentary attempts to recover their legacy.

Inspired by producer and music supervisor Allan Sluksky’s 1989 biography of The Funk Brothers’ late bassist James Jamerson, Justman’s doc is shot at the Detroit after-hours club where the band developed an inimitable sound, playing gigs to supplement their pitiful Motown wage. We get the history of the group from surviving members: keyboard player Joe Hunter, drummer Uriel Jones and bassist Bob Babbitt?sly old coots to a man, full of self-deprecating humour, whose anecdotes about Smokey, Marvin, Diana and Stevie are the stuff of pure gold. But the film has many wistful, not to mention downright sad, moments. One of the most striking comes during a series of vox pops with shoppers in a Detroit collector’s record store. Each is asked to identify the musicians who played on every great Motown smash. No one knows the answer.

Intercut with these reminiscences we get some great footage of the chaps?some of it archival, some of it contemporary with the Brothers jamming with Chaka Khan, Boosty Collins, Ben Harper and Joan Osborne. Even now, reformed after 30 years, they’ve got the funk in spades.

Justman carefully deconstructs the fantasy image perpetrated by Berry Gordy and the Motown family. The fulcrum of The Funk Brothers?the late great drummer Benny Benjamin and James Jamerson?went largely under-acknowledged during their lifetimes. Benjamin died a lonely death in 1968 and, damningly, Jamerson only got to attend the Motown 25th anniversary concert in 1983 after buying a ticket from a tout. He died a few weeks later. This film suffers for their absence, and the grainy re-enactments Justman stages seem superfluous.

That aside, this is the best kind of documentary?a salutary history lesson told with care and affection.