OPENS MARCH 28, CERT 15, 101 MINS

They may only have eight letters between them, but Jet Li and DMX are a force to be reckoned with in Andrzej Bartkowiak’s martial arts action caper. Okay, so they’re rather limited in the acting stakes?DMX growls every line in the same menacing monotone, while Li prefers not to speak at all?but the former’s bling-bling gangsta attitude and the latter’s awesome capacity to kick butt ensure that Cradle rocks.

By marrying the kinetic combat of Hong Kong cinema to the pulsating energy of US street culture, producer Joel Silver has fashioned an appealing hybrid (hip hop kung fu) that caters to more than one demographic. It’s also one tailor-made for his leading men’s strengths: Jet’s Chinese agent looks after the whupp-ass, while DMX’s jewel thief takes care of the hardware (tanks, missiles, fast cars and quad bikes). The fanciful plot involves a race to locate some futuristic weapon of mass destruction, with everything climaxing in mano a mano fisticuffs between Li and Mark Dacascos (Brotherhood Of The Wolf) inside a ring of fire. Video cultdom beckons.

OPENS APRIL 11, CERT 15, 77 MINS

Damien Odoul’s debut feature is a coming-of-age film with a difference. Shot in black and white, full of violent and surreal imagery, it has more in common with the movies of Bu

Starring all your favourite second bananas, plus George Clooney, this is a downbeat, low-budget, impeccably-scripted, superbly-acted, humanist tragicomedy from George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh’s Section 8 production company. Pull up a chair, this is a doozy.

Guzm

DIRECTED BY Lukas Moodysson

STARRING Oksana Akinshina, Artiom Bogucharskij, Pavel Ponomarev

Opens April 25, Cert 18, 109 mins

As harrowing and distressing as Lars Von Trier’s Breaking The Waves or Dancer In The Dark, but a better film, this establishes Moodysson as, quite possibly, the post-millennial Bergman. The elder Swede’s already described him as “a young master”. His lovely 2000 film Together shrugged and smiled sweetly when things got rough. This one just keeps on getting rougher: it’s uncompromising and unforgettable. Maid In Manhattan it’s not.

Sixteen-year-old Lilya (the astonishingly open, brittle and proud Akinshina) exists (rather than lives) in a drab suburb “somewhere in the former Soviet Union” (actually Estonia). The buildings can’t get it up to be grey; the trees don’t know what a leaf is. She and equally poor young friend Volodya (Bogucharskij) dream of America, of the luxuries enjoyed and symbolised by Britney Spears and Michael Jordan. When Lilya’s mum runs off with her new man, the girl’s forced to drop out of school, sniff glue, and fend for herself. Shafted by her wicked aunt, she has no food and no electricity?it’s only a matter of time before she’s reduced to acts of prostitution.

Hope?that cruel temptress?arrives in the form of Andrei (Ponomarev), a handsome charmer. Lilya’s spirits lift. He invites her to Sweden: a flat and a job await. Escape at last! Lilya marvels at the airport shops, the prettiest things she’s ever seen, the baubles for sale. But at the other end of the journey, a horrible destiny crushes her back down.

“It was meant to be a film about God’s benevolence,” Moodysson has said, “but reality reared its head and it became something else.” Reality kicks doggedly at the characters’ shins, but it’s their dreams (as with the girls in his debut, Fucking

OPENS APRIL 4, CERT 12A, 104 MINS

It looks like the most macho sporting arena in the world, but ultimately in the aggressive Hawaiian surf community it doesn’t matter if you’re a girl or a boy, just as long as you can keep your cool with 200 tonnes of water about to crash onto your head. Well that’s what Anne Marie (Kate Bosworth) hopes as she trains for the ultimate surfing competition. Recovering her nerve after an accident that nearly drowned her, Anne Marie has a lot to prove. But life gets complicated when a fling with a pro-footballer turns serious and she has to choose between the highlife and the 20ft-high waves waiting for her.

The grungy authenticity, not to mention the hardcore pre-teen partying, suggests a chick-flick seen through the eyes of someone like Larry Clark. And this uncompromising edge is what makes this slight film so enjoyable. That and some exhilarating surfing footage. When the camera gets inside the wave, it’s like being flushed down a U-bend. In a good way, naturally.

OPENS APRIL 25, CERT 15, 105 MINS

The subtitles of this Italian movie from Turkish-born director Ferzan Ozpetek translate its title as “Ignorant Fairies”, which gives pause as to whether that translator will ever work again. But it’s all uphill from there in a splendid, subtle, almost-love story which deals with grief and healing with deft courage and sharp comic poise.

In Rome, Antonia (Margherita Buy) is shattered when her husband of 15 years is killed. She finds he had a long-time lover, Michele, and tracks ‘her’ down. But Michele’s a ‘he’ (Stefano Accorsi). At first the mourning rivals snap at each other, but as Antonia’s drawn into the non-judgmental world of his gay community, curiosity leads to bonding. However, Ozpetek shies away from any obvious, idealised arc: there are scenes of emotional ambivalence which only, say, Moretti would risk. A strikingly sensitive film, in all the right ways. Buy is a presence of graceful strength, there’s not a false note throughout. Quality.

OPENED MARCH 28, CERT 15, 118 MINS

“I confess that I am very sensual, father.” Sniggering already? For some reason this Mexican melodrama was Oscar-nominated, but it straddles more lead-me-not-into-temptation clich

OPENED MARCH 28, CERT 12A, 135 MINS

The Earth’s molten core has stopped spinning, and this is a Bad Thing, with knock-on effects that will kill off humanity within a year. Enter a team of kamikaze scientists with an unlimited military budget who plan to drill through the Earth and kick-start the core again with a few nukes.

“This isn’t going to be subtle,” observes a character early on, and they’re not far wrong. What we’ve got here is kind of the ultimate disaster movie, like Armageddon with the gloves off and a ton of mad science on board. Aaron Eckhart is the sensitive-but-hunky geophysicist hero, Stanley Tucci the deeply vain government-sponsored ‘expert’, Delroy Lindo the inventor of their sub-surface vehicle and Hilary Swank the plucky astronaut who’s piloting the thing.

That it’s all utterly predictable is part of the appeal, a comforting familiarity amid all the destruction?some of which is impressive, some of which is sub-standard?and by and large it doesn’t disappoint. Turn off your brain and enjoy.

OPENS APRIL 4, CERT U, 96 MINS

Director Alexander Sokurov’s film is a feat of visual orchestration set in St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum. Our guide is a film-maker who floats unseen around the former royal palace. As he drifts from room to room, he’s tossed backwards and forwards across history?now in the era of Peter The Great, now in 1919, now in the present day, now in the reign of Catherine The Great. Along the way, he picks up a fellow traveller, a prickly 19th-century French diplomat.

The events to which they bear invisible witness are generally inconsequential rather than pivotal, though one scene of aristocratic revellers pouring slowly down the staircases following the last, sumptuous ball of the Tsarist era is loaded with significance. The diplomat and film-maker’s bickering amounts to a querulous meditation on Russia’s pre-and post-Communist history.

Get this, however: Russian Ark was achieved in one unbroken steadicam shot. An unprecedented technical and artistic achievement.