La Antena (The Aerial)

Peter Bradshaw: This left-field, futuristic film is a tad too indulgent to be a true homage to the silent movie

Un secret

Philip French: It's a gripping story, extremely well acted, far superior to Truffaut's bogus The Last Metro

XXY

Philip French: The title of novelist Lucía Puenzo's subtle, thoughtful first feature film, XXY refers to genetic coding

A Secret

Peter Bradshaw: A blue-chip cast and handsome stagings do little to prevent this French movie being a muddled, pretentious washout

A taste of love and pain

Eagerly awaited French film Couscous tells the heart-warming, and heart-breaking, story of one man's struggle to save his immigrant family from poverty by opening a fish restaurant

DVD releases

Bonnie And Clyde, 40th Anniversary Edition | Assembly | Charlie Wilson's War | Out Of The Blue | Don't Touch The Axe | Skins: Complete Second Series | Ashes To Ashes

Truly drawn from life

Philip French: A film about a girl growing up in Tehran makes the transition from comic strip to big screen with ease and exuberant humour

Lust, Caution

Rental and retail: An intriguing combination of spy movie and perverse romance, but it's the subtlety of director Ang Lee's approach that makes it stand out as one of the year's best

Colossal Youth

Cath Clarke: An extraordinary and otherworldly, but also an utterly unforgiving piece of film-making by the Portuguese director Pedro Costa

Bandit Queen

Cath Clarke: Brutal epic about Phoolan Devi, a bandit who became a household name in India in the early 80s

Private Property

Peter Bradshaw: Intense and very involving drama by Belgian director Joachim Lafosse, starring Isabelle Huppert

Hope (Nadzieja)

Peter Bradshaw: An intriguing and rewarding film about an art theft, written by Krzysztof Piesiewicz