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Despite suggesting tensions between the community and the national security forces, Xavier Beauvois makes little attempt to solve the mystery in Of Gods and Men. Instead, he concentrates on the psychological and spiritual impact that the knowledge of impending death has on men who had sacrificed their lives to the service of others, but had never previously considered the prospect of dying for their faith. The result is a film of great intensity, integrity and intelligence, as it contemplates the legacy of colonialism on the Maghreb, as well as the centuries-old struggle between adherents of the Bible and the Koran. But it is also a quietly inspirational treatise on the difference between religious conviction and living according to one's beliefs.

Nestling in the verdant countryside of an unnamed North African state, the monastery headed by the scholarly Lambert Wilson has close ties to the adjoining village. Medic Michel Lonsdale tends to the locals with an easy avuncularity, while Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Laudenbach, Loïc Pichon, Xavier Maly and the aged Jacques Herlin sell produce at the nearby market. When not attending to their chores, the brothers gather in the simple chapel for sung services of humble beauty that emphasise the strength of their bond and the piety of their non-proselytising mission.

However, on Christmas Eve, jihadi commander Farid Larbi comes to the monastery and demands that Lonsdale travels to his camp to treat a wounded rebel. Wilson resists and is surprised when Larbi offers a handshake out of respect for his decisive leadership and knowledge of Islamic scripture. But everyone realises that the incident has exposed their vulnerability at a time of growing fanaticism and Wilson offers his companions the opportunity to return to France. Lonsdale and Herlin have no intention of leaving, but the others have to wrestle with their consciences, with Rabourdin being particularly torn between duty and martyrdom.

The situation deteriorates after some Croatian labourers are slaughtered and Larbi is assassinated by the local militia. Wilson and Pichon visit the regional governor, only to be greeted with a volley of anti-imperialist rhetoric and a callous indifference to their fate. So, once again, Wilson offers the monks the chance to leave. But they vote to remain and celebrate what turns out to be a last supper with the visiting Olivier Perrier.

Accompanied by the strains of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, this sequence is superbly photographed in fluid close-ups that capture the mixed emotions of ordinary men discovering unsuspected reserves of courage, acceptance and faith. Yet Beauvois retains the mood of restraint that makes this exploration of theology, politics and humanity so authentic and poignant. Caroline Champetier's use of light and Michel Barthélémy's austere interiors are crucial in this regard. But it's the discipline of the performances that gives the drama its potency, with Wilson particularly excelling as the abbot whose somewhat aloof manner doesn't always endear him to either friend or foe.

Beauvois and co-scenarist Étienne Comar might have presented more of each man's backstory (especially as several of the actual victims had led remarkable lives) in delving more deeply into the reasons why the monks are so determined to stay. They could also have examined the reaction of both their flock and the wider church to their plight. But this is still a compelling study of doubt and fear and the consequences of putting one's entire trust in the rectitude of a religious calling.

Another infamous crime that has never been satisfactorily explained is recalled by Robert Connolly and playwright David Williamson in Balibo. During the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, five tele-journalists were killed in a border village and Canberra conspired with Jakarta to conclude that they were accidentally caught in crossfire. However, Jill Jolliffe contradicted this claim in her 2001 book, Cover-Up, and her findings have since persuaded a Sydney coroner's court to return a verdict of murder.

Rather than simply reconstructing the events that led to the deaths of Australians Greg Shackleton and Tony Stewart, New Zealander Gary Cunningham and Britons Brian Peters and Malcolm Rennie, Connolly and Williamson follow veteran foreign correspondent Roger East as he is lured out of a dead-end PR job in Darwin and asked to investigate the case by East Timorese foreign secretary José Ramos-Horta. Thus, instead of an indignant exposé, they succeed in producing an engrossing thriller that not only suggests the appalling fate of the Balibo Five, but also assesses how much the gathering and reception of news stories has changed in the intervening 35 years.

The film opens in 1999 with a fictional character played by Bea Viegas appearing before a truth and reconciliation commission and her recollections about meeting East (Anthony LaPaglia) in her family hotel in November 1975 spark an extended flashback to East being persuaded by Ramos-Horta (Oscar Isaac) to travel to Dili to discover what actually happened to Shackleton (Damon Gameau), Cunningham (Gyton Grantley), Rennie (Nathan Phillips), Peters (Thomas Wright) and Stewart (Mark Leonard Winter). However, Connolly proceeds to cross-cut between East's quest and the sequence of events that led the quintet deeper into the war zone and out of easy contact with their stations back in Australia.

This narrative strategy, together with the insistence of having Tristan Milani shoot several close-ups in shakicam, occasionally makes the action difficult to follow, especially for those not fully au fait with an incident that has long been a bone of contention Down Under. But, even though it is never up to the standard of past works like Gallipoli (1981) and The Year of Living Dangerously (1982),Williamson's screenplay has an intelligence and authority that makes scenes like Shackleton's last report from a village in the path of the Indonesian advance and East's final realisation of how the Five were mercilessly gunned down after being trapped in Balibo all the more poignant.

Ably blending Timorese tunes with her own guitar-and-strings score, composer Lisa Gerrard matches the intricacy of editor Nick Myers's mix of dramatisation and archive footage, while LaPaglia is typically impressive as the weary hack rediscovering his edge as the head of the bullish Isaac's newly-founded East Timor News Agency. But it's Connolly's evocative use of the authentic locations that gives this sincere picture its power.

The consequence of doing one's duty are considered along with the important subject of post-traumatic stress disorder in Brian Welsh's unconvincing melodrama, In Our Name. In the opening stages, Welsh credibly conveys the sense of dislocation that returning squaddies must feel on leaving behind the 24/7 uncertainties of a war zone for the supposedly cosseting security of home. But the action becomes increasingly implausible and melodramatic as Joanne Froggatt struggles in vain to cope with her own traumas and those of her equally scarred soldier husband, Mel Raido.

Despite being hailed as a heroine by John Henshaw and her mates at her local Newcastle boozer, Froggatt is upset by young daughter Chloe-Jayne Wilkinson's cool welcome and Raido's insistent requests for sex. Her dreams are haunted by the memories of a dead Iraqi girl. Yet, when she is debriefed by her superiors, Froggatt insists she is suffering no psychological after effects, as she fears that any sign of weakness will harm her chances of promotion.

Only comrade-in-arms Andrew Knott knows what she is going through and he tries to offer his support when she breaks down in front of a class of children after teacher sister Janine Leigh coaxes her to talk about her experiences. But Raido's furious jealousy drives Knott away and Froggatt tries to patch up her marriage, even to the extent of joining her husband in a frenzied attack on a Muslim taxi driver who had identified with the fundamentalist cause and questioned the British presence in Iraq.

However, when she finds photographs stashed away in the garage of Raido posing with Arab corpses, Froggatt becomes so concerned for her daughter's safety that she steals a gun from the barracks armoury and heads off into the wilds with a tent and no particular plan of action.

By this stage, however, Welsh's well-meaning film has lapsed into something approaching soap operatics. Raido has become a chauvinist suburban psychopath, while Froggatt has lost all connection with reality. This is a pity, as she achieves an impressive mix of steel and vulnerability that convinces far more readily than domestic shouting matches that sound scripted rather than overheard from life.

British cinema has been much slower to address the problems of wounded and shell-shocked troops than Hollywood and Welsh is to be applauded for his laudable socio-political intentions. But a bit more confidence in his subject matter and a reduced concern with reaching a mainstream audience by spicing up the storyline might have resulted in a much more potent and persuasive picture.

Equally well-meaning, but similarly flawed in its execution, Mohamed al-Daradji's Son of Babylon is an Iraqi road movie that owes much to the humanist tradition of Iranian film-making. Contrasting the mythical glories of antiquity with the shocking realities of a nation decimated by four decades of tyranny, this seeks to place the blame for Iraq's woes firmly on the shoulders on Saddam Hussein. But, in striving to encourage reconciliation by suggesting that even eager cohorts acted more out of fear than conviction, Al-Daradji risks compromising the authenticity of a picture that already resorts frequently to sentimentality when the enormity of the truth appears too much to bear.

Three weeks after Saddam's fall in April 2003, Shezhad Hussein learns that Kurdish prisoners have been released from captivity in Nasiriyah and she desperately hopes that the son she has not seen since his arrest following the First Gulf War will be among them. Accompanied by 12 year-old grandson Yasser Taleeb (who has never seen his father), she hitches a lift with truck driver Salih Abdul Rahman Farhad, who is irritated by Taleeb brandishing his father's military jacket and his incessant tooting on an old flute. However, despite a breakdown and the occasional rant, Farhad gets his passengers to Baghdad, where Taleeb befriends cigarette seller Muhammed Hussein Jbara after his grandmother dispatches him to find out where they are supposed to catch the bus south.

Eventually, the pair reach the end of their 600-mile journey. But the prison is empty and the records of who survived incarceration are either chaotic or non-existent. Hussein is told about the mass graves that are being discovered across the country, but it's only after the bus back to the capital breaks down that she agrees to allow kindly middle-aged Bashir al-Majid to help her search for his missing son.

Having consulted Asmaeel Al-Matri at a mosque that had given refuge to political prisoners, the trio reach a burial ground where Hussein sympathises with grieving widow Kefaya Dakhel Kareem. However, their anguish proves too much for Al-Majid, who confesses that he was a Revolutionary Guardsman actively participated in the Anfal against the Kurds. Hussein forgives him, but Taleeb drives him away and ushers his grandmother on to a bus home. Shortly into the journey, he spots a signpost to the remains of the Hanging Gardens. But when he tries to rouse Hussein, he realises she has passed away.

Evocatively photographed in barren deserts and decimated cityscapes by the director and Duraid Munajim, this is a movingly poetic and intensely metaphorical lament for a country and its suffering people. Yet Al-Daradji struggles to make the case that Arabs endured as much as the Kurds and other persecuted minorities and his plea for unity through redemption and forgiveness sometimes seems a little naive.

The excellent non-professional cast reflect his earnestness to the extent that, while the irrepressible Taleeb slips in some much-needed mischievousness, he is also made to embody a slightly specious connection between the Babylonian past and the post-Ba'thist future. But, even if the film's socio-political insights are a touch simplistic, it's still infinitely preferable to see the Iraqi perspective being expressed by indigenous artists rather than being patronisingly imposed by Hollywood.

Curiously, the parched wilderness find echo in the waterlogged expanses of the Mississippi Delta in Lance Hammer's impressive feature debut, Ballast, which was shot with a real outsider's eye for telling detail by North East-based cinematographer Lol Crawley. Indeed, with Hammer's editing being as sharp and eclectic as Crawley's camerawork is restless and evocative, this is a remarkable effort by the Californian, who was best known for his SFX work on Batman Forever (1995), Batman & Robin (1997) and Practical Magic (1998) before serving as assistant art director on Joel and Ethan Coen's The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) and completing the short, Issaquena (2002).

The moody, measured action opens with decent neighbour Johnny McPhail discovering African-American shopkeeper Micheal J. Smith sitting alone in a state of shock because his twin brother has overdosed on pills. Having survived his own clumsy attempt at committing suicide with his father's gun, Smith returns to his isolated homestead and is almost immediately robbed at gunpoint by his 12 year-old nephew, JimMyron Ross, who needs quick cash to pay off a drug debt to bully dealer Ventress Bonner. But it's only when Ross and his cleaner mother Tarra Riggs are forced off the highway by Bonner's goons that she realises the extent of her son's delinquency and she insists on moving into the spare lodgings on Smith's land so she can sort their lives out.

Overcoming her dislike of Smith, whom she blames for the break-up of her relationship with his sibling, Riggs re-opens the roadside convenience store and masters the ordering rubric, while arranging to home school the recalcitrant Ross, who prefers to spend his time walking Smith's vulpine dog. However, old prejudices still run deep and it takes a couple of acts of emotional courage before Riggs and Smith can settle their differences and begin again.

Owing as much to the Dardenne brothers as Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (1977), this is grindingly rigorous and austerely authentic drama is superbly enacted by the non-professional cast, who spent two months workshopping the scenario after Hammer decided to jettison his screenplay. No one says very much, but the trio's pain and frustration is evident in Kent Sparling's inspired sound design, which saps the spirit with each squelching footstep across the muddy terrain and car journey through the characterless backwater landscape. Simultaneously beautiful and bleak, warm and sombre, this is what slice-of-life cinema should look and feel like and it deserves to be widely seen.

Actor Diego Luna examines a different kind of juvenile upheaval in his debut bow, Abel, a rueful meditation on Mexican masculinity and the decline of family values in traditional communities. Co-scripting with Augusto Mendoza and using Patrick Murguia's camera to contrast the shabby cosiness of Brigitte Broch's interiors and the harsher realities of the wider world, Luna also coaxes a poignant performance out of Christopher Ruíz-Esparza, as the nine year-old who returns home after spending two years in a mental institution following his father's disappearance.

Mother Karina Gidi has visited her troubled son every day. But he's something of a stranger to siblings Geraldine Alejandra and Gerardo Ruíz-Esparza and neither know how to react to a taciturnity that is punctuated by occasional outbursts. However, they're even more non-plussed when Ruíz-Esparza responds to witnessing doctor Carlos Aragón flirting with Gidi by assuming patriarchal control over the household. In addition to sleeping beside his mother, he also confronts the 15 year-old Alejandra about her homework and her relationship with older neighbour, Gabino Rodríguez. Indeed, so convincing is his display that his younger brother begins to regard him as his new dad.

However, José María Yazpik returns unexpectedly after a two-year absence and is persuaded by Gidi to play along with the new hierarchy. But, when he reveals that he hasn't been working in the United States and has a new family in a nearby town, Gidi disowns him and the resulting tensions force Ruíz-Esparza either to accept the truth or return to his previous torpor.

The climactic crisis at the local swimming pool is a little contrived, but this is a thoughtful and cogent drama whose gentle humour reinforces the melancholic mood. Setting the house in a rapidly emptying part of a rundown town, Luna is able to contrast the national crisis of confidence with Ruíz-Esparza's own conflicts. But this is as much a quiet character study as an incisive allegory or social critique, with Ruíz-Esparza excelling as the deadly earnest child imposing his acquired chauvinism on family members who need his delusion as much as he does. There's an awkward Oedipul moment when he rolls on top of his mother and announces next morning that the stork will soon be bringing a baby boy. But, otherwise, this remains within the bounds of taste and reason and the denouement is as credible as it's touching.

A hospital ward plays an even more central role in Bruce Webb's The Be All and the End All, a non-patronising teenpic that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as such accomplished continental studies of sick children as Antonio Mercero's 4th Floor (2003) and Delphine Kreuter's 57000 Km Between Us (2007).

While holidaying with his parents Connor McIntyre and Catherine Rice and best mate Eugene Byrne, 15 year-old Josh Bolt develops a crush on campsite barmaid Bryony Seth. However, a vodka binge causes him to collapse and he is kept in hospital while McIntyre drives Byrne back to Liverpool and his Scottish librarian mother, Neve McIntosh. Eventually, Bolt is transferred to a children's ward in the city, but he is frustrated by everyone's reluctance to discuss his condition and he persuades Byrne to steal his notes from nurse Lisa Tarbuck's desk. Unfortunately, the prognosis is not good and the bedridden Bolt pleads with Byrne to ensure he doesn't die a virgin.

Having failed to talk his female classmates into performing an act of mercy, Byrne agrees to put his birthday money towards purchasing Bolt a session at a dockside massage parlour. However, the premises are raided by the police and Byrne has to wheel his half-naked buddy back to the hospital in a supermarket trolley. Further misadventures occur in the red light district, when Byrne not only loses his cash to a shifty pimp, but also spots McIntyre seeking some seedy solace from the strain of his situation. But an encounter with prostitute Leanne Best and some delicate negotiations with the sympathetic Tarbuck lead to an assignation that is interrupted in the most charming manner.

Scripted by Steve Lewis and Tony Owen with a judicious mix of Scouse wit, vernacular veracity and adolescent gravitas, this is one of the best low-budget British films of 2010. Zillah Bowes's 16mm photography has a suitably grainy feel that is reinforced by a Richard Lannoy score that catches the mood without dictating the tone. The debuting Webb similarly directs with a no-nonsense grittiness that's flecked with a little laddish sentimentality.

But it's the performance of Eugene Byrne that most impresses, whether he's searching for the girl of Bolt's dreams, removing the porn from his pal's computer, cadging cash off McIntosh or getting ticked off by the excellent Tarbuck. Indeed, he even manages to invest a rather hoary subplot involving a runaway father with more sincerity than Kyle Ward summoned in A Boy Called Dad. However, the bracing views of the Wirral coastline ensure that even this cornball conclusion feels right.

By contrast, Japanese director Hideo Nakata struggles to rein in the excesses and contrivances contained in Enda Walsh's cumbersome adaptation of his stage play, Chatroom. Broaching such thorny issues as teenage angst, cyber bullying and suicide sites, this could have been a disconcerting insight into internet ethics. But a tutting undercurrent and the resort to a race-against-time finale tips this into preachy and increasingly implausible melodrama.

Loner Aaron Johnson deeply resents the fact that novelist mother Megan Dodds based the hero of her bestselling boy hero books on his brother, Richard Madden. Consequently, he retreats into his own online world and sets up a chatroom for the equally disenfranchised that quickly attracts trendy Imogen Poots, mousy Hannah Murray, conflicted Daniel Kaluuya and cripplingly shy Matthew Beard. Each recruit has their own problem. Wannabe model Poots is insecure about her looks and hates being teased by her bitchy peers, while Murray detests her pushy mother's insistence on improving her and longs for some genuine affection. By contrast, Kaluuya is tormented by a crush on his best mate's underage sister, while Beard is dependent upon antidepressants after being abandoned as a boy by his shiftless father.

However, Johnson is less concerned with helping his new friends than in ameliorating his own sense of inadequacy by manipulating them like characters in a responsibility-free domain. Thus, he sabotages the online profiles of Poots's biggest rival, urges Kaluuya to tell his buddy about his feelings for his gymnast sibling and suggests that Murray indulges in a little subversion to gain her parents' attention. But his decision to push Beard towards suicide prompts his roommates to rebel and sets up a faintly ridiculous denouement at London Zoo.

The hidden perils of the internet are well worth addressing. But they're difficult to depict effectively on film, as characters tapping on a keyboard and reading from a computer screen are hardly dynamic. Nakata and Walsh strive to overcome this by siting the various chatrooms off a long corridor in a shabbily chic hotel and giving each one a distinctive look and feel. But, while these milieux are cleverly designed by Jon Henson and evocatively photographed by Benoît Delhomme, they fail fully to capture the depth of the despair and isolation that are only temporarily assuaged by each visit. Moreover, the omniscience of Johnson's malevolence and the helplessness of his victims are too calculatingly encompassing to convince.

The performances are fine, with Johnson displaying the same hint of melancholic cruelty that he brought to his portrayal of the young John Lennon in Nowhere Boy. But his master plan seems more borne out of brattish petulance than compulsive sociopathy, especially as Nakata largely undermines Johnson's dangerous dementia by illustrating it with a couple of claymation interludes. So, while this may well do enough to unnerve computer-careless adolescents, it will feel like a retrograde step to Nakata's numerous admirers.

If Chatoom occasionally seems boorish and self-conscious, Tetsuya Nakashima's Confessions fizzes with hipness and innovation, as it makes ingenious use of flashbacks, recollections and voiceovers to demonstrate the impossibility of knowing the whole truth and the dangers of basing action on misconception. Studiously (and in places humorously) adapted from a novel by Minato Kinae, this is complex and compelling and could easily have been an instant masterpiece but for a deleterious loss of control in the final reel.

On her final day as a junior high teacher, Takako Matsu waits for her unruly form of 13 year-olds to finish drinking their milk and begins telling them that she knows which two boys were responsible for the recent death of his four year-old daughter, Mana Ashida. As the class falls silent, she explains how the father of her child (Makiya Yamaguchi) was an HIV+ academic and how they had agreed that she would raise the baby alone to avoid her being tainted by the stigma of his illness.

However, Yukito Nishii and Kaoru Fujiwara had decided to take out their mutual frustration with Matsu by giving Ashida an electric shock with an anti-theft device that Nishii had invented. But the prank backfired and Fujiwara was so convinced that the jolt had killed the toddler that he tossed her body into the campus swimming pool so the death appeared to be an accident. Retaining her sang froid, Matsu reveals that as Japanese law forbids the prosecution of children under 14, she has exacted her revenge by injecting the culprits' milk with her husband's contaminated blood and the scene fades as the stunned students absorb the devastating news.

When the next term begins, newcomer Masaki Okada is in charge of the class and he knows nothing about Matsu's tragedy. However, he is aware that Fujiwara is off school with mental problems and co-opts Ai Hashimoto into delivering weekly messages from his classmates to his mother, Yoshino Kimura. She is angry with Matsu for ruining her son's life. But while he holes up in his room and refuses to wash (while furiously cleaning every surface he touches), Nishii takes out his resentment on father Hirofumi Arai, who has married Kinuo Yamada following his mother's decision to leave home and pursue her career in academe.

Nishii is determined to attract his mother's attention with his inventions. But, when his triumph at a school science fair is overshadowed by a sensational news story about an underage girl killing her family, he decides he has to resort to more desperate measures. However, the grief-stricken Matsu hasn't forgotten or forgiven.

Dividing the action into testimonies delivered by Matsu, Nishii, Fujiwara and Hashimoto, this is a fiendishly clever picture that draws viewers deeper into its dark recesses before confronting them with its awful secrets. Nothing quite matches Matsu's devastating monologue, but the relentless drip of grim information fixes the attention and the final revelation is a real humdinger.

The performances by adult and juvenile cast members alike are impeccable, as are Towako Kuwashima's austere production design, Masakazu Ato and Atsushi Ozawa's atmospheric photography and Yoshiyuki Koike's precision editing. But it's the steely manner in which Nakashima presents his sombre vision of a society on the precipice that makes this so harrowing. Pressing issues like family breakdown, the decline in educational standards, bereavement, bullying, the alienating impact of modern communications technology and the lingering ignorance about AIDS are all explored with a fierce intelligence. But what's most commendable is Naskahima's control over the fragmented narrative and shifting moral perspectives and, consequently, the audience never feels manipulated no matter how convoluted the connections between the characters and their choices becomes. Rarely has cruelty been depicted so lyrically or with so much chilling, yet non-accusatory dispassion.

South Korean sophomore Lee Jeong-beom imparts his own spin on the `kids caught up in crime' theme, as he takes Luc Besson's Nikita (1990) into Johnnie To territory in The Man From Nowhere. Loweringly photographed by Lee Tae-yoon and played with a bravura blend of delirium and restraint, this is a bullish and often brutal revenge thriller that gathers sufficient momentum to crash through the occasional contrivances in the screenplay.

Floppy-haired loner Won Bin runs a pawn business in the basement of a Seoul apartment block. His taciturnity fascinates 10 year-old neighbour Kim Sae-ron and he often feeds her when her junkie mother, Kim Hyo-seo, is dancing at a nearby sex bar. However, when the pair are abducted following the theft of valuable heroin consignment, Won is forced to draw on his training as a special agent to track down sibling mobsters Kim Hee-won and Kim Song-oh and their bigwig overlord, Song Yeong-cheong. But the discovery of Kim Hyo-seo's body in the boot of Won's car means he also has to outwit detective Kim Tae-hun if he is to find Kim Sae-ron before she is sold for organ harvesting.

Won's scenes with Kim Sae-ron are charming, whether they're sharing spicy sausage and rice or he's ticking her off for shoplifting. But Lee avoids sentimentality and is quite prepared to unleash pitiless violence in the fight sequences choreographed by Park Jung-ryul. Won's blade duel with Kim Hee-won is particularly effective, especially at it follows a gleeful bullet bloodbath in the gangster's hilariously stylised headquarters. Won's showdown with dour Vietnamese assassin Thanayong Wongtrakul also stands out, as Lee leaks information about Won's undercover career and the toll taken on his psyche by the monstrous murder of his pregnant wife.

Expertly pacing the action, Lee slickly shifts from intense exposition to spectacular set-pieces like Kim Song-oh's explosive demise. But his script only offers superficial insights into South Korea's drug, crime and poverty problems, while too little is made of Baek Soo-ryeon's dastardly transplant operation.

The scene shifts to Hong Kong for Oxide Pang's The Detective, which suggests he is capable of more discriminating work than Hollywood remakes when not directing in tandem with his brother, Danny. Slickly shot and edited by Echa Sri Antra and Curran Pang, this is a comedy that largely avoids jokes and a neo-noir that refuses to abide by the rules governing flashbacks and the final revelation.

Aaron Kwok is a private eye operating in Bangkok's Chinatown. However, much to the frustration of cop buddy Liu Kai-chi, he is C-grade at best. Yet he is entrusted with a case by terrified butcher Sing Fui-on, who is convinced that Natthasinee Pinyopiyavid is out to kill him. Armed only with a photograph, Kwok follows the trail from the mahjong parlour that Pinyopiyavid frequents to the apartment of her businessman lover. But his hanging corpse has been dead for days and Kwok finds himself the target of the killer after he snoops around the deceased's widow, Kiki Sheung, and another of his paramours, Jo Koo. Eventually, he stumbles on to a stock market scam, but such is Kwok's inability to join the dots that he's no wiser about the elusive femme fatale's involvement.

Constantly switching back to explain how Kwok was effected by the childhood disappearance of his parents and why Liu remains so loyal to such a serial loser, Pang is clearly more concerned with character than clues and he's well served by leads who downplay the stumblings and shortcomings even when they descend into slapstick. But this strategy requires Pang to pack too much plot into a denouement that even has a supernatural element. Nevertheless, there's something laudable about the decision to subvert noir convention by bypassing the flawed deductions that Kwok has so meticulously scrawled on a blackboard and present the solution directly to the audience.

Lucas Belvaux similarly refuses to play by the rules in Rapt, for which Yvan Attal shed 40lbs to play a kidnap victim. Such transformations are often little more than actorly stunts. But, in this instances, the physical aspect reflects the character's psychological state and enables Attal to deliver a performance of remarkable control.

A cocksure tycoon who plays as hard as he works, Attal lives in Parisian luxury with wife Anne Consigny, teenage daughters Sarah Messens and Julie Kaye, and acerbic matriarch, Françoise Fabian. When he's not hunting, gambling or philandering, he consorts with the captains of industry and is even due to accompany the French president on a trip to China. But, one morning, Attal is abducted and driven to a network of tunnels in the heart of the frozen countryside. Terrified, but defiant, he writes ransom notes with a scowl of superiority. But the loss of a fingertip (as proof of his seizure) breaks his haughty spirit and he grows increasingly shabby and demoralised, as the full import of his family and company's delayed response begins to sink in.

Police commissioner Michael Volta realises that Attal has been snatched for failing to pay a poker debt and, as the truth about his double life rapidly becomes headline news, the government begins to distance itself from the disgraced playboy and his activities. Finding himself in temporary charge of the business, executive André Marcon recognises the emergency as an opportunity to advance his claims to become full-time chairman. Therefore, he refuses to risk union ire in the middle of a recession and offers only to lend Consigny a fraction of the €50 million required. However, the planned drop goes wrong, as do solo attempts by Messens and family lawyer Alex Descas, with the consequence that Attal is moved to a new location and the family is placed under 24-hour protection.

Belvaux sustains the suspense superbly, as he cuts between boardroom bickering, dinner table bitching and the unexpected bonhomie extended towards Attal by Marsellais kidnapper, Gérard Meylan. He also makes effective use of the media coverage by contrasting its cross-class reception, with the kidnappers taking every reference to Attal's wealth as gospel, while Fabian dismisses stories of his infidelities as tittle-tattle and blames Consigny for not being a more attentive wife.

However, Belvaux saves the best for last, as the gang decides to cut its losses and release Attal, on the proviso that he will pay them €20 million sometime in the future or three innocent victims will be murdered with IOUs bearing his signature being pinned to their corpses. He is dumped in a nondescript backstreet and a confused Consigny comes to collect him. But, rather than being humbled by his experience, Attal attempts to resume his former lifestyle, only to discover that while he retains power at home, he has been utterly outmanoeuvred by Marcon and is even suspected of colluding in his own sequestration in order to pay his creditors.

Based on the 1978 abduction of Edouard-Jean Empain, this is both a gripping thriller and a fascinating character study. Attal's facial expressions give little away, but his increasing emaciation during the nine-week ordeal suggests a shift from arrogance to humility that is countermanded by his unrepentant behaviour on regaining his liberty. Consigny also keeps her emotions in check, leaving one to suspect she is more concerned with her own reputation and future than those of her treacherous husband.

In addition to keeping the action taut, Belvaux also forces the viewer to pass judgement on Attal by making telling use of Pierre Milon's intense close-ups and atmospheric interiors to compare the confined spaces he endures in detention and the sprawling opulence he risks losing. But no one emerges from this harrowing saga with much credit, with the board of directors proving as cold-blooded and calculating as the kidnappers and the family torn between relief at Attal's deliverance and resentment at the public humiliation they have suffered. But Belvaux has one last twist up his sleeve.

Another household is thrown into disarray in Ferzan Ozpetek's Loose Cannons, a gentle blend of gay romcom and generational soap that's set in the luminous southern Italian town of Lecce and is as appealing as it's contrived. Notwithstanding a couple of misfiring subplots and a predilection for circular tracking shots, this is a slick and sweetly sentimental saga that deftly deploys overly familiar tropes to explore entrenched attitudes, foolish hopes and unfulfilled dreams with knowing wit and stylish delicacy. Moreover, it's a must for all fans of Ozpetek's distinctive brand of domestic drama.

Returning to Puglia from Rome (where he is supposed to be attending business school, but has actually dropped out to move in with doctor Carmine Recano), aspiring novelist Riccardo Scamarcio is all set to inform father Ennio Fantastichini that he is homosexual and wants to relinquish his claim to the family pasta business when his stay-at-home older brother Alessandro Preziosi steals his thunder and disappears into the night having caused Fantastichini to have a minor heart attack. What makes Perziosi's gay revelation all the more shocking, however, is that Fantastichini was about to announce a new investment deal with Giancarlo Monticelli and his daughter Nicole Grimaudo, who had earlier caught Scamarcio's eye when she wreaked vengeance on a cheating beau by scratching the paintwork of his sports car.

Leaving daughter-in-law Lunetta Savino to prevent the scandalous news from leaking to their enviously gossiping neighbours, diabetic matriarch Ilaria Occhini retreats to her room and her memories of a thwarted passion, while lonelyheart aunt Elena Sofia Ricci seeks her inevitable solace in the bottom of a glass and takes another stab at insisting that she has caught a thief in her bedroom.

Realising he has no option, Scamarcio agrees to stay and run the business with sister Bianca Nappi and her hopeless husband, Massimiliano Gallo. Much to his surprise, however, he begins to enjoy working alongside Grimaudo. But when Recano arrives from the capital with screamingly camp pals Gianluca De Marchi, Mauro Bonaffini and Giorgio Marchesi in tow, his closely guarded secret seems set to be exposed.

Occasionally trespassing into Almodóvar territory, this is a wholly engaging picture that benefits from superb playing and Maurizio Calvesi's glorious imagery, which is particularly striking in Occhini's recollections of her wedding day (when she deserted the love of her life to do the honourable thing and marry his brother) and Scamarcio's final reverie, in which characters from all parts of the story come together for a touching courtyard dance.

There's an intriguing spark between Scamarcio and Grimaudo that is never quite fully explored and plenty of sly social comedy involving Savino's relationships with maid Paola Minaccioni and Fantastichini's tarty, but loyal mistress, Gea Martire. But the hilarious highlight is the Roman invasion, as Scamarcio's family continue to view Recano, De Marchi, Bonaffini and Marchesi as strapping ladykillers even when they can't resist flirting with Gallo or trying on Ricci's drag queeny wardrobe.

Some might find the humour a little broad here. But it adroitly provides some light relief before Occhini's suicide by chocolate and Preziosi's poignant return and reunion with the wiser, but sadder Fantastichini. Moreover, it forces Scamarcio to question his commitment to Recano in the light of his growing fondness for Grimaudo that lingers as he wanders away from his waltzing family into a less than certain future.

Finally, Mathieu Amalric lays on the camp with a much thicker trowel in On Tour, an enjoyably teasing blend of backstage vérité and road movie melodrama that stands in marked contrast to his three previous feature-length directorial outings, Mange ta soupe (1997), Le Stade de Wimbledon (2001) and La Chose publique (2003). However, the constant skirting of the reasons why Amalric's disgraced impresario is back in France with an American burlesque troupe deprives the desperate mid-section bid to rebuild his career of the intrigue that could have made this as significant as its evident inspiration, John Cassavetes's The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976).

In fact, the idea was gleaned from a Colette story about the Parisian music-hall and it would be fascinating to know how Mimi Le Meaux (Miranda Colclasure), Kitten on the Keys (Suzanne Ramsey), Dirty Martini (Linda Marraccini), Julie Atlas (Julie Ann Muz) and Evie Lovelle (Angela de Lorenzo) would have gone down with Belle Époque audiences. They certainly keep the punters of Le Havre and La Rochelle happy with their tassels, fans and giant translucent balloons. Kitten also amuses with some saucy songs, while the troupe's token male, Roky Roulette (Alexander Craven), does a showstopping Louis Quatorze striptease.

But Amalric has great hopes for his transatlantic imports and he leaves them in the care of nervous assistant Ulysse Klotz while he heads to Paris to negotiate a spectacular that will relaunch his career. However, he made some powerful enemies during his time as a TV maven and theatre owner Pierre Grimblat refuses to have anything to do with him, despite the intervention of Amalric's long-suffering brother, Damiel Odoul, who has to overcome his own deep-seated resentments before agreeing to mediate. Old flame Florence Ben Sadoul is equally unsympathetic when they meet in her hotel room, by which time Amalric has been saddled with young sons Simon and Joseph Roth by his fuming ex-wife.

However, the New Burlesquers take the disappointment in their stride, as they do encounters with a prying journalist and a snooty air hostess. But Colclasure wants to get the measure of Amalric and insists on sharing his car for the next leg of the tour and incidents in a service station toilet, a small-town bar and at a supermarket checkout bring them closer together and prompt Amalric to make a sentimental speech over the tannoy of a deserted beach hotel when the ensemble is finally reunited.

There are several engaging moments in this rather ramshackle picaresque, including Amalric's teasing nocturnal flirtation with garage attendant Aurélia Petit. The seemingly improvised banter between the girls has an equally edgy authenticity that reinforces the conviction that their act is a form of female empowerment rather than a sordid flesh show for leering men. However, Amalric seems less concerned with the politics of burlesque than the decline of traditional forms of entertainment and the skittish relationship between America and France.

Employing wide shots that captures the energy and immediacy of the backstage milieu, cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne achieve a documentary aura that is enhanced by the naturalist performances. But the artistes rarely offer any insights into their profession or personalities and, thus, this ends up feeling like a series of set-pieces rather than a cogent narrative.