Nanni Moretti is one of Europe's most courageous auteurs. Whether he's experimenting with the feature format (as in Dear Diary, 1993) or exploring his own emotions (as in The Son's Room, 2001), Moretti is always prepared to take chances in order to denounce banality, vulgarity, and cliché.

He's very much on the offensive again in The Caiman. But for all the political fury of this scathing satire, this is also a fond tribute to the journeymen film-makers who devote themselves to cinema with as much fervour as their more feted arthouse counterparts.

The action centres on Silvio Orlando, a Roman indie producer, who clings to the illusion of domestic contentment with his onetime actress wife Margherita Buy, while also struggling to save his flagging exploitation studio. So, when his latest project crashes, Orlando agrees to shoot first-time scenarist Jasmine Trinca's crime thriller, unaware of the fact it's little more than a thinly veiled exposé of the media and political careers of Silvio Berlusconi.

Orlando's dealings with Polish backer Jerzy Stuhr and egotistical actor Michele Placido are highly amusing and there's also much fun to be had at the expense of the former Prime Minister. But there's also a cutting edge to the film-within-the-film's discussion of corruption, the abuse of power and the diminishment of Italian television. Moreover, Moretti himself contributes a chilling climactic cameo.

Yet, for all its prescience and ingenuity, this is a frustrating film. The political and personal aspects don't always fuse, with the ferocity of the polemic often clashing awkwardly with the more genial insights into the movie business and Orlando's crumbling marriage. But even a Moretti mis-step still makes for fascinating viewing.

Another peerless iconoclast, Aki Kaurismäki, follows Drifting Clouds (1996) and The Man Without a Past (2002) with the last part of his 'Loser' trilogy, Lights in the Dusk, a terse, taut tribute to Chaplin, Hitchcock, Fassbinder and the B noir.

The plot follows an inevitable progression, as security guard Janne Hyytiainen is duped by femme fatale Maria Jarvenhelmi and only comes to realise the value of fast-food vendor Maria Heiskanen's devotion after he's done time as the patsy in a jewel robbery. But the pleasures here lie in the pacing, the tone and the visuals, with Kaurismäki using a mostly nostalgic soundtrack and Timo Salminen's lustrous Edward Hopper-inspired photography to reinforce the characteristically deadpan sense of melancholy that confines Hyytiainen to an isolation he's too wilfully introspective to escape. It may be a touch self-conscious in places, but this is still textbook Kaurismäki.

Even more idiosyncratic is Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970). This revisionist Western was once championed by John Lennon. But, more recently, it has been subjected to much snooty derision. Its densely allegorical content has been dismissed as hallucinogenic obscurantism and its iconography derided as insanely egotistical. But denouncing a movie because it makes demands on the imagination as well as the intellect simply represents sloppy criticism.

This is a hellishly difficult watch, which follows an enigmatic drifter (played by Jodorowsky himself) as he acquires wisdom while roaming the desert picking off a quartet of master gunmen. However, he eventually comes to seek atonement in a discarded community whose subterranean refuge abuts a decadent town, whose excesses and prejudices have a satirically American feel to them.

You can view this picture a dozen times and even though you think you recognise all the riffs on everyone from Leone to Peckinpah, Buñuel to Godard and Tod Browning to Glauber Rocha, there's always something new to challenge, intrigue and baffle. But this isn't just a film buff's paradise. It's also a classic slice of cult fantasy that will appeal to fans of spaghetti Westerns and comic books alike.