Hollywood was a markedly less sexist place in the silent era. Admittedly, Lois Weber had few peers as a director. But screenwriters like Frances Marion, Anita Loos, Adela Rogers St John and Jeanie Macpherson wielded considerable power and few stars were as profitable or popular as serial queens Pearl White, Helen Holmes, Grace Cunard, Helen Gibson and Ruth Roland. Yet in the century since chapterplays like The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913), The Perils of Pauline, The Exploits of Elaine, The Hazards of Helen (all 1914) and The Adventures of Ruth (1919) thrilled audiences of all ages and both sexes, American cinema has left the action heroics to its male pin-ups and reduced their female co-stars to swooning inconveniences who periodically had to be rescued or kissed.

In recent times, Lara Croft's tomb-raiding escapades have provided young girls with an all-too-rare movie heroine to identify with. However, she is hardly ideal role model material and the major studios continue to pander to the fantasies of adolescent males in creating screen superheroes. But French director Luc Besson seeks to redress the balance with The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, an effects-strewn adaptation of Jacques Tardi's long-running comic-book series that boasts a terrific performance by Louise Bourgoin as the intrepid, wisecracking writer with a mastery of disguise and a talent for trouble.

As with most comic concoctions, the plot is wildly implausible. In the early 1910s, reporter-cum-novelist Adèle Blanc-Sec (Bourgoin) diverts from a trip to Peru to the mythical tomb of Patmosis to collect the mummy of the physician to Rameses II, whom she intends to reanimate in the hope he can bring her twin sister Agathe (Laure de Clermont-Tonnere) out of the coma in which she has lain since a bizarre hat pin incident spoilt a friendly game of tennis. However, her mission is complicated by the arrival of her archaeologist nemesis Dieuleveult (Mathieu Amalric) and she has to find inside the sarcophagus to escape.

Back in Paris, her elderly scientist friend Professor Esperandieu (Jacky Nercessian) has managed to hatch a 136 million year-old pterodactyl egg while practicing his telepathic techniques in the Jardin des Plantes at the Natural History Museum and the flying dinosaur has embarked upon a killing spree that started with a prominent politician and a Moulin Rouge showgirl who were not so innocently sharing a cab. As President Armand Fallières (Gérard Chaillou) calls in inept police inspector Albert Caponi (Gilles Lelouche) and bungling big game hunter Justin de Saint-Hubert (Jean-Paul Rouve), Adèle arrives back in the capital with her Egyptian treasure. But with Esperandieu facing the guillotine, she needs all her resources - as well as the help of besotted sidekick Andrej Zborowski (Nicolas Giraud) - to win the day.

Things get out of hand when Adèle discovers she has borrowed the Pharaoh's astrologer instead of his doctor and has to sneak into the Louvre to bring the entire court to life to save Agathe. But the spectacle of a shuffle of mummies on a sightseeing tour of Paris epitomises the mix of adventure, slapstick and far-fetched fantasy that Besson has packed into this enjoyable, but self-consciously wacky romp.

The performances are splendidly sporting, with the virtually unrecognisable Amalric and the ever-hungry Lelouche particularly amusing alongside the dauntless Bourgoin, who takes stunts, disguises and even a nude bathing scene in her stride. But, while Hugues Tissandier's production design, Thierry Arbogast's cinematography, Olivier Bériot's costumes and Eric Serra's score are all worthy of a bigger budget Hollywood blockbuster, the CGI work is less impressive and Besson's script often feels flabby and more intent on lining up a sequel than focusing on the task at hand.

Despite operating on an even smaller budget, Takashi Miike seems much more in control of 13 Assassins, a remake of a 1963 Eichi Kudo samurai adventure that shows the prolific maverick reining in his tendency towards excess to fashion a heartfelt homage to the kind of classical chambara picture produced by such masters as Akira Kurosawa. Boasting exceptional contributions by cinematographer Nobuyasu Kita, production designer Yuji Hayashida, costumer Kazuhiro Sawataishi, editor Kenji Yamashita and composer Kôji Endô, this is a satisfyingly complex tale of court intrigue and violent vengeance that proves that visceral action sequences can be shot without shakicam and assembled without obfuscating flash cuts.

In the mid-1840s, Japan is ruled by the Tokugawa shogunate. However, the regime's reputation is seriously damaged when the shogun's spoilt half-brother, Gorô Inagaki, murders nobleman Koshiro Matsumoto's son (Takumi Saito) and rapes his daughter-in-law (Mitsuki Tanimura) and drives kinsman Masaaki Uchino to commit hara-kiri. Realising that raising the matter with the Shogun could bring an end to decades of peace, high-ranking courtier Mikijiro Hira decides to dispose of Inagaki and his retinue and asks revered samurai Kôji Yakusho to assemble a trusted team to complete the mission.

Aware that Inagaki is protected by his onetime dojo friend Masachika Ichimura, Yakusho calls upon the services of police inspector Ikki Sawamura and his assistants Yûma Ishigaki and Kôen Kondô, as well as Hira's loyal lieutenant Hiroki Matsukata and his aides Sosuke Takaoka and Seiji Rokkaku. He also enlists apprentice Tsuyoshi Ihara, the intrepid Ikki Namioka, novice Masataka Kubota, pragmatic veteran Arata Furuta (who asks for his fee up front to purchase a headstone for his late wife and enjoy a little luxury before it's too late). Most surprisingly, however, Yakusho also persuades dissolute nephew Takayuki Yamada to quit gambling and honour the family name.

Riding out across the muddy terrain, the posse is soon ambushed by a rag-tail mob hired by Ichimura. But, while the novices are quickly dispatched, Yakusho decides to take a more circuitous route through marshland and forest to throw his adversary off the trail. He also sends Sawamura ahead to buy out the residents of Ochiai so he can turn the entire village into a booby trap. But the closer Inagaki gets to danger, the more he relishes the anticipation and he even allows Matsumoto to block his path and divert him directly into Yukusho's clutches.

Hunter Yûsuke Iseya has swollen the assassins' ranks to the requisite thirteen by the time that Ichimura realises he's been outmanoeuvred. But Inagaki is so taken by the sight of slaughter that he vows to start a civil war once he has vanquished Yakusho to satisfy his bloodlust. However, as the 200-strong force begins to fall foul of the ingenious network of barriers and barrages, it becomes clear that Inagaki is going to have to put his own life on the line if he is to survive.

The scale, slickness and audacity of Yuji Hayashida's sets are crucial to the success of the devastating 45-minute denouement, as the suspenseful prelude finally ends and battle commences. But, for all the intricacy of the mechanical wooden props and the precise swordsmanship of the athletic cast, the gruesome noise of butchery produced by Kenji Shibazaki's sound effects unit leaves the deepest impression.

That said, this never approaches the Japsploitation goriness of the Zatoichi, Hanzo the Razor and Lone Wolf and Cub franchises and Miike's self-control is almost the most impressive thing about the entire enterprise. His use of bleak humour is particularly well judged, most notably in allowing Inagaki to revel in such pitiless acts of villainy as firing arrows from point blank range into cowering human targets. But he also questions the unconditional obedience demanded by the Bushido Code and the extents to which honour is the preserve of the privileged and those in power always know what is best for their minions.

A mother's best intentions are similarly misplaced in Denis Villeneuve's Incendies. Clearly inspired by playwright Wajdi Mouawad's home country of Lebanon, the fictional Middle Eastern state of Fuad is still coming to terms with the civil war that tore communities and even families apart some three decades previously. However, in delving into the awful truth of one woman's experience, this intense mix of flashback and detection occasionally comes perilously close to mawkish melodrama.

When Quebecois notary Rémy Girard summons twins Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Maxim Gaudette to his office, they presume he is going to read the will of their late mother, Lubna Azabal. However, she has left them two letters to deliver - one to the brother they never knew they had and the other to the father they thought had perished in the Fuad conflict. As Girard has no idea of the whereabouts of either man, Gaudette flatly refuses to embark upon a wild goose chase. However, Désormeaux-Poulin feels duty bound and is more than a little intrigued to learn about the past her mother had refused to discuss.

The action now splits into two time frames, as Désormeaux-Poulin goes in search of her roots and Azabal sets out on a traumatic odyssey of her own. While she was still a teenager, the Christian Azabal became pregnant and brothers Ahmad Massad and Bader Alami gunned down her Muslim lover, Hamed Najem, for shaming their family. Soon after the child was born, grandmother Majida Hussein gave him away, after inscribing a distinctive tattoo on its heel so that Azabal could recognise him if the time came when she could reclaim him. However, the war raged for 15 years and, by 1990, Azabal had married and moved her twins to Montreal.

Désormeaux-Poulin learns the agony that Azabal endured shortly after arriving in Fuad. But she is puzzled by the identity of their father and, the more she investigates, the more impenetrable the mystery becomes. As she travels to a frosty reception in her mother's home village of Der Om, Villeneuve shows Azabal leaving it to find her son and the action continues to criss-cross, as Gaudette finally arrives to help his increasingly confused sister and Azabal offers her services to the Nationalist Muslim militia after she learns that the Kfar Khout orphanage where her baby was taken has been razed to the ground by vengeful Christians.

Drifting to the city of Daresh, Azabal gets a job as a nanny with Christian politician Ali Elayan and accepts a mission to assassinate him from rebel leader Mohamed Majd. She is arrested and guard-turned-janitor Nabil Sawalha tells Désormeaux-Poulin that she was known as `the woman who sings', as she signalled her defiance to those who brutalised her and sought to encourage her fellow prisoners in their resistance. She is also informed by nurse Baya Belal that she was born in Kfar Ryat jail. Ultimately, after visiting the Deressa site of a refugee camp massacre, the twins turn to lawyer Allen Altman for assistance. He arranges a meeting with the reclusive Majd, who tells the incredulous pair the shocking truth about their half-brother, Abdelghafour Elaaziz, a ruthless child sniper who developed a terrible talent for torture.

In opening out Mouawad's play, Villeneuve takes much of the melodramatic curse off a story whose contrivances acquire more sickening power with each new revelation. Yet, as he explores grave themes like the scars of conflict, parental secrets and the cruelty of fate it's not entirely possible to escape the feeling of being instructed and manipulated. The performances are imposing, with Désormeaux-Poulin bringing a dignified humanity to what is essentially a detective role and Azabal conveying the unbearable pain of loss that draws her deeper into the dark heart of a pitiless war. André Turpin's imagery and Monique Dartonne's editing are also impeccable. But the key to the film's credibility is Villeneuve's storytelling skill and his restraint.

Remaining in Quebec, 21 year-old director Xavier Dolan also takes the lead in Heartbeats, a Montreal-set variation on François Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1961) that sees him compete with vintage-wearing gal pal Monia Chokri for the affections of new-in-town hunk Niels Schneider. Seething with catty lines and camply hip visuals that owe as much to François Ozon and Christophe Honoré as the nouvelle vague, this achingly stylish paean to unrequited lust peppers the action with vox pops to emphasise its dramatic points. But it's the fond rivalry between Dolan and the excellent Chokri that makes this such a vibrant insight into twentysomething attitudes to life, love and loyalty.

Bored by the same old faces at yet another trendy party, Dolan and Chokri are busy bitching when they spy Schneider through the crowd. Trying to play it cool, they mosey over to make his acquaintance and immediately begin a game of one-upmanship that sees them researching his every move so they can accidentally bump into him in restaurants, discover what he wants for his birthday and arrange secret rendez-vous that they hope they other will never find out about.

However, neither takes the trouble to get to know Schneider or what he wants from their friendship. Indeed, they don't even know whether he is straight or gay and, by the time they eventually see past his floppy blonde bangs and ripped torso, they have disgraced themselves during a weekend in the country by coming to blows in the woods. But, having decided that Schneider was unworthy of their devotion, Chokri and Dolan look set to make the same mistakes all over again when Louis Garrel walks into the room at picture's end.

Although Chokri gives a supremely confident display that rivals similarly engaging work in Trieste Kelly Dunn's in Aaron Katz's Cold Weather, this is very much Dolan's film. He is flightily amusing as the gadfly incapable of anticipating the consequences of his actions. But he is supremely in control as his own screenwriter, production designer and editor. The script zings with a wit and pace that is so often absent from Mumblecore comedies, while his manipulation of colour and Stéphanie Anne Weber Biron's camera angles enable him to pastiche both Jean-Luc Godard's Le Mépris (1963) and Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love (2000) with a precision that's as witty as it's reverential.

The only misstep, however, is the recurrent inclusion of street interview musings on the pain of unrequited love, the frustration of missed opportunities and the pain of being dumped by e-mail. As in Hsiao Ya-chuan's debut feature, Taipei Exchanges, these feel more like padding than Greek chorus-like comments on the central storyline. But Dolan does more than enough here to suggest he has matured considerably in eschewing the melodramatics that similarly compromised his otherwise impressive debut, How I Killed My Mother (2009).

Although Quebec has fiercely clung to its French connection, other former colonies were keener to sever their ties, as Rachid Bouchareb reveals in Outside the Law, which examines the changing relationship between Algeria and its imperial master with much the same intensity (if markedly less impartiality) that he demonstrated in Days of Glory (2006), the Oscar-nominated study of the role played by Maghrebi troops in the Second World War.

Feeling more like a Godfather-style family saga than a Lawrence-like historical epic, the action opens in 1925 as Ahmed Benaissa and his wife Chafia Boudraa are evicted from their land by French speculators. Two decades later, they are living in the town of Setif with their three sons and two daughters when Benaissa and his daughters are massacred by French troops during a peaceful demonstration for greater civil rights on 8 May 1945. Middle son Samy Bouajila is also arrested, leaving Boudraa to emigrate to Nanterre with boxing promoter son Jamel Debbouze, while his older brother Roschdy Zem is fighting with Fourth Republic forces in Indo-China.

By 1953, Boudraa has grown to despair of Debbouze, who has become a seedy pimp and nightclub owner in their over-crowded shantytown, while Zem has returned from Asia to join Bouajila in promoting the cause of the Front de Libération Nationale. In fact, the pair behave more like gangsters themselves as they intimidate their neighbours and conduct reprisal operations against the rival Mouvement National Algérien party and collaborationist policemen. Indeed, such is their success in raising funds, recruiting new members and sabotaging factories and fuel depots that retired army colonel Bernard Blancan forms the covert Main Rouge vigilante squad to challenge them.

Although he stages the terrorist and military encounters with gritty panache, Bouchareb relies too heavily on stereotypes and clichés for this patriotic war cry to be considered a serious work of political cinema like Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966). The performances are spirited and capture the zealotry of the rival combatants. But the screenplay lacks balance and nuance, with the result that it often seems emotionally manipulative rather than factually analytical, with even Christophe Beaucarne's photography bathing the North African sequences in warm tones and dousing the ones set in Europe in chilly greys and blues.

The palette is equally restricted in Alexei Popogrebsky's How I Ended This Summer. But the bleak blues and icy whites reinforce the intensity and oppressive sense of place in this simmering study of macho patriotism that earned Sergei Puskepalis and Grigori Dobrygin the Best Actor prize at the Berlin Film Festival for their doughty displays as the veteran technician and callow graduate manning a meteorological station on a remote island inside the Arctic Circle.

Having been raised in the Soviet Union, Puskepalis is fiercely proud of continuing the monitoring work that commenced when a base was built on Archym Island in 1935. But Dobrygin is very much of the perestroika generation and he would much rather listen to his mp3 player or shoot video game adversaries than check the apparatus dotted around the twin headlands looking out on a vast expanse of ice-pocked sea. Consequently, when Puskepalis heads to the south lagoon to catch some trout to take home to his wife, Dobrygin oversleeps and misses a series of key readings.

However, the lost data is the last thing on his mind when Puskepalis returns, as he has been informed over the radio by mission co-ordinator Igor Chernevich that his colleague's wife and son have been killed in a plane crash. Having been angrily reprimanded for insulting the memory of those who had perished maintaining the station, Dobrygin hides the radiogram Chernevich had dictated and sabotages the connection to prevent operators Ilya Sobolev and Artyom Tsukanov from discussing the tragedy during the regular report transmissions.

Dobrygin even withholds the information that a ship is coming to collect them in a couple of days and allows Puskepalis to set off on a second fishing expedition. But when Chernevich calls to say that the vessel is stuck in pack ice and that a helicopter will be arriving within 24 hours, Dobrygin is forced to set out across the inhospitable terrain to find his partner and only narrowly avoids a confrontation with a ravenous polar bear. However, he still has to be rescued by Puskepalis and, on returning to base, a combination of cowardice, confusion and resentment causes him to blurt out the bad news on the beach.

An exchange of gunfire follows and Dobrygin seeks sanctuary in a ramshackle cabin near the isotope beacon. But, in his panicked conviction that Puskepalis is hunting him down, he touches the radioactive equipment and contaminates the fish supply after sneaking back to the main hut.

The ambiguity of the closing sequences considerably heightens the suspense of this already unbearable drama. Scrambling up and down cliff faces, sleeping rough and risking lashing waves to hide from what he presumes is a furious Puskepalis, Dobrygin becomes increasingly irrational as the physical and psychological strain takes its toll. But he proves to be his own worst enemy and is penitently surprised when his ordeal concludes on a note of unexpected poignancy.

Whether engaging in banal conversations or enduring brooding silences, Puskepalis and Dobrygin ably convey the pressures placed upon an already antipathetic camaraderie by months of confinement and isolation. Dobrygin particularly impresses, as he betrays his immaturity by petulantly defying his superiors and nervously stuffing sweet wrappers into the frayed arm of a chair while fretting about what to do for the best. But Puskepalis also has his moments, as he composes an awkwardly affectionate radio message to his wife and sombrely recalls a predecessor who went stir crazy on discovering that his companion had been cheating him.

In addition to his controlled pacing, Popogrebsky also tellingly highlights details within Gennadi Popov's cramped interiors. But it's his use of Sigitas Motaras's raucous sound mix and Pavel Kostomarov's widescreen digital vistas and delicate time-lapse sequences that best captures the contrasts in the duo's personalities and the ominous ruggedness of the relentlessly daylit landscape. Doubtless a surfeit of undetected socio-political symbolism lurks in the bleak Chukotka scenery. But Popogrebsky eschews the mysticism that blights so many Slavic insights into human fragility and, consequently, this compels as both a harrowing rite of passage and a disconcertingly unconventional thriller.

The thrills are more obvious, but nonetheless effective in Guillem Morales's Julia's Eyes, which reunites the star (Belén Rueda) and the producer (Guillermo Del Toro) of Juan Antonio Bayona's 2007 chiller, The Orphanage. Rehashing many of the `blind woman in peril' gambits pioneered in the likes of Terence Young's Wait Until Dark (1967) and Bruce Robinson's Jennifer 8 (1992), this is more audiovisually than dramatically intriguing, as anyone paying the slightest attention should be able to spot the killer from the get-go.

Distraught at finding her sister hanged, Rueda is unconvinced by husband Lluís Homar and inspector Francesc Orella's insistence that she was driven to suicide by the prospect of going blind. Suffering from the same degenerative condition, Rueda (in a dual role) vows to expose her sibling's killer and begins frequenting the local club for the sight-impaired and makes the acquaintance of odious neighbour Boris Ruiz and his daughter Andrea Hermosa and elderly blind woman Julia Gutiérrez Caba. Eventually, she discovers that her sister had a secret lover and travels to her seaside bolthole, where janitor Joan Dalmau mutters ominously about invisibility.

However, before Rueda can piece the clues together, Homar disappears and is found hanged in his sister-in-law's cellar. Despite losing two of her nearest and dearest on the premises, Rueda decides this is the best place to recover from eye transplant surgery and she stumbles around the unfamiliar surroundings with her eyes bandaged as the killer seeks to silence her forever.

Much of the picture's final third is dominated by a convoluted chase sequence that taxes the game Rueda's actorly ingenuity and allows cinematographer Óscar Faura to experiment with lighting designs, canted angles and subtle special effects. Balter Gallart's art direction and Oriol Tarragó's sonic mix are equally artful, while Fernando Velázquez's score is amusingly atmosphere when not overplaying its hand. But Morales and co-scenarist Oriol Paulo jettison the slow-building suspense of the expository scenes to bombard Rueda and the audience with a series of increasingly implausible incidents and generically gothic jolts that fail to explore in any depth the contrasts between the victim's fading sight and the viewer's ongoing voyeurism.

Finally, the mood changes radically for Richard Ayoade's first feature, Submarine, which relocates Joe Dunthorpe's quirky rite-of-passage novel to 1980s Swansea and casts it in the image of a nouvelle vague hommage, complete with jump cuts, in-jokes, handheld spurts and gliding circulatory slo-mos, as well as endless references to bicycles and beaches. Indeed, anyone familiar with Ayoade's interpretation of computer geek Moss in The IT Crowd or his previous directorial outings on Garth Marenghi's Dark Place and videos for Vampire Weekend and Super Furry Animals will recognise his distinctive personality in every frame of this promising, if occasionally self-conscious debut.

Fifteen year-old Craig Roberts is an outsider. He reads the dictionary for pleasure and his delight in language is evident in both his voice-over narration and such reveries as imagining the entire town lamenting his tragically early demise. Yet, Roberts is anything but a victim. Instead, he believes he can control everyone and everything around him, whether it's coaxing pyromaniac classmate Yasmin Paige into helping him lose his virginity or rousing marine biologist father Noah Taylor out of his depression or preventing mother Sally Hawkins from drifting into an affair with old flame and smug spiritual guru Paddy Considine.

Ultimately, his own domestic crisis comes to preoccupy Roberts, as the eczema-plagued Paige becomes distracted by mother Melanie Walters's diagnosis with a brain tumour. And herein lies Submarine's prime problem. Despite his superficial similarity to Billy Liar and Rushmore's Max Fisher, Oliver Tate is nowhere near as compelling a character and Craig Roberts struggles to make his cocky articulacy and other highly resistible traits in any way endearing. This is more down to Ayoade's direction than Roberts's acting, as he allows him to be upstaged by Hawkins, Taylor and Considine, whose sordid little ménage always seems more interesting than the arch schemes of a self-aggrandising adolescent and his eccentric girlfriend.

This sounds more damning than is intended, as Ayoade makes adept use of Erik Wilson's agile camera, Gary Williamson's authentic period designs and the poignant music of composer Andrew Hewitt and songwriter Alex Turner. Even the retention of the literary structure in the teeth of frequent allusions to so vehement an opponent of such traditions of quality as François Truffaut works well. So, while this may not entirely avoid the more glaring teenpic clichés, it does enough to entertain and suggest that Ayoade is a film-maker of considerable promise.