Ken Loach at his best. First-time actor Martin Compston is outstanding in the role of Liam, a teenager growing up with a mother in jail, a drug-dealing stepfather and no future to speak of. But Liam is a bright kid who dreams of a normal family life. He's determined to make enough money to rent a home for his mother for when she gets out of jail. It's heartbreaking stuff that combines a political message with real humanity and a rich strand of black comedy. Highly recommended.

South African director Oliver Schmitz revisits the same territory as his angry anti-apartheid classic from 1988, Mapantsula, delivering a wry but equally scathing account of his post-Mandela homeland. Researching a role as a street hoodlum, a middle-class black actor (Tony Kgoroge) returns to his childhood township near Johannesburg to learn street cred from his former friend, a car-jacking gangster (Rapulana Seiphemo). A gripping, funny, darkly satirical thriller.

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John Andrew Gallagher's shambling 1997 comedy about an Italian-American storekeeper (Mike Starr) with gambling problems, unwanted mob buddies and endless eccentric customers is a fun idea which never quite takes off. There's shades of Blue In The Face, while various future Sopranos regulars—notably Michael Imperioli—cameo.

The 1985 film that launched the careers of the Brat Packers. This finds Emilio Estevez drooling over Andie MacDowell, Demi Moore coked out of her box and Rob Lowe being annoying and fratboyish—like much of the script. A must for those who thrill to the antics of self-absorbed young Americans.

A terrific Japanese rites-of-passage drama shot Dogme-style on digital cameras, this puts a fresh twist on the timeless themes of alienation, dislocation and teenage angst. Shunji Iwai's impressionistic, cutting-edge ensemble drama weaves together the lives of several emotionally wounded Tokyo teens united by their blank worship of a distant pop idol, Lily Chou-Chou. Pretentious, but still a punky new voice in Japanese cinema.

The first screen outing for a post-collegiate comedy team calling themselves Broken Lizard, Super Troopers is a spoof knockabout farce concerning clownish highway patrolmen in small-town Vermont. With Brian Cox as the indulgent police chief presiding over the goofy jokes and motorist-baffling stunts, writer-director-star Jay Chandrasekhar's feature debut is slight but sporadically hilarious.

A return to classic Mike Leigh terrain, this examines desperation, loneliness and family tragedy on a grim south London housing estate. Leigh regulars Timothy Spall and Lesley Manville are long-suffering parents who manage to invest their bleak lives with tenderness, truth and humour. Leigh may sail dangerously close to self-parody here, but nobody does it better.

Kathryn Bigelow's Cross Of Iron, basically, with Harrison Ford's Soviet submariners the embattled equivalent of James Coburn's Wehrmacht platoon, both groups of men fighting for their lives in films that perhaps unsurprisingly failed to make a huge impression at the box office. Terrific in parts, with imperious turns from Ford and Liam Neeson, Bigelow handles the action stuff brilliantly though comes close to mawkishness in a tear-stained coda.