ACTION.

Takeshi Kitano's Hana-bi (the maverick Japanese director created his masterpiece with this 1997 tale of a cop forced to turn to crime to care for his dying wife and disabled partner); Shinya Tsukamoto's Tokyo Fist (the cult director stars in this bruising 1998 mix of body-horror and black comedy as an insurance salesman who hits the gym after losing fiancée Kahori Fujii to brooding box Koji Tsukamoto); Takeshi Kitano's Kikujiro (another gem from 1999 that sees Beat Takeshi's middle-aged wastrel accept the need to grow up after accompanying nine year-old Yusuke Sekiguchi on a cross-country bid to track down his estranged mother); Takeshi Kitano's Dolls (a challenging, but visually glorious triptych of stories on the theme of undying love inspired by the bunraku form of puppet theatre); Victor Vu's Sword of the Assassin (adapted from a novel by Bui Anh Tan, this rare Vietnamese Kiem Hiep martial arts picture centres on orphan Huynh Dong, who discovers after being raised by a lone monk that he is the grandson of a nobleman who was framed for fratricide and whose innocence depends on him finding a scroll written in blood by an eye witness); Nguyen Quang Dung's The Lady Assassin (another Vietnamese actioner sees Tang Thanh Ha join the murderous hostesses at Thanh Hang's Duong Son Tavern in order to learn the martial arts skills she needs to kill the general who slaughtered her family).

BFI.

Ken Russell's Valentino (a splendidly cast Rudolf Nureyev doesn't quite cut it as silent screen icon Rudolph Valentino in this mischievously excessive 1977 biopic, but there are knowing turns by Leslie Caron [Alla Nazimova], Michelle Phillips [Natasha Rambova] and Felicity Kendal [June Mathis]); Emir Kusturica's Underground (the contentious, darkly comic and compelling winner of the 1995 Palme d'or at Cannes opens in Belgrade in 1941 as Miki Manojlovic and Lazar Ristovski hole up in a Belgrade cellar with blonde Mirjana Jokovic. By 1961, the married Manojlovic and Jokovic are celebrated anti-Fascists, but they keep Ristovski and others as subterranean slave labourers who think the war is still going on. However, when Ristovski escapes, he mistakes film extras for real Nazis and is arrested for murder. By 1993, Ristovski is commanding a partisan unit during a civil war, while Manojlovic and Jokovic are wanted by Interpol for weapons trading).

DRAMA.

Stefano Incerti's Gorbaciof (putting things right proves difficult for Toni Servillo in this 2010 saga, as his strawberry birth-marked Neapolitan prison cashier borrows some money to help out Mi Yang [whose father owns the Chinese restaurant where Servillo enjoys after hours poker games] and finds keeping the ruse quiet and paying back the debt tougher than he anticipated); Sion Sono's The Land of Hope (deeply poignant 2012 drama from the usually outré Sono that follows the fortunes of dairy farmer Isao Natsuyagi, ailing wife Naoko Otani, son Jun Murakami and bride Megumi Kagurazaka, and biker pal Yutaka Shimizu and girlfriend Hikari Kajiwara in the days after the Fukushima earthquake); Lou Ye's Mystery (set in the eastern Chinese city of Wuhan, this simmering, but entirely specious 2012 melodrama turns on Hao Lei discovering that affluent husband Qin Hao has been leading a double life with mistress Qi Xi, whose son is in the same class as her daughter); Ryohei Watanabe's Shady (made for just £10,000, this 2012 debut becomes increasingly sinister after chubby school loner Mimpi*ß is befriended by the popular Izumi Okamura shortly after one of their other classmates disappears); Mike Binder's Black or White (good intentions abound, but there is little subtlety in this account of the legal battle between wealthy Los Angelino Kevin Costner and proud matriarch Octavia Spencer for custody of their mixed race granddaughter, Jillian Estell, whose white mother dies in childbirth and whose black father is a hopeless junkie); Peter Sattler's Camp X-Ray (this earnest, but far from convincing drama sees rookie private Kristen Stewart transferred to Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay, where she begins to empathise with German detainee Peyman Moaadi, whose growing despair over eight months of mistreatment drives him to attempt suicide); Jacob Thuesen's Accused (disappointingly formulaic until the shattering denouement, this Danish noir sees Sofie Gråbøl remain loyal to husband Troels Lyby after their 14 year-old daughter, Kirstine Rosenkrands Mikkelsen, accuses him of molestation).

EUREKA.

André De Toth's Day of the Outlaw (adapted from a Lee Wells novel by screenwriter Philip Yordan, this gritty 1959 Western chronicles how cattleman Robert Ryan tries to save the neighbours who detest him when wounded outlaw Burl Ives and his band of desperados ride into their remote town of Bitters, Wyoming); Samuel Fuller's Fixed Bayonets! (James Dean makes a fleeting debut in this gripping 1951 Korean War adventure, in which pacifist corporal Richard Basehart faces up to his responsibilities when he finds himself in command of a retreating unit trapped in a cave in the snowbound mountains); Pier Paolo Pasolini's Hawks and Sparrows (the legendary comedian Totò teams with Ninetto Davoli in this unflinching 1966 political allegory, in which an itinerant duo encounter the disenfranchised living on the edge of Rome after meeting a talking crow who tells them a parable about St Francis of Assisi and his plans to unite all creatures in love); Pier Paolo Pasolini's Pigsty (this scathing 1969 study of contemporary society tells two tales: cannibal Pierre Clémenti joins forces with thug Franco Citti in the countryside around Mount Etna; and industrialist Alberto Leonelli repairs his relationship with rival industrialist Ugo Tognazzi, while son Jean-Pierre Léaud develops a grim obsession with pigs); Nicolas Roeg's Eureka (a typically ambitious, visually strikiing and dramatically frustrating 1983 outing that begins some 30 years after Gene Hackman makes a fortune prospecting gold in the Yukon and he finds his remote island paradise under threat from the mobsters wanting to open a casino, while his domestic idyll is disturbed by daughter Theresa Russell's fractious marriage to playboy Rutger Hauer); Zalman King's Wild Orchid (Kansas lawyer Carré Otis accompanies businesswoman Jacqueline Bisset to Rio de Janeiro to conclude a real estate deal and winds up being introduced to the city's sensual pleasures in this steamy, but badly dated 1990 drama).

HORROR/THRILLER.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Eyes of the Spider (challenged in 1998 to make two films in a fortnight, Kurosawa produced this tale of a father enlisting the help of a mathematician to wreak vengeance on the man who raped and murdered his daughter; and Serpent's Path, in which a former yakuza joins forces with a friend to capture the presumed killer of his child, only to discover that the truth may not be so simple. Audacious enterprise carried by the gripping performances of Sho Aikawa and Teruyuki Kagawa as the grieving fathers); Brian C. Weed's Bloody Homecoming (the body count starts to mount in the most predictable manner in this 2012 slasher after Grainne McDermott and best pal Lexi Giovagnoli return to the venue where the former's rapacious boyfriend, Jesse Ferraro, perished in a fire after being locked in a storeroom); Scott Schirmer's Found (adapted from a Todd Rigney novella, this 2012 chiller centres on 12 year-old Gavin Brown, as he tries to work out whether to tell parents Louie Lawless and Phyllis Munro that older brother Ethan Philbeck has a penchant for decapitating black people); Jason Lei Howden's Deathgasm (this amusing timewaster follows wannabe rocker Milo Cawthorne, as he goes to live with his fundamentalist Christian aunt after his mother is institutionalised and he accidentally summons a demon with some sheet music entrusted to him and gal pal Kimberley Crossman by murdered rock recluse Stephen Ure).