Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth may seem an odd assignment for Terence Davies after forging his reputation with a couple of working-class melodramas set in his native Liverpool , writes David Parkinson. But the sense of place and time that made both Distant Voices, Still Lives and The Long Day Closes so excruciatingly authentic proves invaluable as he dissects the polite New York society of the mid-1910s.

Just as Mike Leigh got under the skin of Gilbert and Sullivan in Topsy Turvy, so Davies is able to expose the ruthless ambition behind the manners and mores of this cynical collection of haves and wannabes.

Confounding those who consider her incapable of anything other than delving into X Files, Gillian Anderson gives a finely judged performance as Lily Bart, the impoverished socialite whose only hope of advancement lies in exposing the affair between a skittish aristocrat (Laura Linney) and the lawyer she adores (Eric Stoltz). She's well supported by a splendid ensemble cast, but it's her crisis of conscience that sustains the action and provides its modern-day resonance.

This may not be as epic as Martin Scorsese's impeccable adaptation of The Age of Innocence, but it's certainly more incisive than Merchant-Ivory's forthcoming version of Henry James's The Golden Bowl.

Away from Oxford, the programmes at two central London venues are worthy of note. Coming in the week that Kim Dae-Jung won the Nobel Peace Prize, the NFT's 'Fifty Years On' season, marking the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, could not have been better timed. Exploring the impact of the conflict, from the South's point of view, these films reflect official and personal responses to the division of a nation.

Both The Marines Who Never Returned and The Stray Bullet were made in the 1960s. The former is a government-sanctioned combat movie, which bears a surprising resemblance to Hollywood's Second World War morale-boosters, as a disparate group of inexperienced troopers banter and blunder their way towards the enemy.

The latter also echoes Hollywood, but it presents a much darker portrait of a 'victorious' society than The Best Years of Our Lives. Revealing that Korea in 1953 was anything but a land fit for heroes, it chronicles the descent into prostitution, crime and madness of various members of a decent working family and prompted a popular backlash with its frank depiction of postwar malaise.

Last journeys of the dead link both To the Starry Island and The Man with Three Coffins. While Park Kwang-Su brings piquancy and lyricism to his fact-based tale of an island community's refusal to allow an exile's burial, Lee Chang-Ho's road movie is an audacious experiment in image and structure, as he ingeniously links the stories of a man's mission to the Demilitarised Zone to scatter his wife's ashes and a nurse's bid to outrun a couple of crooks in order to return her dying patient to his roots. Alternately bathed in orange, red and yellow tints, this is a film that demands attention but repays the effort with its ambition and positive conclusion. Finally, there's Spring in My Hometown, a charming tale of childhood that takes on a more sombre aspect as the realities of war intrude upon an isolated village. Shot in long, distant takes, Lee Kwangmo's bittersweet tale openly refers to the US involvement in the conflict, as the GIs' use of a derelict barn for sexual encounters results in tragedy. This may be the most accessible film in the series, but it loses nothing in power and poignancy.

Based at the Metro Cinema in Rupert Street, off Leicester Square, the Raindance Film Festival offers a millennial selection of indie cinema from around the world. I Will Survive is a determinedly right-on study of a widowed thirtysomething's attempt to make a go of a new life with a younger bisexual sculptor. Emma Suarez steels her vulnerability with spirit, but the peripheral characters are weak, and while co-directors Alfonso Albacete and David Menkes fashion some neat montage sequences they allow events to meander into insignificance.

In It Was an Accident, debutant director Metin Huseyin rightly refuses to romanticise a Walthamstow trapped between its mythologised gangland past and its honourless present. But his inability to pace his tale or restrain Max Beesley's manic mobster reduces proceedings to a shambles. Chiwetel Ejiofor is cruelly exposed by the forged argot of Oliver Parker's dismal screenplay, although it does dream girlfriend Thandie Newton even fewer favours. In attempting to put a British slant on the rites-of-passage picture, Newton I. Aduaka's Rage falls into all the familiar traps, as it equates vrit camerawork with dramatic realism. But, there's an honesty about this investigation into the limited options open to many of today's kids. As much about dreams and friendship as gangstas and crime, this smacks of authenticity, until it starts dealing in street clichs and sickening violence.

However, better things are expected of The King Is Alive, the latest entry in the Dogme 95 series, which boasts Jennifer Jason Leigh among a cast performing King Lear in Namibia. Also worth noting are Karl Francis's account of the McCarthy witchhunts, One of the Hollywood Ten, and Innocence, another offbeat tale of late-life romance from the outstanding Australian director, Paul Cox.

There's a huge programme of features, shorts and documentaries to chose from and details can be obtained from the Raindance office on 020 7287 3833.