From the moment the documentary Spellbound became an unexpected commercial success, it was only a matter of time before somebody cashed in on its popularity. Bee Season derives from an ante-dating Myla Goldberg bestseller, but it plays on the audience's familiarity with the competitive world of juvenile spelling contests to lure us into the lives of Talmudic scholar Richard Gere and his secretive wife, Juliette Binoche.

However, directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel proceed to fritter our interest by asking us to accept that the miscast Gere's common touch comes from his obsession with Kabbalah mysticism, that Kate Bosworth's good looks could suddenly convert Gere's musical son, Max Minghella, to Hinduism, and that Binoche's furtive nocturnal sojourns are part of a delayed healing process following the death of her parents. Against such bizarre contrivances, Flora Cross's ability to visualise letters under pressure seems positively normal.

The Jewish theme continues in Liev Schreiber's debut adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's highly stylised novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Dispensing with the book's historical sweep and deciding against finding a cinematic equivalent for its literary pyrotechnics, Schreiber concentrates on New York writer Elijah Wood's journey to the Ukraine to find the woman whom his grandfather credits with saving him from the Nazis. However, the proceedings are rapidly taken over by Eugene Hutz and his supposedly blind grandfather, Boris Leskin, who agree to act as Wood's guides to find the shtetl of Trachimbrod and the truth about what took place there in 1942. Consequently, the action lurches between travelogue and moments of clumsy comedy, many of which involve the Odessans's dog, Sammy Davis Jr. Hutz has fun mangling language, while Leskin ably caricatures the Slav temperament. But it's only when they encounter Laryssa Lauret, whose shocking tale transforms the tone, that this otherwise knockabout cultural romp achieves any depth.

The emphasis is also firmly on the offbeat in Norwegian Bent Hamer's Factotum, which draws on the deadpan miserabilism of cult writer Charles Bukowski for a droll drifter's tale that brings out the best in Matt Dillon. The heavily autobiographical premise sees Dillon flitting between jobs and women as he tries to get his work published. But while Dillon and co-stars Lili Taylor and Marisa Tomei suggest a world of disappointment dulled by drinking and perfunctory sex, there's a surprising amount of affection on display here, which is reinforced by John Christian Rosenlund's photography, which achieves a shoddy nostalgia that perfectly fits Hamer's Kaurismakian direction.

Thomas Bezucha's The Family Stone is made with equal care. But, city gal Sarah Jessica Parker's bid to impress boyfriend Dermot Mulroney's ultra-folksy kin (including mom Diane Keaton and tomboyish sister Rachel McAdams) consistently strains for effect and, consequently, the comedy becomes a chore.