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With his wife Saskia (Eva Birthistle) about to give birth, Rembrandt (Martin Freeman) accepts a commission to paint the Amsterdam Civic Guard, headed by Captain Frans Banning Cocq (Adrian Lukis). However, when one of the company, Piers Hasselburg (Andrzej Seweryn), is killed in a musket accident, Rembrandt begins digging into the private lives of his august subjects and discovers that many have dark secrets he cannot resist incorporating in the portrait. His ire particularly falls upon Banning Cocq, as he betrays his homosexual lust for co-conspirator Willem van Ruytenburgh (Adam Kotz) and the Guard's involvement in a child prostitution racket at the local orphanage.

However, the artist has problems of his own, as Saskia dies soon after producing their son Titus and he loses the will to paint. Moreover, he is torn between the affections of two of his female servants, sensuous wet nurse Geertje (Jodhi May) and demure maid Hendrickje (Emily Holmes), and disturbed by the desperate pleadings of Marieke (Natalie Press), a melancholic waif who pours out her woes as Rembrandt sits on his roof watching the night. But, by picture's end, he succeeds in both finding love and shaming his powerful adversaries, while retaining his reputation and alighting upon a new style.

As ever with Greenaway, this is a visual delight. Reinier van Brummelen's cinematography and Maarten Piersma's production design are exceptional, enabling Greenaway to fashion tableaux vivants that are as cinematic as they're theatrical and which evoke the artist's work, while also thrumming with life. Choreographed to Wlodzimierz Pawlik's Nyman-like score, the action draws the eye to all corners of the screen, as though to confirm the contention that posing a painting was tantamount to directing a moving image.

Martin Freeman takes a while to settle into his role, but the script plays to the strengths displayed in The Office and one quickly forgets Charles Laughton's titanic performance in Alexander Korda's 1936 biopic, Rembrandt, and Klaus Maria Brandauer's spirited turn in Charles Matton's 1999 drama of the same name. However, the use of a cosmopolitan cast to satisfy the terms of the quintipartite co-production proves less felicitous, as the erudite dialogue is often weighed down by the heavy accents of several secondary characters. Nevertheless, this compels as much as it captivates, particularly in the reveal sequence, in which Freeman presents his evidence like a whodunit detective damning a suspect.

The mannered performances are commensurate with Greenaway's stylisation. But the Oscar-nominated grandiloquence exhibited by Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer leaves Michael Hoffman's The Last Station looking more like a Film d'Art production of the 1910s or a slice of Masterpiece Theatre than an insightful or psychologically credible account of Leo Tolstoy's final days.

Adapting his screenplay from a novel by Jay Parini, Hoffman strains to show that Russia's greatest novelist was also its biggest celebrity. Acolytes scribbled down his every utterance and he was constantly doorstepped by journalists and cameramen cranking their handles in order to capture the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina riding a horse or clambering into a train. It's an arch attempt to make a literary titan accessible to a modern audience. But the decision to depict the struggle for his legacy as a high-class soap opera is thoroughly misguided.

Despite bearing him 13 children during a 48-year marriage, Countess Sofya fears losing her husband to ardent disciples like Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti) and Dushan Makovitsky (John Sessions), who adhere to such tenets of Tolstoyan philosophy as pacifism, social equality, vegetarianism and celibacy with considerably more zeal than the 82 year-old does himself. He wearies of Sofya's tendency to melodrama, but he dislikes sycophancy just as much. Thus, when Chertkov hires Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy) to become his new assistant, Tolstoy bombards him with personal questions as a way of shifting the unremitting focus away from himself.

Chertkov wants Bulgakov to spy on Sofya to prevent her from dissuading Tolstoy against bequeathing his works to the Russian people. But as soon as Bulgakov falls for Masha (Kerry Condon) at the nearby Tolstoyan commune, he realises that Sofya's histrionics are dictated less by greed than a devotion to her family and a passion for her soulmate and his genius that saw her to hand copy War and Peace six times during its composition. Thus, when Tolstoy decides to leave the shabby grandeur of his Yasnaya Polyana estate with Chertkov and daughter Sasha (Anne-Marie Duff), Bulgakov sends Sofya a telegram urging her to come to the station at Astapovo, where illness has forced her spouse to break his journey.

This is textbook middlebrow film-making, with Tolstoyan theory reduced to a few buzzwords and a complex marital relationship delineated in a handful of stagy set-pieces that afford Mirren and Plummer copious opportunities to emote. In fairness, Plummer does manage to convey something of Tolstoy's reluctant sainthood, while the half-Russian Mirren seethes with frustration and bemusement at the ease with which her pride and fidelity have been supplanted by the calculating adulation of Chertkov and his cabal. However, it's hard to take either seriously after the clucking seduction scene, with Mirren particularly descending into grande damery as she hurls herself into a lake on learning that Plummer has deserted her and then as she demands entry to his Astapovo bedroom in full view of waiting hacks desperate for a piece of salacious gossip for their newspapers.

With the exception of Giamatti, who preens and scowls like the villain in a silent serial, the remaining principals struggle to make an impact. McAvoy lacks the gravitas to suggest an earnest intellectual and his romance with Condon is strictly novelettish. Indeed, the entire tone feels more Rose Tremain than Tolstoy (which is hardly surprising, given that Hoffman directed Restoration in 1995). Moreover, it's ironic that Andrei Konchalovsky should be included among the 21 credited producers, as The Last Station has clearly been influenced by his brother Nikita Mikhalkov's 1995 Oscar winner, Burnt By the Sun.

The scene shifts to the postwar Soviet Union for Tom Roberts's In Tranzit, a sincere, but unremarkable melodrama that is based on the true story of some Nazi war prisoners who were billeted in a female-run gulag while their fate was being decided. Roberts has previously demonstrated an understanding of this vast country and the complex mentality of its rulers in the documentaries In Search of Mother Russia's Children (1997) and The Death Train (1998). But his feature bow is much less assured, despite some earnest performances and an oppressive sense of place.

Vera Farmiga is the medical officer at the remote camp, where she also tends to her shell-shocked husband, Yevgeni Mironov. However, the usual routine is interrupted when military intelligence chief John Malkovich entrusts her superiors with a consignment of Germans and orders Farmiga to use her psychological skills to identify the SS officers masquerading as ordinary troops.

Initially, her task is made difficult by the simmering resentment of comrades like Ingeborga Dapkunaite and Thekla Reuten, who lost loved ones during Operation Barbarossa. But relations slowly improve and the newcomers are allowed to form a band and even attend a dance with the local womenfolk. Farmiga also befriends Thomas Kretschmann, who seems the most civilised of the detainees. But she is appalled when Malkovich discovers that raw recruit Natalie Press has also formed an attachment to one of the foreigners and humiliates her in front of everyone on the frozen parade ground. Moreover, he begins pressurising Farmiga to conclude her investigation and she becomes increasingly fearful as her suspicions of both Kretschmann and his furtive pal, Daniel Brühl, begin to mount.

Despite being capably photographed by Sergei Astakov to contrast the greys and browns of the uniforms and environs with the oppressive snow, this rarely convinces. Malkovich's hammy performance sets the incredulous tone, which Farmiga lacks the intensity to recover. Moreover, her acting style feels too modern for 1945, although she's not helped by Natalia Portnova and Simon van der Borgh's verbose and often wildly melodramatic screenplay. Brühl is typically assured in what is little more than a cameo, but this is a resounding misfire in almost every other regard.

It's satisfyingly ironic that the sole Oscar nomination accorded Tom Ford's A Single Man went to Colin Firth - the one facet of this airless adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's 1964 novel that the debuting fashion designer-turned-director couldn't rigidly control. Firth might have allowed himself to be attired in Ford suits, but he refused to be reduced to mere set dressing. Consequently, he is able to breath some life into this arch aggregation of meticulous décor, voguish costumes and saturated cinematography that feels like the result of endless hours studying Sirk, Hitchcock, Antonioni, Haynes and Wong Kar-wai, as well as countless weighty tomes on film as art.

Every gambit in the directorial lexicon is on display, as Ford fetishises Firth's morning routine in preparation for another day teaching Aldous Huxley to students who are barely aware of the looming Cuban Missile Crisis, let alone the terrors of a Brave New World. An Englishman in Los Angeles, Firth chats stiffly with housekeeper Paulette Lamori, exchanges maladroit pleasantries with neighbour Ginnifer Goodwin and banters banally with colleague Lee Pace. But his heart hasn't been in such mundanities since the car crash death of lover Matthew Goode and his exclusion from the funeral. So, he has decided that this will be his final day and he devotes himself with typical thoroughness to making the necessary arrangements.

Encounters with eager student Nicholas Hoult and hustler Jon Kortajarena provide eye-candy distractions, but Firth remains set on ending it all after drinks with fellow ex-pat Julianne Moore, a divorcee who once slept with him and can't understand why he won't translate their easy friendship into a marriage of convenience. Prising himself away from Moore's tipsy protestations, Firth returns home to contemplate the deed. But the need for some Dutch courage leads to a midnight skinny dip in the Pacific with Hoult and the realisation that things might not be quite so ghastly after all.

Firth's assured performance has already earned him the Best Actor prize at Venice and he seems to be Jeff Bridges's only serious competition at the Academy Awards. But the sheer self-containment of his portrayal leaves little for anyone else to feed off. A hammy Moore mixes traits from Far From Heaven (2002) and Savage Grace (2007) and winds up resembling a desperate housewife from Mad Men. Elsewhere, Kortajarena tries to tempt Firth into an indiscretion beneath a giant poster for Psycho, while Hoult flatters to deceive. But no one is allowed to upstage Eduard Grau's imagery, Dan Bishop's interiors or Arianne Phillips's couture.

Ford's affection for a stream-of-consciousness text that became a landmark in gay fiction is evident from the care he has lavished upon every composition. Moreover, his addition of the suicide subplot adds an intriguing element of suspense. But his stylistic confidence and technical expertise belie a cinematic inexperience that leaves these impeccably tasteful, but calculatingly immaculate tableaux looking less like a movie masterpiece than an animated photo shoot for a glossy magazine.

Although less obsessed with surfaces, Todd Solondz proves himself to be equally inclined to narrative contrivance in Life During Wartime, a sort of anti-sequel to his controversial domestic drama Happiness (1998), which echoes the casting stunt of his 2004 saga, Palindromes (in which the lead was essayed by eight different actresses) by having the returning principals being played by entirely new actors. Relocating the action from New York to Miami, Solondz retains the wry Jewish wit that likens this to Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). But this is a much bleaker, darker treatise on family ties and the unerring tendency of good intentions to backfire.

Persuaded by mother Renee Taylor to stick to her suspicion that junkie husband Michael Kenneth Williams has failed to mend his ways, Shirley Henderson travels to see self-centred screenwriting sister Ally Sheedy to escape the incessant pestering of Paul Reubens, the ghost of an ex-boyfriend who committed suicide when she dumped him. Meanwhile, sibling Allison Janney is also struggling to come to terms with her divorce from convicted paedophile Ciaran Hands. But, just as he emerges from prison determined to make amends with older son Chris Marquette, youngest boy Dylan Riley Snyder is reeling from the revelation that his father isn't dead (as his mother had told him) and finding it agonisingly difficult to accept her new beau, Michael Lerner.

Although much of the idiosyncratic dialogue is delivered in a deadpan manner that is often grimacingly funny, this still makes for unsettling viewing. Hands's encounters with plain-spoken lonelyheart Charlotte Rampling and with Marquette in his campus digs are riveting. But it's the naive Snyder's discussions with Janney about the morality of terrorism and with Lerner about his attitude to young boys that will leave most viewers aghast. Denouncing the middle-class propensity for saving face by living according to the expectations of others, Solondz coaxes excellent performances from his estimable ensemble. He's also well served by production designer Roshelle Berliner and cinematographer Ed Lachman, who succeed in making comfortable homes look like pastel-shaded torture chambers. Ultimately, however, this is never as audacious or harrowing as Happiness, although few would complain if Solondz returned to this unhappy family in a further decade's time, perhaps with another overhauled cast.

A very different America is depicted by Iranian émigré Rahman Bahrani in Chop Shop (2007), which is set in the Willets Point part of Queens known as the Iron Triangle for its numerous garages and junkyards. As with Man Push Cart (2005) and Goodbye Solo (2008), this is an acutely observed study of life on the immigrant margins that not only benefits from Bahrani's exceptional sense of place, but also his neo-realist genius for finding human drama in the minor and the mundane.

Twelve year-old orphan Alejandro Polanco scrapes a living on the streets around Shea Stadium selling sweets and DVDs. However, his main task is to direct potential clients towards the body shop owned by Rob Sowulski, who does a profitable, if illegal line in stripping cars for spares. Polanco saves every spare cent in the hope of doing up a battered food truck and he is sure that 16 year-old sister Isamar Gonzales will share his dream when she comes out of care and moves into the room he rents above the workshop. But he disapproves of her methods of making a quick buck, even though one of her regulars, Ahmad Razvi, helps him find more vehicles. Moreover, Razvi is also the bearer of bad news, as Polanco learns that the van he bought from uncle Anthony Felton for $4500 is beyond repair and he commits a reckless crime in a bid to recoup some of his losses.

Much more about ambience and attitude than a linear narrative, this is an unflinching look at a world of mud, rust, dereliction, pirated porn, fake jewellery and $40 trucker tricks. Michael Simmonds's handheld digital imagery and Tom Efinger's sound design enable Bahrani to capture the hardscrabble tone of a wilderness that would break the spirit of tough nuts, let alone tweenage Latinos. The non-professional cast is outstanding and if the ending comes perilously close to maudlin melodrama, Bahrani finds a glimmer of optimism to set Polanco back on track and wiser for his experiences.

On the other side of the planet, the plight of the Aborigines living on the fast-emptying Outback reserves still has the power to appal, as writer-director Warwick Thornton demonstrates with Samson & Delilah.

Sixteen year-old Marissa Gibson shares a rickety shack with ageing Mitjili Gibson and survives by producing indigenous paintings that are sold in Alice Springs by the white owner of the general store. Each day, she ensures her nana takes her pills and then wheels her to the compound's health centre, past a pay phone that constantly rings but is never answered. Her every move is monitored by the mute Rowan McNamara, who is a year her junior and lives with an older brother who devotes his time to playing in a reggae trio. Each finds solace in music, with McNamara listening to country and western on the radio and Gibson sitting in a pickup truck at the end of each day to play a flamenco cassette. But she resists her nana's teasing that McNamara is fated to become her husband, even though she is aroused one night by the sight of him dancing on his verandah with joyful abandon.

However, when nana dies and the local women thrash Gibson for failing to take better care of her, she decides to run away with McNamara, who has also taken a beating for smashing his sibling's guitar. Stealing a truck, they head for the city. But they soon run out of money and when Gibson fails to sell the paintings she produces with shoplifted materials, they are forced to share space beneath a road bridge with alcoholic derelict Scott Thornton, who keeps them supplied with instant noodles. Things get worse, however, when Gibson is abducted and raped by some white thugs and, out of crushing despair, she succumbs to McNamara's habit of sniffing gasoline and is hospitalised after being hit by a speeding car. Yet the indomitable pair survive their travails and receive a chance of making a life together when they are settled in a remote outpost.

With its sparse Warlpiri dialogue and unflinching mix of gentle humour and grim realism, this is a damning indictment of the treatment of the Aboriginal peoples by the Australian authorities. Thornton doesn't refer directly to the so-called `Northern Territory intervention' that cited sexual and substance abuse as an excuse for breaking up isolated communities on homelands coveted by mining and agricultural conglomerates, but his intention is readily apparent from the assertion that `cinema is a lie that tells the truth about life'. He perhaps piles too many miseries upon the runaways and the climactic shift from rock-bottom hopelessness to tentative optimism is a touch contrived. But Thornton handles his own cinematography with the same aplomb he brings to the pacing of the picture, while he also coaxes performances of touching vulnerability and spirit out of his exceptional non-professional leads.

Finally, in a much lighter vein, there's Tom Reeve's Holy Water, an Ulster comedy that seeks to replicate the Oirish whimsy of sleeper hits like Waking Ned (1998), but is simply too contrived and inconsequential to raise more than the occasional smile.

Times are so hard in the backwater of Killcoulin's Leap that the locals have taken to plunging off the cliffs in mid-lament. Hotelier John Lynch hasn't had a booking in months and can barely make beer money from playing in a folk band with mechanic Lochlainn O'Mearain, farmer's son Cian Barry and chirpy postman Cornelius Clarke. So, when the latter learns that he's about to lose his job in an economy drive, the friends fall in with his plan to hijack a truck carrying Viagra to Belfast Airport and sell the little blue pills in Amsterdam.

Dressed as navvies and nuns, the foursome pulls off the heist with surprising ease. But Pfizer wants its merchandise back and dispatches a crack unit comprising Linda Hamilton, Tommy `Tiny' Lister and Lisa Catara to assist village bobbies Stanley Townsend and Angeline Ball with their inquiries. Having hurled a telltale tracking device out to sea, the quartet stashes its ill-gotten barrels down a nearby Marian well. However, it's only a matter of time before the contents get into the water supply and priest Dermot Crowley is being waylaid by libidinous parishioners desperate to confess their wanton transgressions.

As Lister pairs off with Lynch's long-suffering sister, Susan Lynch, and Catara seduces O'Mearain, Barry plucks up the courage to kiss barmaid Deirdre Mullins. Meanwhile, pub landlord Ray Callaghan and crony Frank Dunne send Hamilton on a wild goose chase after a Russian trawler and prosperity returns as crowds flock to take the rejuvenating waters.

The cast works hard to put some lead in a limp script, with Townsend and Ball having a few choice lines as they mockingly follow in Hamilton's wake. But, even though Joost van Starrenburg's camera luxuriates in the verdant coastal scenery, there's just no escaping from the clichés, caricatures and cornball innuendoes.