Fresh from the Tricycle Theatre’s superb season of Oscar-shortlisted foreign language films comes Outside the Law, an extraordinary portrait of one of the most significant conflicts in recent European history. If you think you’ve made up your mind about terrorists, watch it.

Unpredictable, unsettling and sometimes excruciating viewing, Tirza is nevertheless a deeply affecting account of one man’s descent into despair. Seeming at first to be a simple tale of a father’s search for his lost daughter, Tirza quickly becomes an uncomfortably dark exploration of parenthood, sexuality and the need to feel wanted. Director Rudolf van den Berg’s confident handle on the many layered plot means that we never lose faith in the story, however much we begin to question our increasingly unreliable narrator…

A touching tale about a man navigating his way through conflicting relationships, He’s My Girl is an unexpected, quietly charming and exceedingly Parisian love story. There are perhaps a few too many loose ends left hanging for it to be a truly satisfying watch, but there’s no question that this is an extremely classy alternative to your Nora Ephron-type fodder.

Takeshi Kitano’s film about the Japanese yakuza may possess all the ingredients – violence, family loyalty and a strict hierarchy – but each wincingly gruesome scene is also strangely hilarious, leaving you laughing at the screen as you watch from behind your hands.

Direct from Geneva’s Black Movie Festival comes our review of The Tiger Factory, a triumph of Malaysian neo-realism (nope, we didn’t either) which will make you question the limits of your self-reliance and the exact situation in which you could be persuaded to milk a pig of its semen.

Anthony Hopkins and some chap you’ve never heard of star in a film which is stuck halfway between psychological thriller and demon-haunted horror. Solid performances and a refreshing rejection of SFX go some way towards redeeming this confused, lumpen effort, but it’s still a long way from being welcomed into the divine presence.

Now that Zac Efron and Hilary Duff are nearing retirement, America is clearly cowering at the prospect of an empty podium. Scouting a 14 year old Justin Bieber on YouTube, the US of A has a new poster child for hard work, family values and segways. Should you accidentally find yourself in the wrong screen, maybe avoid the overwhelming instinct to reach for your gag reflex and gouge out your brain as there are a number of nice visual touches and bop-tastic tunes that just keep this docu-concert on the right side of God-awful.

“A city in conflict” reads the tag line, but that doesn’t even begin to cover the violent nature of Jaffa’s Ajami neighbour hood. Ajami attempts to capture the lives of various families caught up in this lethal religious boiling pot.

A searing, ironic and deeply unsettling expose of modern society and the values it trumpets; it could be that the seminal Just Go With It succeeds in unpacking the dark issues of our control state that George Orwell’s 1984 failed to address. Or else I just paid ten pounds for an guided tour of Adam “I’m young, I SWEAR IT” Sandler’s wank bank. Tricky.

From Wendy and Lucy director Kelly Reichardt comes a stripped down, neorealist anti-Western with plans to change our fundamentally childish conceptions of the gun-totin’, Injun-lynchin’ Old West. I miss my comfy stereotypes.