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Ajami (15)

(Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani, 2009, Isr/Ger) Shahir Kabaha, Ibrahim Frege, Eran Naim. 125 mins.

If any situation justifies the multi-angled Crash/Amores Perros-style treatment, it's modern-day Israel. Co-written and directed by an Israeli and a Palestinian, mostly using non-professional actors, this is more hip, streetwise and even-handed than we're used to. Set in a mixed neighbourhood of Tel Aviv, the plot skilfully juggles intertwined stories of feuds, families, drugs and violence involving characters from all faiths.

Trash Humpers (18)

(Harmony Korine, 2009, Us/UK) Brian Kotzue, Travis Nicholson, Rachel Korine. 78 mins.

Korine preserves his enfant terrible reputation with a scrappy, seedy home video following a group of masked delinquents around. It's a vaudeville of depravity (they literally hump dustbins) that manages to be grimy without being explicit.

Wild Grass (12A)

(Alain Resnais, 2009, Fra/Ita) André Dussolier, Sabine Azéma. 104 mins.

Veteran Resnais crafts a silky, genre-hopping middle-aged romance that's full of wonders and mysteries.

Poor Daniel Myrick. After all but setting the world on fire a decade ago with The Blair Witch Project (co-directed with Eduardo Sanchez), a film that managed to grab headlines in the summer of The Matrix, Star Wars: Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, and The Sixth Sense, he returns now with The Objective, a film that is split by two opposing instincts: recapturing the glory of his initial success and expanding his vision to a scope that would suggest he’s ready to move on to a studio feature. Neither instinct is satisfied by either the film’s plotline or its execution, leaving us to wonder what movie he really wanted to make.

In the weeks following 9/11, the United States government picks up a strong heat signal emanating from the remote mountains of Afghanistan. The first suggestion, of course, is that the Taliban has gotten hold of a nuclear weapon,...