Imposter<br/>Everything Put Together<br/>Cairo Station

Alien life, emotional loss and rock'n'roll... Egyptian style

Would you go up against Spider-Man? The Green Goblin might be willing to tangle with the webslinger, but none of his competitors in the film business seem to fancy their chances. Hollywood has sent over just one other new movie this week, Impostor (15), and that wasn't going to be a blockbuster whatever time it was released. Originally, it wasn't even going to be a full-length film. It was intended as a 40-minute segment of a science fiction portmanteau, and when the other two segments were shelved, Impostor had 50 more minutes plonked in its middle.

Would you go up against Spider-Man? The Green Goblin might be willing to tangle with the webslinger, but none of his competitors in the film business seem to fancy their chances. Hollywood has sent over just one other new movie this week, Impostor (15), and that wasn't going to be a blockbuster whatever time it was released. Originally, it wasn't even going to be a full-length film. It was intended as a 40-minute segment of a science fiction portmanteau, and when the other two segments were shelved, Impostor had 50 more minutes plonked in its middle.

It's set in the year 2079, when Earth is at war with unseen extra-terrestrials. Gary Sinise stars as Spencer Olham, a government scientist accused of being an alien replicant. The real Olham is dead, he's told, and has been replaced by a walking bomb programmed with all of Olham's memories. Can he convince the authorities that he's human? For that matter, can he convince himself?

The story is based on one by Philip K Dick, who also inspired Blade Runner, Total Recall and the imminent Spielberg/Cruise production, Minority Report. Given that the film-makers had 50 minutes to spare, they could have delved into Dick's thinking about reality and identity, but instead they've padded out proceedings with a series of cut-price, dimly lit chases. The best idea might be to see Impostor as it was conceived: rent the video and then fast-forward from the first half hour to the last 10 minutes.

On to the art-houses. The ICA is showing Everything Put Together (nc), a film which was shot on digital video by Marc Forster in 2000, and which is being picked up now because Forster has since made Monster's Ball. Like his new film, Everything Put Together deals unsettlingly with bereavement, but its protagonists live a world away from the desperate southerners portrayed by Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry. A beautiful and affluent Californian couple, Angie (Radha Mitchell) and Russ (Justin Louis) belong to a coterie of friends who drive four-by-fours and throw pool parties for their children. When Angie has a baby boy, life couldn't be better. One day later, the infant dies.

Forster and his co-writers, Catherine Lloyd Burns and Adam Forgash, have incised a slice of American life reminiscent of the Raymond Carver story, A Small, Good Thing (the Andie MacDowell thread of Robert Altman's Short Cuts). That, too, had the death of a child in sunkissed southern California, although while Carver's grieving parents received comfort and sticky buns from a lonely baker – and in Monster's Ball, Thornton and Berry receive comfort from each other – Angie and Russ become ever more isolated.

As they ricochet from dreadful hallucinations to euphoric denial, Everything Put Together is as draining as any horror film: new or prospective parents should stay away. However, it also has a vein of stinging, acid humour, satirising people who have no vocabulary for anything more serious than decorating the nursery. After Angie's loss, her friends withdraw, as if she might jinx their own pregnancies. In one scene a friend of Russ's explains that, what with things being so "awkward", it would be better if their families kept away from each other. "But you can call me any time ... any time," he insists. Then he adds: "At the office."

The NFT's Youssef Chahine retrospective centres on Cairo Station (nc), from 1958.

I'll have to take their word for it that it's "among the 10 best films of the Egyptian cinema", but the composition of the shots alone would qualify it as a classic. Set over one hot day in the eponymous station, it shunts from comedy to romance to thriller to tragedy in 75 minutes, with time left over for a rock'n'roll number courtesy of Mike And His Skyrockets.

n.barber@independent.co.uk