We Don't Live Here Anymore (15)

Adapted from two novellas by Andre Dubus, this film about adulterous couples in a New England town has an assurance and pointedness comparable to Todd Field's In the Bedroom (also adapted from Dubus). Terry (Laura Dern) is married to Jack (Mark Ruffalo), and her best friend Edith (Naomi Watts) is married to Hank (Peter Krause); when Jack and Edith fall into an affair, the undertow threatens to engulf them all.

We Don't Live Here Anymore (15)

Adapted from two novellas by Andre Dubus, this film about adulterous couples in a New England town has an assurance and pointedness comparable to Todd Field's In the Bedroom (also adapted from Dubus). Terry (Laura Dern) is married to Jack (Mark Ruffalo), and her best friend Edith (Naomi Watts) is married to Hank (Peter Krause); when Jack and Edith fall into an affair, the undertow threatens to engulf them all. Director John Curran handles the long, rancorous arguments with skill, and exacts fresh, detailed performances from his quartet: Dern and Wattsachieve moments of real pathos amid the shrillness of domestic discord. It's a profoundly bleak yet oddly lyrical insight into married couples who love but don't actually like one another, and, by the by, a study in a certain kind of literary failure (Jack and Hank are both frustrated writers - is that why they stray?). Beautifully shot by Maryse Alberti, and hauntingly scored by Michael Convertino, this is grown-up cinema of a very high calibre.

Undertow (15)

David Gordon Green's curious Southern Gothic story begins very promisingly as the tale of two brothers (Jamie Bell and Devon Alan) and their emotionally costive father (Dermot Mulroney) leading a hardscrabble existence on their remote farm. Then the boys' uncle Deel (Josh Lucas) arrives, an ex-con determined on his share of a fabled family legacy. Green draws fine, naturalistic performances from the two boys, but once Lucas's insinuating charm boils over into murderous rage the picture tilts from tense family drama towards rambling picaresque.

13 Conversations About One Thing (15)

It remains virtually impossible to make a suite of interlinked stories and not be unfavourably compared to Short Cuts. Writer-director Jill Sprecher doesn't ape Altman too slavishly, and the pivotal character of a sourpuss insurance salesman is expertly played by Alan Arkin. The film's vague motif is karma, though the storytelling isn't quite artful enough to make us care.

Bombon El Perro (12A)

Sweet-faced Juan Villegas is a mechanic wandering around Patagonia in search of work; instead he's gifted a pedigree Argentine Dogo and finds success at a dog show. Carlos Sorin's film is so gentle one can scarcely object, though I'm not sure the emotional climax of any film should centre upon two large dogs mating.