A Ma Soeur! (18) <BR></BR> The 51st State (18) <BR></BR> Christmas Carol The Movie (u) <BR></BR> Riding in Cars with Boys (12) <BR></BR> Women Talking Dirty (15)

Where the recent Amélie seduced the world with smiles; the heroine of Catherine Breillat's new film, A Ma Soeur!, lives or dies by her scowl. Passionate lardy-guts Anaïs (Anaïs Reboux) thinks that the world is a garbage dump and that love is for fools. Her beautiful older sister Elena (Roxane Mesquida) does not. Presumably, that's why she falls for the romantic claptrap of an Italian pretty boy while the siblings are on family vacation. He bribes his way into her virginal knickers by offering her a precious ring; a few days later, his furious mother comes to claim it back. Anaïs (beautifully played by newcomer Reboux) is the only one who sees the disaster coming, a disaster that falls entirely on Maman's brittle shoulders (workaholic Papa has already flown home). The car journey back to Paris, thundering lorries shattering what's left of the trio's nerves, is like something from a terrible, metal-edged dream.

Breillat's shocking climax (based on a 20-year-old-newspaper item) can be interpreted in any number of ways, but whether fantasy or wish-come-true, it, too, has a bone-clattering force. Anaïs refuses to be defined by external events. As in that pivotal moment of Breillat's 1999 film, Romance, where a team of doctors virtually rape the pregnant heroine with their rubber-gloved fingers, violation gets massaged into a satirical new shape – the world exposed, not the girl. Having begun as a sub-Eric Rohmer essay on summertime blues, the film ends with a crazier-than-Cronenberg bang. Leave Amélie to the children, and choose Anaïs.

Pulp Fiction meets Trainspotting – that's how the swaggering Brit-pic The 51st State would like to be seen. The reality? Luc Besson's Fifth Element tripping over a piss-poor episode of Brookside. Samuel L Jackson plays Elmo, a chemistry whizz who is sick of making money for wicked US drug baron Lizard (Meatloaf); he arrives in Liverpool offering to sell the recipe for a wonder drug so that he can retire and play... golf. Of late, Jackson himself seems to have been on automatic pilot; maybe he's hoping Europe can offer him some way out. There's no accounting for taste, but I doubt even the stupidest punter could mistake The 51st State for a revolutionary high. Emily Mortimer as Dakota, the glamorous, ie skeletal, hit-woman sent to take da man out, is so wooden she could mate with a tree, while Robert Carlyle, as Elmo's unwilling Scally sidekick and Dakota's ex, looks seven different kinds of bored. At least the drug Jackson's pushing turns out to be harmless. Here's a health warning: during The 51st State, viewers may experience the desire to nap.

The charmless Rhys Ifans plays a drug dealer in The 51st State; he also provides the voice of Bob Cratchett in a new animated version of A Christmas Carol (right). (Well, at least you can't see him.) As it happens, Rhys is the least of our problems. The film's producer and director worked on The Snowman, back in 1984, but none of that project's tingly charm has rubbed off here. Hideous-looking for starters, the Yuletide landscapes are reminiscent of the sort of Crimbo cards that come in packs of 500, and that you feel guilty even sending to people you hate. Then there's the script. Writers Piet Kroon and Robert Llewellyn (Red Dwarf's Kryten) obviously find Dickens's classic a little slow, so have thoughtfully added two mice, Gabriel and Ellen, to jolly things up.

Still, let's not be too Scrooge-like. Developing the grumpy-one's back-story wasn't such a bad idea – a wicked father, a very un-Harry Potterish experience of public school, Kate Winslet as a masochistic ex-fiancée – anything that spares us the wretched mice has to be good. But even then, when so many other brilliant versions already exist (the one with Alistair Sims, the one with Mr Magoo...), what's the point? At the end of the film, Callow (doubling as Scrooge and a flesh-and-blood Dickens) apologises for the slightly altered version, then chuckles smugly. A reaction shot of the audience shows a woman looking thoroughly cheesed off. I'm with you, lady.

Elton John announced last week that he wants to give up the music biz so he can concentrate on the film company he and boyfriend David Furnish have created. Their first film? Women Talking Dirty. Note to Elton: do not give up day job. An Edinburgh-set "comedy" about a single mum, Cora (Helena Bonham Carter), her best friend Ellen (Gina McKee), and the good-looking scumbag (James Purefoy) who almost comes between them, it's essentially Mad Cows, the acid flashback. I'm still shuddering now. But putting aside the lame references to "shagging", the Marmalade Atkins haircuts, the implausible collection of posh friends, the coyness: how did Bonham Carter get this job? Her Scottish accent is the film's one memorable joke.

More best friends, more unplanned pregnancies, more flashbacks, in Penny Marshall's Riding in Cars With Boys, and yet another unsatisfying star turn, this time from Drew Barrymore. The film is based on the true story of Beverly D'Onofrio, a big-hearted, poetry-scribbling Connecticut gal who overcame teen pregnancy, uptight parents, a junkie husband, and a night in jail, to write a bestselling autobiography. No doubt she'll recover from this.

Many of the movie's lines are overly cute (and, where Bev's grown-up son is concerned, overly Terms of Endearment). But even when the film is moving, pert-lipped Drew frightens the moment away. An acting genius at seven, a dolt at 26, who says practice makes perfect? Only Steve Zahn, as Bev's no-hoper husband, gets this script. He doesn't try to be adorable. Simple, really.

Canines. Horny young men. Guns. It can work: see Amores Perros. It can also fail: see Dog Eat Dog, a Brit movie so offensive and stupid that it puts the rest of the week's duff releases into a beautiful new light. Two of the four roustabout heroes have bitchy ex-girlfriends; one of them is played by All Saints' Melanie Blatt. First Honest, now this. Is it possible for one woman to be so unfortunate? The Film Council, though, could really use her. Keep handing Blatt scripts. If one takes her fancy, torch it.

CO'S