The Descent<br></br> Sky Blue<br></br> The Car Keys<br></br> Punishment Park<br></br> Novo

The Descent is still not perfect, mind you. The women are much more credible when they're screaming than when they're chatting, and neither the dialogue nor the acting is authentic enough to make us care about their in-fights. But as long as Marshall is out to frighten us, he makes an admirable job of it - and, fortunately, he's out to frighten us most of the time.

Sky Blue

Animation students might like to see this Korean sci-fi cartoon, which places hand-drawn figures in breathtaking, computer-generated scenery. But if the visuals are cutting-edge, the story's been seen a thousand times. It's got a post-apocalyptic dystopia, a city ruled by a fascist elite, and a rebel hero from the underclass, plus so much cod-mythology that watching it is like trying to make sense of The Matrix Revolutions without having seen the previous two instalments.

The Car Keys

The Car Keys is either a postmodern deconstruction of mainstream cinema, or a threadbare joke stretched past breaking point. The joke is that the actors know that they're in a film, so while they're pinballing through a comedy about a man who's hunting for his car keys, they keep stepping out of the action to complain about the script and budget. Some of the screen's greatest comedians, including Buster Keaton and Daffy Duck, told that joke much better decades ago.

Punishment Park

When a kangaroo court hands lengthy prison sentences to a huddle of draft-dodgers and student revolutionaries, their only alternative is three days in Punishment Park: if they can tramp across 50 miles of baking Californian desert, without being caught by the police on their tail, they'll go free. Peter Watkins's caustic satire, first seen in 1970, is so realistic that it could be mistaken for a documentary (it's shot in verité style by Nick Broomfield's cinematographer, Joan Churchill, and the political arguments between the

long-haired radicals and the Martha Stewarts who condemn them are improvised by non-professional actors).

In the age of Big Brother and Guantanamo Bay we can appreciate how prophetic Punishment Park was. The irony is, though, that its prophesising is so accurate that it's lost its power to shock. Scenes that must have seemed scandalous 34 years ago have been overtaken by what's actually happening.

Novo

Like Guy Pearce in Memento, Eduardo Noriega suffers continual memory lapses, so he has to write himself notes every few minutes to remind himself whom he's met and where he's going. His condition allows him to be exploited by his boss and betrayed by his best friend. But, luckily for him, he's in an arty French erotic drama, so a beauteous young colleague decides that the best way to cure him is to initiate a torrid affair.

n.barber@independent.co.uk