This week's new film events

Doubtless catering to its core demographic, Canary Wharf's free outdoor screen has primarily hosted live sports events so far this summer, but now the holidays have set in, its selection has broadened. From Tuesday to Thursday the Barbican present three lesser-known family friendly Japanese animes: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Nintendo puzzle hero Professor Layton, and the acclaimed Summer Wars. Then, there are classic silent comedies for the next three Mondays (Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, with live piano accompaniment), and coinciding with the Canary Wharf Jazz Festival (12-14 Aug), a few choice documentaries on Thelonius Monk.

Canada Square, E14, Tue to 22 Aug

Project Nim

Few anticipated that the story of a tightrope walk between the Twin Towers would make for a wildly entertaining documentary, let alone an Oscar-winner, but 2008's Man On Wire catapulted James Marsh from the status of an interesting film-maker to an important one. It's also heaped expectation on his follow-up, Project Nim, about an ape raised to be human that says a lot more about mankind than chimpkind. Add in Marsh's dramatic work (Red Riding, The King) and newfound celebrity, and you're in for an interesting night.

Curzon Soho, W1, Thu

Funeral Parade Of Roses

Those intrigued by Norwegian Wood's recent recreation of 1960s Japanese radicalism can check out the real thing with this crop of strange, fascinating and little seen works, subtitled Films From The Art Theatre Guild Of Japan, which represent the flowerings of Japan's new wave and the birth of its indie cinema movement. In the 1960s and 70s, the Art Theatre Guild provided a haven for film-makers too adventurous for the major studios such as Nagisa Oshima and Shohei Imamura – and with their new-found creative freedom, they didn't hesitate to explore controversial topics like sexuality, death, radical politics, and capital punishment, and experiment with new stylistic approaches. The titles say it all – Death By Hanging, Double Suicide, Pandemonium – although the lyrical Silence Has No Wings follows a butterfly's journey, while Funeral Parade Of Roses is a landmark drama on Japanese transsexuals. Far out.

BFI Southbank, SE1, Mon to 31 Aug

Horizontal 8

It's a while since Poland produced giants like Krzysztof Kieslowski, Roman Polanski or Jerzy Skolimowski (though the latter two are at least still active), but perhaps their successors can be found in this travelling showcase of seven features, plus shorts, documentaries and an exhibition of world-beating Polish film poster designs. Most accessible is Decalogue 89 Plus, which marks the 20th anniversary of Kieslowski's landmark film cycle with a new set of films by 10 young directors. Kieslowski veteran Jerzy Stuhr also leads Mystification, on the mysterious suicide of a real-life artist, while pop sci-fi Horizontal 8 and satanist drama Black get closer to the Polish cutting edge.

Various venues, Tue to 15 Dec

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This week's new DVD & Blu-ray

Dressing up in a silly costume and fighting crime is only heroic in the movies and comics. In real life, it's more likely to be the result of a mental breakdown than a quest for truth, justice and the American way.

It's the real-world approach that Super takes and pursues relentlessly. Rainn Wilson (Dwight from the US The Office) plays a delusional cook whose life collapses when his ex-junkie wife, Liv Tyler, leaves him for local criminal Kevin Bacon. He snaps and becomes The Crimson Bolt, wielding a monkey wrench while delivering his goofy catchphrase, "Shut up, crime!" He teams up with a far too enthusiastic sidekick, Boltie (a very game Ellen Page), and sets out to right wrongs, hospitalising drug dealers and muggers with wrench blows to the head. He also doles out the same punishment for relatively minor infractions like butting into cinema queues. Director James Gunn did his training in the zero-budget exploitation of Troma films before writing the Dawn Of The Dead remake and directing enjoyable monster satire Slither. He's a director who doesn't pull punches, which is what this story needs to work. It's darkly funny, with a message that is far more complex than The Dark Knight, Spider-Man, etc. Plus, with no stupid rocket jetpack to shatter the mood, it kicks Kick-Ass's ass.

DVD & Blu-ray, G2 Pictures

Bittersweet coming of age comedy, directed with bags of style and a sure hand by first-timer Richard Ayoade.

DVD & Blu-ray, Optimum

The Rock stars in a surprisingly merciless and effective revenge thriller. Score by Clint Mansell.

DVD & Blu-ray, Sony

Average Joe becomes a brainiac thanks to an untested pill with sinister origins. Bradley Cooper stars with Robert De Niro in this limited but entertaining thriller.

DVD & Blu-ray, Momentum

Impeccably written, acted and directed classic Ealing comedy. Essential.

DVD & Blu-ray, Optimum

Parisian TV crime thrillers don't come much grittier than this.

DVD, 2 Entertain

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This week's new DVD & Blu-ray

Here's A Health To The Barley Mow.

We are very lucky here in the British Isles to have a folk cultural tradition that isn't just ancient and rich in pageantry, it's also incredibly spooky.

There are bits of this collection of 44 films about strange rural customs and traditions that seem more suited to horror films. You could easily picture the grainy footage of men wandering around country lanes wielding antlers as something off a haunted VHS in a Ring movie. While there's plenty that's familiar, such as Morris Men and sword dancing, there's much that's specific to one area. Events such as the Shrovetide football match in Ashbourne, Derbyshire, where both the upper and lower halves of the town collide en masse around a ball, or the ancient sport of dwile flonking from the Norfolk/Suffolk area, which is half-custom/half-drinking game and was recently banned under health and safety regulations. We meet mummers, hobby horses, tups and all kinds of other fascinating festivities. A lot of the films are old, which only adds to the fun, making footage of customs where local men wear gaudy skirts for a day appear to be something far darker and primal. Still, who cares what they do as long as it makes the crops come in on time? It's a peek into a world hidden in plain sight, where young girls can perform precision dance routines with swords, under the watchful eye of a man dressed as a woman. A world that's often a lot like The Wicker Man, only far creepier.

Liam Neeson carves out a Euro thriller niche for himself with this superior Berlin-set paranoia adventure.

DVD & Blu-ray, Optimum

Historical action movie about the siege of Rochester castle, with a movie-stealing turn by Paul Giamatti as the king.

DVD & Blu-ray, Warners

Jerzy Skolimowski's unusual 1970 UK drama, best known for the amazing track Mother Sky by Can.

DVD & Blu-ray, BFI

Underrated Elmore Leonard-based backwoods crime show about lawman Timothy Olyphant and full of bone-dry humour.

DVD, Sony

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This week's new films

Cell 211. Photograph: Jose Haro

Sometimes all you need is a great set-up: a prison guard, first day on the job, gets trapped in a cell just as a riot breaks out, and must therefore pose as an inmate to survive. It's better not to know where this tough Spanish thriller goes from there, but rest assured you're in very good hands. There's tightrope tension and breakneck pace, but wider questions of honour and justice unfold, too – everything you could ask for, in fact.

Having sat through the deathly dullness of Part 1, here's our reward: a rousing finale that strikes all the right notes, ties up 10 years' worth of loose ends, plunges you into 3D battle, and perhaps even wrings the odd tear – all without inducing effects fatigue. Great sequel, when's Part 3?

Basking in the lush Turkish countryside, but by no means oversweetening the mix, this tender drama follows a painfully shy boy forced out of his shell when his honey-gatherer father disappears in the forest. It's a little slow, but often wondrous to look at.

Fisher plays a man who walks out on his family, but his introspective solo odyssey is hijacked by an overbearing Irish misfit (Gillen), and becomes an eccentric odd-couple drama instead – which is refreshing.

Truer to its faux grindhouse trailer roots than Machete, this trashy 1980s-style street justice thriller maintains an admirably straight face. Hauer's face, on the other hand, has seen better days, but he's commendably game for an entrail-strewn shoot-up.

The life of the troubled chess champion rendered through oral history and lively graphics, with the focus on his big cold war showdown with Boris Spassky in 1972. That leaves little time to go into Fischer's later psychological problems, but his complex personality emerges all the same.

Putting faces to anonymous direct-action groups, this documentary follows British environmental activists such as Plane Stupid on their imaginatively risky direct action campaigns, and hears their justifications. Being on the inside, it's far from a neutral account, but the access is illuminating.

Three buddies bond and bicker on an expensive road-trip holiday in this Hindi dramedy.

Break My Fall.

Break My Fall

East London hipsters trawl the night.

Beginners

Ewan McGregor in a downbeat LA drama.

Horrible Bosses

Jason Bateman and friends plot workplace vengeance.

Cars 2

Spy thriller for junior petrolheads.

The Big Picture

Romain Duris leads a Tell No One-like French thriller.

One Life

Daniel Craig narrates a BBC wildlife doc.

The Violent Kind

Biker teens face demonic evil in this lo-fi horror.

Gilda

Rita Hayworth burns up the screen in the immortal 1940s noir.

The Lavender Hill Mob

Reissue for the lovable Ealing crime caper.

Singham

Ajay Devgan leads an Indian action thriller.

In two weeks … Here comes Captain America: The First Avenger … Studio Ghibli's take on The Borrowers, Arrietty …

In three weeks … JJ Abrams's Spielbergian monster movie Super 8 … Charlotte Gainsbourg leads family drama The Tree …

In a month … Double monkey trouble with chimp doc Project Nim and prequel The Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes …

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This week's new film events

Scorsese isn't the first person you picture paddling in a Cornish estuary, but Port Eliot Festival has persuaded him to curate a season of evening double bills. His selection is defiantly old school – 1974's Murder On The Orient Express is the most recent. There are sumptuous epics such as The Leopard and The Red Shoes, and classic noirs Human Desire and The Narrow Margin. For more up-to-date fare (and more shelter), the parallel Paradiso Piccolo indoor event has newer documentaries and features including Project Nim, Velvet Goldmine and author Kevin Sampson introducing his rock'n'roll saga Powder.

Port Eliot, Thu to 24 Jul

I Start Counting.

From The Railway Children to Walkabout, Logan's Run to An American Werewolf In London, Jenny Agutter has long occupied a special place in the hearts (and fantasies) of a certain demographic. Those foragers of the freakish over at Flipside have unearthed another Agutter treat for the faithful: 1969's I Start Counting, in which Agutter plays a schoolgirl attracted to her stepbrother, who might be a sex killer. Beyond the risque themes and retro interiors, it's a decent social snapshot of Britain, and Agutter herself is on hand afterwards to discuss it, and her rich and varied career.

BFI Southbank, SE1, Wed

Top Gun. Photograph: Allstar

The roving outdoor cinema movement gathers pace over the south in the coming months. The Nomad is setting up in parks, lidos and other public spaces around London most evenings of the summer, with some fine films (Inception at the Houses of Parliament – nice), but its range also takes in some great south-east locations, starting this week with The King's Speech at Walmer Castle. Also on the packed itinerary are other Kent castles, the first Pirates Of The Caribbean at Dorset's Lulworth Castle, Ghost in Canterbury's ruined St Augustine's Abbey, and Sense And Sensibility at Reigate's Gatton Park. There's more theming going down in Cornwall, meanwhile, starting this Friday with Top Gun at Newquay Airport, and continuing with Robin Hood, Prince Of Thieves at Pendennis Castle and Point Break on Godrevy Beach.

Various venues, from Wed

Bistro.

There's no shame in shorts, as evidenced by the familiar names in this year's event: you'll see Malcolm Tucker (AKA Peter Capaldi) in a pig nose (in Bistro), John Hurt falling in love with Phyllida Law (Love At First Sight), Dexter Fletcher, Ridley Scott productions – and that's before we even get into short documentaries, international films, music promos, animation (don't miss Mikey Please's Bafta-winning The Eagleman Stag) and so on. The categorised programmes are screening all over Soho, but being at the heart of London's movie world, Rushes also offers advice from and access to cutting-edge media companies, well-established film-makers, and others just starting out. There are also screenings of music promos by Gorillaz and the xx. Eleven days could be too short.

Various venues, Thu to 30 Jul

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