This week's movie releases

The ever-versatile Steven Soderbergh rethinks the action genre in Haywire, re-grounding it in physical reality and introducing a new star. Gina Carano, plucked from the world of cage fighting no less, exudes a tangible - and elegant - brutality in her movie debut. Playing a double-crossed government security contractor hopping from Barcelona to Dublin and New York as she tries to clear her name, she punches with a plausible dull thwack, fires shots that reverberate and leaps around within the bounds of accepted physics - and she couldn't care less about laddering her tights. She's bolstered by an impressive supporting cast - Ewan McGregor, Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas, Michael Fassbender, Bill Paxton and Channing Tatum - who add sparkle to what is essentially a ho-hum action thriller plot. But, by holding back on the frenetic cutting to better build suspense and show off the muscular action, it's one that turns out tougher, tenser and more authentic than the norm.

Also going a little haywire are the characters of Chronicle, a sci-fi drama from newcomers Josh Trank and Max Landis (son of director John Landis). Presented in Blair Witch-style video-camera footage, it follows a trio of high-school students experimenting with the telekinetic powers they gain after unearthing a strange object.

Actress Angelina Jolie shows she's more than just ¡Qué Me Dices! gossip-page fodder with her ambitious directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey. Shot in Bosnian, Serbo-Croatian and English, this brutal romantic drama set during the Bosnian War was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar (though it lost out to Iran's superb A Separation).

Inspired by real events, Big Miracle casts Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski in a Cold War-era tale of Eskimos, oil tycoons and the Russian and US military putting aside their differences to rescue a family of gray whales trapped by rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle.

There's more struggling for solidarity in Where Do We Go Now?, Lebanese actress-director Nadine Labaki's follow-up to her debut Caramel. The film portrays a group of women in an isolated village of Muslims and Christians who try to keep their menfolk in the dark when civil tension engulfs the country.

Last year's Golden Lion winner at Venice, Faust is Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov's retelling of Goethe's tale, while Year of Grace, from prolific Catalan director Ventura Pons, concerns the not-always-cordial relationship between a 20-year-old recently arrived in Barcelona and the 60-year-old woman who offers him free lodging in exchange for some company.