This week's movie releases

In both his features and documentaries German filmmaker Werner Herzog has always explored the farthest reaches of human experience. In Cave of Forgotten Dreams he takes us back to the origins of art itself as he is granted privileged access to film -- in 3D -- the 32,000-year-old paintings inside the Chauvet Cave in the Ardèche region of southern France, some of the oldest cave pictures ever discovered. The fragile nature of these images of horses, lions, wooly rhinos, mammoths, bison - human breath alone can cause mold - means only a select group of scientists is normally allowed access. With their help, plus that of, among others, a master perfumer, Fred Astaire, and some albino crocodiles, Herzog captures the wonder and picks away at the mystery of a space he speculates could be the cradle of human creativity. The result is not merely a document of singular relics that may never be filmed again, but also a film about what it means to be human, about our impulse to represent the world around us, and create and watch movies in the first place.

If recent Seville-set thriller Unit 7 saw him extending his range, romantic drama Tengo ganas de ti finds Mario Casas back in teen heartthrob mode. The sequel to 2010's Tres metros sobre el cielo, based on the novels by bestselling Italian author Federico Moccia, it finds Casas' Hache back from an extended stay in London and hooking up with the bubbly Gin (Clara Lago) as he tries to get over his relationship with Babi (María Valverde).

The latest from Dogma director Kevin Smith, Red State is the story of three teenagers who unleash all kinds of hell in a small American town when they run into the fundamentalist local preacher (Michael Parks) on their way to hook up with a woman they met on a sex site. With John Goodman and Melissa Leo.

Romantic comedy La suerte en tus manos, from Argentinean director Daniel Burman, stars musician Jorge Drexler as a divorced father of two and poker fan who reconnects with his teenage girlfriend thanks to a card game.

French film Elles stars Juliette Binoche as an Elle magazine journalist drawn into the lives of two student prostitutes she is researching for an article.

Also out this week, Top Cat: The Movie is a Mexican-made 3D outing for Hanna-Barbera's famous cartoon feline and his gang.

Meanwhile, Fran Ruvira's Orson West is a film within a film within a film that follows a movie crew shooting a low-budget western on the Alicante-Murcia border, where 50 years before the legendary Orson Welles also tried making a cowboy flick.