DIRECTED BY Gregor Jordan

STARRING Joaquin Phoenix, Ed Harris, Anna Paquin, Scott Glenn

Opens July 18, Cert 15, 98 mins

It’s been a long time coming, but Gregor Jordan’s pitch-black satire on Uncle Sam’s military machine finally gets a UK release after a string of setbacks. A huge hit when it premiered at the Toronto Film Festival on September 7, 2001, its initial momentum was derailed by the 9/11 attacks. Five subsequent attempts to release it in the US were also aborted (most recently due to the war in the Gulf), while in the UK the collapse of the film’s production company, FilmFour, in July 2002 suggested it might never see the light of day over here.

Finally, Buffalo Soldiers has found a new home at Pathe, and we can see what the fuss is about. In a nutshell, it’s Catch-22 meets Three Kings. Set on a US air force base in Germany just weeks before the Berlin Wall comes down, it follows Special Fourth Class soldier Ray Elwood (Phoenix), an amoral hustler who seems to have studied from the Bilko book of military protocol. Willing to trade whatever he can get his hands on, Elwood and his brigade of misfits, losers and addicts hit the jackpot when they come across a consignment of hi-tech weapons in two abandoned trucks. The only obstacle stopping them from collecting huge profits is bull-nosed Viet Vet sergeant Robert Lee (Glenn), who develops an almost pathological obsession with bringing Elwood down. Pouring gas on the fire, Elwood soon starts seeing Lee’s teenage daughter Robyn (Paquin).

Phoenix is on mischievous form here, whether running illegal scams or sparking off Harris (Elwood’s weak-willed base commander) and Elizabeth McGovern (Harris’ two-timing wife). But the best performance comes from Glenn, who betters even his recent ensemble work in Training Day and The Shipping News, visibly enjoying himself as Phoenix’s detestable, gung-ho nemesis.

Buffalo Soldiers shares its bitter, black sense of humour with Jordan’s first film, 1999’s Australian heist thriller Two Hands, but this is driven by a far more devilish sensibility, and the screenplay (from Robert O’Connor’s 1993 novel) crackles with fiery, feisty wit and energy.

DIRECTED BY Tom DiCillo

STARRING Denis Leary, Elizabeth Hurley, Steve Buscemi

Opens July 18, Cert 15, 91 mins

It’s endured a troubled path to UK release, but within minutes of the opening you’re reminded why DiCillo’s unique blend of acid humour and wry pathos has been sorely missed since ’97’s The Real Blonde. He makes satire sting and romance rock. Some will say Hurley’s clunky acting holds the humour down like a ball and chain, but Leary and Buscemi fully understand DiCillo’s tightrope walking, and keep both the story and the asides nimble. Leary’s good bad cop is a credible, flawed anti-hero who deserves a better fate, and finds it.

NY detective Ray Pluto (Leary), recently widowed, is a loner with chronic back pain. When he fails to prevent a hold-up in a burger bar (instead, a little kid saves the day), the papers dub him “Loser Cop”. Only his partner Jerry (Buscemi) stands by him, veiling mixed emotions of his own. Ray withdraws from life, lying on his couch with a spliff and a bunch of cheerleader videos for company. Eventually persuaded by Jerry to visit a chiropractor, Ray engages with the world again upon finding she’s the attractive doctor Ann Beamer (Hurley). A comically steamy affair ensues, but while Ray thus has his eye off the ball, his friend and neighbour (Luis Guzman) is nearly killed. “Neighbour Stabbed While Loser Cop Sleeps” chortle the Manhattan media. Ray pursues the case in a last fling at regaining his self-respect.

This being DiCillo, there are numerous twists and kinks. Jerry confesses to Ray that he thinks he has a nice ass. “Uh… well, everybody’s gay to some extent,” mutters Ray, kindly. “Hey, I’m not!” shrieks Jerry. Leary and Buscemi work wonders with this. In another apartment in Ray’s block, two wannabe screenwriters are working through their “ultra-megarealist” script, which, echoing Living In Oblivion, comments on, and intertwines with, the main action. “We should call it ‘Suck The Monkey’,” chimes one, “that’s so in-your-face.” “Whoa, yo, bro, no!” protests his buddy. Hurley throws food at smokers in restaurants; Leary’s embarrassed-to-be-with-her-even-though-she’s-hot cringe is a sight to behold.

“I wanted to make an adult movie that you could enjoy without a lobotomy,” DiCillo’s said.

Your brain will laugh its socks off. Very splendid.

OPENS JULY 4, CERT 12A, 231 MINS

The title of writer-director Ron Maxwell’s prequel to his equally lengthy Gettysburg (1993) sums up his attitude to America’s Civil War?as a conflict between moral giants and holy armies. Like Spielberg’s recent hits inspired by Stephen Ambrose’s patriotic history books (Saving Private Ryan, Band Of Brothers), Maxwell suggests even this most terrible of America’s wars is part of a wider heroic narrative for God’s chosen nation.

Moving from secession through the Confederate successes preceding Gettysburg’s apocalypse, this is largely the South’s story, focusing on their brilliant General “Stonewall” Jackson (Stephen Lang). Though Jackson’s military faith in bayonets unfortunately recalls Corporal Jones, his higher trust in the Lord adds to a daringly Biblical tone, maintained in a mighty new Dylan theme song. But despite Lang’s driven performance and Robert Duvall’s almost mystical Robert E Lee, that spirituality is dully doubt-free and sanitised, as is slavery, and the bloody carnage wrought by these generals in their stirring chessboard battles.

OPENS JULY 4, CERT 15, 110 MINS

Eddie and Maria live in rural seclusion, scraping by on a small timber business and subsisting on home-grown vegetables. She is nervy and bird-like, he’s a gentle bear of a man. Although little is said, it’s clear that for this damaged couple, their home and the stoic simplicity of their existence is a refuge from other, wilder past lives.

Then a chance encounter brings Kullman into their world. A former acquaintance of Eddie, recently released from prison, he’s treated at first with hostility by Maria. The couple’s little world is disrupted and neither will be quite the same again.

This atmospheric Norwegian psychodrama is remarkably powerful, particularly given that the actors apparently improvised much of the dialogue. Director Marius Holst favours long, meditative takes and striking wide shots to build tension and create menace. With echoes of early Polanski, this first film contains some of the most fascinating performances that you’ll see all year from leads Maria Bonnevie and Kim Bodnia as Maria and Eddie. A totally absorbing experience.

OPENS JULY 25, CERT 15, 118 MINS

In these days of shock and awe we might all feel a twinge of nostalgia for the Cold War’s certainties, but Wolfgang Becker’s Goodbye Lenin! looks back on old East Germany with neither indulgence nor anger.

Hardcore socialist Christiane (Katrin Sass) falls into a coma when her son, Alex (Daniel Br

OPENS, JULY 4, CERT 12, 98 MINS

Veteran documentarian Tareque Masud’s Cannes award-winning feature is both a tender coming-of-age tale (button-cute boy realises that world is harsh place) and a continuous, meandering and essentially inconclusive debate on the nature of religious and political freedoms in late-’60s East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

Anu (Nurul Islam Bablu) is the wide-eyed pre-pubescent protagonist with a penchant for Hindi festivals and decadent Western ways who is sent by his angry fundamentalist father from the family home to a strict Islamic school, or madrasa. Here, Anu befriends the school patsy, Rokon (Russell Farazi), adjusts to the harsh new regime, and dreams of happier times spent with his kindly communist uncle Milon (Soaeb Islam). And yet, whenever the movie threatens to take off, and Anu’s journey hints at catharsis, Masud obscures the revelation with sermonising. Like Ken Loach on a bad day, we get passionate teachers, grumpy prefects, howling minstrels and wizened old boatmen all proffering their opinions on martial law vs democracy, Sufis vs mullahs and pacifism vs fundamentalism.

Ultimately quite wearing.

DIRECTED BY Paul Justman

STARRING The Funk Brothers, Joan Osborne, Bootsy Collins, Chaka Khan

Opens July 25, Cert PG, 108 mins

Detroit, 1959, and Berry Gordy gathers the best musicians from the city’s jazz and blues circuit and sets them to work as the house band on his fledgling Motown label. Holed up in the garage at 2648 West Grand Boulevard, these guys put the backbeat into Hitsville USA and, during Motown’s golden age, play on more hit records than The Rolling Stones, Elvis and The Beatles combined. Some feat, but The Funk Brothers are soul music’s unsung heroes?and director Paul Justman’s fabulous documentary attempts to recover their legacy.

Inspired by producer and music supervisor Allan Sluksky’s 1989 biography of The Funk Brothers’ late bassist James Jamerson, Justman’s doc is shot at the Detroit after-hours club where the band developed an inimitable sound, playing gigs to supplement their pitiful Motown wage. We get the history of the group from surviving members: keyboard player Joe Hunter, drummer Uriel Jones and bassist Bob Babbitt?sly old coots to a man, full of self-deprecating humour, whose anecdotes about Smokey, Marvin, Diana and Stevie are the stuff of pure gold. But the film has many wistful, not to mention downright sad, moments. One of the most striking comes during a series of vox pops with shoppers in a Detroit collector’s record store. Each is asked to identify the musicians who played on every great Motown smash. No one knows the answer.

Intercut with these reminiscences we get some great footage of the chaps?some of it archival, some of it contemporary with the Brothers jamming with Chaka Khan, Boosty Collins, Ben Harper and Joan Osborne. Even now, reformed after 30 years, they’ve got the funk in spades.

Justman carefully deconstructs the fantasy image perpetrated by Berry Gordy and the Motown family. The fulcrum of The Funk Brothers?the late great drummer Benny Benjamin and James Jamerson?went largely under-acknowledged during their lifetimes. Benjamin died a lonely death in 1968 and, damningly, Jamerson only got to attend the Motown 25th anniversary concert in 1983 after buying a ticket from a tout. He died a few weeks later. This film suffers for their absence, and the grainy re-enactments Justman stages seem superfluous.

That aside, this is the best kind of documentary?a salutary history lesson told with care and affection.