Affliction (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin

One of American cinema's most intelligent, thought-provoking and uncompromising artists, the writer and director Paul Schrader returns to the peak of his form with his quietly powerful and profoundly affecting film of the Russell Banks novel, Affliction. In its theme of an emotionally bruised man seeking redemption and drawn into violent, self-destructive behaviour, Affliction eerily echoes a preoccupation in Schrader's work which has been evident and eloquently expressed since his early screenplays for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. The novelist and film-maker Paul Auster has commented that "the combination of Russell Banks and Paul Schrader in an artistic context proves the existence of God."

Schrader's skilful, precise distillation of Banks's 1989 novel succeeds both in remaining inherently faithful to its source and in treating that material through a subtly cinematic exposition. The film is set at the start of the deer-hunting season in the small, snow-capped town of Lawford in upstate New Hampshire, where Wade Whitehouse (played by Nick Nolte) ekes out a meagre living as the town's parttime police officer and school crossing guard.

Now in his forties, Wade is a human wreck, drinking heavily and living in a battered trailer. He has failed to make anything of his life, unlike his younger brother, Rolfe (Willem Dafoe) - the film's narrator - who is a college professor in Boston. Wade's wife (Mary Beth Hurt) has left him for marriage to a wealthy man, and his nine-year-old daughter has no time for him, even though he vainly persists with the delusion that some day, somehow he might be granted custody of her. The only light in Wade's life is the sweet-natured waitress (Sissy Spacek) who remains patiently involved with him.

The roots of Wade's sadness and deep sense of failure are explained in grainy flashbacks to his childhood - when he was brutalised and demeaned by a cold, domineering father (James Coburn), a mean-spirited, alcoholic bully who crushed the boy's spirit and capacity for self-belief and trust in others. "At least I was never afflicted by that man's violence," Wade's brother, Rolfe, notes with detachment in voiceover.

As Wade's personal crises well up and threaten to burst their fragile banks, his edginess is exacerbated by a gnawing, nagging toothache. Still desperately trying to make himself feel needed, he gets himself caught up in knots as he tries to unravel an apparent murder mystery involving a deer hunter.

Russell Bank's novel Affliction clearly resonated with Paul Schrader, who underwent such a repressive Calvinist upbringing under a strict father that he did not see a movie until he was 18 and, like Rolfe Whitehouse, cut his family ties and went to college. In his immaculately structured film of Banks's book Schrader has fashioned a searing, intense and deeply unsettling picture of wrecked hopes, wounded machismo and the hereditary line of male violence. This is thoughtful, sobering cinema achieved with a deceptive simplicity and a fierce conviction which makes it utterly riveting. It is distinctively lit in chilly shades of winter by Paul Sarossy, the gifted cinematographer who also shot cinema's only other Russell Banks adaptation to date, Atom Egoyan's admirable, affecting treatment of The Sweet Hereafter.

In the finest performance of his career which may very well earn him an Oscar next month, Nick Nolte plays the emotionally damaged Wade in a raw, risk-taking and physically expressive portrayal which imprints itself on the memory. His fellow Oscar nominee James Coburn - a light character actor upon few demands were placed until Sam Peckinpah imaginatively cast him as more complex characters in Pat Garrett And Billy The Kid and Cross Of Iron - fully seizes upon the opportunity of playing the bloated, glazed-eyed brutal father.

Little Voice (15) General release

A solidly accomplished, crowd-pleasing production which operates as a fine showcase for its well-chosen British cast, Mark Herman's film is based on the acclaimed stage play, The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice, written by Jim Cartwright as a vehicle for the young Lancashire actress, Jane Horrocks and her remarkable ability to impersonate the singing and speaking voices of divas such as Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey and Marlene Dietrich.

Horrocks wholly engagingly plays the central character who's known as LV (for Little Voice). She is painfully shy and her whole world revolves around her room and her late father's formidable vinyl collection, which she treasures and which, since his death, is the only thing that gives meaning to her life.

She lives with her mother, a foul-mouthed, brassy harridan played in a gloriously outsized performance by a cast-against-type Brenda Blethyn. Michael Caine plays the seedy, failed talent agent who manages to persuade LV to perform her gifted impersonations at a local club and Ewan McGregor is unusually subdued as the British Telecom repairman and pigeon-fancier who chastely fancies LV, too.

This captivating film is directed by Mark Herman, who adapted Cartwright's play for the screen, and it marks a significant improvement on Herman's rather over-rated previous film, Brassed Off, another filmed play concerned with humour, tragedy and music. Herman triumphantly pulls out all the theatrical stops for the big numbers when the crunched-up, withdrawn LV is wholly transformed by performance and Horrocks sets the screen alight.

Michael Caine, who is always at his most interesting when playing rougher, sleazier characters (as in Get Carter and Mona Lisa), is on vintage form, and he contributes an amazing, booze-and-anger-fuelled performance of Roy Orbison's It's Over that even threatens to put LV's dazzling vocal gymnastics in the shade.

Hugh Linehan adds:

This Year's Love (18) General release

Set in the quasi-bohemian milieu of Camden in north London, writer/director David Kane's debut feature is structured as a sort of La Ronde Lite, charting the interwoven sexual dalliances of six characters in their late twenties. Douglas Henshall is a tattoo artist whose marriage to Catherine McCormack collapses on the couple's wedding day, whereupon McCormack takes up with womanising artist Dougray Scott, while Henshall goes off with pub singer Kathy Burke, before each becomes involved in turn with mentally unstable comic book fan Ian Hart and rebellious rich kid Jennifer Ehle.

The schematic structure makes for a certain sense of predictability, as we wait for each character to end up in bed with whoever's next in line, and Kane peppers his soundtrack with the sort of bonehead Britpop anthems that seem to be de rigueur for every film out of the UK at the moment, but This Year's Love is redeemed by the quality of the performances from its excellent cast, who invest these protagonists with more depth than they probably deserve.

Kane's writing is uneven, and the film, like its characters, seems to be wandering around in a fog for long periods of time, while cinematographer Robert Alazraki tries but fails to make Camden visually interesting. However, it's refreshing to see a British romantic comedy that isn't afraid of the grubbier side of life, and doesn't feel the need to insist on its characters living happily ever after.