Angela's Ashes (15) General release

Alan Parker's admirable, deeply affecting film of Angela's Ashes opens in Brooklyn in 1935, on a moment of rare joy in the family of the impoverished young Irish immigrant couple, Malachy and Angela McCourt, with the birth of Margaret Mary, their fifth child and first daughter. In the next scene the baby dies. "She's awful quiet, Angela," says Malachy, a man virtually incapable of facing up to the harsh facts of life. "And cold," he adds, as the realisation dawns that Margaret Mary is dead.

The hard-knocks life of the McCourts continues when they return to Ireland, the only Irish family saying goodbye to the Statue of Liberty rather than hello, as the grown-up Frank McCourt (voiced by Andrew Bennett) observes on the soundtrack. They return to Angela's native Limerick, to life in a cramped, flea-infested flat - where death takes their young twins, Oliver and Eugene, one after the other.

Nothing is overstated about Parker's approach to this wrenching material. There is silence when the second twin dies and the camera observes a few curls of his blond hair over the edge of a blanket while his despairing mother caresses the dead body. Any movie which depicts the deaths of three small children in the first 20 minutes could have wallowed in heartstrings-tugging sentiment, but some of the more remarkable aspects of this film are what Parker chooses not to do, and he treats the most harrowing scenes with a welcome restraint, remaining compassionate without turning manipulative.

That restraint is evident throughout the film, in the performances, the timing and judging of scenes, and even in the music of John Williams, a composer prone to bombastic excesses. Here Williams underscores the drama with effective but unobtrusive music which, thankfully, eschews the Irish cinema cliches of harps, tin whistle and uilleann pipes.

That score accompanies a film which is succinctly composed in a series of telling vignettes, accumulating into a boy's own story of striving and surviving against all the odds, and offering testimony to the indomitable nature of the human spirit.

We see young Frank at the receiving end of corporal punishment in primary school, and in later years, of rejection by the Christian Brothers and the church where he volunteers as an altar boy. We witness his mother's humiliation as she queues for alms at the St Vincent de Paul and is told beggars can't be choosers, and again as she grovels for leftovers from the priests' dinners. Worst of all, there is the sequence - sensitively suggested off-screen - where she gives in to the sexual demands of the grotesque cousin who grudgingly gives accommodation to her and her children.

Yet for all the horrors and abject poverty it unflinchingly addresses, Parker's film of Angela's Ashes is shot through with the great humanity which has marked out the most honest and genuinely socially concerned films in international cinema, and the Italian neo-realist classics, in particular.

One Irish newspaper advised its readers to miss the movie of Angela's Ashes on the grounds that it would be too depressing to watch - which makes one wonder what advice they offered regarding Schindler's List. Nevertheless, Parker's film proves to be rich in humour, especially in the delightful scenes of young Frank preparing for his first Holy Communion; going to Confession in scenes even funnier than the confessional punchline in Parker's earlier Irish movie, The Commitments; and displaying his skills as a writer for the first time with a school essay, Jesus and the Weather, the gist of which is that Jesus would never have lived in Limerick because it was always raining there.

Incidentally, much has been made of just how much it rains in this movie, even though there were heavier, more persistent downfalls throughout Se7en, for example, and London and Pittsburgh are awash with torrential rain in the imminent releases, The End of the Affair and Stigmata, respectively.

Alan Parker's virtuosity as a visual artist has never been more vividly illustrated than in the succession of subdued but indelible compositions which constitute Angela's Ashes, the eighth Parker picture to be lit by the gifted cinematographer, Michael Seresin. The atmosphere and credibility of the film are greatly enhanced by Geoffrey Kirkland's gritty and elaborate production design, and the entirely authentic costumes designed by Consolata Boyle. While the title singles out Angela McCourt, the focus of the film is on her eldest son, Frank, and the highly versatile actress Emily Watson unselfishly holds back yet acutely catches Angela in all her naivete, desperation and impotence. Playing her equally immature husband, an alcoholic who could only be relied upon to be unreliable, Robert Carlyle subtly reveals the man's deep-rooted insecurities and yet manages to show how such a man could still be loved by the children he let down so often.

The central role of Frank is wonderfully played by three young Irish actors at different ages - Joe Breen, Ciaran Owens and Michael Legge - whose marvellously natural performances affirm Parker's skill with child actors, which has been evident since his earliest work, The Evacuees and Bugsy Malone. The linking transitions, as one boy takes over from another, are masterfully achieved with a deceptive simplicity. One brief scene brings the three young actors together, and it is magical.

There is outstanding work from Ronnie Masterson as Angela's practical and ever-patient mother and Pauline McLynn as Frank's cranky but essentially caring Aunt Aggie in the film's exemplary Irish supporting cast, which includes Liam Carney, Eanna McLiam, Gerard McSorley, Des McAleer, Brendan Cauldwell, Eileen Pollock, Moira Deady and James Mahon.

The Limey (18) Selected cinemas

After his sharp return to form with Out of Sight, director Steven Soderbergh stays with the crime movie genre for his droll and stylish The Limey. Cleverly scripted by Lem Dobbs, it brings together two 1960s cultural icons from opposite sides of the Atlantic, Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda, for a cool, compelling revenge thriller.

Stamp is riveting as the steely, sardonic English career criminal, Wilson, who has just completed a nine-year sentence for armed robbery and travels to Los Angeles to track down the killer responsible for his daughter's death. His chief suspect is the oily, affluent, Sixties-fixated record producer, Terry Valentine, played by Fonda. The hard-boiled dialogue of Dobbs's witty screenplay is littered with sharp throwaway humour hinged on Wilson's Cockney rhyming slang, which baffles the Americans even more than his philosophical outbursts mystify them. "I'm going to have a butchers round the 'ouse," he declares at one point, prompting the reply, "Who're you gonna butcher?". Wilson is similarly at sea with the Southern Californian lifestyle, language and geography.

As Soderbergh's adroit timeshifting structure gradually reveals the movie's scenario, it features flashbacks to Wilson's earlier life as a young father - and to this end Soderbergh quite ingeniously employs footage of the handsome young Terence Stamp as the thief (also named Wilson) in Ken Loach's 1967 film, Poor Cow.

A fine supporting cast includes Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzman, Barry Newman and Joe Dallesandro, and the soundtrack aptly features old hits from The Who, The Hollies, The Byrds, Steppenwolf and Boston, with Stamp, who is on rare form, singing Donovan's Colours.

Summer of Sam (18) Selected cinemas

Much the more dramatically arresting of today's two new movies dealing with serial killers in New York City, Summer of Sam is Spike Lee's most provocative though least preachy movie for some time, and one of his most stylish. The setting is New York during the long hot summer of 1977 as the city sweats through a heatwave - and the fear instilled by the serial killer, David Berkowitz, who operated under the alias, Son of Sam. The film is introduced by the veteran New York journalist, Jimmy Breslin, to whom Berkowitz wrote several times. Echoing a classic American television series, Breslin presents the movie with the line, "There are eight million stories in the naked city, and this is one of them."

The serial killer story is employed, not always persuasively, as the recurring backdrop to the fictional story of two fiery young Italian-Americans in the Bronx. Vinny, played by John Leguizamo on terrific form, is a sexually insatiable hairdresser who regularly cheats on his wife (Mira Sorvino); while Ritchie (Adrien Brody) is volatile, bisexual, an early convert to the new punk movement, and a performer on and off stage at gay sex clubs. Spike Lee himself pops up in an overplayed minor role as an over-the-top television journalist reporting on - and hyping up - the heatwave and the serial killer.

Lee's 13th feature as a director, Summer of Sam is arguably his most impressive since Do the Right Thing, like which it bristles with energy, exuberance and flair. One particularly eventful evening takes Leguizamo and Sorvino through three key clubs of the era - CBGB, Studio 54 and the hedonistic Plato's Retreat - in this vibrant, ambitious exercise which packs a visceral charge.

The Bone Collector (15) General release

The shadows of Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs hang heavily over Philip Noyce's The Bone Collector, a dark and often grisly thriller in which a particularly sadistic serial killer deliberately leaves cryptic clues at the scenes of his crimes. The drama takes place mostly in darkness - by night or in spooky subterranean passages - while the rain lashes down on Manhattan.

To assist them in deciphering the cruel killer's clues, the NYPD turns to one of its finest, a brilliant criminologist implausibly named Lincoln Rhymes (Denzel Washington) and now quadriplegic after a near-fatal accident. "One finger, two shoulders and a brain, that's all I have," he tells the glum rookie officer, Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie) whom he recognises as a kindred spirit.

With the assistance of a sophisticated computer system and his own keen powers of deduction, he turns to her to carry out the physical work of the investigation, guiding her by mobile phone on hazardous and traumatic missions, to the irritation of his dull, old-fashioned and obstructive successor (Michael Rooker).

This efficiently directed thriller squanders a fairly intriguing premise by peppering it with ludicrous coincidences and steering it towards an all too obvious and conventional resolution. What carries it are the central performances of the ever-promising Jolie and the always interesting Washington, who invests his character with charm, intelligence and authority.