Singing, dancing, fire and brimstone

"The Apostle" (12) Screen at D'Olier Street, Dublin

The stereotypical image of the American evangelist, propagated in both fictional feature films and in television appearances by real-life preachers, is that of a shrewd con-artist or a grotesque opportunist. Robert Duvall offers a contrary image in The Apostle, a labour of love which he wrote, produced, directed and even financed - and he also takes the central role of a Texas-born Pentecostal preacher with an all-consuming zeal that is sorely undermined by an all-too-human frailty. For all his flaws, his character, Sonny Dewey, is a true believer. "I'm on Jesus's mailing list," he declares. Following a pre-credits prologue of him as a boy attending a service given by a black preacher, we first see him as an adult when he stops at the scene of a car crash, ignores the police barriers and prays over the young passengers whose lives are ebbing away.

On stage at a religious revival mission, Sonny's fervour is expressed in his wholly impassioned whirlwind of a performance as he joins five other preachers for an all-singing, all-dancing, all-fire, all-brimstone ritual which whips the congregation into a frenzy. Off-stage, however, his life is a mess, undermined by a certain smug arrogance and a propensity for violence. Having seriously injured the young preacher (Todd Allen) with whom his wife (Farrah Fawcett) has fallen in love, and threatened with the loss of his family and his church, Sonny goes on the run and forges a new identity and a new life for himself in a small Louisiana bayou town. "We're going to short circuit the devil today and have a Holy Ghost explosion," he promises his new flock.

Duvall's astute screenplay captures Sonny in all his contradictions, and his quite astonishing performance is charged with a fierce passion and dynamism. This is arguably Duvall's finest work as an actor in an illustrious, often underestimated career which spans most of four decades. In keeping with the film's tone, he draws naturalistic, understated performances from a cast that mixes inexperienced players with professionals such as Farrah Fawcett, Miranda Richardson and Billy Bob Thornton, all on fine form here.

The Apostle is Duvall's second film as a director, marking a hugely ambitious leap for him after his modest debut in 1982 with Angelo, My Love. His fascinating picture of Sonny Dewey's faith, reinvention and quest for redemption is acutely observed, perfectly measured in its dramatic mood-swings, and precisely sustained all the way to his simmeringly powerful finale.

"Wag The Dog" (15) Nationwide

In January of last year, during an enforced hiatus in the production of the high-budget, special-effects-driven yarn, Sphere, the film's director and star, Barry Levinson and Dustin Hoffman, teamed up with Robert De Niro and his Tribeca production company to make the political satire, Wag The Dog, which was shot in just 29 days for a fraction of what Sphere cost (and lost).

Wag The Dog is set within a fortnight of an American presidential election as the incumbent is threatened by a sex scandal involving a teenage girl and himself. Life truly imitates art in the case of one scene which shows a photograph of the president touching the girl on the shoulder - its resemblance to the much-reproduced photograph of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in a similar position is quite uncanny. Robert De Niro plays Conrad Brean, the Machiavellian spin doctor called upon by a dedicated but uptight presidential aide (Anne Heche) as the scandal looms, and Brean, in turn, seeks out the expertise of Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman), a vain, veteran Hollywood producer to whom cynicism is second nature. Together, and with the assistance of hi-tech digital technology which slickly tweaks and manipulates images, they fake a war with Albania to divert the American public from the president's personal problems. One hoax leads to another when the CIA intrude upon their scheme and Brean and Motss devise an alternative distraction involving an allegedly heroic soldier left behind in Albania. They get a convicted psychopath (Woody Harrelson) to play the soldier, and the producer's songwriter colleague (Willie Nelson) to compose a stirring patriotic anthem which sounds remarkably like We Are The World - not surprisingly, given that Tom Bahler wrote both songs.

The screenplay for Wag The Dog was rooted in Hilary Henkin's adaptation of Larry Beinhart's novel, American Heart, before David Mamet came on board to inject it with his customary caustic wit, extending the film's targets beyond politics to encompass the media and Hollywood itself. The acerbic result inevitably invokes such movies as Dr Strangelove, Network, Nashville, The Player and Bob Roberts, all of which were more focussed and incisive; and Levinson's film is neither as ambitious nor as sophisticated as Mike Nichols's political satire, Primary Colors, which opens here at the end of August.

The principal problem with Wag The Dog is its ill-judged last half-hour, where the plotting turns rudimentary and the sourness becomes misdirected. That said, there is much to savour in the entertaining - and sometimes uproariously funny - earlier stages of the picture. In a wonderfully droll change of pace, Dustin Hoffman - improbably tanned and bewigged and wearing outsized spectacles - plays the producer with unstinting relish, reputedly modelling his performance on the flamboyant Hollywood producer, Robert Evans.

"Nowhere" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin

The provocative American writer-director Gregg Araki returns to his favourite themes - of angst and alienation among mostly bisexual Los Angeles teens - with his sixth feature film, No- where, which was aptly described in the Sundance festival programme as being "like a surreal, supersaturated Beverly Hills 90210 episode". The characteristically frank and homo-erotic nature of Araki's work is signalled right from the beginning of Nowhere, as its sexually versatile 18-year-old protagonist, Dark Smith (James Duval), stands in the bathroom shower, his excitement building as his mind is bombarded with sexual fantasies - until the mood is shattered by the interruption of his shrill, shrewish mother (Beverly D'Angelo).

The movie takes place over one hectic day of sex'n'drugs'rock'roll for Dark and his disparate group of invariably nihilistic friends, with some surreal intrusions from space aliens and fears that the world is coming to an end. The humour is knowing in a Clueless kind of way, and the look is brash and lurid, but the breezy giddiness is punctuated uneasily by some abrupt violence in a rape scene and a brutal physical assault.

"The Girl With Brains in Her Feet" (members and guests only) IFC, Dublin

The Seventies revival continues with first-time director Roberto Bangura's slight but hard to dislike low-budget British picture, The Girl With Brains in Her Feet, which often strains under the evident limitations of a very low budget. It is buoyed by the ebullient central performance of young Joanna Ward as Jacqueline (nicknamed Jack), a harried 13year-old schoolgirl in Leicester in 1972, as she is faced with her burgeoning sexuality and the casual racism of classmates and neighbours - Jack is black and the daughter of a single white mother and a black father she never met. Meanwhile, her talent as a sprinter is encouraged by her patient PE teacher played by John Thompson, a regular actor in Steve Coogan's television comedy series.

Director Bangura almost swamps the movie with a Seventies soundtrack - Slade, Sweet, Tom Jones, and six T Rex tracks - which is as predictable as its is often intrusive.