“The International” is a contemporary conspiracy thriller that also feels like it would not be out of place as a long-lost Harry Palmer espionage movie from the Sixties. Clive Owen stars as Louis Salinger, a dogged, jet-setting Interpol agent on a mission to expose the arms-dealing activities of the International Bank of Business and Commerce.

Assisting Louis is Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts), a New York District Attorney under pressure to deliver results before her bosses pull the plug on the investigation. As the film opens, Salinger witnesses a fellow agent’s shocking murder by a seemingly invisible assassin and thus, from the outset our protagonists realise the stakes have been set colossally high. As they pursue their case against the bank right across Europe and beyond, each stone they upturn leads to further clues, but more often than not is accompanied by onerous collateral damage.

“The Machine Girl” is something else. I’ve reviewed a bundle and seen many, many more “gorefests” in my time, but this Japanese movie really takes the blood-soaked biscuit to a whole new level! Playing the titular role is brilliant newcomer Minase Yashiro. Her character, Ami, is a spirited high school student who finds herself having to tear-up her morality rule book when her brother Yu and his best friend are first bullied and then murdered by a gang of ruthless boys.

That would be bad enough, but the leader of the gang is the son of a local Yakuza boss, and anyone who gets on the wrong side of him is sure to meet with a swift and bloody end. Shockingly, Ami gets seriously injured in an attempt to avenge her brother, and loses a forearm. Fortunately for her, she is sheltered and brought back to good health by the parents of Yu’s friend – Miki (Asami) and Suguru Sugihara (Yuya Ishikawa). The Sugiharas also happen to be engineering whizzes, and construct an amazing machine gun prosthetic for Ami for help level the odds for round two! With Miki to fight by her side, Ami charges straight into the lair of the Yakuza, and they are more than ready for her...