Strictly Sinatra (15) <br></br> The Body (12) <br></br> Jump Tomorrow (PG) <br></br> Kiss of the Dragon (18) <br></br> La Strada (PG)

Ian Hart's cherishable gift for impersonation was first evidenced in the role of the young John Lennon in Backbeat. His imitative skills are again called upon in Peter Capaldi's comedy drama Strictly Sinatra, this time as a struggling nightclub crooner named Toni Cocozza who's a kind of one-man tribute band to Ol' Blue Eyes. With his Scots accent, curly perm and gentle demeanour Toni isn't a natural heir to Sinatra, but up on stage with mic in hand, his vocal inflections and mannerisms really aren't a bad copy. Personally I'd have liked a little more of the singing and a little less of the plot, which concerns Toni's moral surrender to a local mobster (Brian Cox) who knew Sinatra back in the Vegas days (or says that he did).

Set against this pernicious influence is his fatherly piano player (Alun Armstrong) and a cigarette girl (Kelly Macdonald) he meets on his adventures in clubland. It bowls along pleasantly enough without being especially convincing or seductive, and I wish they'd picked any other song for a finale than "My Way", that boorish ode to self-regard and, incidentally, a number Sinatra himself always disliked. But, to give him credit, Hart performs it with tremendous conviction – has he ever considered Stars in Their Eyes?

A conflict between science and religion is portentously played out in The Body when a Vatican troubleshooter (Antonio Banderas) and an Israeli archaeologist (Olivia Williams, wildly miscast) puzzle over a strange excavation in downtown Jerusalem: a 2,000-year-old tomb discloses what may or may not be the remains of Jesus. The body is soon immersed in a tide of political controversy, with Catholics, Jews and Palestinians all pressing their claims on its soul, while the priest (Derek Jacobi) who made the preliminary investigation goes bonkers in the face of its awesome significance. The writer-director Jonas McCord has hold of a good subject, but his film is let down by a fuzziness of focus and some pretty inept writing – exposition is bolted uneasily on to some very dreary action, and nobody should ever have to say with a straight face, "I'm being blamed for destroying a world religion". It may interest you to know that The Body has been on the shelf for more than two years, and frankly, it smells like it.

The British writer-director Joel Hopkins's feature debut Jump Tomorrow is a small, sweet, silly romantic comedy that may win a few friends. George (Tunde Adebimpe), a New Yorker with a diffident smile, has fallen in love at first sight with Spanish beauty Alicia (Natalia Verbeke), but he has to go to Niagara Falls for his arranged wedding, while she's on her way north to introduce her English boyfriend (James Wilby) to her family. Playing George's companion is lonelyheart Frenchman Gerard (Hippolyte Girardot), who offers not just life advice but the practical boon of an old Citroën. Complications of a not particularly hilarious nature ensue, and Hopkins's oddball style (jump-cuts, kooky colour schemes) is a bit too calculated in its eager-ness to please. If he can attend to his storytelling, rather than merely urge us to root for his characters, he may yet be one to watch.

Does Tcheky Karyo never get tired of playing villains? His latest repository of psychopathic nastiness in Kiss of the Dragon is a Parisian cop who runs the city as Sodom-on-the-Seine and keeps the likes of the unfortunate Jessica (Bridget Fonda, pictured) on a diet of heroin and prostitution. Still, he has his work cut out when he tries double-crossing super-agent Jet Li, seconded to Paris from China on a hush-hush mission. Li is kind of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee rolled into one, flying through the air with the greatest of ease and usually landing his boot – crack! – on the bridge of his combatant's nose; his other trick is niftily disabling the enemy with acupuncture needles, either paralysing them or sending them to sleep. A quick jab of the latter would have been personally very welcome.

From the vaults comes Fellini's tragi-comic fable La Strada (1954), a fine antique now restored in a sharp new print. Why is it that Audrey Tautou's sweet-souled sprite in Amelie leaves me cold yet Giulietta Masina's wide-eyed simpleton clutches at the heart? "What a face," one gallant remarks, "more like an artichoke than a woman", yet to watch her eyes brim with tears is to feel the expressive comic pathos of Stan Laurel, while her submission to the brutish strongman (Anthony Quinn) who tyrannises her has all the terrified devotion of a whipped cur to its master.

Not having seen the film in years, I had forgotten how bleak the background of rural Italy looks, how good Richard Basehart is as the tightrope-walking fool, and how his scenes with Masina play with a lovely melancholy quite different from the rest of the film. It was good to be reminded.