Its setting among New Zealand’s Maori warriors aside, you’d be forgiven for dismissing The Dead Lands (Magnolia) at first glance as one of those subcompetent C-movie action flicks that populate the lower orders of the home-video ecosystem. But if you did opt for an evening of half-naked men subduing each other with Stone Age weapons instead of Gracie jiu-jitsu, you’d be in for a pleasant surprise. Director Toa Fraser’s film is, in fact, a B-movie, a creditable action yarn reinforced with a core of integrity by its Maori roots.

Effectively an Antipodean Apocalypto, The Dead Lands follows Hongi (James Rolleston) as he sets off to avenge his tribe’s slaughter at the hands of a strutting rival (Te Kohe Tuhaka). Since he’s all alone, Hongi turns to an unlikely ally: the unnamed warrior/boogeyman (Lawrence Makoare) who kills and eats any trespassers in the title no-go zone. The rest of the film follows a chase-fight-chase rhythm while allowing Hongi to come of age and the guardian of the Dead Lands to flesh out his own backstory with a minimum of corn or simpiness. Many of the warriors look a bit too Crossfit-ted for pure realism, but the fights are handled with aplomb, the non-Hobbit-ish New Zealand scenery is amazing, and the story’s cultural roots give it bends and angles that make it feel fresh. At the climax, Hongi doesn’t do what the typical overmuscled, vengeful Western action hero would do, and that makes it all the more satisfying.

Abel Ferrara’s latest film, Welcome to New York (IFC), is another title that might get a hipshot pass when you’re scrolling through options. Ferrara’s films haven’t gotten decent domestic distribution in decades, so most viewers have no idea what he’s been up to, and his past mix of grindhouse sensibilities and auteur ambitions constitutes an acquired taste for most anyway. In addition, New York is Ferrara’s barely fictionalized take on the lurid Dominique Strauss-Khan sex scandal and stars Gerard Depardieu, who seemingly hasn’t been good in anything since well before the advent of the Euro.

To be sure, Ferrara opens the film by diving face-first into the booze-and-hookers netherworld of sexually compulsive French politician Devereaux (Depardieu’s Strauss-Khan stand-in), and the director takes a stab at a theory as to why such a man might sexually assault a random hotel maid (Pamela Afesi). But from there, Ferrara recedes into dispassion. He merely observes as Devereaux is arrested and processed. (If you’ve been aching to see the pendulous 66-year-old Depardieu strip-searched, ache no more.) And he watches coolly as Devereaux’s wife (Jacqueline Bisset) begins her own processing regarding what her husband’s done and what it means for her. Welcome to New York neither dramatizes nor pathologizes the unrepentant Devereaux, and yet it doesn’t lose interest. Ferrara has disavowed the cut released in the United States, but it nonetheless stands as one of his best films in years.