You have questions; Film Comment has answers. You in this case being what they call a “cinephile:” a movie lover for whom Entertainment Weekly doesn’t cut it as a guide to film culture.

What’s the word from Cannes, Toronto, Korea, and Kazakhstan? What’s the hot new trend, national cinema, or name to know? What do Amy Taubin, Gavin Smith, Kent Jones, and – Joan Rivers! – have to say about the state of the art? From what far-flung corner of the globe has peripatetic, sleep-deprived Olaf Moller returned to report? And most important of all, how many movies will Armond White of the New York Press declare a “bomb” on the “Critics Choice” checklist? (Usually about half.)

If these aren’t the kind of questions you’re in the habit of asking, you might assume that a magazine more interested in the Thessaloniki Film Festival than the Academy Awards would be boring, elitist, or irrelevant. To be sure, a lot of ink is split over marginalized masters like Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Jia Zhangke, but you won’t find better writing on “The Aviator” or Clint Eastwood anywhere else on the newsstand.

The chief value of Film Comment, however, is in the discovery, celebration, and explication of the cinematic peripheries. One of the smartest guys I know doesn’t understand why he’d want to read about movies he might never get a chance to see. The short answer is that if no one writes about them, fueling the enthusiasm of even a tiny coterie audience, then challenging films will simply vanish and film culture decline.

Even if you live in New York City – the best place to see movies this side of Paris – it’s not easy to keep your eyes sharpened on the cutting edge of contemporary cinema. The latest cause celebre might run for a week at Cinema Village, screen once at Anthology Film Archives, or eventually become available on an import DVD. But often it never shows up anywhere at all.

Enter Film Comment Selects, an invaluable event organized by the magazine’s editors and contributors. Starting tonight with the U.S. premiere of Olivier Assayas’s “Clean,” and ending February 24 with the controversial documentary “Route 181: Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel,” the series offers a package of local premieres, undistributed gems, and rare repertory titles.

The program begins with a pair of prizewinners from the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. Maggie Cheung was honored for her raw, nervy performance as an aging scenester with a heroin problem trying to stay “Clean” (screening today at 6:30 p.m.) in a wonderful new movie by Olivier Assayas. Meticulously detailed and brilliantly cast (Nick Nolte’s extraordinary supporting performance might be the finest we’ll see all year), it’s a modest, heartfelt movie that may be underrated by fans of the filmmaker’s more cerebral work.

Think of “Clean” as Mr. Assayas’s “Million Dollar Baby”: a deceptively conventional, deeply felt star vehicle made with knockout craftsmanship and an ache in its bones. In fact, it’s very much a part of his oeuvre: This story of a woman’s soul navigating the seductions, boobytraps, and dead ends of the globalized 21st century could the unplugged, optimistic B-side of the techno-remix “demon lover.”

Then there’s “Old Boy,” (today, 5 & 9 p.m.) Park Chan-wook’s hyperviolent, hyperbolic revenge thriller. Notorious for a scene in which the raving antihero (Choi Min-suk) gobbles down a very live octopus, this “state-of-the-art helping of Extreme Asian hyperpulp” (according to Mr. Smith) walked off with the Grand Prize at Cannes. It is sure to provoke a walkout or two at the Walter Reade. A previous Park provocation, the name-says-it-all “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance,” will screen later (February 13 & 18).

Both “Clean” and “Old Boy” have secured distribution and are heading for New York theaters later this year, so you may want to select from the undistributed choices. Following in the hallowed footsteps of “Blissfully Yours,” the Argentine jungle enigma “Los Muertos” (February 17 & 18) is the very definition of progressive narrative. Formalism: check. Ambiguity: check. Sparse dialogue: check. Metaphorical tease: check. Provocative goat-flaying sequence: check. Box-office potential: nil.

Lisandro Alonso’s remarkable sophomore film follows a middle-aged ex-convict as he travels through lush modulations of landscape, slowly making his way upriver to reunite with – or menace? – his family. A concentrated, hermetic film, “Los Muertos” has been interpreted as a sort of avant-garde serial-killer movie. Whatever it is, this is a rare chance – maybe your only chance – to see one of the most absorbing movies on the festival circuit. PETA types proceed with extreme caution; everyone else plunge in.

“Los Muertos” is one of the movies that has informed my new, almost certainly bogus theory that the best movies are either 80 minutes long or three hours long. “The Ister” (February 13), part of the latter category, fuses travelogue, history lesson, philosophical inquiry, and political rumination into a bracingly intellectual video essay.

Drawing inspiration from a lecture by Heidegger on a poem by Holderlin, filmmakers David Barison and Daniel Ross voyage up the Danube and back through time, offering a smart montage of images with even smarter commentary by a group of archeologists, philosophers, and artists. Like last year’s essay essential, “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” this dense, text-heavy epic demands and rewards participation. Let’s hope Film Forum agrees.

Other undistributed titles include “Le Pont des Arts” (February 11 & 15), the latest by cult auteur Eugene Green (“Le Monde Vivant”); Samira Makmalbaf’s Afghanistan-set allegory “At Five in the Afternoon” (February 10 & 12); and the latest mind-bender by Takashi Miike, Japan’s unstoppable genre lunatic. Starring the legendary Takeshi Kitano as “an angel of death traveling through Japanese history leaving a trail of blood behind him, “Izo” (February 11 & 12) is “positively outrageous even by Miike standards,” says Olaf Moller, who knows from positively outrageous.

On the coat tails of the recent reconstruction of “The Big Red One,” a Film Comment favorite, two of Samuel Fuller’s magnificent war films are also turning up. To be screened, and absolutely not to be missed: rare archival prints of “Fixed Bayonet” (February 16) and “Steel Helmut” (February 16).

As always, the program includes a thematic sidebar, and this year it’s devoted to French actress Bulle Ogier (subject of a forthcoming Film Comment appreciation by Gary Indiana.) The rich survey includes Alain Tanner’s “The Salamander” (February 19, 20 & 22), Werner Schroter’s nutty “Deux” (February 19 & 20), Barbet Schroeder’s kinky “Maitresse” (February 19 & 22), Luis Bunuel’s classic “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (February 20), and best of all, a new print of Jacques Rivette’s rarely shown “Le Pont du Nord” (February 19 & 20).

In the interest of full disclosure, I should state that I often write for Film Comment. In the interest of fuller disclosure, I should admit I’ve got my own gripes with the magazine. Ever so conveniently, I’ve run out space to say what they are, but the essential Film Comments Selects program isn’t one of them.

Until February 24 (Lincoln Center, 212-496-3809).