You can use a inline visualforce page to achieve this . instead of placing the related list on the page layout you can place that inline visualforce page. The page should have similar look and feel as salesforce plus some place to define the filters.
What do you mean by filter? Hide or show columns? Hide or show columns based on a criteria? Or filter records based on some sort of criteria?
Regards.
if you don't mind can you please share example code of inline visualforce page, so that i can use of it.