DVD, Blu-ray and TV

At a provincial asylum, a down-at-heel doctor agrees to shelter an anonymous patient for the US government; soon his village is swarming with international spies, all trying to discover the new inmate's identity. This minor but hugely odd 1957 effort from Henri-Georges Clouzot has none of the suspense, nor the thrills, of his incredible Wages Of Fear or Les Diaboliques, but the atmosphere is strangely compelling.

Utterly predictable slapstick-laden festive fare as Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) prepares to spend an old-fashioned non-stop domestic disaster of a Christmas with his extended family (including Randy Quaid and an extremely young Juliette Lewis). If you'd like to see Mr Chase being hit repeatedly over the head, this could be the movie for you.

From 1992, good guy Brad Pitt and bad guy Gabriel Byrne are transported to another dimension (which just happens to be a Ralph Bakshi cartoon) where they vie for the affections of an animated version of Kim Basinger. It's Roger Rabbit without the jokes: dumb, dull, dire, and a criminal waste of money.

William Friedkin's original was dazzling, intelligent and scary; John Boorman's train wreck of a sequel is none of the above. Richard Burton is at his hammiest as the priest investigating the death of Father Merrin at the end of the first movie, Louise Fletcher plays Regan's psychiatrist, and the screenplay is one of the worst ever committed to paper. Avoid.

Renny Harlin's 1995 bomb comes midway, both chronologically and qualitatively, between Roman Polanski's fascinatingly bad Pirates (1986) and this year's Pirates Of The Caribbean (reviewed on p141). Whether casting Geena Davis as the head swashbuckler on this treasure hunt was post-feminist revisionism or sheer vanity (she's Harlin's wife) is for you to decide. Either way, it doesn't work. Looks nice, though, in a theme park way.

A patchy Italian crime thriller, the only fresh 'angle'being that the drug dealer working for the Mafia is a woman (she hides the goods in shoe boxes). Roberta Torre's direction lacks vim, but Donatella Finocchiaro is vividly compelling as the titular anti-heroine—alternately nervy and swaggering, torn between love and duty, craving affection but ultimately hard as nails. DVD EXTRAS: Stills, cast and crew biographies, trailer, BBC 4 and Edinburgh Festival promos.

Mike Figgis' brilliant experiment spawned many imitations, some by him, none as good. Against a quartered screen, four cameras show—in real time—a multi-strand narrative, played out among Tinseltown wannabes and has-beens. There's sex, murder, moral vacuums and a huge cast including Stellan Skarsgård and Saffron Burrows. Figgis' own music ices the cake. Genius.

Standout supernatural action movie from 1987. The tale of a poor young scholar who falls in love with a ghostly princess, it involves a journey to the underworld, a battle with a mile-long tongue, sword fights, songs, slapstick and some real shocks. Despite its evident lack of a budget, it's magical, mildly erotic and only marginally insane.

Roberto Rossellini's small-scale but infinitely moving 1953 masterwork plucks two stars from Hollywood—Rossellini's wife Ingrid Bergman and the magnificent George Sanders—and smashes them down on the road as a crisis-hit couple coming apart during a trip in Italy. Rossellini gave his actors the bare bones of a situation, then left them to improvise; they stumble beautifully, trying to discover their own story. The random feel anticipates the French new wave.

Tom DiCillo's offbeat comedy is a blend of cop thriller and romance which may confuse the uninitiated, but diehards will lap up his calmly twisted humour. Denis Leary's an NY cop with backache, recently widowed, who's lousy on the job till chiropractor Liz Hurley shows him love and partner Steve Buscemi questions his sexuality. Factor in many cinephile in-jokes and it's an intelligent, cynical joy.