A triple bill of iconic horror: Boris Karloff's Frankenstein's monster, Bela Lugosi's Dracula and Lon Chaney Jr's Wolfman. Admittedly creaky, these black-and-white chillers from the '30s and '40s still boast amazing gothic sets, mesmerising atmosphere and some riveting performances. More enchanting than scary, the best of them—James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein—appears here in its uncut form.

Exhaustive two-disc release of this superlative restored cut of producer/star Kirk Douglas and wunderkind director Stanley Kubrick's epic tale of the legendary slave-turned-rebel-leader. All together now: "I'M SPARTACUS!"

Possibly the best John Grisham-based flick since The Firm: OK, the rest were lousy, but Gary Fleder rattles this courtroom thriller along with pace and panache, and a stellar cast. Lawyers Dustin Hoffman (anti-guns) and Gene Hackman (pro-his own fat pay cheque) face off as a widow claims damages for her husband's shooting. But jury rigger John Cusack and his moll RachelWeisz are the wild cards. Classy potboiler.

Based on a Philip K Dick short story and directed by John Woo, Paycheck plays like a made-for-TV Minority Report. It boasts a screenplay from, ahem, Dean Georgaris (Tomb Raider 2—nuff said), it stars Ben Affleck and Uma Thurman at their charmless worst, and it's Woo's dullest action-direction in years. No John, slo-mo doesn't make it better!

The Vietnam war had been over for three years by the time Hal Ashby made Coming Home in 1978. Those who'd survived the combat zones of South-East Asia had returned to find themselves shunned and quarantined, like lepers in their home towns; a living, breathing reminder of a shameful war many back home would rather forget had ever happened. Some of those who came back perhaps wished they'd died out there in the jungles—the paraplegics, the traumatised, forever dreading the nameless, shapeless things that whispered to them in the night.

Paul Giamatti, a character actor who's embodied a host of losers and creeps, always merited a lead role, and was surely born to play Harvey Pekar, the grumpy but ultimately likeable (not lovable) hospital clerk who finds a means of expression through his comic books/graphic novels. Inspired by friend Robert Crumb (and this is a superior film to the 1994 documentary Crumb), our obsessive-compulsive antihero depicts and ponders the mundane and everyday through his work, and the world and his wife relate.

Henry Hathaway's Nevada Smith takes one of the characters from Harold Robbins' Hollywood potboiler The Carpetbaggers (filmed by Edward Dmytryk two years earlier, with Alan Ladd in the role) and wraps an entire movie round him. Steve McQueen stars as the young Smith, a half-breed cowboy hellbent on tracking down his parents' killers. Beautifully shot by Lucien Ballard, McQueen is as quietly hypnotic as ever.

One of the most gratifying indie dark horses of last year, with writer/director Dylan Kidd giving Campbell Scott the role of a lifetime. As ageing Lothario Roger, getting bitter as he realises his sleazy charms are fading, Scott is dynamic, demanding no sympathy as he educates and corrupts his eager-to-learn-the-ropes nephew. Jennifer Beals and Elizabeth Berkley turn their noses up. Honest to a fault.

This 1976 adaptation of Jack Higgins' best-selling WWII novel was a fitting late-'70s swan song for John Sturges. Michael Caine leads a band of principled, Nazi-hating German commandos off to invade Blighty on the sly. Robert Duvall, Donald Sutherland, Jenny Agutter and Donald Pleasance join the action.

Paul Newman, all Texan swagger and mesmerising Marlboro sneers, completely redefines the concept of 'iconic' as the eponymous heavy-drinking, skirt-chasing, joy-riding cattleman and self-declared "cold-blooded bastard" in Martin Ritt's 1962 classic. Able support comes from sultry Patricia Neal, suitably green Brandon DeWilde (Shane) and James Wong Howe's perfect black-and-white cinematography.