DVD, Blu-ray and TV

At their mid-'70s peak, the stoner Laurel & Hardy personified friendly drug culture - and, accordingly, now seem dated. There are flashes of inspired humour, but only the most devoted pothead would want to wade through this box set, which contains Cheech & Chong's Next Movie (with Pee Wee Herman), Nice Dreams, Things Are Tough All Over, Get Out Of My Room and Cheech's solo Born In East LA.

Sidney Pollack directed, Coppola co-wrote, Natalie Wood, Robert Redford and Charles Bronson star; how come it's so disappointing? A Tennessee Williams adaptation, Wood plays a dreamy but slinky belle in a stifling Southern smalltown boarding house. She falls for golden stranger Redford?then gets left behind. Hard to swallow, but Wood is highly watchable, and the cinematography is exemplary.

SPIDER-MAN 2 IS THE best movie adaptation of a superhero comic since Superman 2—one each to Marvel and DC, then. Like that 1980 Christopher Reeve (R.I.P.) super-vehicle, here the eponymous character, played by Tobey Maguire with muscular sensitivity, is torn between saving the world and giving it all up for The Girl (Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane). This sets things up quite nicely for Peter Parker's biblical abdication of responsibility when the prospect of losing MJ becomes too great and inevitable return when he realises his true calling.

Abel Ferrara's slick 1993 adaptation of Jack Finney's páranoid sci-fi novel about human beings being replaced in their sleep by alien duplicates is the third screen version, and surprisingly good considering the director was compromised by the studio's desperation for a hit. Ferrara relocates the action to a military base, and Gabrielle Anwar and Meg Tilly are among those being menaced. The SFX are gross but impressive.

You'd have to be Scrooge (or rather Mr Potter) not to recognise Capra as a film-maker whose delight in the human spirit produced some of the finest, sharpest comedies of vintage Hollywood. Here's four of'em-Jimmy Stewart in You Can't Take it With You, Mr Smith Goes To Washington and everyone's festive favourite, It's A Wonderful Life, plus 1934's It Happened One Night. Heart-melting brilliance.

Scintillating songs let down by clumsy visuals

Robust, insightful doc by Startup.com director Jehane Noujaim examining the role of Arabic news channel Al Jazeera during the recent Gulf War. Despite being damned by Donald Rumsfeld as the mouthpiece of Al-Qaeda, Al Jazeera emerges as the only honest voice, struggling to be heard above the clamour of misinformation, manipulation and deceit (most of it, ironically, from the US networks). A real David and Goliath story, expertly told.

If Mary's never quite convinced the world she merited that "the voice of R&B's future" hype, she's godhead to believers: 5,000 funked-up fans fill the LA Amphitheatre here. Her first concert DVD, it finds her belting through I'm-so-damaged-but-the-merchandising-revenue-sure-helps material like "No More Drama" and "Your Child", and duetting, weirdly, with big-screen images of Lil' Kim and BIG. CHRIS ROBERTS

Not quite Fellini at his most brilliantly enigmatic, but the movie that made his name. Christ is helicoptered out of Rome while the city decays into a listless Sodom for the international jet set; Marcello Mastroianni plays the louche hack carrying too much ennui to write a novel, documenting the party people's jaded adventures for local scandal sheets, worried his soul is dying. The decadence looks tame today, but it still has Anita Ekberg in the fountain.

For years, Ringo has surrounded himself live with established musicians (here including Paul Carrack and Sheila E), each performing songs of their own. The audience, then, are expected to settle for usually no more than eight from Starr himself. Offsetting this disappointment are the warm scenes off stage and in interviews. CAROL CLERK