DVD, Blu-ray and TV

Coppola's love-in-Las Vegas musical fantasy is ripe for reappraisal

Thriller from '81 based on Whitley Strieber's novel, directed by Michael Woodstock Wadleigh, and by no means a conventional werewolf tale. Albert Finney is the cop investigating incredible gory deaths in New York... but are terrorists to blame, or animals, or Native American shape-shifters? Unusual camera techniques, a great performance from Finney, and a genuinely supernatural atmosphere that builds and builds.

While the US administration portray. Iran as hostile to culture and dissent, Samira Makhmalbaf's films suggest otherwise. Her 1997 debut, made when she was 17, tells the story of the Naderi family (played by themselves), whose daughters were kept unwashed and imprisoned until they were 12. Simple, painterly, weirdly engaging, it subtly reveals that excessive faith and the repression of women are outmoded concepts even in that 'axis-of-evil' capital Tehran.

BECOMING QUEEN

Kaufman and Gondry's complex romantic comedy dazzles

Definitive mid-period Almodóvar (post-avant-garde tyro, preestablishment icon), this typically hysterical family melodrama pitches Carmen Maura's downtrodden amphetamine-addicted housewife, her two teenage dope-dealing hustler sons, her grizzled mother-in-law and her Nazi-obsessed husband together in an anonymous Madrid apartment block. Deadpan camp at its best.

A 1986 John Hughes charmer which has acquired, over the years, near-legendary status for accidentally pre-empting the "slacker" (lack of) movement. Matthew Broderick and his Chicago buddies play truant, but through quick wits get the wheels and the girls—wish fulfilment for the pre-Nirvana generation. Crisp fun for those who found Pretty In Pink a little too dark and troubling.

Cosmic compilation boosts maligned high-fliers back into orbit

George Lucas' debut is a dystopian 1984-style fantasy of a loveless society, starring Robert Duvall. The studio hated it, hacking five minutes out of it (here restored) for its initial 1970 release, but even though bleak and predictable, it's visually breath-taking. Speculate on where Lucas might have gone from here if only he hadn't been waylaid by Wookies.

When blackmailers try extorting businessman Roy Scheider over his fling with a stripper, he thwarts them by telling his wife—so they film the girl being murdered and threaten to frame him. At which point, it gets personal. Although co-scripted by the author, John Frankenheimer's flat 1986 movie is just another unsatisfactory Elmore Leonard adaptation. The dialogue occasionally crackles, but the casting is off and the pace drags enough to let you count the implausibilities.