DVD, Blu-ray and TV

Tony Richardson's 1968 version of the military disaster mirrors the decade it was made in, with a strong anti-war theme. David Hemmings is a young trooper, Trevor Howard his brutal commanding officer and John Gielgud the high-ranking buffoon who orders the attack. An ambitious mess, but still compelling.

Talk about narrow fucking escapes. Halfway through one of the interviews with Brian De Palma that make up the raft of extras on this special edition of his lavish gangster epic, the director mentions that Paramount's first choice for the central part of Eliot Ness was Mel Gibson. It's an appalling thought. I mean, imagine Mel hamming it up here, his narcissistic gurning turning De Palma's operatic vision into mugging farce. Fortunately, Mel had other commitments, and the role of Ness, as De Palma had always intended, went to the then relatively unknown Kevin Costner.

The title translates as "I remember" in dialect, but Fellini's visionary 1973 work (an Oscar winner) wasn't the rosy nostalgia about childhood he'd originally planned. His unique, untethered imagination bleeds into every frame of these '30s-set seaside snapshots, with—of course—sex and religion figuring prominently. Warring parents, twisted priests, Fascists, fantasy, farce and melancholy. As they say, very Fellini.

Underrated, atypical Brit film from Penny Woolcock, smartly mashing up the thrills of Fight Club with the what-are-we-here-for musings of French existentialism. Marc Warren and Alec Newman are competitive males into bareknuckle bouts, drugs and strippers; Sienna Guillory is the single mum they soften for. Confused climax, but till then alarmingly gutsy.

Nine out of ten people will tell you Pam Grier starred in this 1973 landmark blaxploitation 'classic'. She didn't: it's Tamara Dobson as the CIA's tough female agent, taking out drug dealers with athleticism, attitude and a healthy amount of sheer spite. The soundtrack is very cool but in truth the film's pretty rubbish: comic-book at best, lazily indulgent throughout. Bring on Foxy Brown!

Six volumes of highlights from the Sunday night US television show that was the MTV of its day

Veteran Japanese director Yoji Yamada's 77th film recasts the Samurai epic with a fin-de-siècle cynicism reminiscent of the revisionist westerns of the '60s and '70s. In the dying days of 19th-century Japan's Edo period, a reluctant Samurai (Hiroyuki Sanada) fulfils his duties while dreaming of settling down. A beautiful, moving deconstruction of national folk myths.

It's very long and extremely po-faced, and most of the performances are pretty wooden, Yul Brynner's imperious pharaoh aside. Even so, Cecil B DeMille's 1956 account of the life of Moses (Charlton Heston) still has some impressive sequences-notably the Exodus from Egypt, with 60,000 extras—and remains the definitive Biblical epic.

"O JOY!"IS NOT THE UNIVERSAL response to the idea of a sofa, a bag of toffees, a long weekend and six Marx Brothers movies to sit through. Inexplicably, there are those whose funny bones are immune to the work of Groucho, Harpo and the rest of the crew. When it comes to the Marx brand of sideways lunacy, seems you either get it or you don't. This latest DVD set gathers up A Day At The Races, A Night At The Opera, At The Circus, Go West, The Big Store and A Night In Casablanca.

Arthur Penn's smouldering anti-western tells the story of Nicholson's Montana horse-rustlers and the pursuit of them by Brando's regulator Lee Clayton. The action is rationed into short, ferocious bursts and used as a counterpoint to the director's paced dissection of power and politics on the anarchic frontier. Brando's whispering Irish accent flirts with parody, but ultimately helps to lend Clayton a compelling air of psychotic menace.