DVD, Blu-ray and TV

Minor shocker (made for TV) from Wes Craven, starring Linda Blair as a schoolgirl whose boyfriend and family get taken over by her evil cousin, a backwoods witch. Only Blair's horse and friendly supernatural expert Macdonald Carey can tell the possessed from normal people. Also known as Stranger In Our House, and for Blair and Craven completists only.

Another brave taboo-buster from Joseph Strick, tackling Jean Genet's play in 1964 with the kind of cast that has you pinching yourself: Shelley Winters, Peter Falk and a youthful Leonard Nimoy. In a brothel that's a hideaway from the war outside, Winters is a fearsome madam and Nimoy's a rebel leader. Surreal and grubbily saucy, though the low budget shows its cracks at times.

It's too much to digest in one sitting—three discs, seven hours and almost 100 songs, released in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of Jacques Brel's death. But it's fascinating to watch him turn so rapidly from the hesitant, gauche performer of the late-'50s into the charismatic equivalent of a Gallic Sinatra.

Sardonic slam-bam action romp with brains

Rain? Leather? Uzis? Slow-mo? Plot? Ah...Character? Um...Performance? Ahem...Sexy and inspired concept—werewolves versus vampires, with extra ammo—visibly collapses amid a slew of derivative Matrix shoot-'em-ups, excruciating line deliveries and cack-handed direction from Megadeth music video veteran Len Wiseman. Kate Beckinsale can only high-kick and cringe.

Intensely felt melodrama collides with saccharine world view in this tale of an Irish immigrant family who attempt to begin life anew in an '80s Manhattan filled with friendly junkies and hackneyed racial stereotypes (see Djimon Hounsou's savage-but-wise African artist). Top performances from Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton are undercut by director Jim Sheridan's squishy screenplay.

Andre 3000 and Big Boi's early clips are superior but fairly routine 'hood dramas, all booty calls and gaudy pimpmobiles. But around their ATLiens album, the day-glo psychedelic X Files wig-outs begin creeping in, reaching a peak in the sexofunkatronic freakerama of "Bombs Over Baghdad". Also lushly cinematic is the stormy Deep South pastoral of "Ms Jackson" and, of course, the multiple Andres of last year's super-catchy retro-futurist soul fantasia "Hey Ya". Pure pop genius.

When discussing Kevin Smith's oeuvre, most dismiss this '95 nugget as the dip between Clerks and Dogma. A mistake: as two slackers, Jason Lee and Jeremy London, hang around the mall doing nothing, plenty happens—comic-book iconography, smut, inventive swearing, Shannen Doherty pretty much playing her loveable hell-bitch self, and Ben Affleck marginalised. A buzzy, cynical, romp.

Beautifully gauged 1989 romantic comedy from the undervalued Steve Kloves, with Jeff and Beau Bridges glorious as two competitive but complementary brothers who constitute a lounge act. When they employ Michelle Pfeiffer's seductive Susie Diamond as chanteuse, Jeff's hard-boiled heart goes whoopee. Oscar-nominated Pfeiffer, cleverly, sings well but not too well. Lovely.

Straining to balance bog-standard biopic with anarchic art expression, Julie Taymor's biopic of Frida Kahlo is crammed with exquisite cinematic diversions (dream sequences, hallucinations, animated Kahlo paintings) while simultaneously stultified by the need to plod through Kahlo's life with startling apathy. Wild teen, bus crash, crippled, Diego Rivera, lots of sex, arguments, affair with Trotsky, big show in Mexico, the end.