DVD, Blu-ray and TV

Based on a John Cheever story, this 1968 movie stars Burt Lancaster as a seemingly prosperous and urbane middle-aged man who decides to swim back to his suburban house via all the pools in the neighbourhood. But his journey turns out to be an exposé of his personal downfall. An enigmatic meditation on the American Dream, marred only by a couple of hazy, slo-mo scenes that radiate '60s naffness.

Rowdy late John Ford comedy starring John Wayne and Lee Marvin as Guns Donovan and Boats Gilhooley, brawling Navy veterans who stay on in the South Pacific after the war against the Japanese ("bad, black days"). Contemporary audiences will probably find it crude, noisy and rambling—but it's ravishingly shot, and beneath the slapstick there's a sharp satire on class, race and friendship.

Following a frenetic opening, Joe Carnahan's Detroit cop movie settles into an edgy two-hander as Jason Patric's alienated undercover man returns to the streets to investigate a cop killing with the dead officer's explosive partner, Ray Liotta. It skirts cliché, but it's powered by a redemptive, almost overwhelmingly emotional current; and it's a joy finally to see Liotta in a role worthy of his talents.

Directed by Oxide Pang, this was re-edited after his success with The Eye—Pang presumably feeling he could now take more stylistic liberties. The movie concerns a drug dealer who courts disaster by upping the ante to keep his girlfriend from prostitution, and sees Pang grandly messing with timelines, colour and reality. An enjoyable dip in the seedy Bangkok underground.

Michael Winterbottom veers as far away as imaginable from 24 Hour Party People, proving yet again that he's bizarrely versatile, in this "fictionalised documentary" about two Afghan refugees who flee across Pakistan, Iran and Turkey in an attempt to reach the relative safety of Kilburn High Road. Not an easy watch, it won multiple awards for its grainy worthiness.

Seven years in the making, this is Anup Singh's dreamy cinematic tone poem (lots of kites and rivers) based on the life and work of acclaimed Indian film-maker Ritwik Ghatak. Adopting a brave, artistic, and not entirely successful motif, Singh follows two symbolic protagonists, male and female, as they re-enact scenes and themes from Ghatak's seemingly sacred canon.

Deeply cool 1957 musical based on the feckless chancer of the John O'Hara stories. Who else but Frank Sinatra could play the nightclub crooner who's a heel to not only Rita Hayworth but Kim Novak (both of whose singing was dubbed)? Rodgers & Hart songs, some (though not quite enough) smart-ass dialogue, and Frank in full effect.

November 1979. Bob Marley is already stricken with the cancer that will soon kill him. He's in the middle of a US tour that will take in 47 dates in 49 nights. By the time he reaches the Santa Barbara County Bowl, he's exhausted. He looks tired and has a cold he can't shake off. The throb in his cancerous toe is a constant reminder that he's dying. And yet he sounds magnificent.

Director Fred Schepisi attacks John Guare's stageplay, frenetically switching locations and narrators as often as possible in an attempt to movie-ise this intelligent, satirical, wordy account of sociopathic homosexual confidence trickster Will Smith (acting, for real!) and his divisive impact upon a group of pompous, wealthy, middle-aged Upper East Side culturati.

Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in arty, autumnal 1971 tale of the Old West