DVD, Blu-ray and TV

Intense Israeli thriller merging politics, religion and thwarted romance in which Rabbi Meltzer (Assi Dayan) encourages his soldier students to embrace martyrdom. A huge hit on home turf, it's fiery spirit ensures it translates.

Magisterial, tough-hearted 1967 western from writer/director Tom Gries. Charlton Heston is a revelation as the eponymous ageing cowhand, a lonesome, unemployed illiterate, bushwhacked by deranged preacher Donald Pleasence and his boys. While recovering, he encounters Joan Hackett, who, although travelling through the wilderness to join her husband, offers the chance of a life he's never known.

You could argue a case for Funny Face or Breakfast At Tiffany's, but this William Wyler rom-com—now 50 years young—is perhaps Audrey Hepburn's shining moment. An incognito princess who leaps into love with journalist Gregory Peck (well, we can all dream), you'd have to be brutish not to catch its spark. And Rome's not bad-looking either.

This cult item came about in 1976 when Claude LeLouch fastened a camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and sent it on a high-octane, outlaw street race, burning up the boulevards of Paris. No roads were blocked off, no stunt drivers used. Everything you see is real. It's fucking astonishing. Available online at www.spiritlevelfilm.com

Jarmusch, Buscemi and Strummer veer off the beaten tracks with Elvis

Golden boy Sam Mendes' less-than-feelgood follow-up to American Beauty suffered a critical backlash, but its daringly gloomy photography (by the late Conrad Hall) is often breathtaking. An unsmiling Tom Hanks' hitman-with-a-heart is underwritten, but a wrinkly Paul Newman still oozes charisma and Jude Law's credibly sinister. A surprisingly bleak, long dark night of the soul.

You might think there's not enough surviving live footage of The Yardbirds to fill a full-length DVD. And you'd be right, of course. But clips from half-a-dozen black-and-white TV shows are interspersed with retrospective interviews to create a compelling band history in which the comments of Jeff Beck are particularly candid. But the revelation is singer/harmonica player Keith Relf, who exudes charisma despite being surrounded by such future stars as Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.

Disturbingly funny debut tackles life and death with the help of a giant rabbit

Indie tyro Doug Liman (Go!) takes a gripping premise (amnesiac superspy is hunted by CIA while seeking clues to his own identity), an efficient leading man in Matt Damon, and a raft of stellar supporting players including Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen and Franka Potente, and delivers a confident if ultimately soulless knockabout thriller.

The culmination of a sell-out 2002 tour sees a middle-aged Williams return to his maniacal roots, musing on Michael Jackson, the Puritans and Viagra, among other topics. However, his breakneck delivery, camp mannerisms and array of accents (including a dismal Winston Churchill) only emphasise, rather than conceal, the weakness of his material. And the "Joe I'm Pregnant" routine is shamelessly lifted from Sam Kinison.