DVD and Blu-ray releases

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

(New Wave, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)

One-hundred-and-fifty-eight open-ended minutes, all utterly gripping, of languidly paced, slyly written, beautifully shot, character-driven drama dropping us right into a murder investigation in backwoods Turkey. Further proof of the genius of director Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

21 Jump Street

(Sony, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)

This really shouldn’t work but so does — Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill as dumb cops undercover in a high school, in a feature-length version of the 1987 TV series which made Johnny Depp’s name. Very funny.

Trishna

(Artificial Eye, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)

After Jude and The Claim, director Michael Winterbottom’s third adaptation of a Thomas Hardy novel pares Tess of the D’Urbervilles right back, transfers it to India and casts Freida Pinto as the peasant girl on the road to perdition. Hardy’s lyricism is all there, his psychological insight less so.

Rampart

(Studio Canal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)

A 1970s-coloured adaptation of a James Ellroy story, about a Dirty Harry/Training Day cop kebabed by changing times. The cast is weapons grade, the looks properly sleazy, but Woody Harrelson is eye-openingly good. This is the film of his career.

Absentia

(Second Sight, cert 15, DVD)

Financed by crowd-funding — and watch lead actress Katie Parker lose weight as she realises this film is actually going to be seen — this is a fascinating psychological horror about people being dragged underground by who knows what.

The Battle of Algiers

(Argent, cert 15, Blu-ray)

Gillo Pontecorvo’s must-see 1966 film about the French war in Algeria invented the pseudo-documentary and memorialised the new kind of urban warfare. Now in Blu-ray for the first time it’s undoubtedly seminal and still remarkably visceral.