Blue Jasmine (Warner, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD, download)
Cate Blanchett is the busted flush wanting her pampered existence back in this Woody Allen drama unlike any other. Blanchett is great, but Sally Hawkins as her sister is even better.
Bad Grandpa (Paramount, cert 15, download)
Johnny Knoxville gets into old-guy disguise to gotcha the public in this Jackass spin-off that isn’t going to win any prizes but has plenty of funny squirm-inducing moments.
This Ain’t California (Luxin, cert 15, DVD)
Looking like a documentary but at least 50 per cent made up, this genre-blurring film about 1980s East German skateboarders is the “Levis brought down Communism” story coined anew.
The Fifth Estate (E One, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
Benedict Cumberbatch is so spectacularly convincing as Julian Assange that you instantly forget it’s him. Otherwise, this “rise and fall of the Wikileaks wizard” is a clever, well-swung hatchet.
John Dies at the End (Eureka, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD)
Don Coscarelli (Bubba Ho-Tep, Phantasm) returns with more madness – frozen- meat monsters, a bratwurst telephone, a time/space distorting drug called soy sauce. Busy, fizzy, bonkers.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (StudioCanal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
Beautifully restored for its 50th anniversary, Jacques Demy’s fabulous musical is France’s best – the sets, the clothes, a 20-year-old Catherine Deneuve, Michel Legrand’s score, fantastic.
Box Sets
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 1&2 (Sony, cert U, Blu-ray/DVD/download)
The sugar-rush animated comedy about a kid whose food-producing machine develops a life of its own - and the second film is every bit as smartly written as the first. A half-term life-saver.
Game of Thrones Series 1-3 (HBO, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD, VOD)
Just time to catch up on 2012 and 2013’s most-pirated TV series before series four kicks off on Sky Atlantic on Mon April 7. At 30 episodes, that’s two every three days.
Fast-talking melodrama in skyscraper Louboutins with the appropriately named Kerry Washington – first black female lead on US television ever – as a DC crisis manager.
Released on Mon Feb 10
Filth (Lionsgate, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD)
Irvine Welsh’s novel becomes a glorious slab of raucous grotesque starring a great James McAvoy as an over-refreshed Jock copper going to hell in his own foul-mouthed handcart.
Captain Phillips (Sony, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD)
Mad-eyed Somali pirates kidnap a ship, director Paul Greengrass works the Bourne shaky-cam and Tom Hanks reminds us again of his skill. A nailbiter with a big Hollywood finish.
Seduced and Abandoned (Soda, cert 15, DVD)
Old mates Alec Baldwin and director James Toback’s revelatory fun doc about hustling for cash to make a movie. The A-list access – eg Scorsese, Chastain, Gosling – is its trump card.
How I Live Now (E One, cert 15, DVD)
A self-help movie for young adults about an up-herself American (Saoirse Ronan) arriving in England just in time for armageddon. The message seems to be “and your problems are…?”
Le Week-End (Curzon, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
After The Mother and Venus, Hanif Kureishi and Roger Michell’s third film about love among the wrinklies follows bickering Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan to Paris. Slight but lovely.
Enough Said (Fox, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD/DTO)
James Gandolfini’s sad farewell, a bittersweet comedy about a slob falling for a divorced masseuse (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), is the man at his best – forceful, subtle, genial and relaxed.
Prince Avalanche (Metrodome, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch are the two guys painting yellow lines on a remote road in David Gordon Green’s gentle absurdist comedy that’s Waiting for Godot, American style.
Box Sets
Dracula Season 1 (Universal, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
It was always going to happen that Jonathan Rhys Meyers would end up playing Dracula, and he’s a moody, metrosexual kinda Count in Sky Living’s steampunk load of old nonsense.
Atlantis Season 1 (2entertain, cert 12, Blu-ray/DVD)
Jason and the Argonauts meet Pythagoras, Hercules and a minotaur in the BBC’s replacement for Merlin, a mish-mash of offcuts with the odd decent actor (Mark Addy) holding it all up, Atlas style.
Lubitsch in Berlin (Eureka, cert PG, DVD)
Essential for lovers of Ernst Lubitsch’s famous “touch”, six early silents which show he was a sophisticated film-maker and master of escapism well before Hollywood called.
Released on Mon Feb 3
Prisoners (E One, cert 15, Blu-ray/DVD)
Sensational acting and a cliché-confounding plot about a dad (Hugh Jackman), a cop (Jake Gyllenhaal) and a suspected paedophile (Paul Dano) made this film fly by.
Kiss of the Damned (Eureka, cert 18, Blu-ray/DVD)
Xan (daughter of John) Cassavetes’ homage to 1970s Euro vampires — fabulous women, softcore sex — even gets the twangy-synth soundtrack right.
Thanks for Sharing (Koch, cert 15, DVD/DD)
A solidly acted drama that is unsure how funny sex addiction is but stars Mark Ruffalo, Gwyneth Paltrow and a rather excellent Pink — who knew?
Wadjda (Soda, cert PG, Blu-ray/DVD)
A feisty, bright young Saudi girl yearns to own a bike in an affirmative drama about being a woman in a country under heavy Islamic manners.
Romeo & Juliet (EV, cert PG, Blu-ray/DVD)
Damian Lewis, Lesley Manville and Paul Giamatti outshine Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare’s perennial, as adapted by Julian Fellowes.
Wings (Eureka, cert PG, Blu-ray/DVD)
Winner of the first Best Picture Oscar, this brilliantly restored First World War drama combines aerial derring-do with the spellbinding Clara Bow.
