ANIMATION.

Travis Knight's Kubo and the Two Strings (Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Feature and Visual Effects, this ingenious blend of stop-motion and digital animation is set in feudal Japan and engagingly relates how shamisen player Kubo [Art Parkinson] joins forces with Monkey [Charlize Theron] and Beetle [Matthew McConaughey] to battle the Moon King [Ralph Fiennes] in order to attend the Bon festival and learn the fate of his samurai father. With Rooney Mara and George Takei also among the vocal talent, this joins Coraline [2009], ParaNorman [2012] and The Boxtrolls [2014] in establishing Laika as a major player in US animation); Tom Paton's Realm of the Damned: Tenebris Deos (adapted from a graphic novel by Alec Worley and illustrator Pye Parr, this is an unflinching retro-animated and heavy metal-suffused account of the titanic battle between a lycanthroplic entity [Dani Filth] rampaging through the forests of Norway and anti-heroic Vatican troubleshooter Alberic Van Helsing [David Vincent] and vampire commander Athena [Jill Janus]. Animated by Craig Hinde and Reece Saunders, this is brisk and brutal, but it also gets bogged down in the curse-strewn verbiage padding out the sketchy scenario).

BFI.

Charlie Chaplin: The Essanay Comedies (spread over two discs, the 14 films that Chaplin made in Niles and Chicago during his one-year deal with Essanay are gathered here, including The Tramp [1915], which famously saw him shuffling into the sunset after failing to prise farmer's daughter Edna Purviance away from fiancé Lloyd Bacon. But there are also cherishable extras like the 1944 British reissue of Triple Trouble [1918] and the 1951 version of A Burlesque on Carmen [1915], which boasts a commentary by Peter Sellers. Wonderful stuff); Abel Gance's Napoleon (finally available on disc in this country, this monumental 1927 life of the Corsican artillery officer rising through the ranks of the revolutionary French army comes with a generous package of extras to enhance the experience of viewing one of the most ambitious and inspirationally innovative features of the silent era); Arthur Robison's The Informer (coming six years before John Ford's Oscar-winning adaptation of Liam O'Flaherty's Irish Civil War novel, this atmospheric 1929 silent makes Expressionist use of a roving camera to capture the sense of Dublin backstreets closing in on Republican rebel Lars Hanson after he betrays comrade Carl Habord in the mistaken belief he is seeking to seduce his sweetheart, Lya de Putti); Wu Yonggang's The Goddess (the great Ruan Lingyu excels in this 1934 drama about a Shanghai mother who endures the cruelty of crime boss Zhizhi Zhang to work as a prostitute to raise her young son, only for his school principal to delve into her past, just as her former pimp catches up with her. Presented with a new score by Zou Ye, this is a heartbreaking story that is made all the more poignant by the fact that Ruan would commit suicide a year later after the press began prying into her private life); Sidney Bernstein's German Concentration Camps Factual Survey (the story of the production of this epochal Ministry of Information film was potently related in Andre Singer's 2014 documentary Night Will Fall. Recorded by 43 British, American and Soviet cameramen in 14 locations like Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and Buchenwald, the images of the Nazi death camps continue to leave an indelible impression. Working to a treatment suggested by Alfred Hitchcock, editors Stewart McAllister, Peter Tanner and Marcel Cohen refuse to pander to postwar sensibilities. But it's instructive to realise how few references there are to the ethnic identity of the majority of the victims. The BFI and the Imperial War Museum deserve great credit for curating this restoration, which adds for the first time the Russian footage of Auschwitz and Majdanek in accordance with Richard Crossman's commentary, which has been re-recorded by Jasper Britton in place of Trevor Howard's original); Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli's The Spring River Flows East (originally released in two parts, `Eight War-Torn Years' and `The Dawn', this beautifully restored 1947 epic follows the fortunes of newly married factory worker Bai Yang and night school teacher Tao Jin, who are driven apart during the Second Sino-Japanese War after Tao leaves Shanghai to work with the Red Cross and winds up seeking refuge in Chungking. By the time he returns, however, he has become a successful businessman and has married affluent old flame Shu Xiuwen, whose family employ Bai as a maid after she is released from a displaced person's camp).

COMEDY.

Stuart Burge's There Was a Crooked Man (this little-seen 1960 comedy shows Norman Wisdom following in the footsteps of Peter Sellers and Tony Hancock in seeking to play against type. Gone are the Pitkin mannerisms that had made him a star, as Norman's army veteran-turned-safe-cracker reluctantly leaves a cushy number in prison to thwart Sleath-on-Sea mayor Andrew Cruickshank's plot to swindle honest citizens like kindly stationmaster Reginald Beckwith and his winsome daughter, Susannah York. Markedly better than later bids to reivent himself like Menahem Golan's What's Good for the Goose [1969], this is a must for Wisdomaniacs in Britain and Albania, but it's no lost masterpiece); Elio Petri's Property Is No Longer a Theft (cannily revived for our recessional times, this surreal 1973 satire follows the efforts of cashier Flavio Bucci to ruin corrupt butcher Ugo Tognazzi [and steal his doting girlfriend, Daria Nicolodi] after he bribes his way to secret loans after Bucci and his time-serving father, Salvo Randone, are denied a pittance by banker Julien Guiomar. Discordantly scored by Ennio Morricone and punctuated with Brechtian digressions affording insights into the characters' mindsets, this is a disconcertingly droll assault on capitalism and the hypocrisy that underpins it); Joe Dante's Matinee (wittily riffing on the gimmick-laden career of master showman William Castle, this 1993 comedy harks back to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, as B-hiver John Goodman arrives in Florida to premiere his latest creature feature, Mant, for a juvenile audience that includes troubled teens Simon Fenton, Lisa Jakub and Kellie Martin); Laurent Tirard's Nicolas on Holiday (once again reworking a much-loved book by René Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempé, this jolly sequel to 2009's Little Nicolas sees young Mathéo Boisselier check into the Beau-Rivage Hotel with his parents and grandmother, only to enlist the help of his new friends - the English Marius Audibert, the pompous Clément Burguin, the ravenous Hugo Sepulveda, the local-living Simon Bouvier and the blubbering Rémi Lardy - to help him do something so naughty that it deflects the unwanted attentions of an overly friendly girl, Erja Malatier).

DRAMA.

Vittorio De Sica's Two Women (Sophia Loren became the first to win the Academy Award for Best Actress in a foreign-language film for her gutsy performance in this 1960 adaptation of an Alberto Moravia novel that sees her widowed Roman shopkeeper become estranged from devoted daughter Eleanora Brown after they are forced to relocate to the mountain region of Ciociaria, where their bond is tested by a shared attraction to Communist charmer Jean-Paul Belmondo and a rapacious encounter with some Moroccan Goumier soldiers); Ettore Scola's A Special Day (an escaped mynah bird brings Roman housewife Sophia Loren and suicidal gay radio announcer Marcello Mastroianni together on 6 May 1938, when the rest of the city is lining the streets to mark Adolf Hitler's visit to Benito Mussolini. Making evocative use of newsreel footage and Pasqualino De Santis's sepia-tinted imagery, this impeccably played study of lonely souls forging an unexpected connection exposes the chauvinism that was so crucial to the fascist appeal); Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester (tapping into his inner JD Salinger, Sean Connery plays a reclusive novelist who takes an interest in promising black Bronx basketballer and capable scholar Rob Brown in this 2000 drama. Naturally, they have a mutually beneficial effect upon each other. But, while the story is a touch on the corny side, the rapport between newcomer Brown and the veteran Connery is undeniably charming and there's something deeply satisfying about their triumph over faculty snob F. Murray Abraham); David Hackl's Life on the Line (demonstrating how far John Travolta and Sharon Stone have fallen from the front rank, this purportedly fact-based plodder centres on a caricatured crew of Texas linemen and no-nonsense foreman Travolta's bid to keep niece Kate Bosworth on the right side of the tracks from Devon Sawa and his alcoholic mum, Stone).

EUREKA.

Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (released in a limited two-disc Blu-ray set that includes the 2004 documentary, From Caligari to Hitler, the first masterwork of Expressionist cinema remains unsettlingly compelling. Scripted by Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz, the story of Caligari [Werner Krauss] and his murderous somnambulist sidekick Cesare [Conrad Veidt] is given a sinister twist by the asylum ending concoted by Fritz Lang. But, almost a century on, what makes this much-debated melodrama so memorable are the sets designed at a time of power and material shortages by Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig); EA Dupont's Varieté (adapted from a novel by Felix Holländer, this 1925 melodrama offers few surprises in story terms, as trapese catcher Emil Jannings comes to realise that wife Lya De Putti is having an affair with aerialist Warwick Ward. However, the expressionist imagery created by Karl Freund and Carl Hoffman combines to thrilling effect with the special effects of Ernst Kunstmann and Eugen Schüfftan to make this one of the silent era's most visually dynamic pictures); Anthony Mann's The Man From Laramie (scripted by Philip Yordan and Frank Burt from a Thomas T. Flynn magazine story, this simmering 1955 reminder of the potency of the psychological Western sees James Stewart clash with rancher Donald Crisp, his reckless son Alex Nicol and his calculating foreman Arthur Kennedy after he rides into Coronado to discover who sold the rifle that killed his brother to the local Apaches); Ken Loach's Kes (rewatching this sublime 1969 adaptation of Barry Hines's novel about a scrappy Yorkshire teenager's obsession with a foundling kestrel reinforces the contention that Loach's style calcified after he allowed political point scoring to matter more than telling human stories with compassion and wit); Walter Hill's Hard Times (the first film by an underrated director of tough insights into the American psyche is set in Louisiana in the 1930s and opens with Charles Bronson riding the Depression rails. From the moment he meets New York chancer James Coburn, however, he is transformed into a bare-knuckle pugilist, whose big heart prompts him to help out hooker Jill Ireland and addicted cut man Strother Martin. But rival manager Michael McGuire throws a spanner in the works of a bruising tale told with integrity and rough-edged style); Robert Aldrich's Twilight's Last Gleaming (always a bold and underrated director, Aldrich chillingly captures the mood of post-Watergate paranoia with this pugnaciously tense 1977 take on Walter Wager's novel, Viper Three. Escaping from a military prison, renegade USAF general Burt Lancaster seizes control of a Montana nuclear silo with Paul Winfield and Burt Young and threatens to launch unless President Charles Durning comes clean about the war in Vietnam. As the clock ticks, cabinet ministers Joseph Cotten and Melvyn Douglas play for time, while Richard Widmark tries to storm the bunker); Billy Wilder's Fedora (echoes of Wilder's own Sunset Boulevard [1950] reverberate around this underrated 1978 melodrama, which follows washed-up Hollywood producer William Holden to Corfu to uncover the role that Polish countess Hildegard Knef played in the suicide of screen legend, Marthe Keller. Adapted by Wilder and Izzy Diamond from a Tom Tryon novella, this intricately woven, flashbacking web of memory, romance, illusion and self-deception is superbly played on exquisite Alexandre Trauner sets to the accompaniment of a Miklos Rosza score. It also exposes the shallowness of New Hollywood with a rapier with a mournful acceptance of the need for things to change); Luis Valdez's La Bamba (poignant and musically vibrant 1987 memoir of Ritchie Valens [Lou Diamond Phillips], who shot to rock`n'roll fame in 1958 with a ballad written for his girlfriend, Donna Ludwig [Danielle von Zerneck]. However, a feud with his brother Bob [Esai Morales] tarnished his success before he fatefully boarded a late-night plane with Buddy Holly [Marshall Crenshaw]); Fred Schepisi's Roxanne (despite its brilliant nose gag monologue, this 1987 reworking of Edmons Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac runs out of comic momentum once British Columbia fire chief Steve Martin agrees to help underling Rick Rossovich win the heart of his own beloved, Daryl Hannah); Jamil Dehlavi's Jinnah (notwithstanding the obvious questions about the casting, Christopher Lee gives one of the best performances of his career in this 1998 biopic of the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, as he recalls his dealings with Lord Louis Mountbatten (James Fox) and his wife Edwina (Maria Aitken) during the Partition of India to celestial guide Shashi Kapoor); Rupert Wainwright's Stigmata (taking cues from the Nag Hammadi Gospel of St Thomas, this 1999 horror follows priest Gabriel Byrne after he is dispatched by cardinal Jonathan Pryce to investigate the appearance of the Crucifixion wounds on the body of atheist Pittsburgh stylist Patricia Arquette, who has also started speaking in Aramaic. From its opening in a Brazilian village to its exorcism finale, this is hugely derivative and largely devoid of suspense. But the performances are laudably game, while the visuals have a certain bullish bravado); Catherine Hardwicke's Lords of Dogtown (set in the Dogtown district of Venice Beach in the early 1970s, this 2005 account of the rise of skateboarding has acquired a cult following for its depiction of how Skip Engblom [Heath Ledger] made superstars of pool surfing pioneers Stacy Peralta [John Robinson], Tony Alva [Victor Rasuk] and Jay Adams [Emile Hirsch], who became known collectively as `The Z-Boys').

HORROR.

John Llewellyn Moxey's The City of the Dead (produced by Amicus founders Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg, this 1959 slice of Gothic Americana opens in the 17th century with Valentine Dyall burning witch Betta St John in the Massachussets town of Whitewood before academic Christopher Lee suggests a possible place for Venetia Stevenson to continue her studies into modern-day devil worship. Eerily photographed on fog-bound sets by Desmond Dickinson and knowingly played by a fine ensemble, this George Baxt-scripted melodrama cannily invokes the spirit of 1940s genre maestro, Val Lewton); Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava's Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (completed by cinematographer Bava at Freda's behest, this 1959 Quatermass-inspired creature feature centres on the passage of a comet as a team of archaelogists disturb an amorphous blob in the ruins of a Mayan civilisation. With the romantic tangles between John Merivale's expedition leader, wife Didi Perego, sidekick Gérard Herter and his mistress Daniela Rocca exposing the darker side of human nature, this has its lurid and ludicrous moments, but Bava achieves some shadowy supernatural suspense along the way); Tony Maylam's The Burning (boasting the Weinstein brothers among its authors, effects work by Tom Savini and a score by Rick Wakeman, this 1981 horror was the first film released by Miramax. Inspired by the urban myth of a flame-disfigured, shears-wielding summer camp caretaker named Cropsy, this accidental video nasty also marked the debuts of Holly Hunter, Jason Alexander and Fisher Stevens, who look on as Camp Stonewater counsellor Brian Matthews tries to keep his charges safe from the rampaging Lou David. Much cut at the time by the BBFC, this derivative and scattershot slasher is released here in its original form); Juan Piquer Simon's Pieces (with its classic tagline, `It's exactly what you think it is,' this 1982 giallo-inflected schlocker from writers Dick Randall and Joe D'Amato opens with an axe death in 1942 before fast-forwarding to the present, as Boston cops Christopher George, Frank Brana and Linda Day try to discover whether it's campus stud Ian Sera, lonely dean Edmund Purdom, gay anatomist Jack Taylor, grumpy gardener Paul L. Smith or hulking janitor keeps chainsawing college kids. The plot is as creaky as the performances, but the cascading gore effects give this cult kudos); Richard Wenk's Vamp (encouraged to make his feature bow after the cult success of the 1979 short, Dracula Bites the Big Apple, Wenk keeps the cornball laughs coming in this camp 1986 horror romp that sees LA frat boys Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler and Gedde Watanabe get more than they bargain for when they try to hire stripper Grace Jones from the After Dark Club, where Dedee Pfeiffer works as a waitress); Andy Edwards's Ibiza Undead (besides a decent joke about vampires, there's little to recommend this humdrum zomcom, which sees lads Jordan Coulson, Ed Kear and Hormuzd Todiwala escape an infested Blighty for a little R&R with ladettes Emily Atack, Algina Lapkis and Cara Theobald at a resort overrun by revenants imported by gay club owner, Matt King); Jeffrey G. Hunt's Satanic (photogenic lovebirds Sarah Hyland and Steven Krueger stop off in Los Angeles to visit some diabolical landmarks with her goth cousin Clara Mamet and boyfriend Justin Chon. However, having visited the Flower Hotel room where former Church of Satan devotee Laney Gore slit her throat in 1972, they hook up with escaped cultist Sophie Dalah, who decides that a little spirit summoning is in order. Scripted by Anthony Jaswinski, this is utterly devoid of wit, flair or scares); Bo Mikkelsen's What We Become (no sooner has a news report mentioned a virulent flu strain than the residents of the quiet Danish town of Sorgenfri descend into a murderous frenzy. But, even though teenager Benjamin Engell is obsessed with new neighbour Marie Hammer Boda, survival is all that matters after mom Mille Dinesen quarantines the family inside their besieged home, especially after they realise that they may have to adopt desperate measures if they are to get out alive. Some decent effects, the odd jolt and a neat conclusion, but there's not much new on offer here).

MISCELLANEOUS.

Tomer and Barak Heymann's Who's Gonna Love Me Now? (filmed over five years, this is a poignant study of HIV+ Israeli Saar Maoz, who quits the London Gay Men's Chorus to return to the Sde Eliyahu kibbutz in the hope of easing the fears of his deeply religious mother, Diza, and rebuilding his relationships with his army drill instructor father Katri and his homophobic siblings Dagan, Tamar and Elia. Often as amusing as it is moving, this frequently shocks as it exposes the extent of the hostility facing Israel's LGBT community); Chris Reading's Somnus (Lurching from a specious 1952 prologue some 300 years into the future, the debuting director pitches a cargo ship through space under the command of psychologically unsound skipper Marcus McMahon. However, their problems really begin when the psychotic onboard computer, Meryl (Meryl Griffiths), forces McMahan, co-pilot Cullum Austin and engineer Rohit Gokani to land on an asteroid whose residents aren't big fans of humankind. Big ideas, low budget and limited talent leaves this looking more like something by Edward D. Wood, Jr. than Stanley Kubrick); Matthew Johnson's Operation Avalanche (infiltrating NASA to pay parodic tribute to the found footage and simulated documentary sub-genres, this is a slickly accomplished boon to all those conspiracy theorists who insist that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was faked. Matt Johnson and Owen Williams impress as the CIA geeks posing as film-makers to trap a Soviet spy sabotaging the American space programme. With a detour to meet Stanley Kubrick at Shepperton Studios, the duo return to help Neil Armstrong take a giant leap for Mankind. Boasting fun effects by Tristan Zerafa and a shrugging sense of its own limitations, this is a must for all fans of James Burke); Gabriel Clarke and John McKenna's Steve McQueen: The Man & Le Mans (a fascinating, if sometimes glib reflection on the making of the 1971 racing saga, Le Mans, which was completed by Lee H. Katzin after John Sturges became tired of Steve McQueen's egotistical preening. Yet, while this well-researched study exposes McQueen as a self-absorbed and brattishly spoilt lothario, it also makes a decent case for reappraising a project that sought to rewrite the rules of motor action movies by prioritising authentic track thrills over dialogue and drama).

THRILLERS.

George Marshall's The Blue Dahlia (Raymond Chandler earned an Oscar nomination for scripting this neglected 1946 noir, which sees Alan Ladd return from the war with buddies William Bendix and Hugh Beaumont only to discover that wife Doris Dowling is having an affair with Sunset Strip club owner, Howard Da Silva. When Dowling dies in mysterious circumstances, Ladd has to rely on Da Silva's ex-wife, Veronica Lake, to clear his name. Teamed for the third time, Ladd and Lake are abetted by a wonderful cast and the brooding photography of Lionel Lindon); Carol Reed's The Man Between (James Mason excels in this sombrely gripping and atmospherically photographed Cold War thriller, as a former Nazi whose relationship with Hildegarde Neff concerns sister-in-law Claire Bloom when she visits army major brother Geoffrey Toone in the West Berlin of 1953); William Friedkin's To Live and Die in LA (evoking memories of The French Connection, this typically muscular 1985 adaptation of a Gerald Petievich novel follows secret service agents William Petersen and John Pankow in their bid to nail murderous counterfeiter Willem Dafoe. But, for all the cynical amorality, the pictures strong suit is Robbie Müller's imagery).

WAR.

Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die (based on the assassination of Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, Bertolt Brecht's sole Hollywood screenplay focuses on the efforts of Czech patriots Brian Donlevy and Anna Lee to save the latter's academic father, Walter Brennan, from a mass reprisal for the murder of Hans Heinrich von Twardowski that is being co-ordinated by quisling brewer Gene Lockhart. Scored by the Oscar-nominated Hanns Eisler and moodily photographed in monochrome by James Wong Howe, this superior Hollywood excursion to Occupied Europe is presented here with the restored 134-minute running time); Mario Van Peebles's USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (an execrable script by Cam Cannon and Richard Rionda Del Castro leaves Captain Nicolas Cage and his surviving crew members high and dry in this 2016 Second World War saga, which centres on the court-martial that ensued when a heavy cruiser carrying components for the first atom bomb was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine in the shark-infested Philippine Sea on 19 July 1945).