If an authority figure ordered you to inflict pain on another person, to what extent would you comply? That is the subject of Experimenter, which focuses on Stanley Milgram's controversial obedience experiment. Unable to secure a theatrical run in the UK, writer-director Michael Almereyda’s urgent biographical drama, which had its premiere at Sundance last year, is now available on DVD and for digital download. The movie’s unsettling depiction of our capacity for cruelty makes it essential viewing.

Was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who straddled the arts and science in such a unique way, several hundred years before his time? Did the painter-inventor-engineer really draw the prototypes for, inter alia, the aeroplane, the motor car, the helicopter and the submarine, or were they doodles to which history has ascribed more genius than they are due? This small but interesting exhibition attempts to answer those questions as it places his mechanical works under scientific scrutiny.

The flip side of the apocalyptic evolution-and-destiny concerns of Prometheus, Ridley Scott's previous foray across the Last Frontier, The Martian is a feelgood take on the theme of space travel. Having landed the first astronauts on Mars in 2029, NASA is pursuing its Ares programme to establish a self-sustaining colony on the Red Planet. However, a calamitous storm forces the NASA crew to evacuate, leaving behind botanist Mark Watney, seemingly killed by flying debris.

Walls that are floors, floors that are walls, and stairs that go up to go down: in the brain-befuddling art of MC Escher (1898-1972) the mundane everyday meets a world of paradox in which the rules of gravity, space and material reality are thrown into disarray. From his fantastical architectural spaces with flights of stairs that lead nowhere, to dazzling tessellations that fade into infinity, Escher is synonymous with queasy optical illusions that fascinate and nauseate in equal measure.

Nicole Kidman has returned to the West End 17 years after causing an innuendo-laden sensation in The Blue Room, the David Hare play that promptly transferred from the Donmar to Broadway, where one major magazine at the time actually bothered to inform readers where best to sit for the optimal view of a stage semi-neophyte en déshabillé. 

Oliver Sacks, peerless explorer of the human brain, has today died of cancer aged 82. Inspired by case histories of patients suffering from neurological disorders, Sacks's eloquent musings on consciousness — which he termed 'neurological novels' — included The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat and Awakenings, the former adapted into a Michael Nyman opera, the latter an Oscar-nominated film. His combination of intellectual rigour, philosophical expressiveness and powerful compassion illuminated numerous conditions for a readership extending far beyond the medical community. In memory of Sacks, theartsdesk republishes our 2011 review of Imagine: The Man Who Forgot How to Read and Other Stories, BBC Two's glimpse into his remarkable work. 

The man who mistook Oprah Winfrey for Michelle Obama. Or indeed, the man who mistook his own reflection for another distinguished-looking bearded gentleman. Yes, the world’s most famous neurologist, Oliver Sacks, has confessed to “face blindness” - a lifelong inability to recognise faces, even his own face or the faces of the preternaturally famous. Last night’s Imagine found Alan Yentob revisiting Sacks (who he last encountered three years ago for a documentary on the mysteries of musical appreciation) to follow up on this story.

Haste was of the essence as the Allies hurried to create the ultimate weapon. They were fearful that Hitler’s Germany, which had been first to split the atom, would beat them to it – and they knew that the Nazis would have no compunction about using it.

From complex machines, whirring busily but with no useful function, to structures that allude to the fundamental building blocks of the universe, Conrad Shawcross (born 1977) uses sculpture to explore the big ideas of philosophy and science. A graduate of the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art and the Slade School of Art, he bacame the youngest living Royal Academician in 2013. This year – punctuated by a series of prestigious public sculptures – has been his busiest yet.

Poised vibrantly enough between the buried-alive monotony of Philip Glass and the dynamic flights of John Adams, Steve Reich’s Three Tales deserves a special place in music-theatre history ("opera" it is not). Ironically, since it deals with the two-edged sword of the 20^th century’s major scientific developments, the video work with which the music interacts so brilliantly – by Reich’s former wife and long-term collaborator Beryl Korot – has been left looking a bit dated by rapid progress in that field since its 2002 premiere.

“A frivolous piece of hysteria. I liked it in a confused sort of way but when it was all over I must confess I couldn’t really see the point.” So ran the Daily Express review of The Manchurian Candidate on 5 November 1962. Other fascinating newspaper appraisals quoted in the booklet of this new Blu-ray/DVD edition of John Frankenheimer’s Cold War-era drama detect the shadow of Hitchcock looming over the film.