Blu-ray: Eclipse

★★★ BLU-RAY: ECLIPSE Unsettling 1977 thriller starring Tom Conti and Gay Hamilton

The BFI has unearthed an unsettling 1977 thriller starring Tom Conti and Gay Hamilton

What constitutes a “lost classic”? I guess we can’t say it’s an oxymoron, since we readily accept the concept of “instant classic”? Either way, the “classic” aspect may be in the eye of the beholder, but “lost" is more easily quantified. Simon Perry’s slippery 1977 psychological thriller Eclipse certainly fits the bill, having languished unseen in the BFI vaults for nigh on half a century.

The Salt Path review - the transformative power of nature

★★★ THE SALT PATH Marianne Elliott brings Raynor Winn's memoir to the big screen

Marianne Elliott brings Raynor Winn's memoir to the big screen

“I can’t move my arms or legs, but apart from that I’m good to go.” Moth (Jason Isaacs) has to be pulled out of the tent in his sleeping bag by his wife Ray (Gillian Anderson). And this is only the second day of their 630-mile walk, split into two summers, along the south-west coastal path from Minehead to South Haven Point.

Bogancloch review - every frame a work of art

★★★★ BOGANCLOCH Living off grid might be the meaning of happiness

Living off grid might be the meaning of happiness

Director Ben Rivers is primarily an artist, and it shows. Every frame of Bogancloch is treated as a work of art and the viewer is given ample time to relish the beauty of the framing, lighting and composition. Many of the shots fall into traditional categories such as still life, landscape and portraiture and would work equally well as photographs.

Don't Look Up, Netflix review - hitting most targets in high style

★★★★ DON'T LOOK UP, NETFLIX Brilliant satire, not preachy lecture, on the way we live now

Brilliant satire, not preachy lecture, on the way we live now

Most dystopian satires are located in a nightmarish future, but their scripts build on the worst of our world today. Adam McKay's Don’t Look Up is different: this is now, and the notion of a comet hurtling towards the assured destruction of planet Earth is the hub for a heaping-up and jamming-together of how media and government respond to the worst imaginable crisis.

Goebbels and the Führer review - behind the scenes from the Nazi perpetrators' perspective

Joachim Lang's docudrama focuses on Goebbels as master of fake news

“Do you know the name of the propaganda minister of England, or America, or even Stalin? No. But Joseph Goebbels? Everyone knows him.” The cynical, grinning Dr Goebbels (Robert Stadlober), perhaps the first master of fake news, is not short on confidence.

Blu-ray: Strange New Worlds - Science Fiction at DEFA

★★★★★ STRANGE NEW WORLD - SCIENCE FICTION AT DEFA Eye-popping Cold War sci-fi epics

Eye-popping Cold War sci-fi epics from East Germany, superbly remastered and annotated

DEFA was East Germany’s state film studio, operating between 1946 and 1992. Among its vast output were four lavish science fiction adventures, released between 1960 and 1976 and shown here in gleaming new transfers. Each one, to varying degrees, depicts the future through a rose-coloured lens, the world evolving into a utopian socialist paradise where disputes are settled peacefully.

Mongrel review - deeply empathetic filmmaking from Taiwan

Artful direction and vivid detail of rural life from Wei Liang Chiang

There is a dark, spectral quality to this compassionate film about Southeast Asian migrant workers in rural Taiwan. At the centre of this story is Oom, played with quiet stoicism by Wanlop Rungkumjad, who is one of many Thai, Cambodian and Myanmar nationals who have entered Taiwan illegally to find care work in its remote mountainous regions. 

The Phoenician Scheme review - further adventures in the idiosyncratic world of Wes Anderson

★★★ THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME Further adventures in the idiosyncratic world of Wes Anderson

Benicio del Toro's megalomaniac tycoon heads a star-studded cast

It’s not what he says, it’s the way he says it. Few filmmakers have bent the term “auteur” to their own ends more boldly than Wes Anderson, whose arresting visual style, oblique wit and skill in picking actors who can mould themselves to the unique demands of Wes-world is surely unequalled.