Blu-ray

Any adults hoping for some Studio Ghibli-style thrills from this CG-animated 'toon made to celebrate Fuji Television's 50th anniversary are bang out of luck. While it borrows familiar story elements from Miyazaki's output, it's aimed squarely at kids and offers little in the way of real emotional heft to engage older viewers. The Blu-ray disc itself is another story, delivering a pristine AVC 1.78:1 1080p encode, lively DTS-HD MA 5.1 audio (in both Japanese and English incarnations) and a boatload of Japanese promotional supplements.

It's hard to know what exactly to make of Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film. On the surface it's a simple tale about a WWII Navy veteran who gets involved with the charismatic leader of a religious movement known as 'The Cause'. But Anderson's oblique storytelling renders The Master so open to interpretation that it's either a brave experiment in movie-making techniques or he's trying to dupe us with the cinematic equivalent of The Emperor's New Clothes.

Gossip Girl's Jessica Szohr adds a smidge of international glamour to this British horror-comedy that pits a quartet of unlikeable Inbetweeners wannabes against a werewolf. Neither funny nor scary (outside of the fact that some people genuinely believed that it was worth financing), Love Bite should be avoided like a werewolf avoids silver. The only thing of note about the Blu-ray release is the richly-hued AVC 2.40:1 1080p encode, as even the DTS-HD MA 5.1 soundtrack is limited in its aspirations and 29 minutes of interview soundbites are the only extras. 

In this sharply-scripted black comedy, Colin Farrell's struggling screenwriter has a title for a movie – Seven Psychopaths – but nothing else, so turns to his dog-napping friends (Sam Rockwell and Christopher Walken) for input. Yet they have problems of their own, having accidentally grabbed the beloved pet Shih Tzu of a violent mobster (Woody Harrelson). Soon the trio are having to deal with psychopaths of their own...

Radley Metzger is one of the more intriguing US directors to have ever worked in the world of softcore erotica. Like much of his work, this 1970 feature mixes art-house sensibilities with softcore nooky, the end effect in this case being akin to a smutty version of Alain Resnais' French New Wave darling Last Year at Marienbad. And it's doubtful that the film has looked this good in a very long time thanks to Arrow's pleasing AVC 1.85:1 1080p transfer (a full restoration is needed, but would undoubtedly be far too expensive for a movie such as this).

Having already written Training Day and Dark Blue, it's safe to say that David Ayer feels at home in the world of cop movies. End of Watch is undoubtedly his most accomplished work in the field to date, using a fractured mix of found footage and cinema vérité styles to put viewers bang in the middle of the action. As expected given the source material, the AVC 1.85:1 1080p encode has some issues – but it's undoubtedly true to the original photography.

In the wake of ITV's sucess with the rating juggernaut that is Downton Abbey, the BBC really needed to pull out all the stops to re-establish itself as the king of Sunday evening costume drama. But who on Earth would have guessed that the Beeb would try to do it with a Daily Mail-baiting cop show set in Whitechapel circa 1889? Both gripping and ripping, this gory crime series' meticulous attention to detail shines through the Victorian gloom on Blu-ray thanks to six sultry AVC 1080i encodes. If only they were accompanied by worthwhile extras or something more acoustically involving than constrained DTS-HD MA 2.0 soundtracks...