Blu-ray

While his earlier Fear & Desire and Killer's Kiss both contain flashes of brilliance, it was Stanley Kubrick's third feature that saw him mature as a filmmaker. A tense thriller, The Killing tells the story of a group of thieves who come together with the perfect plan to rob millions from a race track, only for human foibles to bring things crashing down around them.

Inspired by a freelance TV crew he encounters at the scene of a traffic accident, small-time criminal Louis 'Lou' Bloom (a shockingly gaunt Jake Gyllenhaal) decides that his future lies in a new line of work. Equipping himself with a camera and police scanner, and prowling the nocturnal streets of L.A., Lou demonstrates a natural talent when it comes to getting hold of the most sensationalist footage imaginable. But just how far is he willing to go to stay on top of the competition?

The search for a teenage runaway (Linnea Quigley) lands Los Angeles private investigator Jack Chandler (Jay Richardson) in hot water when it turns out that she's involved with an ancient Egyptian cult that worships chainsaws. Naturally.

Arriving on a wave of critical acclaim, this Australian horror movie is the sort of shot in the arm the genre has been crying out for.

Director Michael Mann's feature film debut stars James Caan as Frank, a career thief whose plan to retire and make a fresh start hits a serious hurdle when he gets mixed up with the Chicago Mafia. Smart, stylish and intense, Thief remains one of Mann's finest films, not to mention one of the greatest American crime movies ever made.

French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann's Shoah is a fascinating and horrifying account of the Nazi's 'Final Solution'. Shot over the course of 12 years, as Lanzmann travelled the globe looking for Holocaust survivors, this nine-and-a-half-hour film (divided into two parts – First Era and Second Era – and spread across two discs here) interviews concentration camp inmates, eyewitnesses and even former SS commandants, as well as visiting several Holocaust sites across Poland. The result is truly extraordinary and highly recommended.

Universal's ongoing struggle to reinvent its 'Classic Monsters' franchises for modern cinema audiences  hits another snag with this curiously anaemic origin story for the king of the vampires.