Christmas 2012 gifts: Films - Telegraph Ridley Scott's keenly anticipated return to the Alien franchise this summer left many cinema-goers scratching their heads, but his twisted sci-fi creation myth, with its subtle Biblical undertones and frostily beautiful visuals, offers up more cryptic titbits with every subsequent viewing.This box set allows fans to rewatch it in context with all four predecessors. Thanks to recent digital restorations, Scott's 1979 original and James Cameron's all-action 1986 sequel have never looked better. Order yours now from amazon Forever Marilyn Four Film Collection, CERT: PG, for adults, £19.75 The voice, the curves, the impeccable comic timing: there are almost as many reasons to love Marilyn Monroe as there are Marilyn Monroe films, and this box set collects four of her very best. The voice, the curves, the impeccable comic timing: there are almost as many reasons to love Marilyn Monroe as there are Marilyn Monroe films, and this box set collects four of her very best.Some Like It Hot and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes are the crowning glories, and the latter, vibrantly restored from the original Technicolor negatives, has never looked more voluptuous. The set also includes How To Marry A Millionaire and The Seven Year Itch. John Cassavetes Collection, CERT: 15, for adults, £56.99 Three films from the godfather of American independent cinema have been recently restored and put out in deluxe separate editions by the BFI. The blueprint's evident in his improvisional debut Shadows (1959), a jazzy dive into Beat-era New York. Faces (1968) is a major step forward dramatically, a bitter relationship drama with Oscar-nominated Lynn Carlin and Seymour Cassel. A Woman Under the Influence (1974), though, is the peak, with Gena Rowlands in the performance of a lifetime. Available at amazon. James Bond: 22 Film Collection, CERT: 15, for adults, £48.99 Time was when Christmas wasn't Christmas without a Bond film on television: this year, why restrict yourself to just one? This comprehensive 22-disc collection, released to mark the franchise's 50th anniversary, includes every 007 adventure from Dr No to Quantum of Solace.Some films have aged better than others, but the nostalgic pleasures of hollow volcanos, Union Flag parachutes and invisible cars should not be underestimated. All 22 films still deliver that intoxicating escapist kick. The Woody Allen Collection, CERT: 18, for adults, £33.39 This hefty set isn't the complete Allen: it gathers 20 of his 47 movies. Several of his best are included, though, from the early, funny Bananas (1971) through Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), the wonderful Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and the incisive, philosophical Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). The one true diamond missing is Husbands and Wives (1992) - in fact, the so-so Melinda and Melinda (2004) stands in for everything post-1990, so you're spared some real duds. La Gloire de mon père/ Le Château de ma mère, CERT: U, for adults, £17.99 Adapted from novels by Marcel Pagnol, La Gloire de mon père and Le Château de ma mère are like two prolonged Proustian "madeleine moments." Here, the hills of Provence provide the memory trigger, transporting the films" narrator back to his childhood at the turn of the 20th Century, when his urbanite family would holiday in a cottage deep in the French countryside.What follows in both films is a gorgeously charming retelling of childhood and its prescient lessons, sentimental but not too saccharine, and immensely enjoyable. David Lynch Box Set, CERT: 18, for adults, £20.99 Except for the newly-remastered Eraserhead (1977) this is mostly mid-career Lynch: everything he made between Dune (1984) and Lost Highway (1997). Completists will feel the lack of some of his others, but may well own them already. There's a pick 'n mix assortment of extras, including a supplemental disc with 12 of his shorts and a 70-minute Blue Velvet doc. There have been reports of picture and sound glitches, though, so caveat emptor, and google before you buy. Harry Potter's Wizard Collection Box Set, CERT: 12, for everyone, £183.82 An absolute treasure chest for Potter fans, compiling all eight films on both Blu-ray and DVD to make it future-proof for the foreseeable, with a digital copy of each thrown in. The 37 hours of special features, many of them previously unreleased, mean you'll be able to roam around Hogwarts until the cows come home. Since Sky have nabbed exclusive TV rights to air them all, if it absolutely has to be Potter this Christmas, and money's no object, here's the solution. The Films of Michael Haneke, CERT: 18, for adults, £45.99 Very nearly all Haneke's films nestle in this set: only Funny Games US (2007), which Tartan released, is a no-show, and it's not a huge priority. Extras, rather in keeping with the austerity of Haneke's filmmaking, are functional rather than lavish, but most of the discs have interviews and trailers at the very least. This is an ideal way to investigate his still relatively obscure early work alongside the marvellous Code Unknown (2000), The Piano Teacher (2001) and Hidden (2005). Great Brit Flicks Collection, CERT: 15, for adults, £10.19 A motley crew of Film4 releases with a mostly geezer-ish sort of flavour and a price to match: they could bulk up Dad's stocking nicely. Bill Forsyth's Local Hero (1983) is the odd man out in both tone and period, but also the best. The working-class grit in Mark Herman's underrated Brassed Off (1996) and the likeable-enough Fever Pitch (1997) are better draws than Shane Meadows's most compromised effort, Once Upon a Time in the Midlands (2002). Mirror Mirror, CERT: PG, for her and kids, £8 Amid the craze for "dark" fairy-tale adaptations comes this blast of pure fun. Tarsem Singh, director of The Fall, takes the Snow White story back to its Mittel-European roots, and adds a gloss of pure Bollywood glamour. Lily Collins, who may have the best screen eyebrows since Audrey Hepburn, is a delight as the exiled princess and Julia Roberts has a ball as the wicked queen. Little girls of all ages will love it. The Guard, CERT: 18, for adults, £4.87 With Martin McDonagh's Seven Psychopaths about to open, here's its dry contrast: the debut film from his brother, John Michael. Brendan Gleeson rules the show as a lone-ranger cop in Galway, whose response to an apparent spate of serial killings is one of stoic bemusement. His rapport with a visiting FBI agent (Don Cheadle, thoroughly welcome) is a consistent delight, unlike the rather sleepy plot, but Gleeson is on simply outstanding form - dignified yet ridiculous, heroic and hardly bothered. The Iron Lady, CERT: 12, for adults, £5 Meryl Streep's physical transformation into Lady Thatcher mesmerised the public when she appeared on billboards last year. Her performance is no less astonishing, particularly her mastery of the Thatcherite voice, and in some wonderful despatch box scenes. The vision of a regretful pensioner with dementia will trouble her admirers, and others will complain the era's social upheaval is glossed over, but Phyllida Lloyd's film is true to the character of Lady Thatcher, if perhaps not to her premiership. The Artist, CERT: PG, for adults, £6.94 Five Oscars later, you may want to see what all the fuss was about, or just savour this enormously pleasurable film again as a matinee treat. One of them went to Jean Dujardin as George Valentin, the silent movie star whose career hits a wall with the advent of sound. Its ingenuity as a pastiche of early-Hollywood style remains priceless, but the more bitter moments make thoughtful comment on how fast and obliviously the medium moves on. Moneyball, CERT: 12, for adults, £4.75 Statistics are rarely sexier than in this chronically underseen Oscar nominee from last year, adapted by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin from a true story. Brad Pitt plays a struggling baseball manager who uses a controversial new type of statistical analysis to find strong, unpopular players he can combine into a dream team of misfits.Don't let the baseball angle put you off: savour Sorkin's screwball dialogue and Pitt's best and subtlest performance yet. The Descendants, CERT: 15, for adults, £7.21 All of Alexander Payne's sharp directorial skills and the tough wit he revealed in films such as Election and Sideways can't disguise the sloppy heart beating beneath this tale of a Hawaiian landowner (George Clooney) who sets off on a journey of discovery with his daughters after his wife falls into a coma. But it looks gorgeous and swings easily between the high comedy of Clooney's inadequate parenting to the gentle wisdom of the movie's close. A pleasure. War Horse, CERT: 12, for everyone, £4.99 Steven Spielberg's adaptation of the much-loved novel by Michael Morpurgo is a war epic crafted in the Old Hollywood tradition, with all the romance, spectacle and sunset-dappled vistas of a John Ford or David O. Selznick picture.The friendship between young Devon lad Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) and Joey, his doughty thoroughbred, takes the pair from the Devon countryside to the trenches of the Somme. Tissues will be required, and by the boxload. Drive, CERT: 18, for adults, £5 Many critics called Nicolas Winding Refn's neon-stained neo-noir the best film of last year, and there can be little doubt it was the coolest.Ryan Gosling plays a nameless getaway driver whose knight-like dedication towards a single mother in his apartment block (Carey Mulligan) leads him deeper into the Los Angeles underworld.Support from Bryan Cranston and Christina Hendricks and Cliff Martinez's throbbing electronic score all cement its movie-of-the-moment credentials. Shame, CERT: 18, for adults, £7 Perhaps this is not one to watch after Christmas lunch with a tin of Quality Street, but the Turner Prize-winning filmmaker Steve McQueen's drama about the hydra-like nature of contemporary sex addiction is one of the smartest films of the year, not to mention one of the most scorchingly explicit.Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan play Brandon and Sissy, two siblings living in New York who are each fighting their own battle with intimacy. Sherlock, CERT: 12, for everyone, £7.25 The plot's a mess, and new addition Noomi Rapace doesn't have much of a function as some sort of knife-wielding gypsy. Still, there's plenty to enjoy in Guy Ritchie's follow-up to his 2009 hit. Jared Harris's Moriarty is devilishly good, and there's more of a sense of moment-by-moment detection along the way, rather than all the Holmesian explanations coming at once. It's far more of a brawling Ritchie flick than something Conan Doyle would have approved, mind. The Dictator, CERT: 15, for adults, £12.49 Sacha Baron Cohen is on invigoratingly offensive form in this comedy about a north African despot who ends up shorn of his instantly recognisable beard and abandoned on the streets of New York City.A vegan hipster (Anna Faris) takes him in, accepting his incendiary views on the decadent West in the name of tolerance and multiculturalism. Nobody does grotesque comedy quite like Baron Cohen, and his closing speech is a comic set-piece for the ages. The Hunger Games, CERT: 12, for everyone, £12 Too many Hollywood films treat adults like children, but this thrilling science fiction tale, based on the first in a series of three novels by Suzanne Collins, credits its young target audience with maturity and intelligence.Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) is the teenage girl who competes in a national, state-sponsored fight to the death to secure food for the residents of her impoverished district. The story hums with timely parallels, and it's rattlingly exciting to boot. The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, CERT: U, for kids, £8.25 There's a Pythonesque streak of insanity running through Aardman Animations" latest creation. Hugh Grant voices a spectacularly dim-witted pirate captain, whose dippy crew team up with the naturalist Charles Darwin and his chimpanzee butler to hijack the Pirate of the Year awards.This is Aardman's most elaborate stop-motion film by some stretch: the characters and backdrops are dazzlingly detailed, and visual gags are crammed into every frame. Be ready with the freeze-frame button. Moonrise Kingdom, CERT: 12, for adults, £11.99 Wes Anderson gets his groove back with a sunny-sad, pleasingly outdoorsy ensemble comedy set in 1965 on an island in New England. A young boy scout and his pen pal take tentative steps towards young love. Frances McDormand, Bruce Willis and Edward Norton head the adult cast of forlorn eccentrics, but Bob Balaban steals it as a lovably odd-duck narrator. Extras include what every film ideally needs: a set tour with Bill Murray. Marvel Avengers Assemble, CERT: 12, for everyone, £10.99 Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk, Captain America and Thor join forces for the superhero film to end all superhero films (only figuratively, of course: six more Avengers-related films are due to be released in the next three years).Director Joss Whedon, perhaps best known for creating the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, ensures there are human hearts beating beneath all that spandex, and the action sequences are a pure multi-sensory sugar rush. Melancholia, CERT: 15, for adults, £6.98 This is a Lars von Trier we can all embrace, more readily at least than the divisive Antichrist. It's a film of two halves: in the first, chronic depressive Kirsten Dunst prepares for her wedding. In the second, a rogue planet is set on a collision course with Earth, and four characters including Dunst and her sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg) wait out apocalypse. Each hemisphere of this brilliantly achieved and acted think-piece is a kind of metaphor for the other. The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, CERT: PG, for everyone, £6.50 When Spielberg's Hergé adaptation soars, it really soars: the "one-take," multi-character chase across a North African port town is a delirious classic of its kind. John Williams's bubbling score is pleasingly odd, and there are all sorts of charming grace notes. By common consent, the motion capture is a problem, and the chubby roundness of the animation style feels alien and misjudged. But it's worth owning if only to watch the highlights again and again. Jack Whitehall Live, CERT: 15, for adults, £13 The accomplished debut DVD from stand-up's young pup of the moment - riding high on the TV success of Fresh Meat and Bad Education. It distils his winning style to perfection: animated, posh-boy insouciance and camp theatricality, with lots of natter about nothing very much in particular - his father's stentorian personality ("This is typical of you Hilary, you are always defending Mugabi!"), relationship angst, and some beautiful bile about Robert Pattinson, served up in a rooster costume as the rousing finale. Al Murray: The Only Way is Epic, CERT: 15, for adults, £13.99 As Shakespeare's Enobarbus nearly said: "Age cannot wither the Pub Landlord, nor custom stale his infinite variety" - coming up to his 20th anniversary the year after next, Al Murray's splenetic, satirically xenophobic and ragingly patriotic alter-ego shows no signs of losing his ire or his comedic fire-power. His most recent touring show, recorded in Brighton, encapsulates his lightning-fast audience repartee and, dealing with such vasty themes as Scottish independence, the Euro and "Why kids don't know the meaning of hard work" lives up to its grandstanding, mock-epic ambition. Stewart Lee: Carpet Remnant World, CERT: 18, for adults, £15 Recorded at the Lyceum, Sheffield, the ever-sardonic Stew unrolls an evening whose chief running-gag is that he hasn't got a set to speak of: he tells us he has been too busy parenting his four-year-old son and hunts through the news for topical relevance, explaining that his specialist subject nowadays is Scooby-Doo. Placed in a stocking in the midst of the usual commercialised over-supply of good cheer, Lee's austere, characteristically clever show about the emptied-out state we're in should act as a welcome purgative. Dara O'Briain: Craic Dealer Live, CERT: TBA, for adults, £13.99 Quick note to stand-up DVD-makers: recordings of shows in theatres and playhouses are far more homely to watch than those shot in arenas. O'Briain's set, filmed at the Edinburgh Playhouse, is a perfect case in point. You could almost warm your hands at the fierce glow of his fast-talking invention, which takes in such topics as the state of the economy, married life and Tunnocks tea cakes. His quips about his fellow countrymen's efforts to claw back their former reputation for graft are among his best: "Watch out for the new Irish - soft hands, soft gentle - "we've been working in IT" hands." Michael McIntyre: Showtime, CERT: TBA, for adults, £13.99 I don't think anyone would be surprised if McIntyre's third DVD release, produced swiftly on the back of his 71-date arena tour, puts enough money into his bank-account to save a debt-enslaved European nation. Why begrudge him it either? Bouncing off the Olympics and the Jubilee year, he finds fresh fodder for mirth and his recounted tales against his own stupidity prove that, for all his detractors, he hasn't lost the common touch. Kevin Bridges: The Story Continues, CERT: TBA, for adults, £14 Believe the hype - the 25-year-old Glaswegian touted as the best thing to have come out of Scotland, comedy-wise, since Billy Connolly boasts a concision and street-grounded attitude that makes the Big Yin's rambling reminiscences look distinctly old-hat. This is the most topically relevant of 2012"s big stand-up shows - with reflections on the economy that hit home whatever side of the border you're from: "I hope Africa has got some good rock bands. Cos we need a concert - it's their ****ing round. Job well done. Frankie Boyle Live: The Last Days of Sodom, CERT: TBA, for adults, £11.99 The best place to watch fearless Frankie live is probably from the comfort of your living-room. The insult-fest the peerless misanthrope unleashes on singled-out members of his Glasgow audience by way of warm-up should have you pleasantly choking on the remains of your Christmas turkey: "You've got a blank face there pal, if you held that expression for long enough in a hospital you'd get ****ing switched off," he advises one gormless onlooker. Sick-taste jokes abound - natch. If you're seeking a toxic antidote to our sycophantic, celeb-obssessed age, here it is, in overdose levels. Sarah Millican: Thoroughly Modern Millican Live, CERT: TBA, for adults, £12.99 Not the token female stand-up on the list - one of the out-and-out joys of the Christmas releases. The Geordie comic's low-key naturalness in front of a crowd remains intensely refreshing in a world of try-too-hard blokeishness but she can serve up smut with the best of them. The DVD extras are generous: ironic backstage bitching, an episode of her Radio 4 "Support Group" series and an insightful interview too into what it takes to succeed in comedy. Available at Amazon Rhod Gilbert: The Man with the Flaming Battenberg Tattoo, CERT: 15, for adults, £11.99 Like a one-man safety-valve on behalf of a nation cracking under the Crimbo pressure, the ranting Welshman is on vintage plaintive form in his new tour, which details a make-or-break trip to New York with his girlfriend. The DVD out-takes lift the curtain on how unyielding he can be when faced with a mutinous crowd: one clip involves an entertaining dispute as to whether a door can have a front and back. A master in the art of over-reaction. Ross Noble: Non-Sensory Overload, CERT: 15, for adults, £12.99 Watching Noble going with the hallucinogenic flow of his thoughts doesn't just offer the chance to peer inside the head of an undoubted comedy impro king, it also presents a vision of what would happen if children were allowed to never grow up or get serious. This is the best value package of the lot - including five hours of material and featuring shows in Canberra, at the Hay Festival and Hammersmith Apollo, as well as a behind the scenes doc.