The Handmaiden (18)

Curzon Artificial Eye, £15.99

FOLLOWING his curious (and not altogether successful) 2013 English language debut Stoker, South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook returns to more familiar territory with a sumptuous and ravishing adaptation of Sarah Waters's 2002 novel Fingersmith.

Make that a loose adaptation: transposing the action from Victorian England to 1930s Korea during the long period of Japanese occupation, he truncates the second section of the novel, keeps the lesbian sex but ignores its political context (Waters is the poster girl for LGBT literary fiction, after all) and even underplays the jaw-dropping twist which marks the book's thrilling midpoint. Yet somehow he still manages to produce a gripping 145 minutes of cinema.

Kim Tae-ri is Sook-hee, a potty-mouthed pickpocket who's persuaded to take a job acting as maid to the unworldly Lady Izumi Hideko (Kim Min-hee) by Japanese nobleman Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo) - actually a handsome conman who's about as Japanese as Sook-hee is honest. The plan is for her to help Fujiwara court and then marry Lady Izumi, who lives with her sinister, pervy, book-loving uncle Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong). The Count will then declare Izumi mad, have her committed to a lunatic asylum and live off whatever's left of her fortune once partner-in-crime Sook-hee has had her share. It's all going swimmingly until Sook-hee falls for Izumi and starts having second thoughts. But it's what happens in the film's second and third sections which turn the whole thing on its head as we see events from Izumi's point of view and realise she's not at all what she seems. A monumental triple-cross ensues.

Park Chan-wook is best known for his baroque 2003 revenge thriller Old Boy and fans of that film's notorious octopus-eating scene will enjoy a (sort of) reprise here as the Count gets his eventual comeuppance. Elsewhere the director's skilful image-making makes a visual feast out of Kouzuki's huge mansion – architecturally half English and half Japanese – and its cherry tree-dotted grounds. But its the intense inter-play between the two female leads that really drives the film. An undeniable return to form for the mercurial South Korean.

Free Fire (15)

Studio Canal, £12.99

BORING isn't a word anyone would generally apply to Ben Wheatley, the British director of blackly comic serial killer flick Sightseers, 2015 JG Ballard adaptation High-Rise and kaleidoscopic Civil War wig-out A Field In England. But unless you can make a case for his 1970s-set 2016 film Free Fire being a triumph of sound design and a free-wheeling essay in the use of space in cinema – dubious, at best – then boring is what it is, all 90 minutes of it.

Or about 75 minutes of it anyway. A set-up in which IRA members Chrissie and Frank (Cillian Murphy and Wheatley regular Michael Smiley) are taken by their American fixer Justine (Brie Larson) to meet slick middleman Ord (Armie Hammer) and South African gun-runner Vernon (Sharlto Copley) in a Boston warehouse is pleasing enough. But then the shooting starts. And doesn't stop.

Nobody hits much, though within about 10 minutes everyone is winged and crawling around in the dirt trading insults. You start longing for someone to actually die, though Wheatley denies his audience even that visceral pleasure until close to the end when, predictably, the one person you know will be the last one standing turns out to be the last one standing. Avoid.

Electric Dreams (PG)

Second Sight, £19.99

IF YOU share this writer's opinion that Phil Oakey's 1984 hit Together In Electric Dreams was one of the most bone-achingly mediocre songs of that decade – yes, despite its being co-written by Giorgio Moroder – then you won't be surprised to learn the film it's taken from is little better.

The major problems are the wooden performances (particularly from lead Lenny Von Dohlen, an actor who makes Keanu Reeves seem animated), though if you can get past that there is a certain nostalgic charm to Steve Barron's yarn about budding San Francisco architect Miles (Van Dohlen) who buys a desktop PC and then, when it becomes sentient after an accident with a bottle of champagne, finds it interfering in his love life. Virginia Madsen plays love interest and upstairs neighbour Madeline, a professional cellist, and there's a welcome role for Bud Cort, who played Harold in Hal Ashby's cult 1971 film Harold And Maude. He voices Edgar, the name the computer chooses for itself.

Elsewhere fans of 1980s gadgetry will enjoy the technology on display and there are certainly aspects of Rusty Lemorande's script which today seem prescient. And the extras package is worth mining, too, if only for nuggets of film trivia. Like: Electric Dreams was funded on a whim by Richard Branson, whose sister used to go out with Bannon's cousin (or something). And: the director himself only found out years later that Tom Hanks had very much wanted to play the Miles role. Not the greatest What If? in movie history, but interesting nonetheless.