Graduation (15)

Curzon Artificial Eye, £15.99

DIRECTED by former Cannes Palme d'Or winner Cristian Mungiu, and awarded the Best Director prize at that same film festival last year, this sixth feature from the Romanian tells the story of highly-regarded doctor Romeo Aldea (Adrian Titieni) who becomes caught up in the culture of compromise and small-scale corruption which pertains in Romania but which he has always tried to stay above. The reason for his calling in of favours is the attempted rape of his teenage daughter Eliza (Maria Dragus) the day before she's due to sit her final school exams: traumatised and with a cast on her arm, she performs poorly, jeopardising her chances of a scholarship to read psychology at Cambridge University. For Romeo, Eliza's only hope lies outside Romania so reluctantly he speaks to people who speak to other people who say they'll see what they can do about helping her grades along – or cheating, in other words – as long as he can help bump a local civic official up the waiting list for a liver transplant. Meanwhile Romeo's marriage is disintegrating and his lover, a teacher with a young son, announces she's pregnant by him.

As Romeo plods from encounter to encounter, his daughter and wife distance themselves from him and even his lover sticks him on the couch. Ultimately, little is resolved. More than that there's a strong sense of secrets held and untold, and hints that peripheral actors may have more agency than at first sight – though Mungiu isn't prepared to share much more with the viewer. There's also the question of who it is that's throwing bricks through his window and tampering with his car, a troubling backdrop to an already troubling few days inn the taciturn doctor's life. Comparisons with Michael Haneke's masterful 2005 film Hidden are apt – interestingly, Maria Dragus starred in Haneke's follow-up to Hidden, The White Ribbon – though with its state-of-the-nation feel Mungiu's is a more overtly political work.

Mulholland Drive (15)

Studio Canal, £14.99

WITH what many view as David Lynch's greatest artistic achievement set to return to UK television screens on Monday – Twin Peaks, back for a third series after a gap of 26 years – there's no better time for this Blu-ray re-issue of what is probably his best and certainly his most intriguing big screen offering: 2001's Mulholland Drive, ranked number one in the BBC's recent list of the best films of the 21st century.

Digitally restored in a process overseen by the director, it stars Naomi Watts as Betty, an aspiring actress who arrives in Hollywood to stay in her absent aunt's lush apartment. Laura Harring is Rita, an amnesiac who escapes a murder attempt and hides out in the apartment while she and Betty set out to solve the puzzle of who she actually is. The trail take them to an apartment block where they find a body.

Ah, but if only it were that simple. On top of this Lynch lays other storylines involving an inept, lowlife assassin; an inscrutable young movie director who resents being told who to cast in his film by comically sinister businessmen; and a young man who dreams about a grotesque and terrifying figure living behind an otherwise normal Los Angeles diner.

As ever with Lynch, everything seems just slightly wrong and out of synch with reality, though the feeling of mild puzzlement lurches into something more persistent and confounding in the final act when realities shift and the whole film seems to suddenly stand on its head. And stay there for the duration.

Extras include new interviews with Lynch and Watts, and separate interviews with Harring, composer Angelo Badalamenti (also responsible for that famous Twin Peaks soundtrack) and editor Mary Sweeney.

The Goose Steps Out (U)

Studio Canal, £17.99

RESTORED to pristine black and white and available on Blu-ray for the first time, this 1940 comedy stars legendary comedian Will Hay and is notable also for its supporting cast – Charles Hawtrey, Barry Morse and Peter Ustinov (in his debut) – and its director, Basil Dearden, also in his first outing. It was produced by Michael Balcon and was Hay's third film for the fledgling Ealing Studios.

The comic plays William Potts, an inept schoolmaster whose doppelganger happens to be a German spy apprehended at Croydon airport en route to Lisbon. Spotting a chance, British intelligence persuade Potts to take the spy's place and return to Germany where he ends up teaching real German spies about British customs. Hay's shrill delivery – every line is shouted – and Chaplin-esque slapstick become a little wearing in a storyline which has him trying to steal a prototype bomb from a research facility. But among the film's best set-piece moments is an iconic scene in which he has the entire room of students flicking V-signs at the massive portrait of Adolf Hitler which looms over them, and a long final scene set on board a plane which Hay flies upside down and which then crash lands in Whitehall.