They don’t call it the magic of Disney for nothing: while the studio’s classic canine confection feels like an artefact from another age, with its crude ethnic stereotyping, dated gender politics and absurd anthropomorphism (these animals don’t just talk, they read), all objections melt away when you look into those puppy-dog eyes. My daughters both fell for Lady in a big way, almost swooning over the spaghetti kiss, but for grown-ups the cameos hold more appeal: Peg’s mournful, mischievous dance to He’s a Tramp (sultrily sung by the wondrous Peggy Lee), the lugubrious bloodhound Trusty and those scene-stealing Siamese cats. The story is shamelessly sentimental, with a schmaltzy Christmas feel, but it’s hard not to be drawn in by the animators’ delight in the detail, and Tramp’s can-do, all-American optimism proves surprisingly contagious. The extras are as thorough and uncontroversial as you’d expect from a Disney re-release. Four stars
Matthew Davis
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This grotesque film’s plot has echoes of Shaw’s Pygmalion and PL Travers’s Mary Poppins, but lacks those classics’ charms. An uglified Emma Thompson (she also scripted the film) stars as the carer who arrives out of nowhere to take charge of the multitudinous and mischievous Brown brood. The children are well cast, as is Kenneth Branagh, as their harassed widower father, and Kelly Macdonald, as Evangeline, their lovable maid. However, the story is formulaic, the setting (a vulgar-hued, Tim Burtonish Edwardiana) unconvincing and the grotesque humour bewilderingly Swiftian — yep, there are jokes about boiling babies. The extras, including features on the child casting, Thompson’s makeover and commentaries, would add to the package if you actually liked the film. Two stars
Patricia Nicol
Richard III
Network, U, 158 mins; £14.99 (2 discs)
Shakespeare was unkind to Richard III. Much subsequent history views him as rather a good king, and it is far from proven that he murdered the two princes in the tower. A second disc included in this special edition has lawyers conducting, in 1984, a trial by jury of Richard for that killing — and he is unanimously found not guilty. The play, though, is a brilliant portrait of ambition leading to bloodthirsty tyranny and, finally, to madness, disintegration and death. This 1955 classic gives it suitably regal treatment, with spacious sets, rich colours and elaborate costumes. The cast of theatrical greats turned screen actors is to die for: Laurence Olivier is magnetic as Richard; John Gielgud (Clarence) and Ralph Richardson (Buckingham) offer distinguished support. The whole creaks only slightly. Four stars
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Adrienne Connors
Charlie and Lola: Series One
BBC, U, 80 mins; £12.99
“These are my friends on the television,” announced my small son of Charlie and Lola, summing up the huge appeal of the cartoon brother and sister, seven of whose television adventures are collected here. Rapt attention and peals of laughter have greeted these stories, based on Lauren Child’s award-winning children’s books and aimed at three- to seven-year-olds. Each 11-minute episode, brilliantly animated and voiced with pitch-perfect clarity by Jethro Lundie-Brown and Maisie Cowell, deals with cool elder brother Charlie’s painstaking efforts to deal with funny, flighty Lola’s whims, dislikes and fears (tomatoes, spiders, going away to granny and grandpa’s). Wittily scripted, imaginative, hilariously funny and yet firmly rooted in children’s real lives, these animations are that holy grail for parents: stories that can be watched over and over again by both generations. More, please. Caroline Gascoigne
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Five stars
The Last Mitterrand
Pathé, PG, 116 mins; £19.99
François (Michel Bouquet) is dying. An eminent patriarch, he worries posterity will judge him badly, so he hires the idealistic Antoine (Jalil Lespert) to write his memoirs. But will the old man’s subterfuge and shady war record upset their growing friendship and ruin his proxy son’s marriage? This could be an Eric Rohmer plot, yet Robert Guédiguian’s subject is le président de la République, in a film based on Georges-Marc Benamou’s book of conversations with the ailing Mitterrand. “Tell them I’m not the devil,” the wily premier urges his young scribe, and the film duly collaborates. Like the ambivalent Antoine, Guédiguian seems ultimately to forgive Mitterrand’s evasions over Vichy — believing him to be the last embodiment of France’s socialist dream. Bouquet is mesmerising as the refined Machiavelli turned elderly Cyrano. Whether it touches the truth about le Sphinx is open to debate. No extras. Three stars
Richard Clayton