UNCHARTED 4: A THIEF'S END 

Ever since the Tomb Raider series and the original Far Cry, we've been fans of a rollickingly good adventure game, where the emphasis is on exploration, skirmishes and narrative. The final episode in the Uncharted series is probably at the pinnacle of the genre, an Indiana Jones-style romp through cities, jungles and oceans. It begins with a flashback to hero Nathan Drake's childhood in an orphanage, then fast-forwards to the present day, where we start the adventure proper in a South American jail straight out of Prison Break. Best of all, it looks stunning, intricately detailed and somehow wringing another level of performance out of the PS4 we played it on. The best game of the year so far.  AH 

A still from film Whiplash.

DVD

WHIPLASH 

UNIVERSAL SONY, MA

Hats off to young writer and director Damien Chazelle. The intensity of this movie is beyond boiling point and the lead actors, Miles Teller as aspiring drummer Andrew and J.K. Simmons as band leader Fletcher, carry the fury as far as humanly possible. Every young drummer knows the Duke Ellington classic Caravan; Hank Levy's Whiplash is in the same category. The pursuit of playing them perfectly on the drums is taken to maximum in Chazelle's movie, revolving around the obsessions of student and teacher. There is blood, sweat, tears – and punches and yelling and car crashes. The movie was nominated for an Oscar for best picture, best adapted screenplay (Chazelle) and J.K. Simmons won best supporting actor.  JK

Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

COMEDY

FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF

PARAMOUNT, PG

All the contradictions of writer-director John Hughes' artistic personality were summed up in the wish-fulfilment figure of Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) – a healthy, normal suburban high-schooler who is also an imp of the perverse, scheming to get whatever he wants while shamelessly flirting with everyone from his parents onward. Following Ferris and his friends as they skip school to enjoy a day on the town, this 1986 comedy trades on what might seem a safely middle-class vision of teen rebellion, with Ferris almost as explicit a spokesman for Reaganite values as Michael J. Fox in Family Ties. Yet few American teen movies of any era are so packed with odd detours and artsy flourishes, from the fourth-wall-breaking interludes to the Cabaret Voltaire poster in Ferris' bedroom to a gallery sequence that plays like a homage to Michelangelo Antonioni. Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night is probably the most immediate template for Hughes' rhythmic cutting and day-in-the-life structure – but in any case, the sensibility is pure 1980s pop, with a gleeful nihilism at the core.  Jake Wilson

Other Men's Women is a working-class melodrama. Photo: Supplied

DVD

OTHER MEN'S WOMEN

WARNER, UNRATED

Made in those few golden years between the invention of sound cinema and the imposition of the Hays censorship code, William Wellman's 1931 working-class melodrama feels more alive than most movies made since. The story is a simple romantic triangle involving a pair of railway workers (Grant Withers and Regis Toomey) whose friendship is broken when one falls for the other's wife (Mary Astor). But the point lies elsewhere, in the slangy, often risque dialogue, and above all in the use of gesture: the actors move with a primal elegance that brings both violence and eroticism close to the surface even in very mundane contexts (say, a woman sewing a button on a man's shirt). Joan Blondell is wonderfully dejected as a jilted diner waitress who describes herself as "A.P.O." (for "Ain't Puttin' Out"); soon to rise to stardom in Wellman's The Public Enemy, James Cagney serves as the film's mascot, a strutting dandy who mimes a boxing match atop a moving train and slides onto a dance floor as if stealing home base.  Jake Wilson

Kate McLennan in Bleak.

FREE-TO-AIR

COMEDY SHOWROOM: BLEAK

MAY 25, ABC, 9pm (AND ON IVIEW)

Bleak is the program The Katering Show's two Kates - McLennan and McCartney - have been working on  for several years; The Katering Show was something they put together 'on the side'. Initially a web series, ABC have developed the pilot now for their Comedy Showroom. It stars Kate McLennan as Anna (McCartney directs), who in the space of a day has been fired from her magazine job (for photoshopping Kim Kardashian's arse down to a normal size), walked in on her boyfriend having sex with a circus performer and been rejected by her mum Noni (the brilliant Jean Kittson) when she asks to move back home. But not before she downs several champagnes and illegally squats in a house down the road after wandering into an open-for-inspection. After her sort-of mate Fran questions Anna's mental state - and potential for arrest - her dad John (Shane Bourne) invites her back to the family home. A different pace from The Katering Show, Bleak is a promising dark comedy with a  stellar cast. Remember to give ABC your feedback if you want to see an entire series.  Kylie Northover