VIDEO / At a store near you: John Lyttle reviews the latest releases on rental and sell-through. Top of the bill: Man Bites Dog

MAN BITES DOG (Tartan Video 18 95mins b/w) The critics: 'blatant brutality', 'a piece of gore titillation'. Actually, this vindictively funny tale of a personable serial killer and his increasingly complicated relationship with a TV crew isn't quite that good. There's a tad too much of the grainy student film about the shock effects. At least the violence is instructive. The target of the three directors' venom isn't the charming butcher or his victims or society. It's the hypocritical media, simultaneously condemning even as it exploits. On release. Retail price: pounds 15.99. See Competition.

LEON THE PIG FARMER (Electric Pictures 15 102mins) Perverse delight. Vadim Jean and Gary Sinyor's pounds 150,000 comedy enjoys the most sensuous camera movement to adorn a British comedy for ages. Swanky technique doesn't sacrifice a sparky plot: the too honest Leon (Mark Frankel) discovers that he's the result of artifical insemination, only half-Jewish, and that his real father is a pig farmer (Brian Glover). Leon's unlucky in everything - employment, love, sex, bowling. The running time outstrips the plot's natural length; it's worth it for the gag about strangers routinely appearing to offer Leon sage advice. Available 9 August.

ONE FALSE MOVE (20/20 Vision 18 129mins) Carl Franklin's drugs thriller has the inevitability of tragedy. From the opening - a choreographed orgy of bloodshed that plunges the viewer into a pitiless subculture - each scene makes its point and marches on. The leanness keeps sentimentality at bay: the junkie 'heroine' (Cynda Williams) splits from her murderous companions to see her five-year-old son, escaping to rural innocence and her child's white father, local sheriff Bill Paxton. He's waiting for her. So are the FBI. Franklin's method is both unflinching and humane. Not quite sufficient for classic status, yet enough to make One False Move the perfect B- movie. Available 11 August.

SARAFINA] (Warner 15 111mins) A musical with a history infinitely more interesting than anything that occurs on screen. Disney bought up the distribution rights to Whoopi Goldberg's South African musical, hoping to placate the disgruntled star of Sister Act. The tactics took. Goldberg now adorns Sister Act 2, despite Sarafina] biting the box-office dust. She's a teacher come to Soweto to encourage hope at the height of apartheid, Khumalo is Sarafina, the teenage pupil whose consciousness is raised. It's The Corn is Black, the cloying relationship sweetened by impeccably mounted production numbers. The film's message is indisputable. Still, it's too obviously a message. On release.

BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (20/20 Vision 18 120mins) Worth renting to peruse Gary Oldman's King Vampire, one moment an ancient grotesque, the next a refugee from The Pogues, roaming Victorian London in blue granny glasses. Otherwise, an ornate version of the horror classic, a compromise between Francis Ford Coppola's 'artistic' impulses and studio imperatives: the casting of Winona Ryder as an English maiden and Keanu Reeves, a (failed) graduate of the Dick Van Dyke School of Accents, as Jonathan Harker. The script is closer to the novel than earlier attempts; you'll be asking why, given that the director's visual flourishes - huge eyes dominating a blood-red sky, writhing mist coaxing Ryder to orgasm - dam the narrative flow. Available 4 August.

WIDE SARGASSO SEA (Polygram 18 100mins) Jean Rhys prequel to Jane Eyre, directed by John Duigan, of Flirting fame. This sea refuses to rage, despite Nathaniel Parker's infatuated Rochester, Antoinette Cosway as his sultry first wife, blistering sex and scenic Jamaican backdrops. The point appears to be that Parker destroys Cosway because he can't accommodate her sensual nature (possibly tainted by black blood). The film's so free-floating it's hard to know. On release.

THE LIVING END (Pride 18 83mins) Simple, sexy story: HIV-positive film critic Jon goes on the run with gun-toting hustler Luke. Complex undercurrents: the characters growing rage keeps being fed by the media, homophobes and craziness encountered on the road. A pity Gregg Araki didn't modulate the picture's tone, which veers from daring to petulant. Still, he grabs attention, and there are flippant, taunting distractions along the way (clock the cocky lesbian serial killers). On release.

MR NANNY (Entertainment in Video PG 80mins). For those panting to see lumpy Hulk Hogan in ballet gear. He's tutu much. The observation can't be extended to the comedy, a sluggish affair which has the wrestler guarding two rich, obnoxious brats. Available 2 August.

PET SEMATARY 2 (CIC Video PG 96mins). A dog of a horror movie, dug up by director Mary Lambert after the success of Pet Sematary, whose high point came with the Ramones whining 'I don't want to be buried in a pet sematary'. This time around the Indian burial ground revives a manic cop and a movie-star wife. Who cares? Fun scenes: Brown drills vet Anthony Edwards' already savaged arm. On release.

THE PUBLIC EYE (Universal 15 94 mins) Engaging fictional take on the life of Wee Gee, the legendary photographer who haunted New York's streets in the wee small hours, taking grim shots of crime scenes, bullet-ventilated corpses, agony-distorted faces. Wee Gee's romance with femme fatale Barbara Hershey violates his moral and artistic neturality; he has to take sides. As a plot propellant this lacks a certain urgency. Fortunately Joe Pesci's trademark hyperactivity and Hershey's mature beauty compensate; Howard Franklin's moody direction makes them an oddly right couple to be kissing amidst corruption. On release.

UNFORGIVEN (Warner 15 125mins) Clint Eastwood's revisionist western reverses the tropes. Movies like Shane are about retired outlaws hoping for a new life. Unforgiven begins with Eastwood leaving that new life; a prostitute has been slashed by a customer and her brethren are offering a reward. It's about embracing the past, realising that you never were much more than a killing machine. Brilliantly conceived, stirringly acted by sheriff Gene Hackman (who can't understand why he has to die) and dark as midnight. On release.

RETAIL

Pleasure package of the month has to be Warner Home Video's Ealing Studios Present, gathering together The Man in the White Suit, The Lavender Hill Mob, Passport to Pimlico, The Titfield Thunderbolt, Whisky Galore], The Magnet, The Ladykillers and that macabre masterpiece Kind Hearts and Coronets. Available from 2 August at a retail price of pounds 10.99.

For the uninitiated, Manga is violent sci-fi cum horror animation from Japan. An acquired taste, often imagainative, bizarrely beautiful and always bloody. Recent releases include RG Veda (Manga 15 90 mins), The Heroic Legend of Arislan (Manga 15 60mins), Lensman (Manga PG 107mins) and Legend of the Demon Womb (Manga 18 100mins). Respective retail prices: pounds 12.99, pounds 10.99, 12.99. pounds 12.99.

Ripping off Jurassic Park hype is Warner's Dinosaur Movie Collection. Raquel Welch is outstanding in One Million Years BC. The same cannot be said of Doug McClure's antics in The Land that Time Forgot. Pre-historic price: pounds 9.99. The movie-buffish Dinosaurs at the Movies (Simitar 90mins) costs pounds 10.99.

Connoisseur Video presents the Roberto Rossellini quartet, especially as Rossellini's reputation is undergoing one of its periodic reassessments. The war triptych - Rome, Open City, Paisa and Germany, Year Zero - is happily available, though the strange, neglected Voyage to Italy, starring Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, has much to recommend it. Retail offer: pounds 15.99.

Also from Connoisseur: Polanski's disturbing debut, Knife in the Water, Rohmer's amusing Die Marquise Von 0 (his first period picture) and La Collectionneuse, the third of his increasingly dry 'Moral Tales'. Prices as above.

On 9 August Artifical Eye releases Serif Goren and Yilmaz Guney's Yol, the critically hailed story of five prisoners on parole from a Turkish jail. Retail price: pounds 15.99. Lovers of Teutonic humour will sample Eye's Schtonk], a retelling of the Hitler Diaries scam. More elevated tastes can turn to Godard's more stylish noir pastiche Detective. Both at pounds 15.99.

Before Stonewall (Pride 15 85mins) hysterically documents America's lesbian and gay communities before the 1969 police raid which resulted in three nights of rioting and the Gay Liberation Movement. RRP: pounds 14.99.

COMPETITION

We have 20 collectors copies of Man Bites Dog (Tartan Video) to give away, autographed by the directors. Name the murderers the following films are based on: Compulsion and Psycho. Answers to Dog, 40 City Road, London, EC1 2DB. Closing date: Friday, 6 August.

(Photograph omitted)