By Michael Fox

"The murderously genteel Claude Chabrol has been compared to Alfred Hitchcock by so many critics, capsule biographers, trailer producers and pressbook writers that the label "France's master of suspense" is forever stuck to his lapel. The seed was planted back in the '50s when Chabrol co-authored an early book on the then-undervalued British filmmaker with fellow Cahiers du Cinema critic (and soon-to-be fellow Nouvelle Vague instigator) Eric Rohmer."

Two of Claude Chabrol's films starring Isabelle Huppert are now available on DVD; The Comedy of Power (2006), and Violette (1978). Read on as Michael Fox shares an overview of some of the director's most memorable works.

By Sean Axmaker

Mario Bava is a horror original. A painter and cinematographer turned director, a craftsman turned celluloid dreamer, an industry veteran who created, almost single-handedly, the uniquely Italian genre of baroque horror known as giallo, he directed the most graceful and deliriously mad horror films of the 1960s and early 1970s. Always better at imagery than explanation, at set piece than story, Bava's films are at their best dream worlds and nightmare visions. Check your logic at the door.

By John Esther

"Death of a President, the documentary-style speculative fiction about the assassination of the 43rd President of the United States, is seamless, intelligent and maybe even necessary to an understanding of George W Bush's role in the world today, and his place in the wider scope of history," wrote Jim Emerson last month. John Esther talks with director Gabriel Range.

Death of a President is now out on DVD.

By Steven Jenkins

Agnieszka Holland is one of the few contemporary directors whose next project is impossible to predict, so diverse is her filmography and so far-ranging her interests both cinematic and personal. Preferring to work independently, and often not far from her native Poland, Holland follows an idiosyncratic path from historical epic to spiritual inquiry to children's fantasy, intuitively making films that reveal as much about her own worldview as about their emotionally charged subjects and characters.

Holland's beautiful and intense Copying Beethoven is now available on DVD.