Top 5 films: what's new in streaming

THE LADY VANISHES (96 minutes) PG

Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 thriller has a perfect premise: an elderly woman (May Whitty) disappears from a train hurtling through central Europe, and only the young heroine (Margaret Lockwood) seems to recall she ever existed. Lighthearted with a dash of political menace, this is timeless entertainment and the culmination of Hitchcock’s work in Britain. Amazon Prime

MONTPARNASSE 19 (108 minutes) Unrated

Jacques Becker’s 1958 portrait of the painter Amedeo Modigliani (Gerard Philippe) embraces the stock romantic notion of the self-destructive genius yet manages to say something truthful — and in the end, quite devastating— about artists and how they fit into the world. The young Anouk Aimee co-stars as a student who becomes Modigliani's devoted wife. MUBI

MELO (110 minutes) PG

The title is derived from a 1929 melodrama by forgotten French playwright Henri Bernstein, centred on a romantic triangle involving a trio of musicians (played here by Sabine Azema, Pierre Arditi and Andre Dussollier). Alain Resnais' exquisite 1986 adaptation commits totally to the material — and, in doing so, transforms it. MUBI

CASINO (178 minutes) R

One of the essential Martin Scorsese films, this 1995 spiritual sequel to Goodfellas is as brutal and garish as you'd expect of a gangster epic set in 1970s Vegas. It's also a vehicle for three great actors: Robert De Niro as meticulous casino manager Ace Rothstein, Joe Pesci as his hotheaded pal, and Sharon Stone as Rothstein's increasingly desperate wife. Netflix

THE PRODUCERS (84 minutes) G

Mel Brooks’ immortal 1967 first feature is a raspberry blown at all repressive standards of good taste. Typically for Brooks, it’s a love story between men — a Falstaffian Broadway producer (Zero Mostel) and his meek accountant (Gene Wilder) who jointly hatch a get-rich-quick scheme involving “the worst play ever written”. MUBI