The sale of DVDs continues to spiral upwards, which means there is plenty of space in the megastores for forgotten masterpieces, new foreign films and, most unexpectedly of all, a stream of stirring documentaries.

The first unmissable DVD release of 2005 is perfectly suited to shaking off the excesses of Christmas and New Year: Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me (Tartan), a witty polemic on the dangers of eating too much fast food, provides a perfect contrast to the Michael Moore school of tub-thumping. Spurlock’s wry tone, as he embarks on a month-long McDonald’s binge, is finely judged and persuasive. We watch dispassionately as his body tells its own disturbing story.

Nathaniel Kahn’s My Architect (Tartan) is another true story told with consummate skill. Nathaniel was only 11 when he lost his father, the world-famous architect Louis I. Kahn. His search to discover him, by seeking Louis’ friends, lovers and buildings, boils down to one simple question: did the architect put human relationships aside in pursuit of his art? Nathaniel finds his answer in Bangladesh, the site of his father’s most famous work, in a moving and profound climax.

New technology has created new formats for the documentary. Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation (Optimum) is a sign of things to come: an adrenalin-charged, narcissistic video diary, shot for $218 on iMovie software. Scraps of Caouette’s life - answering machine messages, snapshots, snippets of Super 8 film, are edited with great panache as the author seeks to analyse his dysfunctional family history. Amid the bombast is the film’s compelling emotional core: Caouette’s attempt to reclaim his mother from the abyss into which her mental illness has thrown her.

By sharp contrast came Electric Edwardians: The Films of Mitchell & Kenyon (BFI), vignettes of a lost world that include the first screen appearance of a certain Manchester United football club. These modest films unveil a dynamic, optimistic era in the thrall of massive social change, and they are made unbearably poignant by our knowledge of what was to come: slaughter in the Somme and a cruel brake on all that positive thinking.

Surprise winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlinale, Fatih Akin’s German-Turkish Head-On (Soda), is an under-appreciated treat. Cahit and Sibel, who meet after failed suicide attempts, decide on a marriage of convenience.

He is drunk and mostly disorderly; she has issues with oppressive parents. But physical closeness begets emotional intimacy, and matters get complicated. There is admirably little room for sentimentality in Akin’s artful unravelling of his tale, switching locations between Hamburg and Istanbul to provide a masterful study of cultural dislocation.

Pawel Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love (Universal) is a rare combination of a British film with a subtle touch, nuanced characters and plenty of soul. Tamsin and Mona are the teenage girls who discover love - or a form of it - during the course of a rural English summer. Tamsin’s aristo-chic tastes and demeanour make an impression on down-to-earth Mona, who is nevertheless the more vulnerable partner. Mutual need stokes the girls’ relationship; yet only one of them emerges strengthened. Pawlikowski’s pastoral tale is beautifully shot, and there have been few shrewder films about class.

Paolo Sorrentino’s frosty and elegant The Consequences of Love (Artificial Eye) is a stylish and tightly plotted thriller that explores what can happen when you lose your heart instead of keeping your head. Middle-aged Italian loner Titta has lived in an anonymous Swiss hotel for eight years. He has emotionally detached himself from the world, but finds himself slowly succumbing to the smile of the hotel barmaid. His infatuation leads to an error of judgment; and then another, and another. This is brilliantly conceived film-making, and its climax is unforgettable.

Wong Kar Wai’s 2046 (Tartan) is another stylish romance, a kind of follow-up to the same director’s In the Mood for Love. As in that film, there was always the danger that the beauty of the images would dominate the narrative, but the performances from Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Ziyi Zhang, a radiant leading woman, give it real emotional depth. Leung is a jobless journalist who uses his writing of a sci-fi novel as a conduit for exploring memories of loves lost and recaptured. Wong’s fluent, high-tech noir is a great accomplishment, and marks him out as one of cinema’s most visionary directors.

The best of this year’s long-awaited releases from the archives - although we must nod to the rapturous Powell and Pressburger masterpiece Black Narcissus - is Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (UPV). The opening exchanges alone, between Fred MacMurray’s smitten ingenue and Barbara Stanwyck’s archetypal femme fatale, are among the greatest lines in the history of cinema. Add the sumptuous visuals, the swelling score and Edward G. Robinson, waiting calmly in the wings to mop up after the protagonists’ hubristic downfall, and you have one of the great postwar movies.

Finally, it has been a great year for catching up on the best television sitcoms, which have become puzzlingly difficult to find on the broadcasters’ eccentric schedules. Seasons Three and Four of Curb Your Enthusiasm included moments of startling audacity; Season Four of Seinfeld, from the early 1990s, saw that comedy hit its confident, self-referential stride. But the (relatively) unlauded Extras (BBC), Ricky Gervais’s follow-up to The Office, carries a much-needed banner for British comedy. Forget the witty cameos; once more it is in the tenderness of the central relationship in the series that Gervais’s writing shows a delicacy of touch that is beyond that of most of his contemporaries.