It's symptomatic of the paucity of modern cinema that so many old films are being re-released into theatres. The latest offering is David Lean's 1946 adaptation of Great Expectations, which remains the finest screen version of any Dickens novel. The screenplay is a model of judicious pruning and compression, with characters being removed or reduced to 'a sniff' to keep the action moving and the focus firmly on the principals. Yet, not only is the story's twisting intrigue retained, but the author's spirit pervades every scene.

The central storyline is built around Pip Pirrip's enduring obsession with Estella. But, as in all Dickens dramas, justice had to be done to the vivid secondary characters, and Martita Hunt is ethereally sour and brittle as Miss Haversham, Bernard Miles exudes geniality as Joe Gargery and Finlay Currie combines desperate menace with remorseful benevolence as Magwitch. His entrance, in the Kentish churchyard, remained among Lean's finest directorial moments, although it owed much to his expertise as an editor to achieve its resounding impact. Guy Green's Oscar-winning monochrome photography was also key, as it reinforced the brooding atmosphere of the art direction by John Bryan and Wilfred Singleton, who also won Academy Awards for such masterly sets as the virtual mausoleum in which Miss Haversham mourns the demise of her romantic dreams and Mr Jaggers's legal office, whose walls are lined with the death masks of those he couldn't save from execution.

Always prone to stiffness, Valerie Hobson proves less alluring than her junior counterpart, Jean Simmons. But 38-year-old John Mills and 34-year-old Alec Guinness (as Herbert Pocket) bely their years to capture the innocence and exuberance of youth that is remorselessly tempered by the cruel Victorian reality that undercuts any lingering certainty in the far from sentimentalised happy ending.

Typically, one of the best new pictures of recent months has been overlooked by the major distributors. But, thankfully, Welcome to Dongmakgol has been acquired by the ICA in London. Based on a play by Jang Jin, it revisits the Shangri-La storyline in order to expose the folly of a world dancing to the tune of its only superpower. The action may be set during the Korean War of the 1950s, but it has a contemporary resonance that's hard to ignore.

Director Park Gwang-hyeon takes his time to establish the scenario, as US Naval pilot Steve Taschler, Southern troopers Shin Ha-gyun and Seo Jae-gyeong, and Northern comrades Jeong Jae-yeong, Im Ha-ryong and Ryu Deok-hyeon find themselves gathered in an isolated mountain village that knows nothing of the civil war. The initial stand-offs between the combatants are highly amusing, as warfare is reduced to the dangerous posturings of macho buffoons. But while the central section slips easily into enchanting feel-good, the geniality is ultimately replaced by grim reality, as the former enemies realise that they are going to have to sacrifice themselves in order to save this ethereal paradise from an American bombing raid.

The film has its flaws. The CGI in the sequence with the giant boar is less than convincing - although the SFX unit redeems itself with the terrifying climactic battle - while the score by Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi occasionally seems better suited to an anime by his regular collaborator, Hayao Miyazaki, than this bittersweet parable. But the setting is sublime and the characterisation superb, with Gang Hye-jeong excelling as the guileless girl who sees good in everything and everyone. Moreover, it provides a timely reminder that shock and awe are rarely the best tactics.