Michael Powell, a director’s director if there ever was one (he’s been championed by everyone from Martin Scorsese to Wes Anderson), is a filmmaker endlessly worth returning to, especially the films he made with co-writer/director/producer Emeric Pressburger under the name “The Archers.” Films like A Canterbury Tale, The Red Shoes, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Black Narcissus are unmistakably Archer-ian in their intelligence, sensitive humanism and playful creativity. They overflow with ideas and life.

Now, Sony’s released one of their best, A Matter of Life and Death (released in the U.S. as Stairway to Heaven), as part of a two-film set called “The Films of Michael Powell,” though it might more accurately be called “Two Films From Very Different Points in Michael Powell’s Career.” The second, Age of Consent, was made in Australia in 1969, after fury over Powell’s wild Peeping Tom made it impossible to make films at home, and stars James Mason and a very young, very foxy Helen Mirren.

But back to A Matter of Life and Death: David Niven stars as an RAF aviator who falls for an American radio operator (Kim Hunter) over the airwaves as his plane goes down. When he survives, they fall in love, only to see the forces of heaven demanding his life back, for as it turns out, he was scheduled to die that day. The movie is full of inventive filmmaking: heaven, for instance, is rendered in black and white, with the world of the living in vivid colour, an inspired and non-obvious choice.

Ping Pong Playa, directed by Jessica Yu (In the Realms of the Unreal) is a sweet comedy that never got a theatrical release here, but it’s worth checking out on video if you have any affinity for the art of table tennis. Co-writer Jimmy Tsai plays a Chinese-American slacker who takes up the sport when his star player brother is injured—it’s a goofy sports movie at heart, but thoughtfully made and funny.