DVD CORNER

Each week, BDN film critic Christopher Smith reviews the latest DVD releases

“The Benchwarmers: DVD and Blu-ray”: The tagline for the movie notes that “It’s Never too Late to Take a Stand.” It’s also never too late to choose a better movie at the video store. The film, available on standard DVD and high-definition Blu-ray, follows three grown men who were bullied as children, and who now, with the help of wealthy Mel (Jon Lovitz), take on the cruelest of cruel Little League teams in an effort to prove that they can, well, beat children. Involved in the chaos is Gus (Rob Schneider), virginal Ritchie (David Spade) and Clark (Jon Heder), who has a taste, shall we say, for the nose pate. Lovely. Much vomit ensues. “The Bad News Bears” this isn’t. Rated PG-13. Grade: D

“Bogie and Bacall: The Signature Collection”: The legendary chemistry between Bogart and Bacall showcased in four movies – “To Have and to Have Not,” “Dark Passage,” “Key Largo” and “The Big Sleep,” the latter of which is one of the finest examples of the noir genre. Saturated with shadows, style and cigarette smoke, the movie follows Bogart’s Philip Marlowe, a private dick trying to get to the bottom of a blackmail case involving socialite Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers). Since Carmen is a conniving kitten, all isn’t what it seems with her. Neither is it with Carmen’s equally mysterious sister, Vivian Rutledge (Bacall), a gorgeous femme fatale who deepens the dysfunction by adding her own bad habits to the mix, which Marlowe inevitably finds himself fixing. With the exception of the World War II drama “To Have and to Have Not,” the cheap sort of slum hustling that goes on in these movies either would bring down a red light district or brighten it, depending on how you view the world. Nobody talks as they do in noir, which is a great deal of the fun. And nobody – nobody – spoke it with such a heated undercurrent of lust as Bogart and Bacall in their prime. Grade: A

“Dark Shadows Collection 25”: At the “great house” Collinswood in Maine’s fictional town of Collinsport, new horrors are evolving – and not just with the acting, which is mesmerizingly atrocious. This season’s gimmick is that it doesn’t take place in the present; instead, it transports us back to 1840, where everyone is someone else and one of the upstairs rooms in Collinwood’s unused east wing contains mysterious secrets. There, the past can be viewed but don’t get caught inside. If you do, you’ll stay in that time – forever! Worse things could happen, of course. You could, for instance, be remembered for this sort of live TV, in which microphones amusingly dip in and out of view, grips scurry and crawl in the background, bound electrical cables run along the baseboards. This is far from the best season, though the show remains a highlight for all the right reasons – as well as all the wrong ones. Grade: B

“Good Night, and Good Luck: Blu-ray”: Shot in gorgeous black and white by cinematographer Robert Elswit, the film looks smashing on Blu-ray. Here is George Clooney’s movie about the showdown that occurred between CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow (David Strathairn) and Sen. Joseph McCarthy (played in news footage by himself). You watch the film with admiration for its subject and its performances. The caveat is that the movie is so ensconced in the mid-1950s, that it demands that those who view it know a good deal about the events it explores in order to follow it with ease. This incubator of a movie is designed to be insular. There are dangers in that, not the least of which is isolating your audience, but in this case, the isolation Clooney courts actually assists his film, giving it the sense of urgency it might have lacked. It’s a film whose larger issues of censorship and big government, journalism and the tricky relationship between news corporations and the advertisers who help bring us our news, are as timely now as they ever have been. Rated R. Grade: A-

“The Incredible Hulk: The Complete First Season”: Based on Stan Lee’s long-running 1962 Marvel comic book series, this first season of the popular television show stars Bill Bixby as Bruce Banner, an emotionally detached research geneticist whose blood is so temperamental, it reacts disastrously when he’s accidentally zapped with a lethal dose of gamma radiation. Instead of dropping dead, as one would expect, Bruce becomes a ticking time bomb waiting to erupt into the Hulk (Lou Ferrigno) the moment he gets ticked off, which is often. Highlights include “Never Give a Trucker an Even Break,” “Of Guilt, Models and Murder” and “The Hulk Breaks Last Vegas.” Seriously. Grade: B-.

“Sybil”: The 1977, Emmy Award-winning television movie, with Sally Field nailing the role – or roles, as it were – of a young woman fighting multiple personality disorder. Joanne Woodward is Dr. Wilbur, the psychiatrist who must pull together a fractured life smashed apart by child abuse. She does so through hypnosis and what she unearths is contained heat. Field is outstanding here, shedding whatever beach-girl, ingenue image she had before coming to the role. It’s the sort of performance that was life-affirming for those with the disorder and life-altering for Field, who three years later would win the Academy Award for “Norma Rae.” Grade: A