DVD corner

“The Condemned” DVD & Blu-ray – A preposterous movie in which 10 death-row inmates are sent to a faraway South Pacific island to murder each other in a pay-per-view reality television event. For their trouble, the last inmate standing will get his or her freedom back, plus some spending money to presumably start life anew. In this case, the one really making the money is visionary producer Ian Breckel (Robert Mammone, awful). For a mere $50, he’s allowing viewers to stream the island’s stabbings, rapes and slaughterings straight into their computers live via the Internet. Sound like a good time? Before you blow your motherboard over that one, get this – the movie actually tries to convince us that it not only condemns violence, but that it’s appalled by it. If only. That the movie was produced by World Wrestling Entertainment and stars the WWE’s Steve Austin are additional sources of amusement in a film that has funny ideas about what’s entertaining. Rated R. Grade: D

“Death Proof” – Since the Quentin Tarantino-Robert Rodriguez double-feature “Grindhouse” failed at the box office (it shouldn’t have – it was one of this year’s better releases), each movie will get its own separate release on DVD. First up is Tarantino’s “Death Proof,” and while a debate will ignite about whose film is better, there’s no question that Tarantino’s is decidedly more mellow and self-indulgent. With the director favoring dialogue and character over the intense, unrelenting action Rodriguez features in “Planet Terror,” Tarantino instead goes for the slow burn with his movie, a female revenge fantasy, finding Kurt Russell’s Stuntman Mike out to slaughter women with the help of his death-proof car. The movie’s highlight is its cast, which includes Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell and Rose McGowan, but especially thrilling is the film’s final car chase, a terrific throwback to the days when computer-generated imagery wasn’t the crutch on which Hollywood has since lifted so much of its action. Rated R. Grade: B+

“For Love of the Game” HD DVD – Takes audiences out to the ballgame – and into the bedroom – with Kevin Costner leading the charge. He’s Billy Chapel, a 40-year-old big-league pitcher whose career and personal life have gone into foul territory. His on-and-off girlfriend, Jane (Kelly Preston), is trading him for a new job in London, his team of 19 years is being sold to corporate America, and now he stands on the mound at Yankee Stadium with thousands of furious New Yorkers screaming for his removal. What does Billy do to turn it all around and have the game of his life? The film answers with a plot that’s part baseball and part sudsy love story, each of which is absolutely predictable. In this case, the predictability works and that’s because of Costner, who understands what baseball means to this country. It’s our game and Costner brings to the role the respect it deserves. On high-definition HD DVD, the film finds new life and it remains a quintessential crowd pleaser. Rated PG-13. Grade B

“Lucky You” – Curtis Hanson’s film doesn’t pack the heat of great gambling films such as “The Hustler,” but this leisurely paced movie has an introspective vibe that’s nevertheless appealing, even if it doesn’t drum up much excitement along the way. Eric Bana is Huck Cheever, a down-on-his-luck gambler whose father is the celebrated poker player L.C. Cheever (Robert Duvall, excellent). Huck learned from the best, but he also learned from a cad. Now, they circle each other warily, a feeling that’s amplified when each enters a championship poker tournament, the prize for which is north of $2 million. Is Huck good enough to beat his old man? The past says no. But when he’s drawn to the dullest person on Earth in Billie Offer (Drew Barrymore), an aspiring singer who favors what appear to be handmade frocks, their relationship gives him the confidence he needs. Actually, their relationship is the film at its weakest – Bana and Barrymore have no chemistry – so it’s good news that Hanson has Duvall, whose cool, knowing performance grounds the movie as the tournament gets under way. Rated PG-13. Grade: C+

“Stargate Atlantis: Complete Third Season” – This third season of the show is a fine improvement over what came before it, with the storylines leaner, the characters richer. Essentially a sci-fi Western, this offshoot of “Stargate: SG-1” features stargates, Pegasus galaxies, underwater cities, the cannibalism of the Wraith, and The Ancients, human ancestors who built their city 10 million years ago and who had to flee it for reasons better left for you. Sometimes you wish the series would take a cue from “Firefly” and lighten up, but then the action, amplified beyond reason, generates a groundswell of excitement, not to mention admiration, and you get swept up in it all. Grade: B

“Troy: Director’s Cut” – DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray – Wolfgang Petersen’s bloated version of Homer’s “Iliad” just got 30 minutes longer in this new director’s cut. Available in a two-disc special edition, the film stars Brad Pitt in the lead as Achilles, but he’s no reason to see the film. Instead, it’s Eric Bana’s Prince Hector who steals the show. With Diana Kruger as the trouble-causing Helen and Orlando Bloom as Hector’s weaker brother Paris, “Troy” isn’t short on a solid cast and it does achieve the chaos of war. But the dialogue is distractingly stiff, especially when spoken by Pitt, whose self-conscious performance sends the movie down the Aegean. Moments do linger, such as a key scene between King Priam (Peter O’Toole) and Achilles that comes late in the film. But what’s missing is an emotional connection to the death that hovers over the film. This is one of the most ambivalent war movies Hollywood ever has produced, lacking passion, personality and heart. Unrated. Grade C-

“We Are Marshall” DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray – We are not impressed. In the right hands, this could have been an insightful, moving drama about the difficulty of getting on with life in the wake of a horrific tragedy. What we have instead is a cliched, predictable sports movie with cloying inspirational overtones. The film follows the residents of Huntington, W.Va., after the Nov. 14, 1970, airplane crash that killed 75 people, including 37 Marshall University football players, eight of its coaches and many supporters. It’s about a town coming to terms with those deaths and with a university president, Donald Dedmon (David Strathairn), forced to acknowledge that the town’s residents might be caught in a haze of mourning if he didn’t find the means to start a new team. He did so by hiring Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey), whose unfocused, caged energy is meant to be endearingly quirky, but which really is distractingly cartoonish. Matthew Fox and Anthony Mackie fare better in supporting roles, but Strathairn is sorely miscast, as is Ian McShane as a bitter, grieving father. This is a movie that leans hard on its hit-heavy soundtrack of popular music to do what the script should have done – infuse it with feeling and energy. As such, it just coasts, with Lengyel taking a scrappy, underdog team and trying to turn them into winners in spite of the odds stacked against them. Who wants to guess how that turns out? Rated PG-13. Grade: D