DVD corner

“Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Season Three”: Among the week’s best new releases, with 39 episodes that appeared during the 1957-58 CBS television season. Hitchcock himself delivers the introductions and closing moments in his inimitable style. The shows are as twisted as you expect, with several highlights worth noting: “The Perfect Crime” with Vincent Price, “The Diplomatic Corpse” with Peter Lorre and George Peppard, Barbara Bel Geddes in “The Foghorn” and “Lamb to the Slaughter,” Gary Merrill in “Flight to the East,” Jessica Tandy in “The Canary Sedan,” and Hitchcock’s own daughter Patricia in “Silent Witness.” Hardly a sorry bunch – and, as it turns out, a must for the fan. Grade: A-

“Entourage: Season Three, Part 2”: All the thrills and all the trappings of fame in a show that sometimes feels like “Sex and the City” for men. The season’s second half picks up with Vince Chase (Adrian Grenier), star of James Cameron’s “Aquaman,” working through the ramifications of having fired his agent, Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven), at the end of Part 1. His agent is the equally ferocious Amanda (Carla Gugino), who gives the series a jolt as she and Ari fight for Vince to be their client. The complication? Vince wouldn’t mind getting Amanda into bed, something with which Ari can’t compete (though you sense he would if he could). Still, he might just be able to deliver Vince the movie he most covets, “Medellin,” which would turn the tables in his favor. What the series continues to get right is that while Vince and his friends (Kevin Dillon, Kevin Connolly, Jerry Ferrara) are otherwise everyday guys having the time of their lives in Hollywood, there always is the sense that this dream world in which they live could be taken away from them in an instant. “Entourage” builds on the fear inherent in that, and it uses it to its benefit. For those who haven’t seen the series, one of HBO’s best, it also is available in “Entourage: The Complete Seasons 1-3.” Grade: A-

“Ironside: Season 2”: The second season of this groundbreaking show finds Raymond Burr bulldozing his way through his iconic role as Detective Robert T. Ironside, San Francisco’s former chief of detectives who was left using a wheelchair after a shooting. Ironside is disabled, sure, but nobody moves as swiftly when it comes to delivering a cutting aside or solving a case. Nearly 40 years out, the 28 shows in this collection are retro hot – you can almost smell the Aqua Velva. To fans of the series, that fact – and Burr himself, who came to it fresh off the success of “Perry Mason” – will prove a big part of its appeal. Grade: B+

“A Mighty Heart” on DVD, HD DVD: Features Angelina Jolie in a performance that reminds us that the longtime tabloid fixture is more than just the Third World’s Santa Angelina, Brad Pitt’s main squeeze and, to some, a serial adopter of children. She’s a woman who can act, and while she hasn’t done much of that since winning the Academy Award for 1999’s “Girl, Interrupted,” she does so here by portraying pregnant journalist Mariane Pearl. In 2002, Pearl was in Karachi, Pakistan, with her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), to investigate shoe bomber Richard Reid through an interview with the elusive Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani. What ensued was a nightmare when Danny was kidnapped by Islamic terrorists and, after a formidable effort to save him, beheaded on videotape. In lesser hands, the movie could have collapsed into a ripe pool of sentiment, but not so here. With the exception of a brutal yet well-earned scene of uncontainable grief, which is so beautifully handled by Jolie, it alone might win her an Academy Award nomination, “A Mighty Heart” looks at the world and the Pearls’ situation through the eyes of a journalist. It doesn’t wince, it doesn’t exploit – it observes, which is enough. What it sees is the moment, itself heightened by Michael Winterbottom’s excellent direction, Peter Christelis’ quick-cut editing and Marcel Zyskind’s whiplash cinematography, all of which seamlessly capture the Pearls’ situation – and the grimy chaos of Karachi itself. Rated R. Grade: A-

“The Reaping” on DVD, HD DVD, Blu-ray: The 11th biblical plague. Between the film’s fainting cows (hilarious!), its lice-ridden children (bilious!) and its skies that rain frogs (amphibious!), the big draw here, according to the marketing campaign, is computer-generated locusts, which pull an “Exorcist II” on audiences by swarming the screen in flocks of undulating evil. There isn’t a can of Raid big enough to kill these beasts, so one might instead consider turning that can on the movie itself. From Stephen Hopkins, the film stars Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank as Katherine Winter, a former missionary minister who has ditched her relationship with God in favor of using science to explain away alleged miraculous events. Now a Louisiana State University professor, Katherine joins others in descending upon Haven, a Louisiana backwater in which the stereotypes run high and rivers have turned red with blood in the wake a little boy’s murder. The presumed murderer is the boy’s sister, Loren (AnnaSophia Robb), who the townspeople are convinced has brought about the 10 biblical plagues, with Katherine eventually running out of ways to explain them away. The trouble with “The Reaping” goes beyond its canned horror, its lack of logic and coherence, its one-note performances. By intentionally recalling such superior horror films as “The Omen” and “The Exorcist,” it sets itself up for failure if it doesn’t match their excellence. It doesn’t. Rated R. Grade: D

“Transformers” on DVD, Blu-ray: Clocks in at nearly 21/2 hours but greases by without ever feeling as long. Shia LaBeouf is Sam Witwicky, a genial nerd caught in a plot that finds Earth under attack by the Decepticons, huge robots in search of the Allspark, a giant cube that, if found, will allow these beasts devastating powers of evil. Working against them are the Autobots, who also are seeking the Allspark but who want to use its power for good. Since neither the Decepticons nor Autobots know where the Allspark is located on Earth, all hell is unleashed in their effort to find it, with Sam eventually learning through his unlikely relationship with the Autobots that he alone has the key to its discovery. Though Megan Fox, Anthony Anderson, Jon Voight and John Turturro co-star, the real stars of the show are the Transformers themselves, whose incorporation into the film’s real-life surroundings is as seamless a feat as you could imagine – and as exciting. Rated PG-13. Grade: B+

“28 Days Later” on Blu-ray: Released at the height of the SARS epidemic, the movie is a post-apocalyptic zombie nightmare that tapped into a national mood of dread. It focuses on the very real horrors lurking in new, unknown viruses, and what it mines is something vicious and kinetic. Director Danny Boyle sustains the horror with black comedy, genuine suspense, quick-cut editing and his unpredictable zombies. A terrific, worthy offspring of Romero’s “Dead” series. Rated R. Grade: A-

Visit www.weekinrewind.com, the archive of Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s reviews, which appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.