“The Last Samurai: Blu-ray”: With Sony at last entering into the new high-definition DVD market with the release of the Samsung Blu-ray BD-P1000 ($999), the competition is on between the two new formats – Sony’s Blu-ray technology, which boasts greater storage capacity and true 1080p resolution, and the HD DVD format, which is less expensive, has been in release for the past several weeks and features the slightly less-desirable 1080i resolution. After comparing the two formats side by side on Samsung’s top of the line 40-inch flat-panel LCD monitor ($2,899), the difference in quality between the Samsung player and Toshiba’s HD DVD player, the HD-A1 ($699), was imperceptible. So, as is the case with all of these movies enjoying the high-definition conversion, we’re left with the movies themselves. Some, such as the Tom Cruise vehicle “The Last Samurai,” do benefit from the conversion. Even if this uneven, more than 2-hour romp in Japan isn’t particularly good, John Toll’s cinematography looks smashing. The film’s landscapes, sets, costumes and interiors are clean, stable and crisp, thus allowing audiences to lose themselves in them even if they can’t do so quite as easily with the overly melodramatic story. Rated R. Grade: C

“Hitch: Blu-ray”: Also just released on Blu-ray is the romantic comedy “Hitch,” in which Will Smith is a consort of sorts for the dating challenged. After years of making his own mistakes with women and surviving a broken heart, Hitch has pulled a Mel Gibson and learned what women want. Now it’s his business to tell men what women want. This is Smith’s first romantic comedy and he pulls it off seamlessly, making his role look deceptively easy as the story unfolds with the addition of Albert (Kevin James), a chubby wreck of a junior exec; his love for his wealthy boss, Allegra (Amber Valletta); and Hitch’s own budding relationship with Sara (Eva Mendes), a steely newspaper gossip columnist whose job it is to write about people like Allegra. The first two-thirds are the movie at its best. They’re fun and brisk, gently guided by formula until the third act succumbs to it. Its appearance on high definition, however, does little for the film, unless of course you long to see the pores along Mendes’ nose. Rated PG-13. Grade: B

“The Libertine”: Begins with Johnny Depp in close-up, his hooded eyes burning through the candlelit gloom. “Allow me to be frank at the commencement,” he says. “You will not like me. You will not like me now, and you will like me a good deal less as we go on. I am John Wilmot, the second Earl of Rochester, and I do not want you to like me.” And so we don’t – not that it’s difficult. “The Libertine” confirms what history knows – Wilmot was one grotesque, unlikable sod. In what arguably is the most disagreeable role of Depp’s career, the actor, one of our best, seems to be having a grand time playing the well-known writer-cum-sexaholic who couldn’t give a toss for anyone, himself included. Yet Depp’s enjoyment isn’t transcendent. The movie is a grimy, uninvolving mess, with too much of the writing proving just as sloppy as the muddy sets and the unwashed cast. The film saddles Depp’s 17th-century satirist with the sort of dialogue that could pull the glue out of a horse: “I wish you to shag with my homuncular image rattling in your gonads,” he says to the camera, which somehow remains steady. “I want you to feel how it was for me – how it is for me – and ponder, ‘Was that shudder the same shudder he sensed? Did he know something more profound?'” Doubtful. Rated R. Grade: D

“The Matador”: A punchy, stylized homage to the movies of Quentin Tarantino and Pedro Almodovar, filled with the sort of harshly colorful landscapes that make those in “Nanny McPhee,” for instance, seem downright pastel in comparison. The movie features a brave, cynical performance by Pierce Brosnan as longtime international assassin Julian Noble, with Brosnan at once courting his James Bond persona while kicking it to the pond. He’s the proverbial live wire here, so unhinged and unpredictable, anything could happen if his wires get crossed. Naturally, they do, and so this movie, with its fine supporting performances from Greg Kinnear and a wonderful Hope Davis, enjoys several unexpected shifts that give it a formidable lift. Rated R. Grade: B+

“Pitch Black: Blu-ray”: David Twohy’s sci-fi thriller “Pitch Black,” a fine addition to high definition, is shot in the same bleached tones as “Mad Max” and “Three Kings.” Punctuated throughout with Graeme Revell’s stirring tribal score, the film is a good student that has learned from the pitfalls of the genre – weak premise, messy plot, terrific special effects at the cost of thinly drawn characters – and uses that knowledge to create a world filled with believable characters, genuine suspense and creepy moments of horror that grab within the gathering darkness. Nothing in this film is new – audiences have seen much of this before in other movies, particularly “Alien” and “Mad Max.” But Twohy, nevertheless, is able to make it seem fresh. The opening shot of a spaceship slamming spectacularly into an unknown planet with three suns looks especially terrific on Blu-ray. There, the ship’s nine survivors, including the female pilot, Fry (Radha Michell), lawman Johns (Cole Hauser) and the dangerous prisoner Riddick (Vin Diesel), learn they must take cover from the darkness of a rare solar eclipse – or else. Rated R. Grade: B+

“XXX: Blu-ray”: Slick entertainment without a brain in its head. The first film in this franchise, now on Blu-ray, isn’t far from the porn its title promises – the movie is a veritable orgy of outrageous stunts, most of which are kicked so high into the heavens, the movie threatens to pass out as director Rob Cohen tries to outdo himself. The result? A film that occasionally feels like a right hook to the jaw. Vin Diesel is Xander Cage, a bald-headed bruiser in a sheepskin pimp coat whose intellect runs as deep as the tattoos crisscrossing his chest. Samuel L. Jackson is Augustus Gibbons, who releases Xander from prison and jets him to Prague, where the new high-definition transfer makes the city look great. This movie about stemming the potential for chemical warfare works because it knows what it is – a flashy B movie streamlined to be a guilty pleasure. There are no pretensions here, just fireworks and attitude, attitude and fireworks. Lovely. Rated: PG-13. Grade: B