Another double feature, of sorts

Five years ago, Nicolas Cage and Chris Cooper starred in director Spike Jonze’s quirky comedy “Adaptation.” Last February, however, the actors found themselves in competition when their films opened the same weekend. Cage’s Marvel Comics adventure, “Ghost Rider,” received generally poor reviews but found box office glory, while Cooper’s spy drama, “Breach,” won the hearts of the critics but met with tepid audience response.

Now Cage and Cooper are going toe-to-toe again as both films arrive today on DVD.

For those fans left wanting more of “Ghost Rider,” there’s a two-disc extended edition (Sony, $35), which features scenes not included in the theatrical version and several perfunctory behind-the-scenes documentaries. Rounding out the release is commentary from writer-director Mark Steven Johnson and visual effects supervisor Kevin Mack, plus an audio track with producer Gary Foster.

In “Breach” (Universal, $30), Cooper was universally praised for his performance as the complex and complicated FBI agent Robert Hanssen, who sold secrets to the Russians for nearly 25 years. Ryan Phillippe costars as Eric O’Neill, the ambitious young FBI employee who is assigned to work with Hanssen.

Extras featured on the disc are a better-than-average “making of” documentary, a 2001 episode of NBC’s “Dateline” program about Hanssen, deleted and alternate scenes with commentary from director Billy Ray (“Shattered Glass”) and editor Jeffrey Ford, and a compelling commentary track with Ray and O’Neill.

Also new

“Days of Glory” (Weinstein, $29): Rachid Bouchareb’s Algerian film, which received an Academy Award nomination for best foreign language film, gives just due to the North African soldiers who enlisted in the French army during World War II to help liberate the mother country from the Axis forces. Extras include a solid “making of” documentary and a short animated film by Bouchareb.

“An Unreasonable Man” (IFC, $27): Henriette Mantel and Steve Skrovan’s compelling documentary on Ralph Nader, the public interest attorney and then trend-setting consumer advocate who ended up being accused of spoiling Al Gore’s chances at the presidency when he ran as a third-party candidate in 2000. Extras on the two-disc set include numerous mini-featurettes on such topics as the role of third parties in the U.S. and what kind of president Nader would have been.

“The Two of Us” (Criterion, $40): Claude Berri’s lovely semiautobiographical feature film debut. Released in France in 1967, the film revolves around a young Jewish boy (a remarkable Alain Cohen) in Nazi-occupied Paris who is sent to live in the country with an elderly Catholic couple. Forced to pretend he’s Catholic, the lad bonds with Grampa (the memorable Michel Simon) even though the old man is staunchly anti-Semitic. Extras include new interviews with Berri and Cohen.

“Charley’s Aunt” (Fox, $20): Jack Benny has a field day in this engagingly silly 1941 adaptation of the venerable Brandon Thomas gender-bender British stage comedy. Benny plays a perennial student at Oxford who is pressured by two fellow classmates, Charley and Jack, to pretend he’s actually Charley’s aunt from Brazil -- “where the nuts come from” -- to occupy their girlfriends’ stuffy guardian (Edmund Gwenn). Extras include a vintage promotional short featuring Benny, Tyrone Power and Randolph Scott and fact-filled commentary from historian Randy Skretvedt.

“Welcome Back, Kotter: The Complete First Season” (Warner, $30): The 1975-79 ABC comedy is best known as the show that made 21-year-old John Travolta an overnight sensation. But when the series premiered, the “star” was popular stand-up comic Gabe Kaplan. He played Gabe Kotter, a Brooklyn-born teacher who returned to his inner-city alma mater to teach. The “Sweathogs,” as one boisterous group of the students was called, may have acted tough, but in reality they were all lovable goofballs. Travolta’s Vinnie Barbarino was the coolest of the group, which included Freddie “Boom Boom” Washington (Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs), Epstein (Robert Hegyes) and Arnold Horshack (Ron Palillo).

And

“Tyler Perry’s Daddy’s Little Girls” (Lionsgate, $28); “Blood & Chocolate” (Sony, $27); “The Practice: Volume 1” (Fox, $40); “The Bridge” (Koch Lorber, $30).

susan.king@latimes.com