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Play ball! No, it’s not the beginning of the baseball season yet, but it is the start of the big-release video season, and leading off this week’s lineup is one of the best baseball movies ever made, “Bull Durham” (Orion, $89.98, R).

Starring Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, “Bull Durham” isn’t just a baseball movie; it’s sort of a romantic-metaphysical-sports comedy. And it’s great fun. Sarandon is passionate both about the sport and its players--notably the two minor-league players played by Costner and Robbins.

Otherwise, it’s mainly tough-guy week at the video store: “Die Hard” (CBS/Fox, $89.98, R) even outscored “Bull Durham” at the box office last year ($78 million to $50 million) with its tense story of a cop (Bruce Willis) vs. terrorists in a Los Angeles skyscraper. In “The Dead Pool” (Warner, $89.95, R), it’s Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood) vs. a serial killer. And “The Presidio” (Paramount, $89.95, R) stars Sean Connery and Mark Harmon in a suspense thriller (with relationship subplots) about a murder investigation on a military base.

Anything for more sensitive viewers? Sure. With its exotic setting (India), quirky characters and lush color, “The River” (Connoisseur, $79.95, 1951) looks like one of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s films. However, this curious, English-language, slightly flawed, often moving picture about a girl’s crush on a crippled American soldier was the work of the great French director Jean Renoir. Connoisseur is also re-releasing three foreign-language films previously on other video labels--Renoir’s 1937 anti-war classic “The Grand Illusion” ($59.95), Michelangelo Antonioni’s ground-breaking, austere 1960 drama “L’Avventura” ($79.95), and the very slow but haunting 1956 story of a Japanese soldier’s spiritual conversion, “The Burmese Harp” ($79.95), directed by Kon Ichikawa.

Other Videos

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s . . . no, it’s a basketball player in “Michael Jordan: Come Fly With Me” (CBS/Fox, $19.98). Arguably the sport’s best current pro (and Magic Johnson fans will argue), the slam-jammin’ Jordan’s career is documented in this 45-minute tribute.