‘Duchess’ channels Lady Di
The Duchess
Paramount, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99
The Keira Knightley vehicle “The Duchess” is the kind of bodice-ripping prestige picture in which the wigs are high, the powder is thick and the diction is perfect in that way common to historical romances about silently suffering souls. But the formula here has a surprising amount of kick, largely because of Knightley’s portrayal of Georgiana Spencer, a late 18th century English celebrity who wielded influence on women’s fashion and Whig politics, yet had no power over her cold, demanding, adulterous husband (played by the marvelous Ralph Fiennes).
The parallels to Georgiana’s descendant Lady Diana Spencer are wholly intentional, but what’s more affecting is the way the heroine espouses unlimited liberty in her public life, yet settles for limited liberty in her private life, for the sake of her children. The DVD comes with a handful of featurettes, including one on the real Georgiana.
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Eagle Eye
DreamWorks, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99
Director D.J. Caruso and star Shia LaBeouf follow up their fun-if-derivative killer-next-door thriller “Disturbia” with the not-quite-as-fun -- and completely ridiculous -- paranoia-fest “Eagle Eye,” in which LaBeouf plays a college dropout who gets blackmailed into helping a supercomputer execute a coup from within the U.S. government. Unlike “Disturbia,” the pervasive silliness doesn’t work in “Eagle Eye’s” favor, perhaps because this time it’s paired with a jittery action-movie style that Caruso can’t pull off.
The DVD and Blu-ray arrive with only deleted scenes and a featurette.
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Ghost Town
Dreamworks, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99
Almost every aspect of this afterlife comedy is straight-from-the-shelf, right down to the “What, this again?” hit-by-a-bus scene. Still, “Ghost Town” makes good use of its premise, which has Ricky Gervais playing a misanthropic dentist whose near-death experience leaves him dealing with the last requests of troubled ghosts. He works hard on one request in particular, trying to disrupt the imminent marriage of a dead cad’s ex-wife, played by Tea Leoni. Gervais and Leoni have a nice chemistry, and while Gervais doesn’t get enough opportunities to display his facility for verbal fumbling, he doesn’t botch the few chances he gets.
“Ghost Town” should be funnier than it is and less predictable, but it’s undeniably sweet and even moving toward the end. The DVD contains behind-the-scenes featurettes, plus a commentary by the always-quippy Gervais and writer-director David Koepp.
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Resident Evil: Degeneration
Sony, $27.96; Blu-ray, $39.95
Having jumped from gaming consoles to the big screen, the “Resident Evil” franchise now makes the move to feature-length computer-animation with “Resident Evil: Degeneration,” a Japanese gorefest created via the eternally creepy process of motion-capture. (Think “The Polar Express” but with zombies instead of Santa Claus.) “Degeneration’s” fleeing-from-the-undead plot is simple and familiar and its shocks minimal, but the movie’s biggest problem is that the photo-realistic characters look and act nondescript -- like figures in a video game, frankly.
The DVD comes with a half-hour making-of featurette (in Japanese, with subtitles), and a 10-minute reel of fake, unfunny “voice bloopers.”
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Also this week
Baghead
Sony, $28.96
The Secret Life of the American Teenager
Season One
Walt Disney, $39.99
Toots
Catalyst, $29.95
Towelhead
Warner, $27.98
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