New on DVD and Blu-ray Disc

"Inside Man" Blu-ray
Another movie filled with racial tension, this time in an enjoyably convoluted heist movie from Spike Lee. The director's mind, steeped in post-9/11 New York City, wraps around a handful of characters who never quite are who they appear to be. For that matter, you sometimes have no idea who they are at all. For instance, to discover exactly what it is that Jodie Foster's chilly Madeline White does in this movie would indeed take somebody from the inside (her role never is fully explained), but my, how she bristles with evil. Denzel Washington and Clive Owen co-star, with “Inside Man” glossing over its plot holes with wit and charisma. Rated R. Grade: B+

“My Bloody Valentine 3-D” DVD, Blu-ray
A remake of the 1981 original, with the gimmick being that it was shot in 3-D. The story itself is a mixed-bag at best, but you have to give it up for the technology, which uses the 3-D platform to such a successful extent, it takes a mediocre horror movie and turns it into a reasonably fun, camp contender. Without diverting much from the original, director Patrick Lussier takes us back to Harmony (the irony!), a mining town in which a massacre happened 10 years earlier on Valentine’s Day. Then, 22 people were murdered. Now, it’s all happening again, with a host of suspects offered up as to who might be the pickaxe-wielding maniac behind the gas mask. Whoever it is (and audiences will figure it out in spite of the film’s trick ending), the good news is that Lussier manages to offer a genuine genre throwback. All of the staples are here. The movie sports over-the-top gore, go-go girls on the nudie run, flashes of tension, and a key ingredient for any slasher film--appealingly bad acting. Rated R. Grade: B-

"Waiting for God--Season 4"
Tom (Graham Growden) and Diana (Stephanie Cole) might be waiting for God, but they aren't doing so quietly. At the Bayview Retirement Village, where death is everyone's last visitor and the food is notoriously bad, these two refuse to go out gracefully, particularly Diana, whose last breath, one senses, will be spent sticking it to somebody with a complaint. Tom exists more in the ether, but he's far from out of it. Together, they're a team, occasionally taking breaks from their long conversations in an effort to grow old disgracefully, all while igniting panic in the impossible staff. From the BBC, which usually comes through, as they do here. Grade: A-

“Weeds: Season Four” DVD, Blu-ray
What's a suburban mother to do when her husband drops dead and leaves her and their two sons saddled with debt? For Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker), the answer is to pick herself up and to sell a little weed on the side. Okay, a lot of weed on the side. This smart, darkly comic Showtime series echoes "Six Feet Under" in that its grim comedy is laced with just enough drama to give it depth. This is, after all, the season in which Nancy and family move out of their home in Agrestic, which burned to the ground in the last season, and head straight to the Tijuana border, where the bud is plentiful--and dealing with Mexican drug lords can be a wee bit dicey. The writing is as sharp as the excellent cast, with Elizabeth Perkins especially good as Nancy's friend Celia, who is so cynical, she makes for one of the best desperate housewives on television. Grade: A-

Also on DVD and Blu-ray disc

“Perry Mason: Season Four, Volume One” now is available from Paramount and 50 years out, the series still proves addictive. Here, Raymond Burr once again bulldozes his way through his iconic role as Mason, the Los Angeles defense attorney who, along with his assistant, Della Street (Barbara Hale, wonderful), takes people to task at the stand and lets them have it by drawing them into webs from which few could flee.

Also available and recommended are the seventh season of Fox’s Emmy Award-winning cop drama “The Shield”; the very good second season and first volume of that iconic cartoon “The Jetsons”; the second season of the medical/family melodrama “Everwood”; the first season of the vampire series “The Hunger,” and William Conrad at his cool best in “Cannon: Season Two, Vol. 1.”

New on Blu-ray are disappointments. Clive Owen and Naomi Watts fail to pull off a so-so thriller in “The International,” and Annette Bening, Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis fail to do the same in the 1998 thriller “The Siege.” A hive of well-known actors (Jennifer Aniston, Ben Affleck, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, others) star in the fractured romantic comedy “He’s Just Not That Into You,” which audiences might feel about the movie itself, and then there’s “Predator 2,” which finds Danny Glover and Gary Busey dipping back into a franchise that’s as stale as their own careers.

Finally, for those seeking something edgy on DVD and Blu-ray, turn to "Prison Break: Season Four." Here, the conspiracy deepens, the pace quickens, the series finds its legs and man, does it run. The show can be a kinetic ride, and in ways that remind you of the old Saturday matinee serials--at every turn, there's a cliff hanger. The good news about this excellent season? You don't want to throw yourself off any of them.