New Today on Home Video

NEW ON HOME VIDEO
This week's releases
"Date Movie": Another sign that sometimes, anything goes in Hollywood, which managed to eke a mini-hit out of this lame romance romp. Though boasting "two of the six writers" of the horror spoof "Scary Movie," this parody of romantic comedies musters few laughs as it mimics and mocks such films as "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," "Napoleon Dynamite" and "Wedding Crashers" and hurls tired zingers at such pop-culture figures such as Paris Hilton. Alyson Hannigan of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and the "American Pie" flicks leads the cast as a young woman looking for love, who should have gone looking in a better movie. DVD, $29.98. (20th Century Fox)
"Freedomland": Hollywood executive Joe Roth -- whose directing credits include "America's Sweethearts" and whose production company's hits include "Anger Management," "Daddy Day Care" and "XXX" -- returned to directing with this misfire set on New Jersey's mean streets. Samuel L. Jackson and Julianne Moore star in the drama about a white woman who claims her young son was abducted in a carjacking, a black cop who forges an uneasy bond with the victim, and the racial tensions that result as police clamp down on a ghetto neighborhood. DVD, $28.95. (Sony)
"Platoon": Oliver Stone's finest hour came with this unflinching portrait of war's insanity, savagery, camaraderie and rivalry. The 1986 Academy Award winner for best picture and director, the film gets a DVD makeover in a two-disc 20th anniversary edition whose extras add insights and background from Stone and his cast. Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger lead the troops' dark saga of an idealistic Vietnam volunteer whose tour of duty lands him in an emotional tug of war between two platoon sergeants whose heroism and blackheartedness are two sides of the same coin. DVD set, $24.96. (Sony)
"The Bette Davis Collection: Vol. 2": Two Davis favorites -- "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" and "Jezebel" -- arrive in new DVD editions, while three other films make their DVD debuts in a seven-disc set. Co-starring Joan Crawford, 1962's "Baby Jane" is the story of a war of wills between two aging sisters -- one a former child star, the other an invalid ex-screen celebrity. The film comes in a two-disc set, while four other Davis classics from the 1930s and '40s arrive as single DVDs: "Jezebel," which earned Davis an Academy Award as a Southern belle going to scandalous extremes to finally hook her fiance (Henry Fonda); "Marked Woman," with Humphrey Bogart in a drama about a call girl who testifies against the mob; "The Man Who Came to Dinner," adapted from George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's stage comedy about a pompous critic (Monty Woolley) creating havoc in a Midwestern household; and "Old Acquaintance," centering on the tempestuous relationship between two writer friends. DVD extras include commentary and vintage short films and cartoons. The films also are available separately, while the boxed set includes a Davis documentary. DVD boxed set, $59.92; "Baby Jane" DVD set, $26.99; single DVDs, $19.97. (Warner Bros.)
--Associated Press
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