Coming to DVD

The following is a list of soon-to-be released DVDs. All capsule reviews have been taken from The Washington Post's Weekend section.

July 14

"The Edge of Love" (UR, 110 minutes): In John Maybury's speculative investigation of the romantic entanglements of poet Dylan Thomas, Keira Knightley plays Vera Phillips, Thomas's real-life childhood friend from Wales. As the film opens, the two reconnect during the London Blitz, when Dylan (Matthew Rhys) is writing British propaganda copy and Vera is crooning in tube stations turned into makeshift cabarets. For a moment it looks like the obvious spark between them will ignite into something more, when -- what ho! -- up pops Dylan's fiery Irish wife, Caitlin (Sienna Miller), and the three embark on a by turns passionate and toxic menage a trois. (Cillian Murphy plays Vera's long-suffering husband, William Killick.) That none of the protagonists earns the audience's sympathy is more likely a failure of the real-life characters rather than the actors. Contains profanity, nudity and adult themes.

"The Haunting In Connecticut" (PG-13, 92 minutes): Solid acting and handsomely realized effects depicting ghostly visions and visitations make this a chilling occult tale: There are flashbacks of someone preparing to snip the eyelids off a body, and of seances in which ghostly ectoplasm spews from a live person's mouth. Virginia Madsen plays Sara, whose teenage son, Matt (Kyle Gallner), has a life-threatening illness. She moves the family to an old house near the hospital where Matt is treated. He immediately starts seeing dead people and worse in the house and becomes detached and obsessed. A cleric (Elias Koteas) helps Matt reveal the secret behind the haunting. The narrative is repetitive but still effective. Contains intense sequences of terror and disturbing images.

Also on DVD July 14: "ER: Season 11," "Explicit Ills," "Mad Men: Season 2," "Menage," "Night Train," "[Rec]," "The State: The Complete Series," "This Is Spinal Tap (Blu-ray)," "Grey Gardens," "Bewitched: The Complete Eighth Season."

July 21

"Coraline" (PG, 100 minutes): The movie, adapted from Neil Gaiman's enormously successful book of the same name, follows 11-year-old Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning), whose wish to replace the adults in her life leads to a nightmarish experience in a parallel universe. She finds herself in another world where charming replicas of her parents invite her to live with them. There's a major hitch, of course. Coraline's "Other Mother" (Teri Hatcher) makes her a prisoner and demands unyielding devotion. For all its visual delights, however, the film remains more an engaging spectacle than a connective drama. That is chiefly because of the writing. Director-writer Henry Selick doesn't reach for the kind of universality that would enrich the movie. It's a shame because Fanning's performance is the movie's most emotionally persuasive element. Her assured modulations, from cheeky to sweet, from bored to anguished, should have been part of a bigger, deeper movie. Contains scary images, mild profanity and suggestive humor.

"The Great Buck Howard" (PG, 87 minutes): Buck Howard (John Malkovich) is a vaudevillian mentalist who gets through each day by reliving his best moments from 30 years ago, even though the rest of the world has moved on. Colin Hanks plays Buck's assistant, who caters to his strange needs and helps maintain his boss's delusion that he is still a beloved personality. A problem is the dull Hanks, who would not have gotten this role on his own merits (his father is Tom, who produces and acts in the film). A bigger problem is Hanks's character, Troy, a law school dropout. The story is Troy's, not Buck's, and the film is all the less interesting because of it. Malkovich is merely a vessel through which Troy learns an important lesson on the way to establishing his own writing career; he's like a jack-in-the-box that never pops out, and the movie plays like an endless, aggravating loop of "Pop Goes the Weasel." Contains language, including suggestive remarks, and a drug reference.

"Watchmen" (R, 163 minutes): The film, like the 1986 graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, follows the tormented daily lives of a ragtag band of retired superheroes caught up in a plot to save the Earth, and themselves, from the machinations of a self-appointed savior of mankind, who may not have mankind's best interests at heart. The gang's all here: the psychotically righteous Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), the dangerously smart Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode) and the shape-shifting blue nudist with seemingly limitless power, Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup). The movie exposes the glaring problems with the original material: The dialogue stinks and is filled with cliches. But when it marches in lock step with the tedious plot, the only watch that matters in "Watchmen" is the one on your wrist. Contains strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language. DVD Extras: Extended cut of the film; split screen commentary from Zack Snyder; featurettes.

Also on DVD July 21: "300: The Complete Experience (Blu-ray)," "Echelon Conspiracy," "Midnight Express," "Pushing Daisies: Season 2," "Prison Break: The Final Break," "Monk: Season Seven," "Psych: The Complete Third Season," "Charlie's Angels: Complete Fourth Season."

July 28

"Fast & Furious" (PG-13, 107 minutes): "Fast & Furious" refires the high-speed adrenaline and the fuel-injected bromance between Vin Diesel and Paul Walker that began in 2001's "The Fast and the Furious." The reunion is fun and frantic, like the original on double nitro. Gone is the young-boy innocence of the first, yet the guy-centric principles remain the same. The things of beauty in the "F&F" universe? Nitro-jacked speedsters that do horizontally what the Cape Canaveral program does vertically. The six-pack-abbed guys standing next to those cars. And bullet-shaped Corona beers, so men can raise them to victory or -- as one character so grandiloquently puts it -- "to the ladies we've loved and the ladies we've lost." And as long as the filmmakers keep giving us vicarious access to the good, fast, sleek things in life, we don't see this ride running out of fuel for a long time. Contains dangerous car chases and fatalities, beer drinking, fist violence and one F-word.

Also on DVD July 28: "Streets of Blood," "Dollhouse: Season One," "Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series (Blu-ray)," "Repulsion (Blu-ray)," "Life on Mars: Series 1."

August 4

"Race to Witch Mountain" (PG, 98 minutes): Screenwriters Matt Lopez and Mark Bomback have retooled the Alexander Key novel that provided fodder for the original 1975 film, creating a vehicle for Dwayne Johnson. Johnson is a sly delight here, playing ex-con Jack Bruno, who has traded in his NASCAR dreams to drive a cab in Las Vegas. In between trundling sci-fi geeks to a UFO convention, Jack picks up a pair of very anxious blond tweens named Seth (Alexander Ludwig) and Sara (AnnaSophia Robb). Once Seth halts a pursuing SUV with his breastplate and Sara levitates Jack's tip change, it becomes clear that Jack is dealing with two strays from outer space who have crash-landed in the desert. With government agents hot on his trail, Jack endeavors to spirit his young charges back to their ship. Johnson (the wrestler formerly known as the Rock) lifts the script above its conventional cat-and-mouse stratagems with his buoyant wiseacre timing. Contains sequences of action and violence, frightening and dangerous situations, and thematic elements.

Also on DVD August 4: "Flight of the Conchords: The Complete Second Season," "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!: Season Three," "St. Elmo's Fire (Blu-ray)," "August."

August 11

"17 Again" (PG-13, 102 minutes): Zac Efron is no Lindsay Lohan. That fact will come as a great relief to Efron's managers, who are no doubt crossing their fingers that their blue-eyed meal ticket, the beloved star of the "High School Musical" franchise, has no mug shots in his future. But it's too bad for "17 Again," Burr Steers's engaging but pedestrian comedy, that young Efron doesn't have a little bit more Lohan in him. Efron is effortlessly diverting as an adult trapped in a teen's body in "17 Again." But, unlike Lohan -- who gave a rich performance as another adult trapped in a teen's body in the 2003 remake of "Freaky Friday" -- Efron has no edge. And although that edgelessness might prolong his career, it keeps "17 Again" from having anything surprising to say about teenage life in 2009. Contains language, sexual material and teen partying.

"I Love You, Man" (R, 107 minutes): Paul Rudd is a phone book actor, meaning he's just one of those guys who could stand there and read a phone book and we'd laugh. Just watch him in the first few scenes of "I Love You, Man," when his character, Peter Klaven, listens in on a raunchy conference call between his fiancee, Zooey (Rashida Jones), and her best girlfriends. Or listen as he makes up fake guy-talk when he goes on a first man-date with Sydney Fife (Jason Segel), the shambling Lost Boy who lives in a self-described "man-cave" with a steady supply of pot, pornography and Rush records. When Peter befriends him in hopes of finding a best man for his wedding, Sydney takes it upon himself to make Peter into a "real" man, i.e., a creature entirely without conscience or consideration for others. It's a thin premise, and "I Love You, Man" features the usual quota of jokes involving masturbation, projectile vomiting and flatulence. But is it worth it? Thanks to Rudd and Segel (and some terrific cameos), totes magotes. Contains pervasive profanity, including crude sexual references.

Also on DVD August 11: "Ichi the Killer (Blu-ray)," "Gigantic," "The Class," "The Tiger's Tail."

August 18

"Hannah Montana: The Movie" (G, 98 minutes):The first moment of applause came early during a recent screening, so early, in fact, the house lights had just begun to dim. The source of the clapping was a pair of excitable girls who looked to be about 7 years old. Which is pretty much the target demographic of this innocuous feature-length adaptation of the popular Disney Channel series about Miley Stewart (Miley Cyrus), an ordinary teenage girl who secretly moonlights as Hannah Montana. When Miley/Hannah gets too caught up in the celebrity swirl of Los Angeles, she's relegated to her family's home in Tennessee by her widowed father (Billy Ray Cyrus, the star's real-life dad). While there, she must cope with country life; evade a tabloid reporter seeking to expose her double life; save the community from a developer; and meet hunky Travis. The film may be, at heart, every Disney princess movie you've ever seen -- only with a stretch limo instead of a pumpkin-turned-coach and a prince who wears a cowboy hat. Contains nothing offensive whatsoever.

Also on DVD August 18: "Man vs. Wild: Season Three," "Surveillance," "Julia," "Gossip Girl: The Complete Second Season," "Sons of Anarchy: Season One (Blu-ray)."

August 25

"Adventureland" (R, 104 minutes): In its own gentle way, the film restores a welcome note of humanism to a genre that has lately become little more than a repository for fart-and-vomit jokes. Jesse Eisenberg plays James Brennan, a recent college graduate whose plans for a European vacation before starting grad school are foiled when his family suffers an economic setback. James is forced to live at home and get a job at the local amusement park. There he meets an eclectic group of lost and striving souls, including a thwarted rock musician (Ryan Reynolds) and a sultry, mysterious girl named Em (Kristen Stewart), with whom he furtively falls in love. Thanks to an exceptionally deft touch, director Greg Mottola manages to capture the absurdity and anguish of young adulthood; his tender look back will ring wistfully true to anyone who has fallen in love, left home or still wonders what it would be like to do either. Contains drug use, profanity and sexual references. DVD Extras Includes the rated and unrated versions of the film.

"Duplicity" (PG-13, 125 minutes): Tony Gilroy's romantic espionage caper pits two pharmaceutical companies against each other. Burkett & Randle, led by Howard Tully (Tom Wilkinson), has discovered a cream that will revolutionize the industry. Equikrom, led by Richard Garsik (Paul Giamatti) needs to steal the secret to that lotion. And there's romance, of sorts. Behind the scenes, Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) and Ray Koval (Clive Owen) work their nefarious magic, he on Equikrom's side, she on Burkett & Randle's. But are they both really working for each other? And can they really trust each other? Luckily, Owen and Roberts both get to play off Giamatti, who overacts gleefully. It's smart, it's for grown-ups and it lets Julia Roberts laugh, if just once. Short of a miracle cream, what else can you hope for from corporate America these days? Contains language, sexuality and displays of obscene wealth.

"Sunshine Cleaning" (R, 102 minutes): Amy Adams is Rose, a maid. Emily Blunt is Norah, a burnout. The sisters' lives have dead-ended. When Rose's young son starts acting up at school, she decides to look for a private school where he can flourish. To help pay for it, Rose enters the expanding, lucrative market of crime-scene cleanup and entices Norah to join her. What should have been a madcap comedy of the macabre, or a tangled yarn about the metaphorical biohazards of living life at the margins, shoots for the middle and ends up being just that: middling. Adams and Blunt can't be faulted for signing up for this film, which is earnest and well meaning and tries to say something thoughtful about the untidiness of family relationships, which, if untended to, can decompose and start to smell. Contains language, disturbing images, sexuality and drug use.

Also on DVD August 25: "House: Season Five," "Smallville: The Complete Eighth Season," "Lie To Me: Season One."