ALSO AVAILABLE…

The 18 episodes of Army Wives—The Complete Third Season (ABC/Disney) show that the series has become one of the best-acted dramas on television, with Catherine Bell and Kim Delaney leading a strong cast that helps keep the show above mere soap opera (best extra: Stationed in the South featurette); a powerhouse performance by Maria Bello as a troubled wife who finds pleasure in pain makes the otherwise gleefully morbid Downloading Nancy (Strand) endurable; Robert DeNiro, reduced to playing finicky grandfathers, gives the earnest Everybody’s Fine (Miramax)—a remake of a somewhat better, because more bitter, Italian film from 1990—its lone juice, especially since usually reliable actors like Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale are so wooden (best extra: featurette on Paul McCartney’s end-title song, “(I Want to) Come Home”); in director Astra Taylor’s Examined Life (Zeitgeist) makes philosophical ideas less scary to the masses in this adroit examination of esteemed thinkers in many fields (best extra: Q&As with Taylor and interviewees); Gary Unmarried—The Complete First Season (ABC) pairs Jay Mohr and Paula Marshall as dueling exes in what’s been a hit-and-miss comedy series so far (best extra: on-set featurettes); British artist-turned-director Steve McQueen’s Hunger (Criterion), a remarkably fastidious exploration of the last days of Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands in a British jail, veers too close to exploitation at times for comfort, which blunts its undeniable power (best extra: 1981 British TV program, The Provos’ Last Card?); The Life and Times of Tim—The Complete First Season (HBO) presents all 10 episodes of the crudely-drawn—and more often than not crudely funny—animated series about a “regular guy” in Manhattan with all the usual problems at work and at home with his live-in girlfriend (lone extra: 10 bonus animated shorts); the gritty drama series Lincoln Heights—The Complete First Season (Shout Factory)—which has since been canceled following its fourth season—follows a police officer who returns with his family to his old neighborhood to begin a new life; Lock’n’Load—The Complete First Season (A&E) features R. Lee Ermey—whom I’ll always remember as the drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket—fully in his element as the host of a fascinating program that shows off the pathology of weaponry, with the help of ingenious computer graphics; the comedy Motherhood (NEM) has its moments of truth from writer-director Katherine Dieckmann, but it’s Uma Thurman in the lead who generates the most laughs and sympathy (best extra: cast and crew interviews); the always-watchable Edie Falco makes Nurse Jackie—The Complete First Season (LionsGate) a must-see, even if this hyped-up show about a harried nurse on and off-duty stretches credibility to the breaking point in every episode (best extra: cast interviews); the aptly-titled Women in Trouble (Screen Media) doesn’t know whether it wants to be a raunchy or sophisticated comedy, a melodrama or psychological study—so it ends up as none of these: at least the actresses, led by Carla Gugino, Marley Shelton and Connie Britton, are anything but trouble (best extra: jokey behind-the-scenes featurette).