The fourth go-round for the American Pie teens find them at their 13^th high school reunion, when horny hell breaks loose again, despite their being older and (supposedly) wiser. It’s surprisingly easy to take, since the performers are comfortable in their characters’ skins as they embarrass themselves again.

Add to that a real find in Ali Cobrin as a horny 18-year-old whom Jason Biggs’ character once babysat, and the stage is set for more goofy but harmless lunacy. The Blu-ray image looks fine; extras include commentaries, featurettes, interviews, deleted and extended scenes and a gag reel.

Dirty Pretty Things

Stephen Frears’ engrossing 2002 thriller follows illegal immigrants working at a London hotel who find themselves caught up in a bizarre body-parts-for-sale scheme.

With persuasive performances by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Audrey Tautou and Sophie Okonedo and a skillful script by Steven Knight, Frears’ best film since The Snapper and The Grifters slowly but surely crawls under your skin. The Blu-ray image is good, not great; extras are a Frears commentary and a making-of featurette.

Down by Law

After his no-budget 1984 breakthrough Stranger than Paradise, Jim Jarmusch two years later made this deadpan romp about small-timers breaking out of a Louisiana jail together: Roberto Bengini, Tom Waits and John Lurie are an unlikely trio, and even the sumptuous visual palette (thanks to Robby Müller’s B&W photography) can’t liven the comedic deadness.

The Criterion Collection impressively brings the film back to life with its hi-def transfer; extras include Jarmusch and Muller interviews, outtakes, Cannes Festival footage, Jarmusch Q&A and phone conversations between Jarmusch and stars.

The Fairy

The Belgian trio of Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy wrote, directed and star in this intermittently amusing tribute to classic cinematic comedians like Chaplin, Keaton and Tati, the latter of whose fingerprints are all over this self-conscious, near-silent farce with physical comedy galore.

There are a few glorious visual moments, but the trio—despite its lithe onscreen gracefulness—never approaches the true masters. The hi-def image is superb.

Friends with Kids

Jennifer Westfeldt wrote and directed this busily innocuous time-waster about couples who mate, fight, split up and (sometimes) make up with an increasingly large brood of children growing up around them.

As in most contemporary comedies, every character is improbably with-it and witty; but Westfeldt writes occasionally zingy dialogue, and directs Megan Fox in her least mannequin-like performance. Otherwise, this is typical rom-com fare that looks quite good on Blu-ray; extras include a commentary, making-of featurette, bloopers and deleted scenes.

Sanctuary—The Complete 4^th Season

For its fourth season, the creators of Sanctuary decide to up the dramatic quotient as the heroic scientific crew (and even the real Bigfoot) goes into emergency assist mode for the monsters it’s trying to keep safe, ending with a two-part fight for survival at season’s end.

Essentially ludicrous, but the program gets by on the chemistry of its actors and bizarre monster make-up. The whole thing looks particularly splendid on Blu-ray; extras include featurettes, interviews, audio commentaries, deleted scenes and a blooper reel.

Gene Kelly’s 1952 musical is a joy from start to finish: no one’s been able to equal Kelly’s extraordinarily cinematic choreography—with the exception of Bob Fosse—and Kelly’s co-stars Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds are unmatched, even by their director’s exacting standards.

Warners has pulled out all the stops for its 60^th anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition: this classic looks luminous on Blu-ray; extras include a new documentary, vintage documentaries, a deleted musical number and an audio commentary; along with goodies like an umbrella (!), 48-page hardcover commemorative book and lobby card facsimiles.

The Turin Horse

Bela Tarr once made interesting pictures about Hungarian life under the Communist regime, but after discovering Profundity with his exasperating seven-hour Satantango, he became the Hungarian David Lean (whose best films were the early, shorter ones). Tarr’s supposedly last feature is another glacially paced, magnificently photographed non-story about the titular horse from a Nietzsche anecdote and its owners; if Tarr mesmerizes you, then by all means see it.

Fred Kelemen’s B&W photography shimmers on Blu-ray; extras include critic Jonathan Rosenbaum’s commentary, Tarr’s 1978 short, Hotel Magnezit; Berlin Film Festival press conference; and a Tarr interview.

Under the Tuscan Sun

In this chipper 2003 adaptation of Frances Maysle’s memoir, Diane Lane gives an un-self-conscious, winning portrayal of an American divorcee who rebuilds her life in beautiful Italy—and, at the end, falls in love: but not with whom you think.

The main draws are Lane’s innate dazzlingness—when she breaks into a smile, she becomes even more so—and the rolling Tuscan hill towns, all receiving an upgrade to hi-def. Extras include featurettes, interviews and director-writer Audrey Wells’ commentary.

DVDs of the Week

These impressive British TV documentaries display a remarkable ability to make dense subjects into something informative and endlessly fascinating.

The Code, narrated with engaging authority by Marcus du Sautoy, unravels the mathematical and numerical patterns that allow the world to function as it does, with evidence ranging from cicadas and serial killers to Chartres Cathedral and Grand Central Station. This Is Civilization, an equally erudite but approachable dissection of art through the centuries, from the Greek, Roman and Muslim worlds to painters David, Goya and Picasso, is hosted by Matthew Collings. Civilization extras comprise a trio of shorts.

Don Quichotte

Belgian bass-baritone Jose Van Dam culminated his towering 50-year career by singing one of literature’s great characters in French composer Jules Massenet’s 1910 opera based on Cervantes’ classic novel.

Laurent Pelly’s centenary production, while it has ludicrous modern touches, keeps Don upfront, and van Dam responds with a physically and emotionally authentic portrayal of a daunting role. Marc Minkowski conducts Van Dam’s operatic swan song with extraordinary sensitivity; an hour-long documentary about the production is the lone extra.

Johnny Carson: King of Late Night

This excellent American Masters program profiles the long-running late-night king who ruled the airwaves for 30-plus years as host of The Tonight Show.

Aside from being a valuable bio of the notoriously reclusive Carson—along with surprising information about his selflessness and altruism—the show is filled with innumerable delightful anecdotes about the master from many of his disciples and acolytes (Letterman, Leno, Conan, Kimmel, Shandling, Rivers, Rickles). Extras include a featurette about narrator Kevin Spacey and additional interviews.

Leverage—The Complete 4^th Season

Tim Hutton and his intrepid crew of Robin Hoods on the trail of “real” bad guys entertain several dangerous cases during the season, which opens with a near-death experience while tracking down crooked businessmen who are off mountain climbing.

Alongside Hutton is a solid supporting cast led by Gina Bellman, and the scenarios continue to be clever without condescension. Along with all 18 episodes, there are audio commentaries on every episode, deleted scenes, making-of featurettes and a gag reel.

Muddy Waters and the Rolling Stones—Live at the Checkerboard Lounge, Chicago 1981

On a night off during their 1981 U.S. tour, the Stones go to hear Muddy Waters at his Chicago club: after a few great tunes to start things off, the master invites the students to the stage for amazing jams like “Hoochie Coochie Man, “Mannish Boy” and “Got My Mojo Working.”

Other guests include Buddy Guy and Junior Wells, but Waters remains front and center, even with Mick, Keith and Ron Wood (and touring keyboardist Ian Stewart) crowding the cramped stage. This legendary one-night-only show finally gets a legitimate release, at long last. An accompanying CD has most of the songs, but the DVD contains the entire performance in a new surround sound mix by Bob Clearmountain.

Blu-rays of the Week

Chariots of Fire

(Warner Brothers)

The surprise 1981 Best Picture Oscar winner—beating out Warren Beatty’s romantic epic Reds—is, despite its pedigree (British, respectable, conventional), surprisingly upbeat if historically problematic. Despite director Hugh Hudson pouring on slow motion, crowd-pleasing sequences and Vangelis’ dated electronic score, the movie holds up well enough.

The muted hi-def image looks comparable to the original theatrical release; extras include a Hudson commentary and interview, screen tests, deleted scenes, featurettes including interviews with Hudson, producer David Puttnam, writer Colin Welland and photographer David Watkin, and a CD sampler of four Vangelis tunes.

Duran Duran: A Diamond in the Mind

(Eagle Vision)

The synth-pop British hitmakjers reunited last year (nostalgia being what it is, who doesn’t nowadays?), as witness this savvy performance in front of an energetic, mostly female crowd.

Simon LeBon and two of the three Taylor brothers are joined by assorted backup musicians and singers for a romp through their three-decade career, with an obvious leaning toward the early smash hits (“Rio,” “The Reflex,” “Hungry Like the Wolf”) that longtime fans will enjoy. The hi-def cameras provide crisp visuals; extras include two bonus songs (including “Is There Something I Should Know”) and band member interviews.

The Flowers of War

(Lionsgate)

The well-documented atrocities against the Chinese when Japan invaded Manchuria in 1936 have been dramatized in several movies; unfortunately, acclaimed veteran director Zhang Timou comes a cropper with his shallow take on such a tricky subject.

As a Westerner posing as a priest who tries to save an improbable group of courtesans and young students, Christian Bale looks confused and embarrassed, while Zhang—whose technical control remains unabated—allows sentimentality to seep in at every turn. On Blu-ray, Zhang’s splendid compositions leave the weak script behind; the lone extra is a behind the scenes featurette.

4:44 Last Days on Earth

(IFC)

Abel Ferrara’s latest unhinged rant explores the final hours for Manhattan residents as the countdown to Armageddon begins. There are interesting moments—particularly when protagonist Willem Dafoe screams from a rooftop at people still wandering the streets—but Ferrara never develops anything coherently.

The relationship between Dafoe and a wooden Shanyn Leigh as his wife never gives us any reason to care about the impending demise of such non-entities. The Blu-ray image is first-rate.

The Horse Whisperer

(Touchstone)

In 1998, Nicholas Evans’ novel was made into a pictorially lovely, dramatically distaff drama by director/star Robert Redford, who smartly cast Kristin Scott Thomas to play the mother of a teenager (Scarlett Johansson) whose accident while on her beloved horse is the catalyst for nearly three hours of intermittently powerful drama.

The movie looks much better than on DVD, but there’s a softness to some scenes—particularly shots of the expansive Montana visitas—that mute the exquisite visuals; extras include three very brief interviews with Redford and real “horse whisperer” Buck Brannaman.

Margaret

(Fox)

Kenneth Lonergan made this illuminating study of a Manhattan teenager who witnesses a gruesome bus accident back in 2005; it sat on the shelf until edited by Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker down to 2-½ hours. Like You Can Count on Me, Lonergan’s excellent 2000 debut, this movie is less concerned with plot than character and dialogue; its textures are of real-life people interacting in ways completely antithetical to typical Hollywood movies. Crammed with scenes of the girl at school, at home or dealing with the accident’s aftermath, Margaret has unyielding empathy for its characters.

Anna Paquin (teen) and J. Smith-Cameron (mom) are great; Lonergan, Josh Hamilton, Matthew Broderick, Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon and Allison Janney provide smart support. The movie looks excellent on Blu-ray; the lone extra is the original, 186-minute cut on DVD: it’s an entirely different movie than the released version, though whether it’s better—it has the same strengths and weaknesses in greater abundance—will be debated for awhile.

The Saphead

(Kino)

A Buster Keaton silent feature that he did not direct (Herbert Blache did the honors)—based on a play, The New Henrietta, by Victor Mapes and Winchell Smith—this is not as memorable as his many comedic classics already out on Blu-ray, though there are enough moments for Keaton fans to savor.

The 1920 color-tinted movie looks fairly worn, but on Blu-ray it’s the best it will look—along with an alternate version that comprises alternate takes and camera angles. Other extras are a featurette comparing the two versions and a 1962 audio recording Keaton regaling a party with youthful songs and memories.

Shark Divers

(Mill Creek)

This quartet of programs, featuring breathtaking underwater footage, shows the lives of several kinds of sharks (and manta rays!), and how humans—especially scientists and tourists in search of more dangerous escapades—try to co-exist with them.

The four episodes—Shark Divers, Shark Business, Whale Sharks: Gentle Giants and Giants of San Benedicto—have spectacular hi-def camerawork in spades; there are no extras, but who cares when there are over three hours of stunning journeys to go on?

Twins of Evil

(Synapse)

This delightfully twisted 1971 Hammer horror flick, with Peter Cushing as the leader of pious witch hunters who meet his match when a local count transforms one of his sexyl twin nieces into a vampire, is a real hoot. Blood and breasts are equally on display, and the finale is ludicrously over the top, even for such a flamboyant film.

With its dark shadows and red gore, the movie looks quite good in hi-def, with film-like grain; extras include The Flesh and the Fury, a thorough 85-minute documentary of the film’s history; The Props that Hammer Built, a 25-minute featurette; and a deleted scene.

DVDs of the Week

Jesus Henry Christ

(e one)

If quirkiness were all, then writer-director Dennis Lee’s exploration of a boy’s search for his real father would be a triumph. But quirkiness aside, Lee’s movie is skin-crawlingly obnoxious, as this most bizarre of bizarre families comes off uninteresting and dull after so many similar movies and TV sitcoms: why can’t we see normal people for a change?

If everyone’s offbeat, then no one is offbeat; Michael Sheen, Toni Collette and Jason Spevack (as the boy) can’t change that. Extras include interviews with Lee and his cast.

Making Plans for Lena

(Kimstim/Zeitgeist)

Christoph Honore’s bland family relations drama pales next to better French films on the subject, with Olivier Assayas’ Summer Hours and Arnaud Desplechin’s flawed but interesting A Christmas Tale the most recent.

Unlike bull’s-eye acting in Summer (Juliette Binoche) and Christmas (Catherine Deneuve), Honore is stuck with Chiara Mastroianni, movie royalty—daughter of Deneuve and Marcello Mastroianni—but a mediocre actress who can’t breathe life into a multi-dimensional heroine juggling young kids, annoying brother and sister, new boyfriend, former husband and overbearing parents.

Paraiso

(New Yorker)

The final film in writer-director Leon Ichaso’s Cuban trilogy—following El Super and Bitter Sugar—is his personal take on a rarely mentioned issue: how newly arrived Cuban immigrants see their American “promised land” if the promises of a better life don’t happen.

What begins as an inchoate character study morphs into a romance and finally into a strange kind of thriller, its heartfelt honesty trumping loose ends in plotting and characterization. Extras include an Ichaso interview, Benjamin Bratt introduction and Ichaso’s short about poet Justo Rodriguez Santos, J.R.S.

Seven Minutes in Heaven

(Film Movement)

Omri Givon’s provocative Jerusalem-set drama follows a survivor a year after a terrorist bombing on a bus which killed her boyfriend: she can’t remember what led to the tragedy, but therapy and an anonymous gift help her make sense of what happened and her future.

Givon artfully shows the wounds, both physical and psychic, on a survivor of such an attack and, in Reymonde Amsellem’s beautifully modulated performance, brings this woman to life. The lone extra is a Brazilian short, Grandmothers.

CD of the Week

Jeffrey Khaner: Czech Flute Music

(Avie)

For this well-programmed CD of music from the former Czechoslovakia, talented American flutist Jeffrey Khaner plays pieces by three towering 19^th and 20^th century masters and a contemporary Czech composer.

First is Erwin Schulhoff’s jazz-inflected 1927 Sonana, followed by Jindrich Feld’s melodic but distinctly modern-sounding Sonata (from 1957). Bohuslav Martinu’s Sonata No. 1, written in America in 1945, is expressive and lilting, the composer at his considerable best; finally, there’s a reworking of Antonin Dvorak’s 1893 Violin Sonatina transcribed for flute. Khaner performs with flair, suppleness and musical sense; pianist Charles Abramovic provides sturdy support.