Options, Not Picture Quality, What Make Dvd Incredible

So I’ve finally entered the DVD world, and I wonder why I waited so long. It’s not that I find the picture so much better. The images that come off my big-screen television were good enough before, whether I was watching mass-produced VHS preview tapes or digital cable TV shows.

No, to me the wonder of DVD involves all the extra features that the format offers you.

For one thing, take the top VHS/DVD release of this week, Kimberly Peirce’s “Boys Don’t Cry,” which stars Oscar winner Hilary Swank. Want to watch it with Spanish subtitles? No problem. A simple button push accomplishes that.

Same with closed captions and quick scene access (DVD movies are typically set up in chapters, but you can fast-forward, too). Best of all, you don’t have to rewind.

Take a look, too, at another of this week’s releases: the children’s film “Stuart Little.” Not only can you get it in traditional pan-and-scan, but it’s also available in wide-screen format (if you can get used to those black lines at the top and bottom).

And as for “End of Days,” the Arnold Schwarzenegger devil-made-me-do-it thriller, you get not only the movie in wide-screen, but the package includes a featurette, a director’s commentary and the theatrical trailer.

Last week I watched Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 film “Seven Samurai,” and had I wanted to I could have listened to an expert on Japanese film comment on Kurosawa’s filmmaking techniques all through the three-hour, 24-minute running time. I preferred to go it alone.

But at least I had the choice. VHS has served its purpose. And just when we get used to what’s current, the next big step will take us into new worlds of home entertainment.

For the moment, though, I love my DVD.

The week’s major releases on video and/or DVD:

Boys Don’t Cry

****

Hilary Swank gives a shattering performance as young Teena Brandon, a troubled Nebraska woman who changes her identity to Brandon Teena as part of what she later says is a “sexual identity crisis.”

Whatever the truth of that, Swank’s Brandon makes the kind of sensitive man that the girls of Falls City, Neb., have likely never seen. Lana (Chloe Sevigny) falls especially hard, which enrages her ex-con boyfriend (Peter Sarsgaard) and ends up affecting Brandon in a way that is as harsh and sad as it is predictable.

Writer-director Kimberly Peirce has taken a real-life story and imbued it with the kind of truth about the human condition that many documentary filmmakers can only dream about. As for Swank, the one-time Spokane resident (and “Next Karate Kid” star) merely pulled off one of the top movie-acting performances of the ‘90s. Her Best Actress Oscar award confirmed that. (In VHS and DVD.) Rated R

Stuart Little

***

Loosely based on E.B. White’s children’s novel, this tender little story about a mouse that gets adopted by a human family plays well as a family film. Its plotline plays a little too much like “Annie,” without the musical numbers, of course. But the mix of real life and animation is more than serviceable, the main actors (Geena Davis, Hugh Laurie, Jonathan Lipniski) are fine and the vocal talents (Michael J. Fox as Stuart, Nathan Lane as the house cat Snowbell, Jennifer Tilly as Mrs. Stout) are even better.

The only problem with this Rob Minkoff film is that, compared with such efforts as “Babe” and the “Toy Story” duo, family viewing has developed a new level of sophistica-tion that it simply can’t match. (In VHS and DVD.) Rated PG

End of Days

**-1/2

On the verge of the millennium, Satan (Gabriel Byrne) shows up in New York looking for the woman (Robin Tunney) he is fated to impregnate, thus releasing a new era of evil in the world. Only a suicidal loner of a cop (Arnold Schwarzenegger) stands in his way.

As far as Schwarzenegger movies go, this is a change of pace — and, thematically, a welcomed one. Yes, he tries to blow everything and everyone away. But it has little effect. It’s only when he puts down his gun that he finds the strength he needs.

Overall, the film holds a kind of creepy fascination. But the best line is one that puts the whole end-of-the-millennium, the-world-is-ending craze and its attendant movie genre into perspective: When told that the world will end at midnight, Schwarzenegger asks, “Will that be Eastern Standard Time?” That’s a light giggle in a dark snicker of a film. (In VHS and DVD.) Rated R

The House on Haunted Hill

*-1/2

While scarier than another recent horror remake, Jan De Bont’s “The Haunting,” this entry in the horror cinema sweepstakes is still too much special effects, too little real emotion. The plot, which follows William Castle’s 1958 original, is about a group of people — played by such noted actors as Geoffrey Rush, Famke Janssen, Taye Diggs and Peter Gallagher — invited to spend the night in a haunted house for a price (in this case, $1 million apiece). Sure enough, they begin dropping dead. And not all of them get killed by the ghosts, who are real enough. Where, oh where, is Vincent Price now that we really need him? (In VHS and DVD.) Rated R