DVD Releases

''BREAKING BAD'': THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON

Stripped down and tuned up for speed

If you heard a little about "Breaking Bad": The Complete First Season (2008) but never got around to tuning in, chances are the buzz you caught was mainly about Bryan Cranston's Emmy-winning lead performance. Rightly so, given how fluidly Cranston shifts from "Malcolm in the Middle" to an altogether darker brand of workaday absurdity. Here, he's Walt White, a high school chemistry teacher who gets a cancer diagnosis, and then, to provide for his family, gets into the crystal meth trade with a screw-up former student (Aaron Paul). Still, series creator and "X-Files" alum Vince Gilligan is something of a draw in his own right. Dedicated X-philes can recall Gilligan's career writing highlights for you - episodes like "Small Potatoes," in which Mulder and Scully track a schlubby changeling who's secretly behind a spate of small-town pregnancies. (The babies' tails were the giveaway.) Walt's misadventures mark an intriguing creative evolution for Gilligan. The show's signature image is one of its first: Walt stands out in the desert, clad only in tighty-whiteys, armed and desperately bracing for a confrontation with police. Yet you're just as likely to remember the deliberately paced midseason episode in which Walt finds some conversational common ground with a drug dealer who'd earlier held him at gunpoint, but incredibly wound up as his captive. Extras: Gilligan, Cranston, and the cast supply group commentary on the pilot and the finale, hinting at season two's revelation of Walt's past Nobel flirtation. (We don't think they're kidding.) (Sony, $39.95)

ACTION

THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971)

It's been a good month for William Friedkin fans. The Harvard Film Archive just wrapped its 10-day salute to the director, and now comes the Blu-ray reissue of Friedkin's policier-defining breakout - which of course means that that iconic, high-def-before-its-time chase sequence finally gets the treatment it deserves. There's more of Gene Hackman's Popeye Doyle to be had in John Frankenheimer's "French Connection II," which also debuts. Extras: Commentary by Friedkin, Hackman, and the late Roy Scheider; new retrospectives include a 20-minute segment with Friedkin retracing Doyle's chase route through Brooklyn, albeit at a somewhat more leisurely pace. (Fox, $34.99)

DRAMA

FLASH OF GENIUS (2008)

Dark chapters or no, there's a sense that director Marc Abraham treads lightly in this account of intermittent-wiper inventor Robert Kearns (Greg Kinnear), who waged a years-long legal battle with Ford to get credit for his work. Adapted from a New Yorker article, the film gets more mileage out of its unlikely subject than you might guess. But in depictions of Kearns suffering a breakdown and letting his marriage crumble, there's always a delicate narrative tone - even from Kinnear, who made ruinous obsessiveness so palpable in "Auto Focus." Extras: Commentary by Abraham; deleted scenes. (Universal, $29.98; available now)

ANIMATION

FUTURAMA: INTO THE WILD GREEN YONDER (2009)

Slacker Fry turns mind-reader, one-eyed Leela turns ecofeminista, and robot Bender reminds us that what happens in Mars Vegas stays in Mars Vegas. The "Simpsons" companion 'toon's new lease on life finally expires with the last of four made-for-DVD quasi-features, and as ever, we're left wishing that the supporting cast was on a par with the LOL leads. An exception to the rule: Nixon's preserved head mourning the loss of Agnew's headless body. Extras: Executive producers Matt Groening and David X. Cohen blow their final paychecks on a zero-gravity commercial flight (and for $5,000, you can, too!). (Fox, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.99)

WHAT JUST HAPPENED (2008)

Robert De Niro is a producer struggling to wrangle his movies and his life in Barry Levinson's adaptation of the inside-Hollywood memoir by Art Linson ("The Untouchables"). With Bruce Willis (above). Extras: Commentary by Linson and Levinson. (Magnolia, $29.98; Blu-ray, $34.98)

RAGING BULL (1980)

Feel like you've climbed into the ring with Jake LaMotta yourself as a 2005 deluxe reissue of Scorsese's dazzling, brutal black-and-white landmark gets further polished on Blu-ray. (MGM, $34.99; available now)

SEX DRIVE (2008)

Carnally challenged Josh Zuckerman and pal Clark Duke go in pursuit of an '80s-type sure thing - '08 model. Extras: Unrated footage. (Summit, $26.99; Blu-ray, $34.99)

HOBSON'S CHOICE (1954)

Charles Laughton is in fine, comically cantankerous form for director David Lean as a boot-shop owner clashing with his independent daughter in Victorian England. Extras: Film scholar commentary; BBC Laughton documentary. (Criterion, $39.95; available now)

IRONWEED (1987)

Nicholson and Streep look back in Depression-era Albany. (Lionsgate, $14.98)

DONNIE DARKO (2001)

Jake Gyllenhaal's mindbender arrives on Blu-ray in an edition collecting both the theatrical version and the 2004 director's cut. (Fox, $34.99; available now)

PAINTED LADY (1997)

Helen Mirren turns from fading rock star to amateur sleuth on the art theft-and-murder beat in this "Masterpiece Theatre" entry. (Acorn Media, $24.99) Titles are in stores Tuesday unless otherwise specified.