Buffed up but nowhere to go

Jarhead
Universal Pictures, 15, £19.99 ***
Sam Mendes's Jarhead is not your typical war movie, despite being adapted from Anthony Swofford's bestselling book about the first Iraq war. Here, blood, guts and combat are replaced by sanity-blasting boredom. Swoff (Jake Gyllenhaal) buffs up and ships out; he endures the teasing, the brutal training and the simmering rage of men deliberately revved to their testosterone peak but what none of them can endure is the inactivity of phoney war. When combat comes, they're left out of it - they have to endure the horrors of civilian death without any compensating chance to kill an enemy soldier. The film looks amazing - no surprise, since it's edited by Walter Murch and shot by Roger Deakins - but Mendes is a dramatist and never quite rises to the challenge of making inactivity interesting.
Extras: Director, screenwriter and author commentaries; deleted scenes; news footage and Swoff's fantasies shorts, with optional commentary. Nina Caplan

The New World
Entertainment In Video, 15, £19.99 ***
Colin Farrell, that nervy heart-throb, isn't an obvious choice for director Terrence Malick - but for The New World he needed a bad boy who could act, and there's no denying that Farrell qualifies. He plays John Smith, a British would-be settler sentenced to death before arrival in the wild lands of 17th-century America but set free to carve a place for himself - and to fall in love with the daughter of a Native American chief, Pocahontas (Q'Orianka Kilcher). She's nearly as beautiful as Malick's film but has a lot more spirit -enough to set Smith and a fellow settler (Christian Bale) a-squabbling over her. This is part history piece, part love story but Malick's real love is the camera and his story suffers accordingly.
Extras: None. Nina Caplan

Breakfast In Pluto
Pathe Distribution, 15, £19.99 ***
Whimsy seldom comes more whimsical than this. Director Neil Jordan's Breakfast On Pluto is a dreamy coming-of-age tale about a young Irish transvestite in the 1970s who calls himself Kitten. Abandoned on a church doorstep, our oft-times infuriatingly fey hero/ine (drop-dead gorgeous Cillian Murphy) goes to London in search of his mother - a super-glam ghost he's been told is 'the spit of' 1950s idol Mitzi Gaynor. It's a merry old tale that beguiles with fantastical episodes (Kitten's bizarre jobs include magician's assistant and Womble), yet is almost too slight. Despite being provocatively gay on the surface, Kitten's wide-eyed naivety would make Frank Spencer look savvy. Since we see the movie through him, it ultimately feels as pretty and neutered as its star.
Extras: Commentary with Neil Jordan and Cillian Murphy; making-of featurette; extended scenes. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh

Nick Broomfield: The Early Works
Metrodome, 15, £34.99 ****
Back before Nick Broomfield thought to put himself in the frame, he was a patient pioneer of socially aware documentary, and Nick Broomfield: The Early Works is a four-disc set that a more modest man than Broomfield would justifiably feel proud of. It includes his first film, Who Cares?, a brief but touching venture on to Liverpool estates where the council flat tenants mourn the neighbourliness and warmth of their old homes. Proud To Be British looks at the class divide; it's hard to believe it was made in the 1970s, not the 1950s. Broomfield ducks backstage at a musical (Driving Me Crazy) and focuses on monologuist Spalding Gray (Monster In A Box), proving consistently that when his subject is worthy and his interest fully engaged, there are few doc-makers who can match him.
Extras: Filmed individual intros to each documentary. Nina Caplan