Derailed before the credits

The latest Jennifer Aniston turkey finds life on DVD this week. Alternatively, a classic cast re-creates one of the most crucial battles of World War II in the remastered Battle Of The Bulge.

Also released is a tribute to genius screenwriter Jack Rosenthal and an insight into the early years of several influential American directors.

Derailed
Buena Vista Home Entertainment, 15, £17.99
Review: Larushka Ivan-Zadeh
**

Uh-oh: another movie - another flop. Jennifer Aniston has more turkeys to her name than Bernard Matthews, and Derailed is a total clucker. Mainly because this un-thrilling thriller casts sweet Jen against type as an enigmatic femme fatale who meets 'happily' married ad exec Clive Owen on a commuter train. They flirt. They end up in a hotel room. They're just about to make more than their Blackberries compatible when baddie Vincent Cassel bursts in and mugs them. Since they're both married, neither reports the crime, leaving them at the mercy of Cassel's blackmail - and us to an even crueller fate: a transparent plot 'twist'. Perfect wait-for-the-DVD fodder. But rent - don't buy.

Extras: Making-of; bonus footage.

Battle Of The Bulge
Warner Home Video, PG, £16.99
Review: Nina Caplan
****

A host of stars gather for Ken Annakin's 1965 fictionalised re-enactment of a real, crucial World War II battle: The Battle Of The Bulge, the struggle to neutralise the Germans' last, desperate counter-offensive in the Ardennes in 1944. Robert Shaw leads the Germans, Robert Ryan the Americans and, while at 150min the film feels nearly as long as the battle itself, the scenes of tank warfare are astonishing, the intentional lack of heroics admirable and the cast - including Charles Bronson, Telly Savalas and Henry Fonda as the American lieutenant colonel battling colleagues' scepticism about the Germans' plans - as sparkling as it's possible to be when fighting for your life and your country among top-grade weapons and gunfire.

Extras: Remastered print and two contemporary making-of featurettes.

Jack Rosenthal At ITV
Network, 15, £39.99
Review: Nina Caplan
*****

The late, much-lamented screenwriter Jack Rosenthal started on Coronation Street and cemented his reputation with dryly witty TV dramas that drew on his experiences - as a British Jew, a Manchester boy, an avid football fan - and seasoned them with firm optimism and a salty sense of life's little trials and victories. Jack Rosenthal At ITV, a four-disc collection of his work for ITV in the 1970s, includes the rather timely Another Sunday And Sweet FA, about a weekend footie ref (David Swift) who is downtrodden and disregarded by everyone from his wife to his fellow players until he turns the tables. It also features various neglected treats such as Mrs Thursday, where an ageing cleaner inherits her employer's money, house - and butler; and The Knowledge, starring Nigel Hawthorne, a comedy about the painstaking process of qualifying as a black cab driver. In these and other remnants from a golden age of British TV that also kick-started the careers of talents such as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, Rosenthal's indomitable humour shines through.

Extras: None.

Cinema 16 - American Short Films
Warp Films, no cert, £19.99
Review: Nina Caplan
****

Cinema 16 - American Short Films, the transatlantic strand in this lively collection of acclaimed short films, has some real treats including Tim Burton's animation Vincent, about a seven-year-old boy who wants to be Vincent Price. It's a tribute both to childhood's overactive imagination and to Hammer Horror. There's also Alexander Payne's film school piece, a trailer-trash Carmen that demonstrates Payne was a dab hand with a quirky narrative a long time before Election and Sideways. The films range from the old (DA Pennebaker's 1958 Daylight Express) to the new, with The Wraith Of Cobble Hill, another animation - which won director Adam Parrish King this year's Sundance Prize.

Extras: Commentary.