“Daybreakers” DVD, Blu-ray: Vampires — though without the swoon or the sparkle. Here is a movie that crushes the vampire cliches by casting them into the light and having a great time lampooning the lot of them. In the film, it’s the year 2019, the human race as we know it is toast, and replacing it are vampires. Scads of them. So many, in fact, that much like today’s dwindling oil reserves, there is in this film a dwindling supply of blood to feed the vamps in question. Think of it as cueing a red alert. Along with it comes chaos, with Ethan Hawke’s Edward Dalton, a doctor, charged to find a suitable blood replacement even though what he really wants to do is to find a cure for vampirism. It won’t be easy, but yes, it will be bloody — and also bloody fun, especially given Willem Dafoe’s over-the-top performance as the vampire Lionel, who reaches for his scenes and steals them with ease. Rated R. Grade: B-
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“Edge of Darkness” DVD, Blu-ray: After spending eight years behind the scenes, Mel Gibson’s return to the screen is only average at best. Here, he’s detective Thomas Craven, a widower struggling to keep it together with his increasingly distant daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) when she’s suddenly gunned down in Boston. Just who shot her dead and why could have made for riveting mystery, but director Martin Campbell, who was so good at delivering the thrills in “Casino Royale,” trips and stumbles. His movie lacks momentum. Gibson isn’t fully on his game. Ray Winstone appears in a supporting role designed to conceal the facts of Emma’s death, but in spite of how chilling his character is, he isn’t given enough room to expand upon it. By not giving him that opportunity, director Campbell essentially cheats us of the film’s most intriguing character. Rated R. Grade: C
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“Batman,” “Batman Returns,” “Batman Forever,” “Batman & Robin” Blu-ray: A bevy of Batmans, all just out on Blu-ray. They’re a mixed lot, the best of which are Tim Burton’s 1989 “Batman” and 1992’s “Batman Returns,” each of which starred Michael Keaton as the Dark Knight. In the latter, Michelle Pfeiffer is particularly memorable as Catwoman, as is Danny DeVito as The Penguin. Under Burton’s direction, each movie is moody and grim in ways that Joel Schumacher eschews in his two weaker, overblown versions — 1995’s “Batman Forever,” with Val Kilmer in the bat suit, and 1997’s cartoon overkill, “Batman & Robin,” with George Clooney sporting the cape. Each disc is crammed with extras, from music videos by Prince, Jewel and Seal to commentaries by each director to additional scenes. All sport new digital transfers — but none of them has anything on Christopher Nolan’s terrific movie, “The Dark Knight.” Each film is rated PG-13. Grades: “Batman” A-; “Batman Return” B+; “Batman Forever” C; “Batman & Robin” C-
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“Igor” Blu-ray: Ironically, this animated film is set within the land of Malaria, and as bad luck would have it, the film itself feels as if it were written and conceived under the haze of some unwanted, lingering malaise. John Cusack is the voice of Igor, a hunchback who slaves for Dr. Glickenstein (John Cleese), but whose own creativity is stifled by a system that refuses to embrace it. The sun never shines in Malaria, so the film turns to its screwball characters for flashes of color. Most amount to Igor’s failed experiments — an immortal rabbit named Scamper (Steve Buscemi), who tries to commit suicide throughout (tough to blame him), and Brain (Sean Hayes), who lives in a jar. When Glickenstein unexpectedly offs himself in an experiment gone awry, Igor is able to build Eva (Molly Shannon), a giant she-monster who doesn’t want to be evil so much as she wants to be a stage actress. (Some will argue whether there’s a difference.) For villains, the movie chooses Dr. Schadenfreude (Eddie Izzard) and his cruel girlfriend, Jacylyn (Jennifer Coolidge, whose marvelous, warbling voice is its own special effect). As promising as it all sounds, what it adds up to is a whole lot of nothing. The trouble with “Igor” isn’t just that it lacks laughs, but that it also lacks action — there are too many long stretches of silence in which you realize a better title for this baby would have been “Ibore.” Rated PG. Grade: C-
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“Rollerball” Blu-ray: John McTiernan’s thriller is one of those movies you never quite forget — which is why, I suppose, we have psychotherapy, mood-enhancing prescription drugs and neighborhood bars to help us cope. Based on the 1975 original starring James Caan and Maud Adams, this version is determined to overlook everything that made its inspiration so prescient. Instead of exploring why pop culture is fascinated with extreme sports, it’s only content to exploit the violence and the blood within the sport. Instead of focusing on how these sports are shaped and fueled by major corporations, it overlooks their influence in favor of featuring a string of head-banging, heavy-metal riffs. The film stars Chris Klein as Jonathan, a fresh-faced kid from San Francisco who leaves his meaningless life in the states to become a meaningless sports star in Kazakhstan, a post-communist bloc country that’s absolutely certain its ticket to free trade rests with the game of Rollerball. With Jean Reno as the evil Petrovich, a mustache-twirling, nouveau-capitalist who is determined to turn Rollerball into a smash success, LL Cool J as an accountant-turned-Rollerball superstar and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as a Russian minx whose performance suggests she worked for scale and a case of Stoli, “Rollerball” takes its place beside “Battlefield Earth” as one of the worst movies Hollywood has shucked out in years. As “Roller Boogie” is my witness, they don’t make them any worse than this. Rated R. Grade: F
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“Windtalkers”: Blu-ray: At its core, this World War II melodrama from John Woo is about Navajo code talkers, Native American servicemen who used their language to confound the Japanese while transmitting sensitive information by radio. It’s an important, overlooked piece of history that deserves to be explored in a movie — and it still does, one hopes in a film that will, at the very least, have a genuine interest in the subject. “Windtalkers” doesn’t. Nicolas Cage, complete with a waxworks ear, might as well be a reject from Madame Tussaud’s Museum. The film suggests Woo’s knowledge of World War II wasn’t mined from hard research, but from the movies, with rote rhythms driving the lot of it straight into the line of its own fire. Rated R. Grade: D+
WeekinRewind.com is the site for Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s blog, DVD giveaways and archive of movie reviews. Smith’s reviews appear Fridays and weekends. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.