Bette Davis Centenary Collection

Beloved by film fans and drag queens everywhere, Bette Davis captivated audiences with her caustic wit and on-target, deadpan delivery. While gay audiences may remember her most fondly for her work as the nutty caretaker of her physically handicapped sister in the wildly campy Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Davis’ best work was in the more realistic dramas she headlined. Five of them are represented in this handsome box set, which features spruced up reissues of All About Eve and Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, plus three new-to-DVD titles, The Virgin Queen, Phone Call from a Stranger and The Nanny. The roles couldn’t be more different—Davis stars as a Broadway star, a haunted Southern recluse, a Queen of England, a British nanny and the small but pivotal role of a wife of a plane crash victim—providing a luminous portrait of an incomparable screen legend. A must-have for Davis die-hards. Extras: Tons. Each disc comes with a four-page booklet, plus commentaries, behind-the-scenes footage, unreleased material, featurettes and interviews with the surviving stars. A
—Ken Knox

Melrose Place Season 4

In the season four opener—partially pre-empted from its original air date after the Oklahoma City bombings—the deliciously psychotic Kimberly Shaw (Marcia Cross) blows Melrose Place off the map, killing an expendable guest star and temporarily blinding Alison (Courtney Thorne Smith) and, during a fist fight, Jake (Grant Show) and his brother, Jess (Dan Cortese), fall off a ledge at a construction site—and that’s just before the first commercial break! Miles from the ’90s primetime soap’s sunny first season, the fourth season brings the pot to boil, with a serpentine plotline fraught with even more bedhopping, backstabbing and blackmailing. Season highlights include the haunting ghost of Brooke (Kristen Davis) floating above the Melrose Place pool; Jane (Josie Bissett) vengefully turning the sprinklers on at a rival fashion show after her designs were stolen; and Kimberly developing multiple personalities, including Stepford Wife-like Betsy and biker-chick Rita. All in a day at 4616 Melrose Place! Extras: None A
—John Hobbs

Boys Love

In this story of unlikely love, Kotani Yoshikazu stars as a conservative magazine editor who becomes enamored with the irresponsible and promiscuous teen model (Saito Takumi) he is profiling. After a botched encounter in a restroom stall that takes place at the restaurant where they conduct an interview, a relationship between the two men develops that is tested by jealous boyfriends and manipulative friends. Director Terauchi Kotaro’s second attempt at filming the same story (the first was for a straight-to-DVD release in 2006), Boys Love is an occasionally stirring but ultimately overly melodramatic film that is far more obsessed with getting its stars semi-naked than with telling a finely nuanced love story. Still, the sex scenes are a lot of fun to watch. Extras: None. C
—K.K.