Once (Fox Home Entertainment)

More than just your average guy-(Glenn Hansard)-meets-girl (Markéta Irglová) love story, Once is a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration with a cast and director that delivers on different levels. It’s a marriage of film and music that will have viewers rethinking the typical movie musical structure.

Playing songs everyone knows during the day and his own compositions at night, a Dublin street busker (Hansard) meets a girl (Irglová), and discovers that they both share a love of music. When he’s not working in his father’s vacuum cleaner repair shop, the guy sings his heart out for tips. Their chance meeting on the street leads them to a music shop where, with Irglová at the piano and Hansard on guitar, they sing and play one of his songs, finding that they are a natural fit. But it’s not that simple. He’s got an ex-girlfiriend in London he pines for, and she’s got a young daughter and an estranged husband. While they make music together, they can’t, you know, “make music together.”

Once is more than just a love story with complications, it is also an immigrant’s story, something that adds depth to an already considerably deep plot. By the time the guy and girl have rounded up a band, backing and studio time for a recording session, you can’t help but find yourself rooting for them to succeed, if not romantically, then commercially. Even the cynical recording engineer Eamon (Geoff Minogue) and the guy’s dad (Bill Hodnett) are impressed and supportive.

Once’s non-traditional approach to a happy ending also hits the right notes. Includes DVD bonus features.

The Simpsons Movie (20th Century Fox)

Gratuitous gay kissing cops aside, The Simpsons Movie packs in more laughs per minute than the non-kissing faux-gay firemen featured in Chuck and Larry could ever hope for, and makes the transition from small to large screen with ease.

His tongue firmly planted in his cheek, Simpson mastermind Matt Groening lovingly pokes fun at a vast array of modern society’s ills, spills and thrills. Following Grandpa Simpson’s religious experience at church where he predicts terrible things will happen to the people of Springfield, a series of incredible events do begin to occur. While canvassing the townspeople to get them involved in cleaning up over-polluted Lake Springfield, Lisa (voiced by Yeardley Smith) finds true love in the form of new student Colin (voiced by Tress MacNellie), who is as interested in environmental issues as she is. Bart (voiced by Nancy Cartwright), meanwhile, skateboards naked through the streets of Springfield on a dare from father Homer (voiced by Dan Castellaneta) and winds up in trouble with the law. Homer is of no help, but perpetually annoying neighbor Ned Flanders (voiced by Harry Shearer) offers Bart the fathering he so desperately needs. In the meantime, Homer is busy bonding with the pig he adopted. When the silo he constructed to hold the pig’s waste begins to overflow, he takes it to the recently cleaned and restored Lake Springfield and dumps it there, which results in the creation of deformed, multi-eyed creatures.

The EPA arrives, under the direction of the evil Russ Cargill (voiced by Albert Brooks), and seals the town under a dome. Of course, word gets out that Homer is responsible for the crisis, and soon he and Marge (voiced by Julie Kavner) and the kids are on the lam. When it is discovered that the EPA plans to level Springfield and turn it into another Grand Canyon, the Simpsons return to save the day. Includes DVD bonus features.

The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal)

Virtually unstoppable U.S. government-sanctioned killing machine Jason Bourne (Matt Damon reprising the role he originated) globe hops in a personal quest to uncover his real identity and thus bring closure to a troubling chapter in his life. From Moscow to Turin to Paris to London to Madrid to New York City, Bourne is undeterred in his mission, regardless of the mounting body count and the potential hazard of reuniting with agent Parsons (Julia Stiles).

As it approaches its ultimate heart-pounding conclusion and Bourne initiates an edge-of-the-seat cat-and-mouse game with CIA bigwigs Vosen (David Strathairn) and Landy (Joan Allen), you realize that you are watching an exceptional thriller being orchestrated by a director (Paul Greengrass) who is at the top of his game.

The wealth of DVD bonus features include deleted scenes and an assortment of featurettes that give behind-the-scene looks at the way various chase scenes and action sequences were constructed.

Rock Bottom (Outcast Films)

Filmed during a two-year period, Jay Corcoran’s unflinching doc about crystal meth abuse in the gay community is as troubling and difficult as the crisis itself. The individual stories of CJ, Raymond, Eric, Scott, J., Mark and Peter provide up-close glimpses into the downward spiral of addiction and the unbearably high cost and consequences. Raymond, for example, survived 20 years of HIV, only to be brought down by crystal. The breakdown of safe sex culture, combined with fear fatigue, is blamed for the rise of the drug. But the hard-won skills for resisting triggers of meth use seem to evade virtually everyone who comes in contact with the addictive and personality-altering chemical. Even with a family-support system, consisting of a concerned and involved grandmother, mother and sister, like that of Eric’s, can prove not to be enough. Hard-hitting and brutal, Rock Bottom is necessary, if narcissistic, viewing.

Rock Haven (TLA Releasing)

Brady (Sean Hoagland), an 18-year-old devout Bible reader, thinks that Rock Haven is an “ideal place to be one with God.” Not in (Overland Park) Kansas, anymore, Brady and his pinched-and-pulled-tight mother Marty (Laura Jane Coles) relocated to Rock Haven following the death of Brady’s dad. While there, Marty plans to open a Christian school while Brady gets ready to attend Summit, a bible college, in the fall. But Brady’s summer of innocence is about to take a turn for the erotic when he encounters experienced 19-year-old, neighbor and U.C. Berkeley student Clifford (Owen Alabado). In spite of his religious leanings (bordering on obsessions), Brady finds himself attracted to Clifford, who, not surprisingly, feels the same way. Encouraged by both Clifford’s “certifiable,” earthy, hippie mother Angie (Katheryn Hecht) and blind-date-turned-best-friend Peggy (Erin Daly) to pursue their feelings, the boys tentatively embark on a relationship that threatens to bring both of their worlds crashing down on them. Among the DVD bonus features are deleted scenes including the “hardest scene for the director to part with.”

Rufus! Rufus! Rufus! Does Judy! Judy! Judy!: Live from the London Palladium (Geffen)

With luminaries such as Sir Ian McKellan, Neil Tennant and Jeremy Irons in the audience, Rufus Wainwright sets out to recreate Judy Garland’s legendary 1961 concert in a song-for-song reproduction. Heck, he even talks between songs where she talked. Wainwright brings the Garland songbook to glorious life and also shares the stage with sister Martha (she sings “Stormy Weather”), mother Kate (she plays piano on “Over The Rainbow”) and Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft (they duet on “After You’ve Gone”). The stage banter doesn’t go over as well as it did on the CD of the Carnegie Hall recording of the concert, but the DVD does function as a pleasant visual companion piece. The DVD is also augmented by a handful of encore tunes.