DVD Releases

Eight minutes and counting, and counting, and …


If there’s one new DVD release that’s going to give you your money’s worth this summer, not just as satisfying entertainment but also for the number of viewings you’ll get from it, it’s “Source Code’’ (2011). Directed by Duncan Jones (“Moon’’), the time-fracturing mind-bender stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Colter Stevens, a soldier drafted for a mission to identify a terrorist who bombed a Chicago commuter train and who’s poised to strike again. A top-secret program dubbed Source Code enables Colter to cross over into the body of a doomed passenger - and a parallel reality - for eight minutes leading up to the blast. And he’ll keep doing it all again until he completes his mission, or real time runs out. But, oh, the twisty questions enticing you to press “play’’ one more time. Once Colter leaps into an alternate timeline, does that world continue to exist alongside our own? What happens to Sean Fentress, the man whose identity Colter assumes? Watching again, you’ll also keep finding more to like about Gyllenhaal’s performance. His crazed-and-confused inappropriateness is as much a nod to Hitchcock - think Jimmy Stewart’s kooky obsessiveness - as are the film’s macabre segues, mystery-train setting, and Herrmannesque score. Extras: In smart commentary, Jones, Gyllenhaal, and writer Ben Ripley give their definitive take on the story’s paradoxes. Pop-up Blu-ray snippets jumble cast interviews, scientists’ time-travel speculations, and thematically related trivia - with nearly as much ooh-my-head overload as the concept of Source Code itself. (Summit Entertainment, $26.99; Blu-ray, $30.49)