“Rise of the Planet of the Apes” was a $480 million worldwide hit, but buzz-averse distributor 20th Century Fox rolled out the movie in early August with a blitz of TV advertising but otherwise so little fanfare (as per their usual operating procedure, screenings for critics were “opt-in,” and additionally hush-hush) that a lot of more savvy filmgoers who perhaps look to advance reviews and feature coverage peeks as signs of studio confidence in the marketplace thought the movie was a brainless dud. Far from it, actually. Director Rupert Wyatt’s reboot of Tim Burton’s reboot of Fox’s second most well known franchise property (not counting “Star Wars,” which they don’t own) is a slick and engaging science-fiction action flick. If it stumbles a bit and makes the same sorts of mistakes that almost all of these sorts of movies make (conflating sci-fi and rampaging action), it at least sets the scene in intriguing enough fashion to cure one of any feelings of regret over having taken the ride.

James Franco stars as Will Rodman, a scientist working on a cure for Alzheimer’s, motivated by his ailing father Charles (John Lithgow). On the precipice of a funding breakthrough, his promising research goes awry, so he takes custody of a special baby chimpanzee, Caesar, and raises him in his home. Cut to several years later: Will has a banging veterinarian girlfriend, Caroline Aranha (Freida Pinto), and has successfully treated his dad’s condition, thanks to genetic advances passed down to Caesar from his mother. As a much bigger chimp (performed via motion-capture by Andy Serkis, in the same fashion in which he previously embodied Gollum and King Kong for filmmaker Peter Jackson), Caesar is astoundingly bright, but also a handful physically. When he misjudges a threat and harms a neighbor, Will is forced to turn him over to an animal sanctuary owned by John Landon (Brian Cox) but run by his sadistic son Dodge (Tom Felton). Feeling both abandoned and certainly overwhelmed by his first real exposure to other chimpanzees, Caesar plots not only his escape, but an entire ape insurrection. Chaos ensues.

The first thing that stands out about the film is Serkis’ superb work, which gives Caesar palpable feelings and generates a sympathy that makes the movie’s action actually mean something, beyond the mere destruction it portrays. Then there’s the matter of that destruction, including a thrilling section on the Golden Gate Bridge in which Caesar and his new comrades make their play for refuge in a nearby Redwood Forest. Not everything here really hangs together or checks out narratively, but the script is fairly smart and the execution top-notch across the board, definitely accruing goodwill for the inevitable franchise follow-up.

There’s a more tricked-out version on Blu-ray, but “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” comes to DVD in 1.85:1 widescreen, in a regular plastic Amaray case in turn stored in a classy, unpolished cardboard slipcover with silver embossed lettering. Three trailers/TV ads are complemented by the weird inclusion of only two deleted scenes (the Blu-ray apparently features more). These tidbits, each running a minute, swap out the death of a supporting character at the hands of a more villainous chimpanzee, Koba, for Caesar, and then — in what one imagines was dreamed up as a credit sequence tag — show Koba discovering a shotgun and learning to hold it, thus setting the scene for future episodic installments. Two eight-minute featurettes are also included. One is a slice of back-patting celebration about the “Apes” franchise and its mythology and previous big screen entries, but the much more worthwhile of the two features loads of production footage and interviews with cast and crew in which they assay Serkis’ work. The man himself submits to an interview as well, and quietly makes the case that the emerging art of which he has been a central figure be called performance-capture, and not merely motion-capture.

A different film in almost every conceivable way, but a thrilling testament to emergent film technology and special effects in its own fashion, Buster Keaton’s classic comedy “Seven Chances” comes to DVD and Blu-ray via a dazzling new release from Kino Lorber. The multi-hyphenate’s fifth feature-length effort, from 1925, had its reputation unfortunately sullied by the terrible 1999 Chris O’Donnell/Renee Zellweger remake, entitled ”The Bachelor,” so it’s awesome to finally see this version arrive in the home video marketplace to reclaim its status.

The story finds pinched junior law firm partner Jimmie Stanton (Keaton) finding out that he’s the recipient of a $7 million windfall inheritance — if, that is, he’s married by 7 p.m. on his 27th birthday. Which happens to be the same day he finds out. After botching a proposal to Mary Jones (Ruth Dwyer), the single girl on whom he has long been sweet, Jimmie — goaded on by his business partner — tries to land a bride, only to be met with an amusing series of rejections. When the afternoon newspaper prints details of his predicament, however, Jimmie then finds himself on the run from a gang of crazed, would-be fiancees.

Keaton’s performance is a winning thing, inclusive of a sympathetic visage as well as all sorts of pratfalls and madcap zaniness. (The movie’s surreal, penultimate flight-from-boulders sequence remains a highlight of pre-talkie filmmaking.) Even more impressive, though, is the way in which Keaton utilizes brilliant in-camera edits to affect a series of stunts. If its awkward inclusion of a single blackfaced bit player marks “Seven Chances” as a relic, that’s virtually the only thing in this otherwise masterful and funny piece of storytelling.

The film comes to Blu-ray with a gorgeous transfer, and featuring music arranged and conducted by Robert Israel, in 2.0 stereo and DTS-HD master audio 5.1 tracks. Bonus features consist of an analysis of the movie’s Technicolor sequence by film historian Eric Grayson, a gallery of production stills, and an audio commentary conversation between film historians Ken Gordon and Bruce Lawton. There are also two accompanying short films – a 1904 Edison short directed by Edwin Porter, and 1947′s “A Brideless Groom,” which finds the Three Stooges utilizing the same premise. (Thankfully there’s no mention of the aforementioned “Bachelor” trainwreck.) Finally, Los Angelenos in particular will spark warmly to an 11-minute featurette on the film’s many locations, overseen and narrated by “Silent Echoes” author John Bengtson. Much of “Seven Chances” was shot on the USC campus, it turns out, but there were also segments shot in marshy Marina del Ray, and the comparative photos of then and now showcase how much — or in some cases, how shockingly little — has changed.

A sort of mash-up of “The Ren & Stimpy Show” and the Farrelly brothers’ “Stuck on You,” “CatDog” takes all the inherent differences between felines and canines and slaps them onto one same-named hybrid critter, thus kind of nudgingly milking for entertainment the two human camps’ polarized love of each animal. The show, created by Peter Hannan, premiered on Nickelodeon in 1998, and ran for four seasons; as with many cable series of its era, though, it lived on in syndication, with re-runs prolonging its shelf life and helping it grow in popularity with both kids and their amused parents.

“CatDog: Season 1 – Part 1″ collects the first 10 episodes from the series’ inaugural season, and centers on the unlikely twins’ contrarian antics and adventures. Cat (voiced by Jim Cummings) is refined and slightly withdrawn, while Dog (voiced by Tom Kenny) is a bouncy bundle of goofy energy. Still, there’s a fraternal bond between the pair, even if they share a rubbery torso and instincts that put them frequently at odds. Their devious neighbor, a sassy mouse named Winslow T. Oddfellow (voiced by Carlos Alazraqui), causes the pair all sorts of trouble, as do a punk gang called the Greaser Dogs. Questions of bodily process, meanwhile, are notably side-stepped. Spread out over two discs, “CatDog: Season 1 – Part 1″ comes to DVD via Shout Factory! in a clear, plastic Amaray case, presented in full screen with an English language 2.0 stereo track. There are unfortunately no supplemental bonus features, which seems to dent its value as a nostalgic sell-thru item, but diehard fans will no doubt still just be happy to finally get their hands on digital versions of these episodes.

Speaking of which, another beloved animated property is also finally getting its full home video due. Matt Groening’s “Futurama” was killed off prematurely (as seems to be the case with a couple FOX properties) in 2003, and then resuscitated three years later after strong DVD sales, with four direct-to-DVD movies that were split up into 16 episodes for broadcast on Comedy Central. FOX didn’t bite on a broadcast re-up, but the aforementioned cable network did, ordering a full slate of 26 episodes, 13 of which saw release last year as “Volume 5″ of the series.

“Futurama: Volume 6,” then, gathers the remaining 13 episodes from that order, which ran from June of last year well into this fall, providing another full payload of whacked-out time travel, self-replication, covert missions, alien eggs and robot roughhousing. Episodic highlights probably include “Benderama,” “Mobius Dick,” “All the President’s Heads” and the strange, industry-tweaking “Yo Leela Leela.” Spread out over two discs and presented in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio, the release includes full-length audio commentary on all episodes, plus deleted and extended scenes, a Professor Farnsworth’s “Science of a Scene” featurette, another segment with director Peter Avanzino, and more.

Writer-director Rod Lurie’s remake of Sam Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs” updates the story of a meek guy and his unaccountably hotter wife, transposing the action from England to the deep-fried South. Small town gal turned actress Amy Sumner (Kate Bosworth) pointedly hasn’t been home in a long while, but in the wake of her father’s death she and her husband David (James Marsden) head back to prepare the family home for sale. Once there, tensions in the duo’s marriage rise as conflicts with (re-) emerge with the locals, including Amy’s old boyfriend, Charlie (Alexander Skarsgard). Violence follows.

The three lead performances here — and even some of the supporting turns — are quite good, and Lurie gets a lot of the small detail right, like the manner in which women lay out little tests for their men (“Well, it’s your house now,” says Amy to David, hoping to prod him into taking a stand against Charlie’s infringements), to gauge their protectiveness. In changing the original character from a nebbishy mathematician to a Hollywood screenwriter, however, Lurie injects a bit of unnecessary navel-gazing. And despite all the sweat and blue-collar banter, this version of “Straw Dogs” feels less like a tale of boiling-over class resentment or pushed-too-far emasculation and more like a generic rogue psychopaths story, which other skeevy recent films (“Strangers,” “The Last House on the Left”) have actually done better. It’s not that Lurie’s version is flat-out terrible, it’s just that the original is a more contained, tense and pointed thing, and superior in every way.

“Straw Dogs” comes to DVD in a regular plastic Amaray case, presented in 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen with a Dolby digital 5.1 surround sound audio track and a slew of optional subtitles. Lurie provides an engaging feature-length audio commentary track, and four separate featurettes, ranging from four to eight minutes, provide discrete looks at the movie’s ensemble cast, production design, big showdown finale and, more broadly, the controversy courted in remaking such a seminal property. These are nice thumbnail sketches, but one-look offerings; something with a bit more academic/comparative meat on its bones would have been a welcome inclusion here.

Also peddling violence and vengeance are two recent DVD-R limited edition sell-through releases via MGM and 20th Century Fox’s special catalogue partnership, 1974′s “Act of Vengeance” and 1993′s “Love, Cheat & Steal.” The former, directed by Robert Kelljchian, is a strange, exploitative cross between TV cop show procedural and urban forerunner to “I Spit on Your Grave.” Starring Jo Ann Harris, the movie tells the story of a bunch of rape victims whose shared attacker – wait for it — sports a hockey mask and makes them sing “Jingle Bells” while he gets off. Yep, seriously. Since he speaks in a rasp and wears a mask, the police decide it’s really hard to apprehend him. The ladies, then, band together and empower themselves. You know, by doing things like taking a self-defense karate class. And lounging together nude in a gym hot tub and talking about how that dirty rapist is going to harm more women. The execution is mildly terrible (a cameraman can be glimpsed during one apartment-trashing scene in which a mirror is broken) and the acting wildly uneven, but Harris presents an engaging blend of forcefulness and vulnerability. Just try not to laugh at the ridiculous action “staging.”

“Love, Cheat & Steal,” meanwhile, gathers Madchen Amick — perhaps at the height of her “Twin Peaks” popularity — and casts her as Lauren, the seeming trophy wife of Paul Harrington (John Lithgow), a Southern California banker who’s just taken over his father’s ailing savings and loan. When her scummy, ex-con husband Billy Quayle (Eric Roberts) shows up pretending to be her brother and possibly trying to extort her, it sets in motion a chain reaction of illicit deeds and shifting alliances. While no great whoop, really, writer-director William Curran’s film is a low-key pulpy delight, and the asymmetrical casting kind of works to its advantage. Cinematographer Kent Wakeford wrings the most out of the coastal settings and exteriors, giving the movie a certain lushness to counterbalance its narrative darkness and double-crossings.

Neither “Act of Vengeance” nor “Love, Cheat & Steal,” however, come with any supplemental features. Both movies are presented in standard Amaray cases in non-brushed-up (i.e., “best source material available”) transfers, and a letterboxed 1.85:1 aspect ratio. If interested, make a couple screwdrivers and settle in for a double feature.

Finally, from Troma, who’s made their name by repackaging schlocky commercial concepts with a DIY ethos, “Killer Yacht Party” delivers a wild and predictably bloody celebration on the high seas. The directorial debut of director Piotr Uzarowicz and writer Alex Silver, the movie tells the tale of two Los Angeles club promoters, Brock (Eric Clark) and Monica (“True Blood”‘s busty Kate Luyben), who decide to host a sort of singles party on their new boat. (Cue The Lonely Island music here.) Among the guests are singer-songwriter chick Jane (Maggie Marion) and her best friend Lacy (Becky Boxer). When guests at the soiree start meeting grisly ends, however, it’s a bit of a mystery as to whether the slayings are connected to the rumor of a disgruntled millionaire’s wife who used to own the ship.

This isn’t reinventing the wheel, or even a nice and shiny new wheel, but super-forgiving genre devotees should be able to get a few kicks out of the proceedings, even if everyone else is advised to steer clear and give this proudly unambitious programmer wide berth. Unlike some Troma efforts, which get bogged down in special effects ideas for which they don’t have the budget, this slasher flick at least pivots on character and story twists, however implausible. Housed in a regular plastic Amaray case, “Killer Yacht Party” comes to DVD on a region-free disc, in 1.78:1 widescreen with a Dolby digital stereo audio track. Forced start-up trailers for “Blood Junkie” and “The Toxic Avenger” kick off the disc, while other bonus features consist of an audio commentary track with the aforementioned filmmakers, a photo gallery slideshow, plus a copy of the movie’s two-minute trailer. Oh, and 23 chapter selections, under a somewhat imaginative motion-menu screen in which footage from the movie unfolds through a round boat window. Just don’t tell T-Pain.

Written by: Brent Simon