Blu-ray of the Week
Valentine’s Day
(Warners)
No one would mistake Valentine’s Day as a great date movie: even as star-studded journeys into sappiness go, Garry Marshall’s self-satisfied, tone-deaf would-be romantic epic suffers from a skewered kind of democracy, wherein each story is given equal weight even when so many deserve to languish on the cutting room floor while others should have been expanded into more than “cameo” status. But that’s the rub with movies like these: everyone is a (supposed) star, so no one can outshine anybody else. They actually should have scorecards included with the disc to mark who should stay and who should go.

Julia Roberts and Bradley Cooper have an interesting chemistry as two strangers on a plane, while Jessica Biel looks properly embarrassed as an agent with a loathing for the holiday who realizes her perfect man (Jamie Foxx) has been right under her nose--he’s her client. Anne Hathaway is hilarious as a nice girl moonlighting as a phone-sex operator, with a game Topher Grace as her bemused paramour. I don’t remember whom Kathy Bates or Emma Roberts played; would that I had also forgotten the Taylors, Swift and Lautner, who have zero onscreen presence. Valentine’s Day is overlong and overstuffed with second-tier stars, but if you’re in the right mood, one of the stories might hit home. The Blu-ray transfer is solid if unspectacular; extras include 14 deleted scenes (so the movie could have been even longer!), a gag reel and other cutesy stuff from director Marshall.

DVD of the Week
The Messenger
(Osciolloscope)
An affecting, low-key character study, The Messenger tells a simple story of two soldiers whose job is to notify families of the deaths of their loved ones in Iraq or Afghanistan while in combat. In its documentary-style realism, the movie is nearly subversive in showing that the military’s policy to inform next of kin is of paramount importance, even in what many think of as an unjust war. The Messenger is no Saving Private Ryan-type melodrama, but rather a warts-and-all account of how soldiers who have seen the worst on the battlefield but steel themselves to look into disbelieving people’s eyes and tell them their children or spouses are not coming home.

The soldiers are portrayed with uncanny authenticity by Ben Foster and Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson, and there’s another superlative performance by Samantha Morton as a grieving soldier’s widow. As good as Morton is, however, her scenes with Foster are the closest Oren Moverman’s restrained movie (co-written with Alessandro Camon) gets to sentimentality. But emotions are usually reined in, to the extent that when Steve Buscemi, of all people, appears as a father dumbfounded by his son’s death, you are struck by the unyielding honesty of the film. Extras include featurettes about the real soldiers who have done the work and the actors who portrayed them.

CD of the Week
Carole King & James Taylor: Live at the Troubadour
(DG)
Baby boomer pop stars never disappear: they keep on touring and performing their best songs from years gone by to equally ageing--but enthusiastic--audiences. And that’s what James Taylor and Carole King are doing on their lucrative “Troubadour” tour, which continues this summer. This CD/DVD set is a terrific souvenir of their concerts together in 2007, when the two legends traded tunes at the famous Troubadour, where they both made auspicious debuts some 37 years earlier, in honor of the club’s 50th anniversary.

Beginning with Taylor’s joyous rendition of his early tune “Blossom,” the pair runs through some 40-plus years’ worth of classic hits in 75 minutes, from “I Feel the Earth Move” to “Fire and Rain,” with underrated gems like “Something in the Way She Moves” and “Smackwater Jack” also brought out of mothballs. The singers sound great together and apart, and they’re backed by a crack band that includes ace guitarist Danny Kortchmar. Along with a CD of the entire concert, a bonus DVD contains the show in HD video and superb 5.1 surround-sound.