Snakes on a PlaneA slow post-holiday week for DVD releases suitably is led by Hollywood’s underachiever of 2006. Samuel L. Jackson’s outrageously plotted airborne thriller was supposed to ride its unprecedented wave of Internet buzz to hit status, but the gross-out B-movie ended up pulling in a modest audience at best. Jackson plays a federal agent escorting a witness from Hawaii to Los Angeles to testify against a murderous crime boss, the assignment hitting extreme turbulence when the mobster’s henchmen smuggle loads of deadly snakes onto the plane full of innocent but tasty victims. The DVD features ten deleted scenes accompanied by commentary from director David R. Ellis, who also joins Jackson for commentary on the full movie. The disc also has a decent range of featurettes on visual effects and the reptile co-stars. There’s also a segment that proves outdated given how the movie fizzled at the box office, the featurette focusing on the creative bloggers and other Web fans who caught on to the movie’s campy title and premise and turned it into a cultural — if not commercial — phenomenon.The CovenantAnother year, another swarm of bad fright flicks. This one has something to do with a pampered, prettified gang of four at an exclusive private school, stars of the swim team who’ve inherited special powers that have been passed down through their families for centuries. This tight quartet of guys finds trouble when a nasty new student turns up bearing the same powers, the descendant of an exiled fifth family of supernatural folks whose blood line had long been believed extinct. Director Renny Harlin provides commentary, and the DVD comes with a behind-the-scenes featurette. World Trade CenterOliver Stone’s “World Trade Center” was the second major movie in 2006 about 9/11. Like its predecessor, “United 93,” it provoked lots of public worrying. “Is it too soon for this film?” became the mantra of the day.

That question is now outdated. The “United 93” DVD was released shortly before the fifth anniversary of the attacks and didn’t generate a great deal of fanfare. The big question concerning the DVD release of Stone’s film is not about appropriateness but whether it will boost its Oscar chances.

It might appear unseemly to bring up Oscar buzz in connection with these films, but “United 93” (unlike “World Trade Center”) has placed high in the year-end voting of several major critics associations — sometimes a tip-off to the Oscars. By releasing the DVD of Stone’s movie at a time when voters are still mulling their choices, Paramount may be hoping to turn the tide.

When it was first released theatrically, “World Trade Center” benefited from public sympathy. It was regarded not as a movie but as a memorial, an exorcism, a celebration of the human spirit. Surprisingly, it was also praised by arch-conservative pundits such as Cal Thomas, for whom Stone’s name has long been anathema.

“World Trade Center” is relatively free of political bias and focuses almost entirely on the rescue of two real-life Port Authority policeman (played by Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena) who were trapped in the rubble. Missing is Stone’s usual cocktail of conspiracy theories.

Still, every once in a while, politics do intrude, and they are not what one might expect from the director of “JFK” and “Nixon.” For example, an ex-Marine who ventures into the debris as self-appointed rescuer talks about avenging the attack. We learn he later served in Iraq, an implicit connection between the war and 9/11 that has never been supported.

Undeniably powerful as it sometimes is, “World Trade Center” is also overwrought and melodramatic. Many fine actors, including Maria Bello and Maggie Gyllenhaal, spend a lot of screen time gnashing their teeth through forced smiles.

The two-disc commemorative edition DVD has abundant extras, including commentary by Stone, a documentary about Stone growing up in New York and attending NYU Film School, a making-of featurette and a documentary about the film’s real-life counterparts, Will Jimeno and John McLoughlin. Along with several other survivors, Jimeno provides a separate commentary track.ScoopWoody Allen’s “Match Point” was widely hailed as his best movie in years, but I prefer his next film, “Scoop,” which repeats the British high-society setting and once again co-stars Scarlett Johansson.

In “Scoop,” Woody plays a magician who gets in over his head while investigating a murder plot involving Johansson and Hugh Jackman. Allen is up to his usual shtick. Whether you like this film or not will depend on how funny you find lines like, “I was born into the Hebrew persuasion but when I got older I converted to narcissism.”

Maybe one of these days Allen will supply his movies with a DVD commentary track. But not this time. — AP/Bloomberg