Alda is paired with Carol Burnett, Len Cariou with Sandy Dennis, and Jack Weston with Rita Moreno, and all deliver excellent performances in this ensemble tale, composed of snapshots of the lives and marriages of these people, with all the expected ups and downs. And it's often very funny.

Extras: Widescreen, trailer, language and subtitle options (English, Spanish, French), chapters.

• "The Old Settler" (PBS/Paramount, 2001, not rated, $19.99). This "teleplay" (with emphasis on the word "play") is set during World War II and tells the compelling story of a middle-age, never-married woman (Phylicia Rashad) who has an affair with a much-younger man — to the shock of everyone around her.

Though it's a bit stagey in places, this is nonetheless a rich drama with excellent performances, especially by Rashad and Debbie Allen (who also directed), as her disapproving sister, whose betrayal of her years earlier is still a wedge between them.

Extras: Widescreen, optional English subtitles, chapters.

• "A Death in the Family" (PBS/Paramount, 2002, not rated, $19.99). James Agee's wonderful novel gets another screen treatment — and it's another good one, as a family copes with the death of a loved one whose departure leaves a deep gap.

Annabeth Gish heads the excellent cast (which includes John Slattery and James Cromwell) in this deliberate, wrenching dramatization about coping with loss and hanging on to faith. Nice period re-creations of early 20th century America help.

Extras: Full frame, optional English subtitles, chapters.

• "I Am the Cheese" (Empire, 1983, PG, $26.98). This just-OK adaptation of a popular youth novel tells of a troubled boy (Robert MacNaughton, the older brother in "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial") who has amnesia, as the film flashes back to events in his life leading up to his trauma.

MacNaughton and the supporting cast are good (Robert Wagner, Hope Lange, Don Murray and future "Sex and the City" star Cynthia Nixon).

Extras: Full frame, photo gallery, trailers, chapters.

• "Bedtime for Bonzo" (Universal, 1951, not rated, b/w, $12.98). Though this film was the butt of many jokes at the expense of Ronald Reagan when he was president, it's actually a pretty charming little comedy.

Reagan is a professor who raises a chimp as if it were a child, to form conclusions about environmental development. He's betrothed to Lucille Barkley, but when he hires cute Diana Lynn to act as the chimp's "mother," they soon fall in love.

Extras: Widescreen, trailer, subtitle options (English, Spanish, French), chapters.

• "Diamond Head" (Columbia, 1963, not rated, $19.94). Charlton Heston is the bigoted big brother whose nickname, "King," tells you all you need to know about his wealthy, upper-crust status in Hawaii, where he is planning to run for the U.S. Senate.

His real feelings about his constituents are revealed, however, when his younger sister (Yvette Mimieux) announces her love for a mixed-blood islander (James Darren), whose brother (George Chakiris) also loves her. Meanwhile, King is having a doomed clandestine affair with a native islander (France Nuyen).

This overheated potboiler has some effective sequences, but it never quite gels.

Extras: Widescreen, subtitle options (English, French, Japanese), chapters.

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E-mail: hicks@desnews.com