"Tell No One" (Music Box/MPI, 2008, $27.98). This complex but intriguing French mystery-thriller is filled with surprises, an entertaining, even Hitchcockian, ride with some edge-of-your-seat tension.

A grieving pediatrician who was the chief suspect in his wife's murder eight years earlier is on the spot again when two bodies are found in the same area. Then he starts getting e-mails that suggest his wife isn't dead. So he goes on the run to solve the mystery and clear himself — and to find his wife, if she is indeed alive.

Francois Cluzet is excellent in the lead (am I the only one who thinks he resembles a young Dustin Hoffman?), with fine support from Kristin Scott Thomas, Nathalie Baye and Jean Rochefort. (Although unrated, the film contains R-level violence, language and nudity.)

Extras: widescreen, in French with English subtitles (includes a dubbed English track), deleted scenes, outtakes

"Not Easily Broken" (TriStar/Blu-ray, 2008, PG-13, $39.95). The minister who pronounces Morris Chestnut and Taraji P. Henson man and wife gives them a cord strengthened with three strands, symbolically representing the relationship between the newlyweds and God. Some 15 years later, they have forgotten the third strand and their marriage starts to fall apart (thanks largely to her meddling mother).

Under Bill Duke's direction, this melodrama with broad comic relief is a bit heavy-handed, and there's little doubt as to where it's all going, but there are excellent performances in this endorsement of marriage and faith.

Extras: widescreen, deleted scenes, featurette, trailers (also on DVD, $27.96)

"A Rather English Marriage" (E1, 1998, $24.98). Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay star as two mismatched recent widowers who are paired by social services to help each other, bombastic Finney providing an extravagant home and quiet Courtenay doing the domestic duties — a sort of British "Odd Couple." Enter Joanna Lumley as a gold-digger with her eye on Finney. Amusing comedy-drama with sterling performances. (And not dissimilar in its way to Finney and Courtenay's pairing 15 years earlier in "The Dresser.")

Extra: full frame

"1612" (E1, 2007, $26.98). History and fantasy mix it up as Russia is thrown into a power struggle following the brutal slaughter of Czar Boris Godunov in the titular year. The central plot has a young servant searching for the czar's daughter, but the plot is really just an excuse for outlandish battle scenes that are way over the top as the film takes aim at the "300" crowd.

Extras: widescreen, in Russian with English subtitles, featurette, photo gallery

"Vinyan" (Sony, 2008; R for violence, sex, nudity, language; $24.96). Emmanuelle Beart and Rufus Sewell star in this horror yarn about a grieving mother who thinks she sees her dead son in a TV news report and convinces her husband that they should search for him in the jungles of Burma — where they encounter a band of violent children.

Extras: widescreen, featurette,

"Swamp Devil" (RHI/Genius, 2008, $14.95). Think of this Sci Fi Channel cable movie as "Swamp Thing Turns Evil." A woman returns to her home in the South to find that her estranged father (Bruce Dern) is on the run for murders he says were committed by swamp monsters.

Extras: widescreen

E-MAIL: hicks@desnews.com