The Hound is a busy dog – camping out for Dark Knight IMAX tickets one night, hosting a Kurosawa retrospective the next – so he doesn’t always have the time to write 2500-word opuses on the latest Miramax or Girls Gone Wild DVD. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care. Here are the Hound’s off-the-cuff, sight-unseen first impressions of this week’s DVD releases, summarizing their appeal in a jaunty 50 words or less:

Major DVD Releases for Tuesday, July 15:

The Bank Job:

We assumed this was just an English knock-off of The Italian Job, but were very pleasantly surprised to find a period film heist flick (allegedly based on a true story) that's much more Good Long Friday than Transporter 2. A solid, not perfect, genre film, and Statham performs admirably.

College Road Trip:

So, apparently, Martin Lawrence is competing with Eddie Murphy for the "most toothless, sold-out shell of a former comedian" award, and this piece of garbage puts Martin over the top. This G-rated soul-killer (a G-rated Martin movie?) proves that there's a BIG difference between "family-friendly" and "intelligence-insulting."

Penelope:

A weird indie fantasy about a modern-day girl (Christina Ricci) cursed to go through life with a pig's snout and her Prince Charming (James McAvoy) who's destined to look past her porcine protuberance. It's got heart and some great performances, but the script never comes together and the fantasy wanes.

Shutter:

Can someone please, please pull the plug on the Japanese horror remake-genre? Granted, we're way past the point where it could die with dignity, but at least it might save us from sitting through more movies like Shutter, a "thriller" about Joshua Jackson seeing ghosts in his camera. Booga-booga!

Step Up 2 The Streets:

Oh... "2" is a substitute for the word "to," and it lets us know this is a sequel. We just got that. Clever.  On an unrelated note, if you're not a hopeful contestant on So You Think You Can Dance, there's literally no reason for you to see this film.