A long-overlooked and fascinating crime film from the early-’70s, Peter Yates’s The Friends of Eddie Coyle gets an overdue DVD re-issue from Criterion this month. British director Yates’s biggest hit was probably Bullitt, though he was nothing if not versatile—he was also behind the camera for Mother, Jugs and Speed and Krull—and Eddie Coyle is very much its own beast. Robert Mitchum, in a truly remarkable performance, plays Coyle, a low-level gangster (more of a working stiff than anything) looking to get out of a prison stint by turning snitch.

This is a distinctively un-flashy movie. Most scenes are shot in seedy bars, restaurants and other grimy Boston locations and the film has a very particular sheen of ’70s grit. The stakes in the film aren’t even that high—at one point, bartender Peter Boyle points out that, at most, Coyle would serve eight months in prison. But what’s fascinating here isn’t so much the plot as the film’s understated, scheming characters. Most of the movie consists of conversations—deals, plans, set-ups. It’s a strange and yet completely compelling film, marred only by a truly wrong-headed jazzy score. The new DVD features commentary by Yates and a great booklet with an essay by Kent Jones and a 1973 Mitchum profile by Grover Lewis from Rolling Stone.

Good news for Joss Whedon fans this week: first, his new show Dollhouse (which I honestly don’t much care for) has been renewed for another season and second, his musical Web series Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, previously available on iTunes, is now out on DVD. Neil Patrick Harris plays a video-blogging aspiring supervillain looking to get into a league of baddies and impress the girl at the laundromat (Felicia Day) who’s being courted by smug superhero Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion). A funny series that will definitely appeal to Whedon fans. The DVD includes a clever musical commentary, titled, of course, Commentary! The Musical.