Woody Allen has never been a fan of DVD supplements, which is why his latest film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Weinstein Co., $29 DVD, $35 Blu-ray) arrives without a single extra. It's a huge missed opportunity, since it would have been fascinating to have even one slight little featurette showing Allen working with his cast (including Best Supporting Actress Oscar nominee Penelope Cruz) and revealing how he dealt with the scenes in which his actors started ad-libbing in Spanish, a language he does not speak.

The movie itself is easily Allen's best since Match Point and one of the strongest explorations of romance in his entire canon. Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall star as a pair of American tourists spending a summer in Barcelona where they meet a Spanish womanizer (Javier Bardem) whose crazy ex-wife (Cruz) refuses to let him be. The tangle of affairs and bed-hopping that ensues between the foursome allows Allen to explore the vagaries of love and the role sexual attraction plays in relationships, but this time with a backdrop of picturesque Spain instead of his usual Manhattan.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona was one of Allen's better-looking films (the cinematographer was the Spanish veteran Javier Aguirresarobe, who also shot Pedro Almodovar's Talk to Her) and the Blu-ray disc offers a huge leap in visual detail over the DVD, with richer, warmer colors and notably finer details in every shot, making the movie an even more enticing invitation to hop on a plane, go on vacation and hopefully run into people as beautiful and horny as these.

`EL NORTE'

Made in 1983 but unavailable on DVD until now, Gregory Nava's El Norte (Criterion Collection, $40 DVD and Blu-ray) was one of the first -- and best -- feature films to document the experience of illegal immigrants who cross the U.S. border fueled only by willpower and an indefatigable stamina. The story centers on the often-harrowing journey of a teenaged brother and sister who flee Guatemala and head north in search of the American Dream.

Upon arriving to the United States, they, like many exiles before them, find that dream much harder to attain than they imagined. Beautifully shot with a combination of stark realism and a trace of magical fantasy, El Norte looks as good on DVD as the low-budget production ever did. The film is accompanied by an assortment of Criterion's typically fine supplements, including an engrossing commentary track by Nava, who talks about working with non-actors and the various symbols contained in the film, an hour-long documentary about the making of El Norte, and a 30-minute short, The Journal of Diego Rodriguez Silva, Nava made while in film school.

`REPO! THE

GENETIC OPERA'

Hoping to find out if there's life after an endless series of sadistic horror movies, director Darren Lynn Bousman uses the clout he earned for directing the cash cows Saw II, III and IV to make Repo! The Genetic Opera (Lionsgate, ($20 DVD, $30 Blu-ray) an ambitious mix of high style, musical storytelling and old-fashioned splatter.

Originally conceived for the stage, the theatrical Repo! is set in an apocalyptic future where a lucrative organ transplant industry has emerged. The field is dominated by the sinister GeneCo organ trading company, whose president (Paul Sorvino) sends out repo men to hunt down people who haven't kept up on their payments for, say, their new heart -- and messily repossess the item in question.

Essentially a feature-length version of the ''Hello, can we have your liver?'' sequence from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, but with wall-to-wall, mostly forgettable music thrown in, Repo! is certainly different, although its originality cannot overcome the feeling that this was one idea best left unmade.

The Blu-ray disc features several exclusive extras not found on the DVD, including a handful of deleted footage, a select-scene commentary with a bored-sounding Paris Hilton (yes, she's in the film) and a reprise of several of the musical numbers with bouncing-ball sing-along subtitles.

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