Recently Released DVDs

Also on DVD October 6: "Ally McBeal: The Complete Series"; "Audition: Collector's Edition"; "Chinatown," "Mary Tyler Moore Show: Complete Fifth Season"; "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (Blu-ray); and "Trick 'r Treat."

September 29

"Away We Go" (R, 98 minutes): As the movie opens, Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) find out that Verona is pregnant. When they go to tell Burt's parents (Catherine O'Hara and Jeff Daniels), they discover that the expectant grandparents plan to move to Europe before the baby is born. That development sends Burt and Verona on a journey to find a new definition of themselves as an expanded family unit. Written by Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida and directed by Sam Mendes, the film, at least at first blush, feels like a welcome respite from the false happily-ever-afters of most mainstream movies. But mostly, Verona is a mirror to the people that she and Burt encounter on their road trip. And it's in these vignettes that the film begins to feel less like an authentic exploration of identity than a condemnation of the very community the couple pretends to crave. No one, it turns out, is good enough for Burt and Verona. Contains language and sexual content.

"The Girlfriend Experience" (R, 77 minutes): In Steven Soderbergh's icicle-sharp portrait of a modern-day lady of the evening, the hooker with a heart of gold gives way to the fantasy date with the business acumen of a Wall Street banker. Soderbergh tracks several days in life of Chelsea (Sasha Grey), a self-employed call girl who commands $2,000 an hour and a clientele that can drop that sort of change without losing a wink of sleep. Buried deep beneath all that is a driven daughter of commerce who is just as ambitious as her high-rolling johns and every bit as stressed over the impact of the plunging economy. The film manages a career-spanning panache: Soderbergh taps into the nervy impulses of his earliest endeavor, "sex, lies and videotape" as well as "Ocean's Eleven." His latest film has something to elevate and exasperate fans of both. Contains sexual content, nudity and language.

"Management" (R, 93 minutes): Traveling alone on business, an attractive single woman named Sue (Jennifer Aniston) checks into a seedy Arizona roadside motel, only to find the tongue-tied night manager, Mike (Steve Zahn), lurking outside her door with a bottle of cheap wine, "compliments of the management." "You have a nice butt," he tells her. Sue flies home to Maryland never to hear from him again. Until he shows up on her doorstep. I'm not saying he can't do creepy, but if Zahn showed up outside your seedy motel room -- even if he were carrying a bloody chainsaw instead of a bottle of wine -- you would probably invite him in. And he's the single biggest reason why this is a delightfully screwball romantic comedy and not a crazed-stalker film. And why it works. Contains a sex scene, obscenity and comic violence.

"Monsters vs. Aliens" (PG, 94 minutes): This super-duper-3-D-big-screen-Imax-deluxe extravaganza has bells and whistles, superb technical sophistication, dazzling visual effects, sound, fury and Reese Witherspoon. What it doesn't have is heart. Even children appreciate a good story, and that's precisely what's missing in this film, which is nominally about a bunch of government-sponsored monsters that do battle with an evil alien squid craving world domination. That's plot, not a story. And too often, it's about things, not characters. One exception is B.O.B., a forgetful blue gelatinous blob that, as voiced by Seth Rogen, not only elicits but earns his laughs. As for the rest of the movie, it will recede into your own B.O.B.-like memory bank, dissolve quickly and disappear forever. Contains sci-fi action, crude humor and mildly suggestive euphemisms.

Also on DVD September 29: "Cagney & Lacey: The Menopause Years," "How I Met Your Mother: Season Four," "Kings: Season One," "Life on Mars: The Complete Series," "Shrink," "The Patty Duke Show: Season One," "The Wiggles: Big, Big Show!," "The Wizard of Oz: 70th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition."

September 22

"Battle for Terra" (PG, 85 minutes): When a spacecraft full of humans, forced to flee Earth after it's destroyed by war, attacks peaceful Terra, Mala (voice of Evan Rachel Wood) captures a human pilot, Jim Stanton (Luke Wilson), and his robot (David Cross). Together they uncover the secret history of Terrian civilization and attempt to stop the genocidal plans of General Hemmer (an over-the-top Brian Cox). It's a real shame that the character design is so terrible -- besides the spermatozoic Terrians, the human characters are interchangeable waxworks -- because the rest of "Battle for Terra" is quite beautiful to look at, though it doesn't do much for the film's pacifist message that, as spacecraft zip across the screen and fire lasers into your popcorn, you may find yourself wishing that the director had replaced the movie's poorly written dialogue and implausible plot with more battle scenes. War! What is it good for? Awesome animation! Contains sequences of sci-fi action violence and thematic elements.

"Ghosts of Girlfriends Past" (PG-13, 100 minutes): Modeled as a kind of sexual athlete's counterpart to Ebenezer Scrooge, photographer Connor Mead (Matthew McConaughey) shuns emotional attachments and disdains marriage. The inspiration for Connor's approach to relationships is his late Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas), an ardent misogynist whose ghost appears with a warning for his nephew to change his ways, then says that Connor will be visited by three ghosts to drive home the message. Wayne's admonishment is followed by the specters, including the childhood sweetheart at the bottom of his childhood traumas, Jenny (Jennifer Garner). Connor meets up with Jenny, who gives him grief at a wedding as one of four bridesmaids whom Connor has jilted over the years. The relentless vulgarities here would be almost tolerable if they were amusing, but Mark Waters's direction is so tentative that the film's single laugh happens more than an hour in. Contains sexual content, language and a drug reference.

"O'Horten" (PG-13, 93 minutes): The recently retired title character of "O' Horten" is a cinematic cousin to Warren Schmidt of "About Schmidt," the 2002 movie in which Jack Nicholson played a reserved man whose retirement confuses rather than liberates him. Both Horten and Schmidt are agreeable career men who are just learning to operate in a world that no longer accommodates their habits. While "About Schmidt" is tart, accessible and ultimately moving, "O' Horten" is dry, distant and slightly absurdist -- in a word, it's more Scandinavian. In fact, "O' Horten" is almost pulseless, a stoic odyssey for a man who couldn't be further from Odysseus. The director is Bent Hamer, whose last movie was "Factotum," the Bukowski adaptation with Matt Dillon. Here, Hamer again shows a knack for capturing the neutered weariness of the isolated male at the end of his rope. Depending on your patience for oddball mood pieces, you will either sleep through "O' Horten" or be oddly captivated. Either way, it'll be like dreaming. Contains brief nudity. In Norwegian with English subtitles.

"Observe and Report" (R, 86 minutes): "Observe and Report" is thematically akin to the recent "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," and in fact the Rogen film has been described as a "darker" version of the goofy Kevin James movie. But that sounds like studio spin. Rogen is playing a delusional, violent, sexist, racist, homophobic mall cop with a bipolar disorder, so there's not really a lot to laugh at. In fact, how the movie got made at all is going to remain one of those mysteries, like decaffeinated coffee, or little ships in bottles. In other words, you'll wonder. But not for long. Contains violence, drugs, rampant vulgarity, sex, nudity.