Blu-rays of the Week 

(Warner Bros)

The ludicrousness of this gargantuan shark movie—it’s Jaws on steroids—is beside the point when all anybody wants is to see, in CGI, how the ocean behemoth makes mincemeat of lots of awful—and some not so awful—characters.

This is the kind of movie that wears its influences not on its sleeve but right in front of the camera, so director Jon Turteltaub must have shrugged and said the hell with it: The Meg goes full speed ahead into campy monster movie craziness. It’s definitely not good, but it’s entertaining in its own ridiculous way. There’s a sterling hi-def transfer; extras are featurettes and interviews.

American Dresser 

(Cinedigm)

Tom Berenger is persuasively wounded as a widowed (and alcoholic) Vietnam vet who goes cross-country on his bike with a compatriot (Keith David) to find himself after his beloved wife (Gina Gershon) dies of cancer in this one-note character study written and directed by Carmine Cangialosi, who plays a handsome ladies’ magnet who joins the pair.

Although Berenger and David have terrific camaraderie, their director is content to wallow in clichés and superficial characters—Gershon, Penelope Ann Miller, Bruce Dern, Jennifer Damiano and Elle McLemore have literally nothing to do—which knocks this otherwise watchable buddy movie down a notch. Extras are featurettes.

Bloodlust  

Supposedly based on a true story, this grimly sick little movie, directed by Marijan Vayda, follows a loner bullied at work and mocked by seemingly everyone who discovers he has a taste for the blood of dead females. Soon he is digging up cadavers in their coffins and going about his yucky business.

Obviously, you have to be a fan of a certain kind of demented films to enjoy chose, but those viewers know who they are. It all looks good and grainy in hi-def; extras are interviews with the assistant director and actress Birgit Zamulo.

Gaughin—Voyage to Tahiti

(Cohen Media)

Vincent Cassell throws himself into the role of painter Paul Gaughin, who infamously left France for the South Pacific in 1891 in order to start his art—and—life anew, in Edouard Deluc’s well-made but by-the-numbers biopic.

Shot luminously by Pierre Cottereau, the film gets the physical details of the artist’s new home right, but despite Cassell’s intensity, we never really get inside Gaughin’s head: there’s never a moment where Deluc illuminates his protagonist in a profound way. The film sparkles in hi-def; extras comprise on-set featurettes.

Midaq Alley 

Director Jorge Fons made this 1995 adaptation of a novel by Egyptian Naguib Mahfouz, relocating it to Mexico City: its interest today is primarily Salma Hayek appearing in one of her earliest roles, because, even at 145 minutes, this multi-character drama is too melodramatic and sentimental.

The stories are presented straightforwardly, even cursorily, as if just watching several people intersecting through and divided by class and wealth is interest-holding enough. It’s not: Hayek is fine and the rest of the cast is equally good, but the total is much less than the sum of its parts. The hi-def transfer looks good; lone extra is a behind-the-scene featurette.

DVD of the Week

The Children Act 

(Lionsgate)

Ian McEwen’s novel about a British judge whose intense focus on cases involving children has pretty much destroyed her own marriage has become a talky, plodding drama by director Richard Eyre, whose streamlined adaptation—the script is by McEwen—strips away much of the book’s nuance.

Although this might straitjacket a lesser actor, Emma Thompson is able to make the judge sympathetic, even admirable, despite her own ethical and moral lapses.