new on home video This week’s DVD releases

Available Tuesday:

“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: “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 Special Edition.”

—The Washington Post