new on home video This week’s DVD releases

Available Tuesday:

“The Boys Are Back” (PG-13, 100 minutes): Joe Warr (Clive Owen), an Australian sportswriter who’s left raising a family alone after his wife dies, and is overwhelmed by the situation. When it explores the minute-to-minute difficulties of fatherhood and the failures of even the best parents, the film is compelling. But to get to the scenes of Joe and his boys you must slog through the dreaded dead-spouse sequence. By the end of this heartfelt-but-draggy ode to the challenges of upper-middle-class single fatherhood, you will feel for Joe and his kids — but you might wish you’d just said no instead. Contains sexual language and thematic elements.

“Bright Star” (PG, 119 minutes): Fanny Brawne in the early 19th century captured the heart of poet John Keats in between stitching extravagantly layered collars and captivating hats. Writer-director Jane Campion’s film makes a convincing case that fashion is every bit as legitimate a form of self-expression as fine literature, even if Miss Brawne (Abbie Cornish) must suffer the intellectual snobbery of Keats and his best friend, Charles Brown (Ben Whishaw and Paul Schneider, respectively). Her spirit and verve win over the romantic young Keats, who over the two years portrayed on screen falls in love, proposes and tragically dies of tuberculosis in Italy. Contains thematic elements, sensuality, brief profanity and incidental smoking.

“Little Ashes” (R, 107 minutes): You’d be forgiven for thinking of this as “the Salvador Dali movie.” After all, that’s who Robert Pattinson plays here. But although Pattinson certainly looks the part of the eccentric, surrealist painter in this historical drama, set in pre-civil-war Spain of the 1920s and 1030s, his Dali is a mess. Fortunately, the character at the center of this strange little film isn’t Dali at all, but Federico Garcma Lorca. Spanish actor Javier Beltran plays the poet and playwright with both soulfulness and passion. The film tells the controversial and speculative story of Garcma Lorca’s doomed love for Dali. But in Pattinson’s performance, we never see what Garcma Lorca sees in Dali. Contains sex, nudity, obscenity and a scene of gay bashing.

“Michael Jackson’s This Is It” (PG, 111 minutes): This new Michael Jackson concert film, has been billed as a rare glimpse into the creative psyche that defined pop music’s shape and trajectory. But this isn’t a concert film. It’s a rehearsal film — and one that will leave Jackson’s most zealous fans waiting for goose bumps that never arrive. Filmed at the Staples Center in Los Angeles between March and June, the film captures the King of Pop prepping for a 50-night run at London’s O2 Arena. But after the singer’s death on June 25, the extensive rehearsal footage — intended for Jackson’s personal archive — was quickly cobbled into a feature-length documentary. For a man who so desperately wanted to show us perfection — or at least project the illusion of it — Jackson would never, ever want us to see this film. Contains suggestive choreography and scary images.

“Surrogates” (PG-13, 104 minutes): In the glorious future of Bruce Willis’s new science-fiction adventure, the dirty work of living has been turned over to humanoid robots. Citizens recline comfortably in their homes, linked remotely to younger, stronger, sexier versions of themselves, who work and play and do all the things that humans once used to do. It’s an entrancing vision: In the future, we can let our surrogates take risks for us, do our jobs for us. Willis plays FBI agent John Greer; at home he looks like the grizzled, bald Willis of old, but on the streets of Boston his shiny young robot surrogate tries to solve Boston’s first homicide in years. The film takes an interesting idea and buries it under clumsy exposition, unconvincing action sequences and a by-the-numbers conspiracy plot. Contains intense sequences of violence, disturbing images, language, sexuality and a drug-related scene.

“Whip It” (PG-13, 111 minutes): Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut is one of those movies that looks on paper like a can’t-lose proposition. The story of a meek teen-age beauty queen named Bliss (Ellen Page), who finds her inner bad girl and true calling in an amateur Austin roller derby, clearly has action, physical comedy and a healthy dose of coming-of-age sentiment going for it. But the film sags when it should skedaddle; Barrymore makes the most of the bumptious energy of roller derby smack-downs, but she too often smooths out the rough edges that make that world so compelling. Kristen Wiig makes little impact as Bliss’ supportive teammate, but Juliette Lewis does her snarling best in a hardhearted role that in another era would have belonged to Eve Arden. Contains sexual content including crude dialogue, profanity and drug material.

Also: “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell”; “Paris, Texas: Criterion Collection”; “Saw VI”; “Southland: The Complete First Season” and “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”

— The Washington Post