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Like clockwork, I’m back with another round of high definition goodness with This Week in Blu-ray. It’s a fairly light week, as several major Oscar nominees seek to capture your home video dollars by piggybacking onto the hype from this past Sunday’s ceremony. We’ve also got a few awful films that I won’t hesitate to smack around a bit, mostly because they made me feel as if my time was completely worthless. It should be a rather entertaining week of Blu-ray picks, as you’ll see below.

Up in the Air

Like his past work in Thank You for Smoking, director Jason Reitman once again takes a character with a deplorable occupation — this time it’s George Clooney as a jet-setting termination expert — and makes their world both interesting and charming. It’s a very good film — and the only release this week that I would categorize as a must-own. That said, the Blu-ray special features are a bit of a disappointment. Jason Reitman delivers a commentary track, there are a few deleted scenes, and there is the “Help Yourself” music video from Sad Brad. But beyond that, it’s a brief experience. Although, there is a very funny little American Airlines prank that involves George Clooney shenanigans that’s good for a laugh. Overall, I’m still saying buy based on the high quality of the film.

Precious

Unlike my colleague Rob Hunter, who recommended that you avoid the DVD release of Precious in his DVD column, I was caught up in Lee Daniels’ heart-wrenching story of poverty, abuse and triumph against unrelenting odds. It is, at the very least, a movie that is worth seeing. On Blu-ray, Precious gets a solid treatment of special features with several featurettes, an audio commentary from director Lee Daniels and a few deleted scenes. The only catch is that most of the special features are shared with the DVD release, which is always disappointing. There is the bookmarks feature though, which is exclusive to Blu-ray, allowing you to bookmark your favorite scenes. This will make the scene in which Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) steals the fried chicken much easier to find later.

The Stoning of Soraya M.

Religion is a dangerous thing. And any movie from the producer of Passion of the Christ that takes on religion and brutality is also a dangerous thing. That’s exactly what we have with The Stoning of Soraya M., a story about an Iranian woman who is falsely accused of infidelity, leading to unimaginable consequences. It’s an incredibly affecting true story brought to life with a stark visual aesthetic. It also features damn good performances from Jim Caviezel (Jesus) and Shohreh Aghdashloo (House of Sand and Fog). The special features selection leaves a bit to be desired, with two commentary tracks, a trailer and a behind the scenes featurette. However, the featurette is exclusive to the Blu-ray, and it’s fascinating, making this one more than worth a rent.

Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

Furious is perhaps the only appropriate word for the emotional response I had to Troy Duffy’s long-gestating sequel to the cult hit Boondock Saints. As a big fan of the first film, I was actually hopeful that Duffy’s long journey back into the world of filmmaking might be worth it. I was wrong. It wasn’t. This second film is a mere shadow of its predecessor, filled with terrible dialogue, void of any charm and lacking in anything that could remotely be mistaken as energy. It is quite simply a bad movie, through and through. The Blu-ray release may have several exclusives extras, including a featurette just on weapons, a behind the scenes look at the Saints at Comic-Con and a lot of extra footage from the set, but that doesn’t make this turd any more appealing. And by turd, I mean awful disappointment that will enrage any fan of the first film, as it is an amplified version of all the things that were wrong about the original.

Planet 51

Even kids’ movie should have a semblance of logic, should they not? This is something that seems to be lost on the filmmakers behind Planet 51. Not only have they made a cliche-ridden science fiction story for little tikes (not always a bad thing), they’ve also made one that is so poorly written that it makes me want to scream. It is mind-boggling to think that the likes of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Jessica Biel, Gary Oldman and Seann William Scott signed on to provide voices for characters in this movie. Then again, everyone has skeletons in their closet. The Blu-ray release — again, this is frustrating — has several bright spots, including several featurettes, extended scenes and a somewhat intuitive Blu-ray exclusive game (that includes iPhone functionality). But again, there’s no special features gloss that can cover up the stink of a bad movie. And this is a bad movie.

Old Dogs

I wouldn’t be overestimating if I were to say that this week was one of the most frustrating weeks of Blu-ray releases in recent memory. As we see with Old Dogs — the tragic story of two great acting careers gone terribly wrong — the releases with the most plentiful special features are also those with the worst films attached to them. Yet again, it isn’t the lack of Blu-ray exclusive extras — of which there are several on this release — or the fact that, like all Disney movies, this release also comes with the DVD copy (a nice touch, as always). No, the problem is that this film simply does not work. It’s schlocky, inane and aggressively unfunny. And that’s a pretty deadly combination.

Also out on Blu-ray this week:

• Breaking Bad: The Complete First Season (Sony)
• Capitalism: A Love Story (Starz/Anchor Bay)
• Evangelion: 1.11 You Are Not Alone (FUNimation)
• Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (Sony)