Rob Hunter loves movies.  He also loves working as a server at the Alamo Drafthouse Theater carrying $5 shakes, black-bean burgers, and root-beer flavored cookies to happy, cinema-loving patrons. These two joys come together in the form of cash money payments that he receives every week and immediately uses to buy more DVDs.  So join us each week as he takes a look at new DVD releases and gives his highly unqualified opinion as to which titles are worth BUYing, which are better off as RENTals, and which should be AVOIDed at all costs.

Click on any of the titles below to magically head over to Amazon.com and pick up the DVD.  And don’t forget to check out Neil Miller’s hilariously titled This Week In Blu-ray column for reviews on the latest high definition Blu-ray releases!

42nd Street Forever Volume 5: Alamo Drafthouse Edition

Pitch: A fantastically offensive collection of trailers from some of the craziest movies ever to grace the Alamo Theater’s screens…

Why Buy? This is the kind of disc you play on a loop during a party or a wake to keep people entertained. The Alamo plays the sleaziest, nuttiest, and wackiest movies ever made on a weekly basis, and this set collects over fifty of their best trailers including the ultimate talking vagina flick Chatterbox.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Featurette

Away We Go

Pitch: A young couple discovers a baby living in their uterus and take a fantastic cross-country trip to find out what to do with it once it escapes…

Why Buy? John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph shine as a young married couple on a quest for adulthood. Their adventure is up and down, filled with laughs and tears, and their love is unaffected by Hollywood conventions. This is one of my favorite movies of the year (review) and one of the best romantic comedies to hit screens in quite some time. It’s also an extremely unconventional rom-com, which is part of the appeal, alongside a hilarious and charming supporting cast including Allison Janney, Melanie Lynskey, Chris Messina, and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? Commentary, featurettes

Baader Meinhof Complex

Pitch: The true story about a group of Germans who decide it would be fantastic if they started bombing and killing in the name of political change…

Why Rent? Sure it’s too long and maybe not entirely accurate historically, but the movie is still an interesting look into a group of domestic terrorists that you’ve probably never heard of before. There’s some solid action set-pieces and interesting characters on display as well.

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? None

Chaim Soutine: 20th Century Expressionist Artist

Pitch: I once dated a girl who loved Soutine’s fantastic animal carcass paintings…

Why Rent? Soutine was an interesting guy and his abstract works range from portraits to still life paintings of dead animals. He escaped from the Nazis, his paintings have sold for millions of dollars in record-breaking auctions, and he died at the age of fifty.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? None

The Girlfriend Experience

Pitch: A fantastic porn star takes the inevitable next career move and becomes a high-priced call girl…

Why Rent? Steven Soderbergh goes low budget in this slight look at the nitty gritty of capitalism through the eyes of a prostitute. Sasha Grey does okay in her first dramatic role, but she probably shouldn’t quit her day job. There’s a lot of talking and a few interesting points about making it in America, but I doubt anyone will be watching this movie a second time so it’s a rental at best.

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? Commentary, featurette

The Hills Run Red

Pitch: The scariest horror film ever made has disappeared and been replaced by this fantastically average one…

Why Rent? Some folks go looking for a legendary lost horror film and find more than they expected. The movie as a whole is just okay, but the killer (and the killer’s mask in particular) is pretty damn creepy at times.  Horror author David Schow wrote the film and while there are a few few smart takes on the genre there’s also a lot of predictability.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Commentary, featurette

How I Met Your Mother: Season 4

Pitch: A man is telling his kids funny and fantastic stories from his youth, and if the kids are still listening four seasons in then maybe you should be too…

Why Rent? The cast here consists of many recognizable faces including Jason Segal, Sarah Chalke, and Neil Patrick Harris, and they’re bringing their funny chops in each and every episode. The mystery behind the unidentified mother of the title continues although reportedly it may be revealed in the upcoming season.

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? Commentaries, gag reel, featurettes

Life On Mars: The Complete Series

Pitch: A present day cop falls backward through time and wakes up in a fantastically rendered 1970′s…

Why Rent? No one will say this US series is better than the UK original, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t any good. A solid cast including Harvey Keitel and Michael Imperioli and an interesting storyline propel the show towards a divisive but still satisfying conclusion.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Deleted scenes, bloopers, commentaries, featurettes

Filth & Wisdom

Pitch: The materialistic girl shares her fantastically profound insight into incredibly boring and unlikable characters…

Why Avoid? Madonna wrote and directed this bland film about a cross-dressing male dominatrix and his two female roommates. They’re boring people in a boring movie. Her Sex book was more exciting than this amateurish mess of a movie, and that book wasn’t interesting at all.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? None

Flesh, TX

Pitch: Hmm, what can we do with these fantastic leftover test shots from the DVD cover of Rest Stop…

Why Avoid? Seems like every week a new straight-to-DVD horror movie about inbreeds hits the shelves, and every week I say to ignore it and go watch Wrong Turn or it’s sequel instead. Guess what… skip this movie and go watch Wrong Turn or it’s sequel instead.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Outtakes, deleted scene

Management

Pitch: A comedy about a stalker and his fantastic cross-country road trip to convince or kill the woman he thinks he loves…

Why Avoid? I kid about the ‘kill’ part, although that angle would have at least made this movie a little more bearable. I like both Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn, but they’re both so incredibly bland and unbelievable here that it’s almost painful to have to watch this whole movie.

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? Deleted scenes, gag reel, commentary

Monsters vs Aliens

Pitch: Aliens invade the Earth and only some truly fantastic (and incarcerated) monsters can stop them…

Why Avoid? Too loud, too fast, and too heartless. It starts and ends and you won’t care even if the animation does look pretty cool at times. And seriously, an Axel F audio gag?

Blu-ray? Yes

Extra Features? Commentary, featurettes

The New York Ripper: Special Edition

Pitch: Lucio takes Manhattan in this trashy and not-so-fantastic flick about a killer stalking the streets of NYC…

Why Avoid? Lucio Fulci’s directorial “skills” work best in horror movies like The Beyond and Gates of Hell. They don’t work nearly as well in the real-world settings found in slasher films. This movie is poorly acted, scripted, and directed, and all the uncut violence aren’t enough to make it worth watching.

Blu-ray? No

Extra Features? Featurettes

Read More: This Week in DVD

What are you buying on DVD this week?