WadjaWadjda (Sony, Blu-ray+DVD Combo, Digital, On Demand), the first feature film produced in Saudi Arabia and the country’s first submission to the Oscars, did not make the final cut, but it is just as worthy as any of the nominated films I’ve seen.

The plot turns on the efforts of a 10-year-old girl to buy a bicycle, which girls are simply not supposed to have, but the story takes on the way women are treated in Saudi society, a culture that (as presented in this film) makes Iran look downright enlightened. It’s also written and directed by a woman filmmaker, Haifaa Al Mansour, which necessitated some complex production workarounds, such a directing street scenes from within a van and communicating with the cast and crew through video feeds and radio sets. I don’t mention that to try and impress you into seeing the film, mind you, but to offer an idea her commitment to making a film about women struggling for their dignity in a culture that refuses them the same rights and opportunities as men. She was living it while making the film.

Waad Mohammed plays Wadjda, a spirited, smart, and ambitious pre-teen who seems eager to engage with the world around her while her mother, her teachers and her principal all tell her that she can’t, at least not on equal terms. She doesn’t let that stop her – she wears sneakers to school, constantly removes her head scarf, refuses to cover her face in public, and listens to secular music on the radio – but she’s no idealized symbol. Wadjda has the self-interest of kids who get fixated on a goal, she’s puckish and playful and defiant and not always polite, but she is a person in full. As is her mother (Reem Abdullah), an educated professional at the mercy of men in every arena of life, including a husband who is ready to divorce her for failing to deliver him a son. It’s compassionate, realistic, hopeful, and absolutely lovely.

Blu-ray and DVD editions feature commentary by writer/director Haifaa Al Mansour, the featurette “The Making of Wadjda” and a Q&A with Haifaa Al Mansour at the Director’s Guild of America screening.

AllisLostAll Is Lost (Lionsgate, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD), the sophomore films from director / writer J.C. Chandor, couldn’t be more different from his debut feature, Margin Call, the soft-spoken look into the trigger behind the stock market crash. Where that was all smart talk (the script was nominated for an Oscar) in Wall Street offices and urban locales, this is a wordless drama with a lone man (Robert Redford) struggling to survive at sea. “All is Lost superbly uses its space and light and score (by Alex Ebert) and every possible technical trick to convey the plight of the sailor we’re watching,” writes James Rocchi for Cinephiled. “Considering that the last story of survival at sea like this required a huge CGI 3D tiger and allegory apparently purchased in bulk, the (relative) simplicity here — sun and sea and night, a universe of wood, wind and wavetakes on real power.”

Both the Blu-ray and DVD editions features commentary with J.C. Chandor with producers Neal Dodson and Anna Gerb, the featurettes “Big Film, Small Film,” “Preparing for The Storm” and “The Sound of All is Lost,” and three vignettes. The Blu-ray also include a bonus UltraViolet Digital HD copy of the film.

EndersGameEnder’s Game (Lionsgate, Blu-ray Combo, DVD, VOD, On Demand), adapted from Orson Scott Card’s award-winning young adult science fiction novel, came out as yet another attempt to launch a young adult franchise, this one with gifted adolescents training to become the next tactical commanders in an interstellar war. Fans were happy to find it pretty faithful to the novel but as a movie is plays like a response to Starship Troopers for the video game era, with an undercurrent of bullying and building character through psychological torment and vague comparisons between playing digital war games and committing genocide. Asa Butterfield is the diminutive hero, a small, gentle genius of a lad forced to defend himself against bigger, meaner, violent boys, and Harrison Ford drops all human dimension as a single-minded commander willing to sacrifice a few kids to forge a new leader. James Rocchi describes it as “Glossy, pretty and bereft of a single scrap of intelligence” in his Cinephiled review.

The Blu-ray and DVD both feature commentary by Producers Gigi Pritzker and Bob Orci, a collection of deleted and extended scenes with optional commentary by director Gavin Hood, and an UltraViolet Digital HD copy. The Blu-ray Combo also features the eight-part documentary “Ender’s World: The Making of Ender’s Game” and a bonus DVD copy of the film.

CounselorThe Counselor – Unrated Extended Cut (Fox, Blu-ray, DVD) is actually only on the Blu-ray version of the disc, which offers both the theatrical cut and an extended version with over 20 minutes of additional footage, as well as the featurettes “Truth of the Situation and “Virals.” The DVD simply offer the theatrical version of the film.

Either way, the first original screenplay by Cormac McCarthy is one dark trip, like one of his novels stripped to the basics: you head into the underworld and you end up hunted by relentless demons. Michael Fassbender is the amateur criminal entrepreneur and Penélope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Javier Bardem and Brad Pitt are colleagues, bystanders, and hardcore players tangled up in death. It’s practically abstract and Ridley Scott’s direction, which is so focused on minutia and process it fails to give us any actual characters behind the actors, has a habit of hammering home the same themes over and over again in repetitive monologues. McCarthy’s language is a treat but his circular writing is just numbing. Cinephile’s James Rocchi is even harder on it in his review: “The Counselor bases its grisly, gratuitous feel with a script so crippled by holes, deletions, things left unexplained and absent transitions, watching it feels like hitting ‘Play All’ on the selection of deleted scenes offered by the DVD of some other film that actually makes sense.”

The Best Man Holiday (Universal, Blu-ray, DVD, On Demand) – More than a decade after director / writer Malcolm D. Lee made his feature debut with The Best Man, he reunited the film’s stars – Taye Diggs, Morris Chestnut, Terrence Howard, Nia Long, Sanaa Lathan, Monica Calhoun, Harold Perrineau, Regina Hall and Melissa De Sousa – to pick up the lives of their characters during their first reunion in years. Cinephiled is teaming up with Universal Home Video to give away a Best Man prize package. See details here.

Also new and notable: 2jacks

2 Jacks (Breaking Glass, DVD, digital) stars Danny Huston and his nephew Jack Huston (of Boardwalk Empire) as a notorious Hollywood director and his son in an adaptation of Tolstoy’s “Two Hussars” directed by Bernard Rose. Includes a featurette and a Q&A.

Red Flag / Rubberneck (Tribeca, DVD) is a double feature of indie productions written and directed by Alex Karpovsky, who also star in each of them. Both were seen on the festival circuit in 2012, with Rubberneck premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Diana (eOne, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, On Demand) stars Naomi Watts as Princess Di in the final years of her life, Austenland (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD, On Demand) sends Keri Russell on a Jane Austen-themed vacation, and How I Live Now (Magnolia, Blu-ray, DVD) stars Saoirse Ronan as an American girl in England during a futuristic war.

YoungDetectiveDeeComing from abroad is Tsui Hark’s lavish period fantasy Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (Well Go, Blu-ray, DVD) from Hong Kong and Fernando Trueba’s The Artist and the Model (Cohen, Blu-ray, DVD, On Demand), about an aging painter and a young Spanish refugee 1943 France.

New documentaries this week include Alex Gibney’s The Armstrong Lie (Sony, Blu-ray, DVD, On Demand) and Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (Documrama, DVD), which were both shortlisted for the Oscars this year (they did not make the final five), and Spinning Plates (Inception, DVD, VOD).

VOD / On Demand exclusives:knightsbadass

Knights of Badassdom, a comedy about live-action role players who suit up to fight real demons from hell, stars genre names Ryan Kwanten, Summer Glau, Steve Zahn, Danny Pudi and Peter Dinklage. After limited release around the US, it’s now available on VOD and On Demand.

Adult World, a comedy starring John Cusack and Emma Roberts, comes to On Demand on Friday, February 14, the sane day it arrive in theaters in limited release.

The Spanish-produced, English language zombie film The Returned (levelFILM) arrives on VOD on Friday, February 14, the same day as it hits American theaters in limited release.

More releases:gbf

GBF (Vertical, DVD)
The Adventure: The Curse of the Midas Box (RLJ, Blu-ray, DVD)
Life of a King (Millennium, Blu-ray, DVD)
Unidentified (Dark Sky, DVD, VOD)
Haunter (IFC Midnight, Blu-ray, DVD)
Reel Zombies (Synapse, DVD)
22 Bullets (New Video, Blu-ray, DVD)
The Reverend (Level 33, DVD, VOD)
Chastity Bites (Grand Entertainment, DVD)
Riot (Screen Media, DVD)
Anna Nicole (Sony, DVD, Digital)
dianaGrace Unplugged (Lionsgate, Blu-ray Combo, DVD, Digital HD, VOD)
And Then There Was You (RLJ / One Village, DVD, Digital, VOD)
Khumba (Millennium, Blu-ray, DVD, On Demand)
Jewtopia (Cinedign, DVD, VOD)
Ballroom Confidential (Lilla, DVD, VOD)
The Human Scale (Kimstim, DVD)
Semi Colin (Shelter Island, DVD)
Reaching For the Moon (Wolfe, DVD, Digital)
SEAL Patrol (Lionsgate, DVD, Digital HD, VOD)
Sorority Party Massacre (Anchor Bay, DVD)

Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD