A look at DVDs being released Tuesday.

"All About Steve" (PG-13, 97 minutes)

This gruesome, almost perversely unfunny movie about a crossword puzzle constructor who obsessively follows a man across the country, may get an asterisk on Sandra Bullock's resume as the most misguided move of her career. Bullock's Mary Magdalene Horowitz chases a news cameraman named Steve (Bradley Cooper), whom she nearly mauls on a blind date before they even pull away from the curb. The movie is by turns cruel and unusual, culminating in a tortured critique of contemporary media and conformism. Thomas Haden Church provides a few laughs as a vain newscaster, but buying Bullock as a hapless nerd is simply asking too much.

"District 9" (R, 112 minutes)

The poison that permeates this phenomenal film is the same toxin that defined so much of 20th-century history: the oppression of the Other — in this case, scaly aliens with feelers for faces, a jones for canned cat food and a mother ship that has been hovering over Johannesburg for 20 years. As the craven corporate tool Wikus van de Merwe, acting newcomer Sharlto Copley is nothing short of revelatory. Wikus is assigned to move the aliens from their ramshackle township to tent cities that are, in fact, concentration camps. The aliens are hard to like, but we like them, just as we end up liking Wikus and rooting for the demise of Greater Human Civilization.