Welcome back to the one and only place you need to go to find the choicest picks of the week's DVD releases. Here, you will only find the cream of the crop, the titles that need to find themselves into your collection. Well, not really, but you will find the top title(s) based on my personal tastes which will actively find ways to diverge with the mainstream. Although, my tastes generally run to the mainstream with these picks. Why is that? I don't know. Maybe I should try making some more esoteric picks. Perhaps this week will be it, if you read the title, I am sure you have already formulated some ideas on taste. Anyway, read on for this week's spotlighted titles.

As I looked this week's release list, I found a number of titles that I would like to get my grubby hands on. However, there was not one, but two titles that rose to the top almost instantaneously. Two movies that were on the big screen earlier this year that captured my mind and my heart. It is not that they are the greatest films ever to grace the silver screen, but I really liked both of them and feel that everyone should give them a shot.

First up is Bug. It is based on the stage play by Tracy Letts, who also wrote the screenplay, and is directed by Oscar-winner William Friedkin (The Exorcist). It is a lean, tension-filled work that keeps its setting limited, almost entirely set inside the motel room. It builds its tension slowly. Awkward conversation between the two damaged leads builds to their frantic, panic-filled monologues of paranoid conspiracy theories that make little real sense to us, but are frightening nonetheless. To the two of them, it is perfectly sound logic. The screenplay really builds from the moment the two main characters meet through to the frenzied madness where they end up. Every step taken is borne organically out of their conversations, Peter's (Michael Shannon) ever-increasing bug talk to Agnes (Ashley Judd) eating it up.

The lead performances are simply incredible. Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon completely sell their roles, with Shannon reprising the role he filled in the stage play. I was completely involved with Agnes and Peter; Ashley and Michael no longer existed. They threw themselves into their roles with reckless abandon. They believed in the characters they were portraying and the emotions that play out are genuine, and they are very scary.

The special edition DVD release includes: Feature Commentary with Director William Friedkin, "BUG: An Introduction" Featurette, and A Discussion with William Friedkin.

The other film at the top of the prime cut list is the Judd Apatow production of Knocked Up. What I like about this movie is that it has a sense of reality to it. You may know people like those in the movie, you may identify with people in the movie or at least elements of those people, but the pieces are there to draw you in. It is something that Apatow has been doing his entire career — go back and watch 40-Year-Old Virgin or his television projects, Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared. Watch them and you will find a lot to laugh at, lots of comedy, but also a lot of truth. It is truth that is grounded in the real world, and delivered in a believable fashion, one that has a reality to it, just a slight step removed from the real.