New video: ‘The Light Between Oceans’ gets lost at sea

New on Blu-ray

“The Light Between Oceans” (Touchstone/DreamWorks DVD, $29.99; Blu-ray, $39.99; also available on VOD)

There’s an outstanding movie stuck inside the meandering melodrama “The Light Between Oceans.” Writer-director Derek Cianfrance’s adaptation of M.L. Stedman’s novel isn’t as lean and to-the-point as it could be, but there’s a lot about it that’s remarkable. The magnetic Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander costar as the Sherbournes, a married Australian couple who operate a lighthouse on a remote island and struggle to conceive a child. When a dead man and his crying baby wash ashore in a small boat, the Sherbournes claim the girl as their own, then have a crisis of conscience after they meet the real mother (Rachel Weisz). Cianfrance spends too much time on the setup and lets the last third skew too broad. But the film looks beautiful, and is dotted with moments of heartbreaking humanity. It should play better on home video, where the highs will stand out more than the lulls.

[Special features: A commentary track and featurettes]

VOD

“A Patch of Fog” (available Jan. 24)

Two of Britain’s finest actors, Conleth Hill and Stephen Graham, play men of different classes and cultural backgrounds, locked into a dysfunctional relationship in “A Patch of Fog,” an overheated psychological thriller that remains gripping throughout because of the two leads. Hill (best-known for “Game of Thrones”) plays a famous author and TV panelist who compensates for his feelings of self-loathing by shoplifting. Graham is the security guard who catches him in the act and blackmails him into becoming his friend. That’s a thin premise for a movie, and director Michael Lennox and screenwriters John Cairns and Michael McCartney never quite make it plausible. But these two actors could make anything entertaining, and they’re front and center for the entire running time, pushing and pulling against each other and expressing different kinds of loneliness.

TV set of the week

“Sherlock: Season Four” (BBC DVD, $29.98; Blu-ray, $39.98)

Even though the last episode of the fourth season of “Sherlock” is titled “The Final Problem,” the show’s creators insist that a fifth series is in the works — which is good, because each year of this show always seems to end way too soon. The three 90-minute episodes in Season 4 are focused more on Martin Freeman’s Dr. Watson, who experiences a profound personal loss that fractures his relationship with Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes. “Sherlock” also introduces some formidable new villains, including a serial killer played by Toby Jones and a woman with an unusual connection to the master detective. Overall, this is another rollicking run for TV’s trickiest, most stylish mystery series, and sets up — fingers crossed — more stories.

[Special features: None]

From the archives

“Black Girl” (Criterion, $29.95; Blu-ray, $39.95)

Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène wrote a handful of acclaimed French novels before wowing international film critics with his first movie, 1966’s “Black Girl.” Mbissine Thérèse Diop stars as a young woman who works as a nanny for a French couple in Dakar and then moves back with them to France, where her previously warm, familial relationship with her employers turns chilly, as they treat her as part menial servant and part shallow symbol of their affection for Africa. Concise in approach and tragic in scope — with a style that evokes the era’s French New Wave — “Black Girl” is a sensitive evocation of how it feels to be a stranger in a strange land.

[Special features: New and old interviews, and a feature-length documentary about Sembène]

Three more to see

“I’m Not Ashamed” (Universal DVD, $24.98; Blu-ray, $29.98); “The Man Who Fell to Earth: Limited Collector’s Edition” (Lionsgate DVD/Blu-ray, $34.99); “The Monster” (Lionsgate DVD, $19.98; Blu-ray, $24.99; also available on VOD)