Samuel L. Jackson is not shy about admitting that he often picks his acting roles based on the production’s proximity to golf courses. It’s not the most professional thing to admit to, but such candor certainly clears up a good chunk of his career choices. “Just Play Dead” could be added to the list, with the endeavor taking cast and crew to Malta to make sense of Dan Gordon’s screenplay, which approaches the darker edges of film noir while keeping a firm hand on comedic entanglements. Director Martin Campbell (“GoldenEye,” “Casino Royale,” but also “Green Lantern” and 2024’s “Dirty Angels”) is in charge of finding a smooth balance between dangerous encounters and extended exposition, and the helmer often fails to supply a decent reason why viewers should remain interested in the pretzel-like storytelling. “Just Play Dead” has lovely locations and a lot of sun, but there’s little happening here that commands attention. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2025’s “Flight Risk,” star Mark Wahlberg elected to wear a bald cap to aid in his portrayal of a psychopath unleashed during a long flight in the middle of nowhere. The hairpiece was a distraction. For “By Any Means” necessary, Wahlberg slaps on an enormous nose to portray a psychopathic gangster using his general disregard for others to inflict as much pain on his targets. The nose is a distraction. However, for this feature, shoddy makeup work is the least of the production’s issues, as screenwriter Sascha Penn turns to history to inspire a tale of a dangerous law enforcement partnership investigating a murder in 1966 Mississippi. “By Any Means” has scenes where it examines the horror and threats of racism, and the terror that stains lives. And it has more cartoony moments that undermine whatever seriousness Penn and director Elegance Bratton hope to communicate with the picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“American Summer” intends to stir up feelings of nostalgia for times gone by. Co-writer/director Michael W. Gray is out to inspect the adolescent experience as it used to be, focusing on the struggles of a teenager fighting to make sense of his opportunities and future while dealing with daily demands from guardians and the pressures of a potential romantic partner. It’s not especially original material from Gray, who seems to be taking moves from the remarkable pop culture endurance of 1993’s “The Sandlot,” hoping to tap into the wonders of life and the feistiness of friendship. There’s earnestness to the feature that’s appealing, as Gray sets out to make a family film that hopes to impart a few messages on the value of persistence and bravery. However, “American Summer” is also a pretty clumsy endeavor, wrestling with a confusing timeline and unadventurous screenwriting as it tries to burrow into viewer hearts. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2022’s “Fall” was a low-budget film issued during the waning days of the summer movie season, with pandemic blues still influencing box office returns. Little was expected of the picture, but it carried decent marketing and a high concept premise, ultimately managing to tempt a small amount of viewers into theaters to watch two characters deal with a disaster up in the sky. “Fall” went on to become a popular streaming title, and now there’s a sequel, albeit four years later. “Fall 2: Deadpoint” (titled simply “Fall: Deadpoint” in the main titles) arrives with very little pop culture momentum, and screenwriters Scott Mann and Jonathan Frank (who scripted the original effort) basically submit a remake with the follow-up, which once again takes to great heights to watch a duo try to survive the elements. “Deadpoint” isn’t adventurous in the least, simply mirroring the previous release to test the longevity of a newfound brand name. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Cold War is back in “Mayday,” the new offering from filmmaking team John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, returning to action after the bizarrely underwhelming box office performance of their entertaining 2023 release, “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.” The pair have a reputation for showy cinematography and comedic interests, and they return to their comfort zone in the new feature, which examines a special relationship between a downed American pilot and his Russian rescuer as they navigate Soviet Union troubles in the late 1980s. It’s a chase movie in some respects, but Daley and Goldstein are out to make a picture about partnership and cultural differences, coming up a little short when trying to sell thawing feelings between the characters. “Mayday” has bigness and broadness, which should be enough for most viewers, but it doesn’t reach its potential as a buddy comedy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Scott Waugh hasn’t delivered a decent movie during his career, but he keeps getting work. The helmer of “Act of Valor,” “Need for Speed,” “Hidden Strike,” and 2023’s disastrous “Expendables 4” (aka “Expend4bles”), Waugh is someone with an interest in big action, playing with Hollywood excess as he hopes to deliver an adrenaline rush for viewers. He hasn’t done much worth remembering, and his streak continues with “Runner,” a high concept thriller from screenwriters Miles Hubley and Tommy White that attempts to deliver a cinematic shock to the system with its pacing and incredible violence, only to be undone by poor writing and Waugh’s generic approach to screen intensity. It’s meant to be a buddy comedy, but it isn’t funny. It hopes to be heartbreaking, but it doesn’t carry deep feelings. And it’s out to be exciting, with liveliness smothered by the helmer’s plasticized approach to raising hell. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Adam Wingard found a way out of low-budget genre entertainment, managing to score a big, fat Hollywood gig helming the last two “Godzilla vs. Kong” pictures, doing a fine job propping up the franchise for additional exploration. Wingard is back in blood and guts with “Onslaught,” which trades the hugeness of kaiju mayhem for the viciousness of B-moviemaking, this time following a woman’s fight for her life when super soldiers arrive in a remote area to kill everything. Wingard and screenwriter Simon Barrett (who previously collaborated with Wingard on “You’re Next,” “The Guest,” and “Blair Witch”) intend to get weird with the film, combining the worlds of action and horror for the endeavor, while idiosyncrasy generally dominates the viewing experience. “Onslaught” maintains highlights throughout, but Wingard is making this one for himself, keeping the audience at a distance while he experiments with tone. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Screenwriter Mark Gibson (“Snow Dogs”) looks to recycle elements of 1998’s “Run Lola Run” to inspire a new tale of endurance. “The Runner” has the simple idea of following one woman’s race to save her son from potential harm, forced to remain in motion as the villain provides orders for the main character to follow. Complications are added to maintain drama, but the central concept is decent enough to support a passable thriller. Director Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland,” “The Eagle”) doesn’t get very far with the material, struggling to transform Gibson’s ideas into a pulse-pounding endeavor that maintains elements of threat and despair as the clock ticks down on the crisis. Unfortunately, “The Runner” is ridiculous, skipping on lean and mean to welcome absurdity as plot turns increase, putting Gibson and Macdonald on the hunt to surprise viewers instead of trying to dazzle them with sustained intensity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Girl in the River” often plays like a pilot episode of a television series focused on the weekly investigative achievements of Amelia Pembrock, a forensic psychology expert beginning her career in the field. The picture opens and closes in such a manner suggesting this endeavor is merely a chapter in the character’s development, launching her future as a detective on the hunt for criminals using her intelligence and training. However, the offering isn’t anything more than a crime story from writer/director Brando Benetton, who makes his feature-length helming debut with the effort. He has a crime and a collection of professionals out to crack the case, but suspense is largely missing from the movie. “The Girl in the River” doesn’t have surprises and is oddly restrained when it comes to physical encounters, but for those who love TV procedurals, there’s probably something here to embrace as Benetton goes slow and subdued with the film. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Ridley Scott’s interest in creating 2024’s “Gladiator II” made sense. It was a sequel to one of his most successful movies, and the helmer, who’s been struggling with box office success in recent years, was looking for a sizable hit with material audiences already understood. His interest in “The Dog Stars” is more puzzling, taking on an adaptation of a 2012 book by Peter Heller with help from screenwriter Mark L. Smith (“The Revenant,” “The Boys in the Boat”), launching something approaching a meditative study of the human experience that’s eventually interrupted by dystopian violence. Scott doesn’t push himself with this one, putting in a limited effort with the material, which is really a few stories rolled into one glacial viewing experience, and not an offering that’s saved by flavorful performances or exploratory highlights. “The Dog Stars” is quite dull when it isn’t absurd, and the director doesn’t show much interest in finding more meaning or pace with the endeavor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2025’s “The Rule of Jenny Pen” was a tremendous achievement for director James Ashcroft. He generated an incredible atmosphere of unease, using style and sinister business to fully immerse viewers in mental illness and devious behavior, creating one of the best movies of the year in the process. He’s back with “The Whisper Man,” graduating to more expensive professional opportunities, this time helming an adaptation of an Alex North 2019 book, which examines the desperation of a father trying to find his missing son while a serial killer of children prepares to take another life. It’s another trip into bleakness for Ashcroft, and he doesn’t maintain his creative momentum with the scuzzy material (scripted by Ben Jacoby and Chase Palmer), but “The Whisper Man” does maintain strong performances, with many in the cast understanding exactly what type of film they’re in, giving the offering a nice level of exaggeration at times to help hold attention. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Much has been written about the road to release for “Coyote vs. Acme,” with the feature (which was filmed four years ago) once set for deletion by Warner Bros. Discovery to cash in on a tax write-off. Now Ketchup Entertainment has stepped in the bring the picture to the masses, much like they did with the previous Looney Tunes movie, “The Day the Earth Blew Up.” There’s a sense of victory for the endeavor, which managed to survive bean counter condemnation that erased the existence of a few other productions, but it’s not so easy to believe that “Coyote vs. Acme” was worth the wait. It’s an enjoyable enough effort, with director Dave Green (“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows”) clearly displaying his love for the Looney Tunes universe and all the cartoon mayhem it contains. However, bigger laughs, or any laughs, aren’t readily available in the screenplay by Samy Burch, keeping this legal adventure somewhat muted as it only occasionally tries to get wild. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

If you have any questions about the making of 1977’s “Exorcist II: The Heretic,” they’re sure to be answered in the documentary “Boorman and the Devil.” Director David Kittredge endeavors to understand the creation and execution of a sequel that was once so highly anticipated, only to be soundly rejected by critics and audiences after its release, launching an investigation in the formation of the project. And who better to explain the process than the picture’s director, John Boorman. The esteemed helmer sits down to share his memories and feelings about the project, recalling an era of filmmaking freedom that allowed him access to a large budget and full studio support, tasked with making a follow-up to one of the biggest movies of all time. Kitteridge nails the assignment, delivering a fresh, funny, and detailed understanding of how “Exorcist II” came to be after nearly fifty years of media rejection. It’s an outstanding document of ambition and fallibility. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Sun Never Sets” is writer/director Joe Swanberg’s first feature since 2017’s “Win It All.” He visited the world of television for a few years, but Swanberg finally returns to cinematic exploration with the picture, taking viewers into the treacherous terrain of relationships and all the incredible complications they encounter. However, this isn’t a love story, but more of a possession tale without the horror influences, offering viewers a look at the extraordinary messiness of three characters struggling to find their way through a maze of jealousy, attraction, and power as they handle one another’s issues while battling their own insecurities. As with other Swanberg endeavors, the effort gets intimate and conversational with improvisational ways, but it maintains an enjoyably unusual atmosphere with particularly itchy personalities trapped in a troubling situation of their own making. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Casper Kelly is in the business of making weird stuff. He developed his interests in the odd and irreverent with basic cable programming such as “Too Many Cooks” and “Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell,” also providing seasonal nightmares with 2022’s “Adult Swim Yule Log” and its 2024 sequel. Kelly recently contributed a segment (arguably one of the best ones) to last year’s “V/H/S/Halloween” as well. This time around, Kelly looks to do something strange with the worlds of “Barney” and “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” teaming up with co-writer Jamie King for “Buddy,” which delivers a thorough freak-out while playing with the conventions and construction of children’s television shows. Kelly makes perhaps his most accessible endeavor with “Buddy,” but the feature remains quite bizarre, asking viewers to manage the lightness of satire with the viciousness of horror in a creative, if a tad overlong, offering of dark comedy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Last year, “The Toxic Avenger” remake finally found release, sending writer/director Macon Blair’s love of Troma Entertainment out into a world that wasn’t exactly prepared for it. He returns with “Idiots,” which continues his interest in Troma-style cinematic extremity, this time exploring mishaps and madness as two transport service employees make a big mess out of a simple driving job, finding themselves constantly dealing with trouble. “Idiots” tries to live up to its title, with Blair organizing displays of dumb guy humor and comedic setbacks for the characters, occasionally reaching into grossness to make his intent with the feature understood. It’s not a rolling display of transgressive cinema, but Blair has decent command of absurdity, while stars Dave Franco and O’Shea Jackson Jr. clearly enjoy the opportunity to play troubled morons handed responsibility they can’t possibly handle. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com