Writer/director Christopher Nolan surprised a lot of people with his 2023 release, “Oppenheimer.” It was a three-hour-long study of a deeply troubled man, mostly avoiding the scale of previous Nolan endeavors, and it connected with audiences in a huge way. The success of “Oppenheimer” helped to secure the helmer’s name as a selling point for ticket-buyers, and he returns with a major flex of power with “The Odyssey,” taking on the adaptation challenge of Homer’s epic tale of danger and survival. Bigness is back in the picture, which looks to hypnotize audiences with its IMAX-approved visuals and ear-splitting sound design. Such overwhelming technical achievements end up the most impressive elements of the feature, with “The Odyssey” occasionally struggling with casting and screenwriting, putting Nolan once again in charge of a three-hour tour that might’ve found greater dramatic impact in a more concise cut. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The deadpan comedy spirit of Wes Anderson and Jared Hess appears to be the main influence on “The Kidnapping of Arabella,” an Italian production from writer/director Carolina Cavalli. She’s not necessarily out to make something uproarious with the endeavor, offering an askew sense of humor while examining the troubled life of a young woman trying to process past mistakes by making a fresh one, accepting the company of a feisty girl who lives to torment her father. “The Kidnapping of Arabella” has moments of hilarity, and Cavalli attempts to give the feature a healthy dose of idiosyncrasy to keep it unexpected. More dramatic intentions are less compelling, but still register with intended sincerity, allowing the movie to reach some personal areas of pain without fully losing viewers to slower pacing and a gradual loss of narrative drive. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2018, director Andrew Renzi released “They Fight,” a documentary inspecting the efforts of trainer Walter Manigan and his battle to teach young kids about the ways of boxing and discipline while dealing with his own tortured past as an ex-con. Renzi returns to the story with “They Fight” sharing a co-writing credit with Sheldon Candis, who also directs this dramatization of Manigan’s experience in southeast Washington D.C. after being released from prison. There’s a define underdog atmosphere to the endeavor, with “Creed” references replacing the usual “Rocky” ones, and Candis pays careful attention to the discipline and contest of boxing. But there’s a lot more to “They Fight,” which strives to be as human as possible, tracking the development of characters attempting to put their lives back together after experiencing tremendous upheaval, learning the value of communication, support, and persistence during a difficult time. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Nick Moorcroft has found his way into the business of feel-good English movies, joined by collaborator Meg Leonard to script 2019’s “Fisherman’s Friends,” which managed to appeal to a smaller audience with its softer ways. Moorcroft and Leonard raised their responsibilities by helming the 2022 sequel, “Fisherman’s Friends: One and All,” which didn’t attract much attention from ticket-buyers. Moorcroft reteams with Leonard for “Mother’s Pride,” though he goes solo behind the camera for this easygoing tale of a financially ruined pub in a small village in England looking to make a major comeback with a special brew shepherded by a troubled young man. There are no surprises in the picture, but these films tend to coast on charm, and “Mother’s Pride” has its moments of personality and feeling, playing simple games of broad conflict to entertain audiences. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Author Richard Matheson originally created “The Shrinking Man” in 1956, quickly turning around a screenplay for a 1957 movie adaptation. The concept has gone on to inspire many film, television, and literary offerings that explore the fantasy elements of the premise, but co-writer/director Jan Kounen (“Blueberry,” “Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky”) hopes to return to Matheson’s quiet intensity of thought with “The Shrinking Man.” A French production, the endeavor is prepared to sell the visual highlights of a small man fighting for his life after he’s forgotten in his own home, with star Jean Dujardin contributing excellent work while handling the demands of visual effects. “The Shrinking Man” intends to remain existential with its examination of life at many sizes, and the austere atmosphere of the feature is interesting to experience, balancing the wonders of the mind with the urgency of Smurf-sized survival demands. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

We’re currently living in an age when movie studios and video game corporations are looking to eliminate physical media, preferring to live a digital download/streaming life to best profit from the art they sell. Writer/director Joseph Scrimshaw makes his feature-length helming debut with “Dead Media,” and he’s hoping to revive that nostalgic spark for discs, using the power and mystery of DVD navigation to inspire a horror tale that highlights zombie-like enemies, but mostly wants to play with acts of disorientation. “Dead Media” is a low-budget endeavor, but Scrimshaw works hard to make something lively and unique, finding an interesting way to approach the usual in stalk-and-kill cinema, giving his fright film special inspiration to help it through a few mismanaged ideas. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The “Evil Dead” film series took a bit of a break after the success of a 2013 remake, raring back after a decade of inactivity with 2023’s “Evil Dead Rise.” While franchise connections were limited, the production captured the spirit of director Sam Raimi’s original creation, successfully reviving the Deadite massacre for another installment of big screen hellraising. Three years later, there’s “Evil Dead Burn,” which offers a different tale of torment from screenwriter Florent Bernard and Sebastien Vanicek (who also directs) while firmly committing to the “Evil Dead” way. Wonderfully menacing, gory, and visceral, “Evil Dead Burn” sustains the momentum of “Evil Dead Rise,” launching a new descent into torturous encounters and horror exploding in contained settings. It’s a post-Ash universe now, but the brand name still packs a punch as a new group of characters are exposed to absolute danger and bodily destruction. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Of course, one fully understands why the Disney corporation continues on a mission to produce live-action remakes of their animated classics. Even with a few financial stumbles, the features make a lot of money for the company, and they carry built-in brand recognition, easing the pain of marketing movies to the masses. The last offering, 2025’s “Lilo and Stitch,” was a massive box office success, and represented a relatively recent release to reheat, redoing the 2002 original. Now “Moana” cuts even closer, with the first film in theaters only a decade ago, enjoying many years of home entertainment domination as audiences warmed to an absolutely wonderful picture. The new “Moana” (which was intended to be released last year, only to be bumped from the schedule to make way for 2024’s animated “Moana 2”) is looking to coast on such popularity and viewer love, but of all the live-action endeavors, this is arguably the most pointless. Director Thomas Kail has technology and casting, but he doesn’t have heart and originality, with “Moana” a cold-blooded copy of the 2016 effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Asylum is a movie studio that specializes in low-budget entertainment, often taking advantage of major studio releases to submit a poorly constructed knockoff (“Transformers” vs. “Transmorphers”) to make a few bucks off the curious and the confused. They’ve built an entire library of pictures, with most barely making a buck, but remaining just profitable enough to keep the entire machine running for another round of movies. To quote the “Hellraiser” tagline, the company is “demon to some, angel to others,” and for Australian corporate video director Anthony Frith, The Asylum is just the place to get his start in the film business. “Mockbuster” is a documentary about Frith’s experience helming the 2025 feature, “The Land That Time Forgot,” putting him in the middle of a potential production disaster, hiring a crew to capture the insanity of the opportunity and the inner workings of Asylum life. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Stephen Susco is a seasoned horror screenwriter, previously credited on features such as 2004’s “The Grudge,” “Hell Fest,” and 2013’s ludicrous “Texas Chainsaw.” He turns his attention to more genre classics to help inspire “Black Box,” which is an airline disaster picture that blends “The Thing,” “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” and the “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” episode of “The Twilight Zone.” It’s a horror film playing a glacial game of discovery, asking viewers to remain patient with a low-budget endeavor that’s in no hurry to develop suspense or scares, and its feel for paranoia is severely lacking. Director Steven Quale (who’s racked up underwhelming efforts such as “American Renegades,” “Into the Storm,” and “Final Destination 5”) is tasked with making something exciting in a series of small spaces, but “Black Box” doesn’t break through with thrills and chills, mostly remaining lukewarm as characters are explored and mysterious threats are eventually defined. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Night Nurse” offers a profoundly slow-paced journey into dark eroticism. It’s the debut for writer/director Georgia Bernstein, who aims to catch an indie film wave with the production, looking to find uncomfortable areas of human engagement while exploring various kinks in play. It’s an unusual picture that demands quite a bit of patience from viewers, who are asked to remain focused on lengthy scenes of seduction and staring as elements of story start to form over the course of the feature. “Night Nurse” is pursuing atmosphere, and the helmer is successful in her quest to make something unsettling and strangely alluring, laboring to craft a movie that tempts and repels in equal measure. It’s no rocket ride of surprises, emerging as highly specific work for an audience willing to go with the diseased Rorschach test Bernstein is making here. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director William Woods makes his helming debut with “The Outer Threat,” and he attempts to generate an apocalyptic scenario with an extremely limited budget and use of a few locations. Woods turns to math and science to conjure a sense of adventure for the picture, along with a healthy dose of paranoia, trying to give the feature some liveliness without having to pay for major action set pieces. The mildness of it all shows throughout the viewing experience, putting Woods to work on character and revelations for what’s kinda, sorta an alien invasion movie. “The Outer Threat” might not please those on the hunt for more defined thrills, as Woods can’t lift the whole endeavor off the ground, but acting and intelligence survives, keeping the offering engaging at times, especially when the tale comes into contact with more physical threats. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2003, author Azar Nafisi published a memoir about her days in post-Islamic Revolution Iran, returning to her homeland to remain an English professor at the University of Tehran during a time of severe social and political change. Director Eran Riklis (“Spider in the Web”) and screenwriter Marjorie David (a television veteran) attempt to make a film out of Nafisi’s details, with “Reading Lolita in Tehran” endeavoring to understand the pressures of living in the country, and how such intensity worked to grind down the professor’s spirit. It’s a story told in four chapters, and doesn’t always provide the most enlightening understanding of the subject’s experience. However, the bullet points are clear, and Riklis oversees fine performances to help sell the anguish of the educational and living situations presented here, preserving Nafisi’s experience as she attempts to endure an impossible situation of gradual submission and form a plan for a secret revolution. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director John Suits has been concentrating on making DTV entertainment, including a dip into the business of Bruce Willis and his medical issues for 2020’s “Breach.” Suits returns with “The Isolate Thief,” moving away from tech and dystopian misery to make a western, going the slow-burn route with help from screenwriter Kevin Lefler, who arranges a tale of survival and threat set during the end of the Civil War. The material plays like a short story, generating a conflict inside a small space, with a handful of agitated characters forced to deal with one another without engaging the outside world. “The Isolate Thief” doesn’t really have enough to support a feature-film exploration of trouble coming for a young woman on her own, but the picture finds a few ways to develop suspense, and acting helps the cause, giving the endeavor some weight as the story hunts for trouble to explore. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

An actor of incredible presence, career achievements, and personal opinion, Brian Cox makes his feature-length directorial debut with “Glenrothan.” He’s out to tell a Scottish story, working with a screenplay by David Ashton and Jeff Murphy that investigates the emotional wounds of two brothers experiencing a reunion after four decades of separation, trying to make sense of their current situation. Cox sells the stuffing out of Scotland, bringing locations to life to the best of his ability, making for a very rustic viewing experience. He’s less confident with dramatic entanglements, as most of the picture offers a formulaic study of communication issues involving stubborn characters. “Glenrothan” doesn’t reach its goal to become a heartwarming tale of forgiveness, but Cox clearly loves the setting, providing a pleasing advertisement for Scottish tourism. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the early 2000s, Scottish men Billy “Silibil” Boyd and Gavin “Brains” Bain were warmed by their dream of becoming rap stars. They had no industry connections, just ambition and confidence in their talents. They also had a gift for spinning lies. The story of the rap group Silibil N’ Brains was previously explored in Bain’s 2010 memoir, which inspired “The Great Hip Hop Hoax,” a 2013 documentary about the duo and their adventures in the music industry. Actor James McAvoy (joined by screenwriters Elaine Gracie and Archie Thomson) is also interested in the story of Silibil N’ Brains, inspired to make his directorial debut with “California Schemin’”, which dramatizes Boyd and Bain’s experiences as they attempted to con their way to music business glory. McAvoy brings energy to the picture’s opening half, capturing the excitement of deceit and the troubles of sustaining such a scam. The feature eventually slides into melodrama, but McAvoy has his moments of liveliness and character, getting the film upright before he loses his way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com