Writer/director Alex Ullom makes his filmmaking debut with “It Ends,” and he tries to create something mysterious and thought-provoking on a very tiny budget. It’s a story about four characters dealing with the insanity of purgatory while driving along a rural road to nowhere, and the writing rarely lets the gang out of their car during the run time. There’s pain and punishment in the material, and while Ullom teases a horror-esque approach to the story, he ultimately pulls away from frights to generate a type of mystery and character study concerning young people trying to make sense of their past, present, and future. “It Ends” will be catnip to some due its interpretive ways, but the puzzle isn’t always compelling. Ullom doesn’t construct a swell of suspense to really support the viewing experience, but he scores with ideas and various points of pressure on the foursome as they battle against the melting of their minds. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Dylan Meyer made a nice impression with her co-writing credit on 2021’s “Moxie,” creating a fulfilling book adaptation that also celebrated the ways of feminism and adolescent spirit with care. Meyer now upgrades to a directorial career, making her debut with “The Wrong Girls,” which tries to become a Cheech & Chong comedy for a new generation. The helmer (who also scripts) attempts to make a very silly picture, filling the effort with wacky encounters and a sustained use of marijuana to help lubricate goofballery. There’s a lot of bigness in the offering, but almost nothing translates into actual laughs, and even the film’s finest moments merely extract a faint smile. “The Wrong Girls” should be a riot, but Meyer has the wrong Cheech & Chong in Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat, who fail to conjure chemistry and deliver silliness as they fumble through this extremely tired endeavor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After scoring a minor hit with the 2015 horror film, “It Follows,” writer/director David Robert Mitchell attempted to land a funkier follow-up with 2018’s “Under the Silver Lake,” which failed to attract much box office attention or critical love, evolving into a cult title for some. The pictures were smaller in scale and budget, and now Mitchell hopes to play in the Hollywood big leagues with “The End of Oak Street,” launching a blockbuster offering that features plenty of visual effects and heated moments of endurance. It’s a big summer movie from co-producer J.J. Abrams, but Mitchell isn’t interested in taking it easy on viewers. The helmer gives “The End of Oak Street” an inviting level of danger to go with its Spielbergian ways, and he’s mindful of emotional needs as the characters face personal problems while trying to remain one step ahead of a dinosaur invasion. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When Metallica made a movie, they elected to create a city riot to accentuate the thunderous ways of their music. When Foo Fighters had their chance to create a film, the group decided to act in their very own horror picture, bringing their screwball sense of humor to genre entertainment. Now Green Day is giving cinematic representation a chance, and while they certainly have the financial means to generate an epic of some shape, the band elects to stay true to their origins and deal with the feistiness of the adolescent experience. “Nimrods” remains with teenage interests, putting writer/director Lee Kirk to work generating a road trip scenario for a three young men trying to change their frustrating lives through music. The helmer doesn’t have anything profound to share about boyhood urges, but “Nimrods” is entertaining enough, getting far on restless energy while Green Day and other artists keep the soundtrack shaking along with hits. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Andrew Patterson impressed some with his 2020 debut, “The Vast of Night.” It was an unusual viewing experience, and apparently not a fluke for the helmer, who returns with “The Rivals of Amziah King,” which is also an extremely odd movie. For his latest, Patterson examines the rough and tumble ways of the honey business, assessing the fight for market dominance as crime and punishment enters what’s initially believed to be a peaceful industry. Patterson has a mood he wants for the feature, and that involves numerous musical performances, adding a distinctly folksy twang to the production between hits of criminal activity and revenge plotting. “The Rivals of Amziah King” is a very idiosyncratic endeavor, and Patterson asks a lot of his audience with a 130-minute-long run time, but he maintains a strange flavor to his filmmaking, and acting can’t be beat, helping to realize cultural touches and atypical emotions spinning around this offering. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie” is the third big screen endeavor for the animated franchise, with the other two pictures (released in 2021 and 2023) managing to slightly impress with scale and interest in generating an action-packed good time for younger viewers and their multiplex guardians. The recipe mostly remains the same for the new film, keeping up with the main characters and their sworn duty to rescue those in need. “The Dino Movie” makes a knowing creative choice to add big creatures to the mix, looking to tempt kids with this combination of brightly colored adventure sequences and dinosaur activity, including plenty of cuteness. As with the other installments, there’s no significant effort to generate a meaningful viewing experience, but it does deliver enough screen activity to pass, along with adding a few new characters to keep things reasonably interesting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Co-writer/director Miguel Angel Hernandez adapts a 2007 novel by Panos Karnezis, with “The Birthday Party” exploring a particularly tense day in the life of a shipping magnate trying to retain control over his empire during a time of celebration. It’s a tale loosely inspired by the ways of Aristotle Onassis, but Hernandez doesn’t fixate on the business side of control. He’s more interested in familial troubles coming for a man typically in command of his destiny. The picture gives star Willem Dafoe plenty of room to feel around edges of his character, capturing a special level of paranoia for a very slow-burn endeavor. “The Birthday Party” doesn’t develop into a riveting study of relationships, but the helmer finds a few unions worth examining, adding unusual eroticism and levels of suspicion as the story takes in life-changing turns for people attending an opulent celebration of youth. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

During its opening act, “Hellcat” sets up an intriguing mystery and arranges a small space of investigation for the main character, who’s stuck inside a trailer as it blazes down a rural road, unable to understand where she is or why she’s been taken. There’s a lot to explore in this situation, and writer/director Brock Bodell is striving to make something more than a thriller, playing with genre touches and emotional wounds to best connect with viewers. There’s an initial rush to the production that’s compelling, coming close to promising a nail-biter to come, but Bodell doesn’t keep his foot on the gas with this endeavor. “Hellcat” eventually loses its momentum, and the trade-off into sensitivities and customary antagonism doesn’t work. However, there’s enough here to hold attention, and Bodell has a semi-decent puzzle to solve with the central crisis, getting reasonably far with the clues in the writing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2024’s “I Saw the TV Glow” represented a major step forward in the career of writer/director Jane Schoenbrun. The picture didn’t attract a major audience, but it found viewers capable of connecting to its enigmatic and perhaps deeply personal ways. Schoenbrun set out to make a brain bleeder, and one that wasn’t easily decoded, relying on tried and true Lynchian ways to fog meaning with artistry, generating a puzzle some viewers were delighted to solve. Schoenbrun returns to their filmmaking fetishes with “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” which carries marketing efforts selling the feature as a sort of riff on the influence and problematic ways of slasher cinema from the 1980s. Of course, the offering isn’t really about satire or even criticism, instead focusing on sexual experiences and personal connections while trauma and pleasure are set up for analysis. “Teenage Sex and Death” keeps Schoenbrun in their comfort zone, but viewers are left with a picture that doesn’t fulfill on a dramatic level, as the endeavor is more interested in hitting a cosmic G-spot instead, which has its cinematic limitations. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Netflix found tremendous success with 2018’s “Bird Box,” which offered viewers a bleak view of suburban survival, watching a family try to manage a mysterious, apocalyptic event. Screenwriter Matthew Robinson (who scored a critical hit with last winter’s “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”) takes on basically the same premise for “The Last House,” which also follows the struggles of a family caught in a strange endurance challenge during what appears to be the end of the world. There could be a sensitive understanding of despair and isolation, following the characters as they handle a desperate situation. However, this is a Louis Leterrier picture, and the man who gave the world “The Brothers Grimsby” and “Fast X” isn’t too concerned with human nuance. Instead, he turns “The Last House” into a crude monster movie and, at times, a deeply unpleasant viewing experience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2001’s “Super Troopers” was a minor theatrical hit that exploded on home video, developing a fanbase for the Broken Lizard comedy troupe, though not one that followed the team into subsequent efforts. It took 17 years, but eventually there was a “Super Troopers 2,” with Broken Lizard turning to crowdfunding to partially finance their dream of a follow-up, and the movie made a shocking debut, ending up with a healthy opening weekend gross after many doubted the brand name’s appeal. Once again, the filmmakers have taken their time, and now there’s a “Super Troopers 3,” with director Jay Chandrasekhar once again overseeing a loose collection of plotting and cop comedy bits, while the new picture tries to jazz things up with a wedding weekend story (the actual title of the feature is “Super Troopers 3: Farva’s Wedding”). The 2018 endeavor wasn’t anything remarkable, but it found a way to make Broken Lizard shenanigans semi-fun and passably exciting. “Super Troopers 3” feels more like an episode of television, with the offering going mild and mediocre with its presentation of comedic insanity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com