At the height of his fame, a dramatic and action star known around the world, Sylvester Stallone wanted to change things up, trying on a comedy for size to expand his thespian horizons. 1984's "Rhinestone" bombed at the box office and scared the star away from pronounced silly business for years to come, retreating to the comfort of Rambo sequels and easy money from Cannon Films. While a cheeky turn in 1989's "Tango & Cash" permitted Stallone to showcase his snarkier side, it was 1991's "Oscar" that found him diving back into the challenge of funny business, this time paring with director John Landis, who was following up his successful work on "Coming to America." The helmer wanted to make a farce, only to be faced with the acting limitations of Stallone, who wasn't known for his fast mouth and limber movement. Landis works very hard to support his star through this endeavor, which tries to simulate the blazing speed and wit of a classic comedy from the 1930s, and achieves a good portion of its creative goals, giving Stallone plenty of co-stars to bounce off of, while Landis orchestrates fine timing for "Oscar," which isn't all that hilarious, but it's consistently entertaining. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It all began in the early 1970s when a gang of students at the University of Illinois decided they wanted to move from making short documentaries to a major motion picture. Devouring the supercop movies of the day, writer/director Mitch Brown and producer Nate Kohn settled on "Shot," which attempts to make a "French Connection"-style ruckus with only a $15,000 budget to work with, leaning on University resources to see the project to completion. Created solely by college students (one of them being Chuck Russell, who would go on to a wildly uneven directorial career) trying to create a calling card for Hollywood employment, "Shot" is a weird but engaging compilation of stunts, shootouts, and cops and robbers, watching Kohn and Brown working within their means to assemble a smashmouth actioner while in the middle of rural Illinois, giving the feature the first of many distinctive marks. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

"Zama" is a period piece, an adaptation of a novel by Antonio di Benedetto, handed over to respected Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel ("The Headless Woman," "The Holy Girl"), who makes a return to screens after a near-decade break from fictional storytelling. Perhaps fueled by her own career set-backs, Martel pours her perspective into "Zama," which examines the days of a Spanish officer (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) in colonial South America trying to get himself out of professional and psychological stasis, running into all kinds of problems as the surroundings start to poison his mind. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As he ascends in filmmaking circles, director Yorgos Lanthimos has sharpened his vision for eccentricity, taking on dark projects that make the most of his strange vision for human (and inhumane) interactions. After coming to world cinema’s attention with “Dogtooth,” Lanthimos has found success with endeavors such as “The Lobster” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” retaining his delight with disaster while edging his way into bigger projects. With “The Favourite,” the helmer has the closest thing to a mainstream hit on his hands, returning to screens with a period piece that’s a bit like watching professional wrestling, offering broad performances, wild turns of fate, and hateful behavior. “The Favourite” is a black comedy, and one that benefits from Lanthimos’s particular world view, using his quirks and adoration for emotional instability to make a relationship picture where nobody possess even a spark of warmth. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

Peter Jackson is no stranger to filmmaking technology. The driving force behind “The Lord of the Rings,” “The Hobbit,” and “King Kong,” Jackson has always managed to create CGI-laden adventures with extreme detail, going beyond the manufacturing of monsters to generate entire worlds for audiences to get lost in. While the concentration has been on fantasy and horror endeavors for the better part of his career, Jackson goes beyond his creative borders with “They Shall Not Grow Old,” which attempts to turn 100-year-old footage from World War I into a living, breathing immersion into a time and place traditionally viewed in scratchy black and white. Jackson’s team of moviemaking wizards have transformed brittle celluloid into flesh and blood, working with color, sound, and clarity to deliver a vision of WWI that’s not about flipping through pages of history, but providing 3D experiences from the men who were there. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For her directorial debut, Bridey Elliot has decided to make it a family affair. A third-generation performer in the Elliot household, the helmer turns to her famous relatives for assistance in bringing “Clara’s Ghost” to life, hiring father Chris and sister Abby for help, also encouraging her mother Paula, an acting novice, to take on the responsibility of the main role. Elliot also doesn’t stray far from home, literally using her family’s Connecticut residence as the setting for this specialized freak-out, which has the air of horror but the bitterness of therapy. “Clara’s Ghost” is definitely not for everyone, but those capable of weathering Elliot’s mixture of genre attacks and home movies are rewarded with a pleasingly odd endeavor that, if it doesn’t scare you, it will at least provide some insight into how the Elliot household works. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The screenplay for “Asher” is credited to Jay Zaretsky, and he sets out to deliver a mournful, sobering take on the aging hitman subgenre. In many ways, the writing is similar to the 1997 classic “Grosse Pointe Blank,” but Zaretsky isn’t interested in having much fun with this story, electing to keep the concept of a killer suddenly targeted for death as serious as possible, striving for characterization, not action. “Asher” gets very dark at times, but it’s never far away from a commendable performance or intriguing study of the human experience, with director Michael Caton-Jones (“This Boy’s Life,” “Scandal”) maintaining impressive control over the tone of the movie, steering difficult material through difficult realizations about life and the cinematic panic of men with guns trying to pick each other off. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As an actor, Alex Pettyfer has been extremely problematic. He’s struggled with emotive performances and American accents, trying to survive dreck like “Beastly,” “I Am Number Four,” and the “Endless Love” remake. Things have improved for Pettyfer in recent years (including turns in “Elvis & Nixon” and “The Strange Ones”), but with “Back Roads,” he really seems to be taking the possibilities of his career seriously, working to define himself as something more than a handsome man willing to take his shirt off for the camera. Pettyfer is so intent on doing something substantial here, he also makes his directorial debut with “Back Roads,” putting himself in charge of a frightfully lurid and pained family drama, giving himself a tonal challenge he manages to pull off with concentration on performances and a slowly rising tide of mental illness, careful not to overwhelm viewers with unsettling revelations. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Rob Brydon is a famous Welsh comedian, rarely finding his way to American theaters, mostly stuck in supporting roles in recent fantasy films such as “Cinderella” and “The Huntsman: Winter’s War.” Perhaps his most defined international offering is “The Trip,” a television series turned into movie for art-house release, where he joined co-star Steve Coogan for a restaurant tour of Northern England. A minor hit, there were two sequels (“The Trip to Italy” and “The Trip to Spain”), giving Brydon some presence outside of Europe, sharing his particular way with punchlines and celebrity impressions. With “Swimming with Men,” Brydon leads a large cast across familiar British comedy terrain, with this “Full Monty”-style romp utterly dependent on its star to weave magic with a screenplay that doesn’t welcome inventive silliness. “Swimming with Men” means to have heart and trigger smiles, but what it needs is writing worthy of Brydon’s talents, giving the main attraction a cinematic playground to explore, not a yellow line of cliché to follow. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While two films sharing the same idea released around the same time isn’t a new phenomenon, it’s not something that happens all that often with art-house fare. Last summer, there was “The Miseducation of Cameron Post,” a searing tale of a teen forced to attend a gay conversion camp to purge her of “evil.” And now there’s “Boy Erased,” which also examines the panic of a young man reluctantly submitting to a system that’s created to destroy natural spirit. Bother features are vital for their analysis of horror that remains in place in many states today, attempting to paint a portrait of manipulation and even torture that exposes camp practices, with humiliations carried out in the name of God. One movie is an unsettling and deeply felt examination of identity and resignation, creating an unforgettable look at the dismantling of a human soul, and the other is “Boy Erased.” Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“All the Devil’s Men” marks the leading man debut of Milo Gibson, who’s quickly climbed the industry ladder after making his acting introduction for his father, Mel, in 2016’s “Hacksaw Ridge.” While he looks the part, Gibson doesn’t necessarily have the stuff of a screen bruiser just yet, visibly struggling through “All the Devil’s Men,” which casts him as a CIA rogue with a kill first, ask questions later attitude, requiring him to project a lot of personality that otherwise isn’t there. Not helping the cause is writer/director Matthew Hope, who’s trying to put on a bad-ass display of boiling masculinity and world concerns about the growing threat of terrorism, only to make a picture that looks like a backyard production, unable to hide budget limitations, even while it delivers all kinds of violence and acts of intimidation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Responding to the growing crisis in the farmlands of America during the 1980s, Hollywood tried to identify the pressure put on farmers to protect their lands from predatory banking practices built on unrealistic business expectations. While the subject matter was timely and critical of government agriculture policies, stories of family upheaval and financial disaster also provided premium drama, offering filmmakers a chance to delve into rural lives that are rarely defined in full. In 1984 there was "The River," with Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek, and "Country," which gifted Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard a chance to stretch by portraying a farming couple suddenly under siege by threats of foreclosure and a loss of their way of life. Scripted by William D. Wittliff ("Legends of the Fall," "Barbarosa"), "Country" pushes as far as it can with its bleak observance of failure and humiliation, trying to remain communicative about the human spirit while taking the central crisis as serious as a Disney production can. It's not a cheery viewing experience, but Wittliff grasps the hardscrabble living experience and household tensions, while Lange and Shepard deliver some of their finest work in showy but sincere roles that depict the death of the American Dream.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There's no one way to start a comedy, but perhaps a cruel murder isn't the best way to commence 1992's "Blame It on the Bellboy," which wants to be a rip-roaring farce, only to spend its introductory period detailing loss of life. Of course, this is one of many issues hounding the feature, which intends to pay tribute to the wacky comedies of yesteryear, pitting a collection of characters suffering through life-altering misunderstandings against one another, setting them loose in the tourist paradise of Venice, Italy. Writer/director Mark Herman doesn't seem to be making a dark endeavor, but there's unshakable gloominess to "Blame It on the Bellboy," which works through violence, death, prostitution, and unbearable loneliness when it isn't trying to be hilarious with hoary jokes and painfully exaggerated performances. Herman's trying to replicate something specific here, but his timing and tone are way off. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Actor/stuntman Kane Hodder is primarily known for his work on the "Friday the 13th" series, portraying Jason Voorhees for four movies, starting with 1987's "The New Blood." He's celebrated for his reworking of Jason's monster stomp, taking a figure of horror cinema and turning him into an icon. "To Hell and Back: The Kane Hodder Story" sets out to humanize Hodder, to expose his real side after decades spent behind mask and makeup. Director Derek Dennis Herbert strives to understand what makes Hodder tick, using guidance from the subject's 2011 autobiography to inspire this documentary, which employs a great number of famous faces and close friends to explore Hodder's personality and professional triumphs, while the man himself sits down to share harrowing tales of medical and social challenges while helped to shape the genre legend that remains today.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Tim Robbins starred in Robert Altman's "The Player," with the 1992 movie managing to boost his career critically and creatively. In 1999, Robbins attempted to repay the favor by making "Cradle Will Rock," an ambitious picture about politics, passion, and the arts that's clearly influenced by Altman's oeuvre, with Robbins trying to pull off a sophisticated cinematic braid that ties performance, music, and storytelling reach together. It's a messy film, taking a very long time to go nowhere specific, but the ride is what matters most to the helmer, who delivers an intelligent, intermittently charged journey into America during the 1930s, investigating the churn of class and political divide while creating an evocative look at the shining light of the theater scene in New York City as it's attacked by government forces trying to stifle radical thought. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com