Director Kenneth Branagh has been working recently to up his career profile, taking on larger productions such as “Murder on the Orient Express” (and its sequel, “Death on the Nile,” which is due in 2022) and “Artemis Fowl.” These have been large-budget offerings meant reach a global audience, and “Belfast” feels like a response to that sort of professional pressure. Instead of grand mysteries and CGI-laden adventuring, Branagh goes small with his latest feature, which is a semi-autobiographical tale of growing up in Ireland during the late 1960s. For “Belfast,” coming-of-age ideas are paired with real-world horror, as the writing examines the growing troubles of Northern Ireland during this era, from the perspective of a pre-teen boy trying to make sense of all the change that surrounds him. Branagh has the clarity of memory on his side for this effort, but his editorial control isn’t nearly as focused, finding the picture a scattered series of dramatic entanglements and political content that never gels in a poetic manner. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The 1950s were a fertile period in horror, introducing audiences to the simple pleasures of Atomic Age nightmares, which included a subgenre involving "big bug" pictures. These efforts turned everyday critters into city-smashing threats, eventually inspiring generations of filmmakers to try their luck at reviving the big screen experience. In 2002, producers Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich aimed to recreate B-movie mayhem from a bygone era with "Eight Legged Freaks," a decidedly high-tech version of monster mayhem, with copious amounts of CGI used to bring a giant spider invasion to life. Director Ellory Elkayem makes his helming debut with the feature (also co-scripting with Jesse Alexander), and he's never exactly sure what kind of endeavor "Eight Legged Freaks" is. There's an uneasy blend of frights and funny business to process, with jokes lacking definition and terror muted by attempts at zaniness. There's some fun to be had with the premise, but the production ultimately doesn't know what it wants to be, resulting in a mediocre attempt to revive big bug thrills and chills. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For director Alan Birkinshaw, the job of adapting Edgar Allan Poe stories was his primary career focus in the late 1980s, with "The Masque of the Red Death" following his time on 1989's "The House of Usher." Of course, these are loose versions of the original stories, but Birkinshaw is hoping to conjure something spooky and B-movie baroque with the features, finding "The House of Usher" the more inspired production, delivering a mild Hammer Films vibe as actors Oliver Reed and Donald Pleasance do their best to ham it up while the story details horrible things happening to a young woman stuck in a dangerous situation of obsession. The endeavor isn't sharp, but it has some degree of enthusiasm for broad antics, making for an amusing sit as Birkinshaw tries to create something savage with his low budget and game cast. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A period mystery collides with horror and action in 2001's "Brotherhood of the Wolf," which represents co-writer/director Christophe Gans's attempt to change the course of the French film industry, adding a little violent genre excitement for the masses. It's a valiant mission to deliver bigger thrills, and the premise is loaded with strangeness, blending magic, myth, the French Revolution, and some sexual power, with Gans using all he can to summon a bizarre adventure that occasionally packs quite a punch as Hong Kong choreography crashes into a stately European endeavor. It's an excessively long feature, but "Brotherhood of the Wolf" holds attention for most of its run time, finding Gans eager to please with his usual mix of fantasy visuals and charged encounters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1974's "High School Fantasies" was created to cash-in on the unexpected success of 1973's "American Graffiti." The George Lucas masterpiece was the tiny movie that could, offering audiences a way out of the Nixon years with a healthy dose of nostalgia, offering a time machine to the early 1960s, when the future was unwritten. Lucas cleverly recreated the era and filled his feature with lively personalities and relatable emotions. Director James Bryan doesn't get the same kind of mileage out of "High School Fantasies," which also attempts to revive the sights and sounds of 1962, but with an adult film budget. The helmer hopes to create a spirited romp about oversexed teenagers and their strange adventures with heavy petting, but there's also a hardcore aspect the picture that's hastily worked into the flow of the endeavor, with Bryan doing his best to shape something resembling a story, fighting the randomness of the effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1984's "Streetwise," Erin Blackwell was known as "Tiny." A 14-year-old prostitute, the girl struggled with a life spent on the hard streets of Seattle, making fleeting friendships and experiencing something resembling love with a boy named Rat. Erin Blackwell eventually survived her brutal formative years, and 2016's "Tiny: The Life of Erin Blackwell" offers a reunion with the now 44-year-old mother of 10 children, who continues on her journey to basic functionality, only now she's saddled with a lot more responsibility. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Taking inspiration from a Life Magazine article by Cheryl McCall and photographer Mary Ellen Mark, director Martin Bell ventures into Seattle to better understand life for the street kids who populate the urban areas. The 1984 documentary "Streetwise" aims to explore this existence, where survival is a daily activity, and the community is filled with children who are perhaps better off on their own than with the dangerous families they've managed to escape. It's a no-win situation for the subjects in "Streetwise," with Bell trying to respect the natural rhythm of this world, which is teeming with confused adolescents left with nothing but their own ill-formed instincts. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Rawson Marshall Thurber has a special relationship with actor Dwyane Johnson, previously collaborating with the star on the comedy, “Central Intelligence,” and the disaster picture, “Skyscraper.” Thurber makes his third straight Johnson endeavor with “Red Notice,” which hopes to be a sweeping comedic caper featuring the bulky performer, delivered on a big budget that necessitates the addition of two other super-famous performers: Ryan Reynolds and Gal Gadot. The trio are unleashed in this criminal extravaganza, tasked with bringing high levels of charm to the production while Thurber masterminds elaborate infiltration and escape sequences. Johnson, Gadot, and Reynolds are basically making a Jackie Chan movie with “Red Notice,” which isn’t advanced filmmaking by any means, but has a candied appeal for fans of nonstop quipping and large-scale stunt set pieces. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Spencer” is not a bio-pic of Diana, Princess of Wales. It’s a chamber piece about the haunted woman, offering more of a psychological profile than a tour of exact details concerning her personal history. The feature is directed by Pablo Larrain, who attempted a similar study of unimaginable stress brewing inside a delicate mind with 2016’s “Jackie,” seemingly drawn to these types of cinematic inspections. “Jackie” was a hypnotic, funereal viewing experience, while “Spencer” aims to be more abstract and artful, with Larrain intentionally getting away from expectations during his examination of Diana’s fragile state of panic. Larrain aims to get inside Diana’s head and remain there for two hours, which is good for some striking images of struggle, but the picture isn’t exactly satisfying, with its addiction to elusiveness throttling dramatic potential. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Tom Hanks has made his fair share of movies about isolated characters, which plays to his considerable strengths as an actor. This tradition returns in “Finch,” with the star portraying a brilliant mind trapped inside a dying body, looking to the company of A.I. to help carry on through an apocalyptic situation on Earth. Hanks is the reason to remain with the story, as his ability to portray nuanced emotions and register degrees of panic are what make him such a special talent. Thankfully, screenwriters Craig Luck and Ivor Powell have something in mind with “Finch,” which explores the nature of trust, parenthood, and responsibility while highlighting various acts of survival. It’s a softer picture than it initially appears, finding ways to be meaningful about the human experience while still meeting suspense needs with its dystopian setting, and all the dangers it contains. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“One Shot” is the latest picture to use the gimmick of a “one take” filmmaking approach, helping to make material that might otherwise be mundane emerge as something cinematically exciting. Director James Nunn (“The Marine 5” and “The Marine 6”) embarks on a technical journey with the production, organizing controlled chaos to best amplify the action interests of the screenplay, using his camera to dodge danger and weave around the characters for 90 minutes of exposition and deadly confrontations. “One Shot” employs technology to sell the magic of an unbroken take, and while the idea doesn’t make for stunning drama, it does manage to generate a few adrenaline rushes during the run time. Complexity isn’t the goal of the feature, which does just fine with pure aggression and a somewhat chilling study of obedience, and Nunn works to crank up the endeavor’s kill count with help from star Scott Adkins. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

This time last year, writer/director Jim Cummings delivered “The Wolf of Snow Hollow,” with the idiosyncratic filmmaker striving to put his stamp on a genre picture, remaining in touch with the violent extremes of a horror movie while still overseeing a screenplay populated with unusual characters and odd situations. Cummings returns with “The Beta Test,” sharing helming and writing duties with co-star P.J. McCabe, this time trading the possibility of fictional creatures with the harsh reality of Hollywood predators, who are just as vicious and relentless. The material is a hodgepodge of ideas and targets, blending sexual obsession with relationship anxiety, and there’s plenty of material about the brutality of the agent system, which is soon joined by an assessment of digital footprints and their power to ruin lives. “The Beta Test” tries to be everything, keeping Cummings out in front with a twitchy lead performance. It ultimately takes on too much, but the production nails some aspects of employment and cohabitation, offering unsettling realism when it comes to the way people treat one another. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Making low-budget films isn’t easy, with challenges common to the job, forcing moviemakers to dream up solutions to make sure something ends up on the screen. In the case of “Dangerous,” money matters allegedly crippled the production, which started shooting in 2015 before running into difficulties, triggering a five-year break from work, resuming in 2020. This incredible delay is perhaps the most interesting aspect of “Dangerous,” which suffers from a nondescript title and an even blander plot. Screenwriter Christopher Borrelli hopes to generate a “Die Hard”-style actioner with a northwestern island setting, but he doesn’t have many ideas for mayhem, electing to keep the material in neutral as dull characters interact, occasionally shooting guns at one another. Director David Hackl is equally uninspired, playing a long game of padding to make a feature-length run time, showing limited vision for the level of extreme physicality this type of entertainment needs to distinguish itself. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Earlier this year, there was “Body Brokers,” a misguided attempt to expose the minor and major scams of the insurance industry as it deals with the revolving door approach of drug treatment facilities. Writer/director John Swab had a great idea for a stinging expose on unrepentant greed, but he decided to bury the good stuff under layers of crime movie mush. Swab is back with “Ida Red,” which does away with commentary on the ways of the world to charge ahead as a tale of bad dudes making poor life choices, with a vague summary of tangled family ties to give it all some deeper meaning. Swab likes the hard stuff, but it’s impossible to ignore just how derivative “Ida Red” is. There’s criminal activity and desperate times, but Swab can’t bring the film to life, with the finished picture playing like a work-in-progress cut. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Baseball movies were all the rage in the early 1990s, especially ones involving children and their love of the game. Joining "The Sandlot," "Rookie of the Year," and "Angels in the Outfield" is 1994's "Little Big League," which had the advantage of a slightly less fantastical premise, exploring the life of a 12-year-old boy who inherits control of the Minnesota Twins. Co-writer/director Andrew Scheinman (co-founder of Castle Rock Entertainment and producer of "When Harry Met Sally," "A Few Good Men," and "Misery") makes a valiant attempt to reduce the sitcom-ish aspects of the premise, focusing on the world of baseball and the trials of being an overworked kid. Not everything connects as it should in "Little Big League," which doesn't contain many laughs, but Scheinman finds the spirit of the picture, playing up a remarkable situation with some down-to-earth writing and an enjoyable supporting cast. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1979's "The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan" is a television film that's hoping to appeal to a singular demographic, offering romantic conflict, domestic despair, and secret desires. It's also a time travel movie, with writer/director Frank De Felitta adapting a novel by David Williams, trying to do something sincere with the concept of a magical dress that offers a broken woman a chance at a happy life. It's all very silly, but De Felitta manages to make the premise work to a certain degree, replicating the romance novel experience for the screen, providing a satisfactory understanding of character and motivation while trying to whip the material into a sufficient network television lather. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"So Long Billie" (aka "Pompei") appears to pursue a hypnotic viewing experience. Writer/directors Anna Falgueres and John Shank don't have much time for storytelling with their endeavor, making room for lengthy shots of nature, open spaces, sexual connections, and naked actors. There's little in the way of drama in the feature, but a direct assessment of motivation doesn't seem to be the point of the movie, which chooses to exist as a cinematic mist of sorts, hoping to attract viewers interested in art-house hypnotism. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com