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When making a movie about the lives of paramedics, intensity to a point of insanity is always the atmosphere. There’s nothing cozy about the vocation, which demands everything from employees, especially those working in troubled areas of the country. Madness is the journey, but co-writer/director Christopher Leone makes a valiant attempt to find some dark humor in the details of life and death. “Code 3” strives to follow the rocket sled ride of EMS life during a 24-hour-long shift for two veterans and a rookie, sending them around Los Angeles as they encounter people in dire need of medical treatment. Leone and co-writer Patrick Pianezza aim for realism in the work, delivering a disturbing understanding of mental illness and physical damage involved in this world. They also try to keep the feature at least somewhat approachable, giving star Rainn Wilson an opportunity to deliver perhaps the best performance of his career in a supremely challenging role. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The last time the Douglas Family attempted a multi-generational production, it was 2003’s “It Runs in the Family,” and it didn’t work. However, it did offer a chance for Kirk, Michael, and Cameron to act together in a feature, offering them a rare opportunity to interact on the screen. The Douglas clan tries again in “Looking Through Water,” which isn’t explicitly a reunion endeavor, but unites Michael and Cameron, who take supporting roles in this story about the pressures of life and the healing ways of fishing. Screenwriters Zach Dean (“The Gorge,” “The Tomorrow War”) and Rowdy Herrington (who directed 1989’s “Road House”) aren’t interested in putting any pressure on viewers, creating a mild study of relationships and family secrets, paying occasional attention to the soothing influence of fly fishing. “Looking Through Water” could use a bit more energy and intensity, but for those searching for something easy on the senses, the movie might work with its nonconfrontational ways. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Comedian Tig Notaro and actress Stephanie Allynne make their feature-length directorial debut with “Am I OK?” It’s the story of a woman’s journey of identity and emotion, touching on the experience of self-acceptance and the long road of realization involved in such an odyssey. The screenplay is credited to Lauren Pomerantz, who’s out to make a comedy with the tale, but also explore some delicate feelings, setting up a tonal tightrope walk for the helmers. Notaro and Allynne manage to make a very funny movie, but “Am I OK?” is also tender when it needs to be, and surprisingly intimate at times. It’s a very small production examining human issues, with Pomerantz never going to explosive extremes to summon drama, and for those who enjoy milder views of character concerns, the picture hits the spot with lots of charm and realism. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1985's "Amazon Jail" contained unintentional laughs, but it was mostly a production out to provide a serious understanding of dangers involving a collection of women and their fight against human traffickers. 1987's "Amazon Jail II" is an intentional comedy, turning something that intended to be both titillating and bleak into an episode of "The Benny Hill Show," complete with undercranked shenanigans and screen time set aside to ogle female characters. "Amazon Jail II" isn't really a sequel, but more of a remake of the original endeavor, only here the emphasis is on silliness, watching the actors flail around in an attempt to be funny. Director Conrado Sanchez doesn't really have a vision for the feature, loosely stitching together whatever he can capture with his camera, creating a wearisome viewing experience that's too random to be engaging, resembling a production where everyone gave up early on. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Helen’s Dead” is meant to be a wacky murder mystery featuring a cast of characters scheming and screaming their way through a disastrous dinner party. Co-writers Amy Brown Carver and K. Asher Levin (who also directs) have something in mind with the feature, playing into a “Clue”-style atmosphere of frantic people dealing with a murder and their own antagonisms, but it’s a long night with these personalities. “Helen’s Dead” is roughly handled by Levin (“Dig,” “Cougars Inc.”), who’s way too permissive with his cast, encouraging improvisations and overacting to a point where the endeavor feels like a filmed stage show performed for friends and family. The writing adds turns and confrontations to keep things interesting, but the picture mostly tests viewer patience, offering little in the way of inspired madness as things go from bad to worse for the guests at a doomed gathering. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Last month, there was “Tetris,” which took a serious look at the creation of a beloved video game, transforming business dealings into a spy film of sorts, with the production trying to wring some suspense out of contract negotiations and corporate villainy. And now there’s “BlackBerry,” which offers the same idea, only here the subject is the once popular smartphone that revolutionized the mobile device industry, inspiring insane popularity in the early 2000s. There’s more corporate villainy and contract negotiations, but co-writer/director Matt Johnson (taking inspiration from the book “Losing the Signal,” by Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff) creates a more involving arena of egos and business dealings with the feature, keeping the picture moving along as the story grows meaner and stranger, also examining a wealth of idiosyncratic personalities. “BlackBerry” is listed as a “fictionalization” of the company’s rise and fall, but there are universal truths about human behavior to savor in this engrossing endeavor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The creative goal of “Chevalier” is to provide some illumination on the achievements of classical composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. He was a man of extreme talent and confidence, but he was the child of a white aristocrat and a black slave, ushered into a world that had little interest in a public celebration of his achievements. Screenwriter Stefani Robinson and director Stephen Williams don’t deliver a traditional bio-pic with “Chevalier,” instead looking to dissect a short amount of time in his life, where the pressures of conformity collided with the development of rebellion in France. There’s combustible energy in the endeavor, which gets off on the right foot, focusing on racial and social challenges for the main character, highlighting his coping mechanisms while facing constant dismissal. It’s not a cinematic spark that remains for the entire run time, but it’s there to get the picture going, generating interest in the ways of a virtuoso and his battle to be treated humanely. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2014’s “John Wick” was a relatively simple affair. It was a revenge picture with clear antagonists and a straightforward mission of payback, using extreme violence and brutal style to reinvent the action movie in a genuinely thrilling manner, using just about 95 minutes to get the job done. Lean and mean. “John Wick: Chapter 4” is anything but lean, asking audiences to be patient with its gargantuan 165-minute-long run time, with the character set on a globetrotting mission of fury, still managing to survive all sorts of physical attacks. The new sequel is definitely mean, with returning director Chad Stahelski absolutely determined to top himself with this new wave of furious stunt work and extended choreography, once again putting star Keanu Reeves through the paces as John returns to power in this exhausting endeavor, which still retains many cinematic highs, but good heavens, does it ever need a few more passes in the editing room. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When one recalls the cinematic successes of the 1979 film year, different titles come to mind. There's "Alien," "Apocalypse Now," "The Jerk," and even "The Muppet Movie." These were hit features that inspired big crowds at theaters, and many have stood the test of time, becoming classics. And then there's "The Amityville Horror," a tiny indie release with an apparently powerful marketing campaign, managing to topple most of the competition to become the second highest-grossing picture of the year, only bested by the Academy Award-winning "Kramer vs. Kramer." The financial triumph of "The Amityville Horror" is shocking, definitely more so than the endeavor itself, which provides an unusually inert viewing experience, especially for a chiller. For two hours, the effort drags along, offering a mild haunted house tale that's in no hurry to unnerve viewers. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1972's "Tropic of Cancer" is not a film for viewers who crave airtight storytelling. The production is more about ideas and situations, trying to build a murder mystery out of what feels like random parts at times. However, the endeavor magically remains interesting due to its location, with the production trying to showcase as much of Port-au-Prince, Haiti as possible, and once a killer starts to become a larger presence in the picture, "Tropic of Cancer" perks up, delivering some black-gloved horror for the fanbase, while nightmare realm additions offer something outside the norm, which helps the cause. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1975's "Rollerball" presents a future where corporations control the world, using their power to keep the public subservient through the use of propaganda and violent entertainment, often going to extremes to maintain authority. The feature is set in the year 2018, and it's really not far off from the real 2018, with screenwriter William Harrison (adapting his own short story) managing quite an impressive feat of prescient thinking, providing a vision of horror that's been somewhat realized in the decades since the picture's initial release. That's part of the appeal of "Rollerball," which digs into the terror of conformity and the liberation of awareness, tracking the lead character's awakening as a life of fame and fortune provided by corporate overlords is gradually revealed to be a prison, and one he's looking to escape. Harrison has a vivid imagination to offer, and director Norman Jewison provides passionate leadership with this Kubrick-ian take on a strange dystopia, generating an intriguing sense of intimidation and frustration as he carefully realizes a mental breakthrough. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For quite some time, Jennifer Lawrence had a white-hot career. She starred in respected indie films, carried a blockbuster franchise in “The Hunger Games” saga, and collected an Academy Award for her performance in 2012’s “Silver Linings Playbook.” Lawrence was everywhere, developing a reputation for committed performances and screen charm, but she mostly dropped out of sight after 2019’s superhero disaster, “Dark Phoenix,” finally taking a break from the business (save for a part in the ensemble-driven "Don't Look Up") after working steadily for nearly a decade. Lawrence returns in “Causeway,” eschewing a grandiose role for something small in an extremely modest picture about the weight of guilt and the healing ways of friendships. There’s no major swing of importance from director Lila Neugebauer, who keeps things calm and introspective for the endeavor, which does well with Lawrence and co-star Brian Tyree Henry, but doesn’t aim much higher than a simple study of characters trying to sort through the buried pain in their lives. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Potential for something blistering is there for the taking in “End of the Road,” which puts Queen Latifah in Liam Neeson mode, offered an action role that requires a more physical screen presence. She plays a mother out to protect her family from the worst of the worst in Arizona, and the role suits her, offering interesting authority with some defined emotionality. For the first act, “End of the Road” builds some suspense and identifies concerns capably, as the screenplay attempts to merge domestic issues with criminal developments, with a road trip setting to keep things on the move. It builds well enough, but progress soon comes to a complete halt. There’s the sight of Latifah in butt-kicking mode, which is a decent distraction, yet the film can’t sustain tension or build compelling antagonists, and director Millicent Shelton (a television veteran) isn’t an action specialist, straining to do something different with a story that grows increasingly idiotic as it goes. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2020, director Tyler Cornack delivered “Butt Boy.” The cult-ready effort tracked the desperation of a man and his battle with the unholy power of his rear end, with Cornack’s production team, Tiny Cinema, creating a detective story about a most unusual event. The endeavor wasn’t without tonal and humor problems, but it managed to find ways to make pronounced oddity amusing, instead of the usual helping of obnoxiousness. Tiny Cinema is back with…er, “Tiny Cinema,” with writers Ryan Koch, William Morean, and Cornack (who also directs) creating an anthology film about the wonders of madness and the pains of trickery, sold with a defined sense of the absurd. “Tiny Cinema” is quite the viewing experience at times, mixing genuine hilariousness with a slow-burn sense of shock value, sold with lively, committed performances and a weird “Twilight Zone” vibe from Cornack, who creates consistent chapters in this tour of crazy ideas and desperate characters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“One Way” is being classified as a thriller, but suspense doesn’t actually arrive in the picture. It’s a small-scale endeavor, keeping up with pandemic production times by involving a small number of characters trying to make sense of their lives in limited locations, putting the weight of dramatic success on the actors, who have to come up with the feeling of entire lives while often sitting or standing in a single space. “One Way” is about a crime, but writer Ben Conway uses a dangerous situation to try and explore various personalities and relationships, only really pursuing tension with select moments of confrontation. There’s simply not enough here to carry a feature-length effort, with the material giving off heavy short story vibes, asking viewers to invest in uninteresting players involved in a dull game of trust, theft, and manipulation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s important to note that “Bodies Bodies Bodies” is not a slasher film, as marketing efforts have been selling the endeavor. It’s more of a murder mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie, only with a defined emphasis on the concerns and cacophony of Gen Z characters. The screenplay by Sarah DeLappe doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the particulars of a whodunit, instead aiming to capture the strain of relationships and the power of secrets while corpses pile up. “Bodies Bodies Bodies” has its entertainment value, and the cast is energized, ready to go where director Halina Reijn leads with this gradual descent into accusations and paranoia. It’s not an especially intriguing look at a community meltdown, but the movie offers a few electric moments, and DeLappe mostly sticks the landing, which isn’t easy in this subgenre. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Day Shift” is hoping to kickstart a fresh franchise with a story that concerns a union-backed effort to control the vampire population in California. It’s a blend of “Ghostbusters” and “Blade,” giving producers another opportunity to showcase monstrous happenings around the Los Angeles area, a location used often for its glamour and mystery. Writers Tyler Tice and Shay Hatten eschew the slickness of vamp-busting, preferring to deliver a blue-collar take on the business, and they elect to make a comedy out of the picture, maintaining distance from anything scary. Funny business is the stake pushed through the heart of “Day Shift,” which highlights exceptional stunt work and a delightful sense of chaos, but whenever there’s someone trying to be hilarious, the film dies, resulting in a highly uneven viewing experience that doesn’t live up to the promise of the premise. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2021, "Candyman" was released, which was a sequel to…"Candyman," a 1992 gothic horror feature adapted by writer/director Bernard Rose from a short story by Clive Barker. While stylishly made and thematically purposeful, it wasn't a scary movie, more interested in developing social and racial issues introduced in the original film. What makes Rose's picture at least somewhat commanding is its attention to the power of fear, with the production generating an impressively pressurized viewing experience that pulls scary business from a number of sources, contributing to a fantastically realized nightmare realm at times. The first "Candyman" remains the best in the series (this includes two other sequels), presenting a driving sense of doom that feels genuinely suffocating, with Rose using real-world agony to fuel something sinister, reaching effective points of terror. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It's enough for John Carpenter to make 1978's "Halloween," using his innate sense of style and tension to generate a horror classic. However, the helmer only expanded his creativity as he began his run of Hollywood work, and this amazing career managed to produce another masterpiece in 1981's "Escape from New York." Using influences from westerns and survival thrillers, Carpenter (joined by producer Debra Hill and co-writer Nick Castle) creates a study of endurance and antagonism with the feature, managing a slow-burn adventure that drips with electronic mood and idiosyncratic events. It also creates one of cinema's great antiheroes in Snake Plissken, an eyepatch-wearing nihilist brought vividly to life by Kurt Russell, in one of his best performances. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The world of "Star Trek" is enormous, with all types of media generating an impressively realized universe of characters, vehicles, and environments, giving fans a chance to completely immerse themselves in a fantasy realm that's carried on for nearly 70 years. Such escapism is a rare event, and director Roger Nygard and star/producer Denise Crosby seek to understand the subculture of fandom with 1997's "Trekkies" (theatrically released in 1999 as counterprogramming for "Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace"), which takes cameras into the world of "Star Trek" conventions, meeting the people who fully believe in the power of Gene Roddenberry's original creation. Tonality is tricky here, with the documentary threatening to veer into camp and cruelty at any moment, but the great joy of this picture is how it remains as respectful as possible while dealing with people who've handed their lives over to the brand, enjoying the possibilities of hope and the protection of cosplay. "Trekkies" is hilarious, but never mean- spirited, offering viewers a clear understanding of passion mixed with a heavy pour of peculiarity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com