“Adopting Audrey” is based on a true story, and such a claim seems plausible during the viewing experience. Writer/director M. Cahill (who hasn’t been credited with anything since 2007’s “King of California”) aims to create a modest overview of people trying to work through their issues, keeping the feature as low to the ground as possible, reflecting the reserved nature of the characters. It’s a story about a woman searching for connection during a period of isolation, and while the title hints at something a bit more playful, “Adopting Audrey” is more of a meditative exploration of relationships, especially between children and parents. Cahill extracts nuanced performances out of his talented cast, and the ensemble remains the primary reason to stay with the endeavor, which isn’t quite as wise or touching as the helmer believes. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s interesting to see how the blockbuster success of 1975’s “Jaws” remains in play to this day, with producers occasionally returning to the people vs. nature formula to give audiences a wild ride of killer creature formula. In recent years, sharks have been used as the demons of the deep, offering aquatic adventures with ferocious antagonists. For “Beast,” a lion returns to power as the focus of horror, with screenwriter Ryan Engle (“Rampage,” “Breaking In”) cooking up a struggle for survival in the heat of South Africa, pitting a father of two against a predator who’s not in the mood for mercy. “Beast” is simple in many ways, and Engle hopes to secure some level of emotional engagement to help power up audience involvement. However, as these movies tend to go, the sheer force of a lion tearing after prey is what carries the viewing experience, and director Baltasar Kormakur (“2 Guns,” “Everest”) respects the hunt, delivering a fast-paced thriller with occasional bursts of violence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The math on “Orphan: First Kill” is a little odd. The original feature was released in 2009, with star Isabelle Fuhrman a child actress hired to play a nine-year-old girl with a taste for murder who was actually a 33-year-old proportional dwarf. Now there’s a prequel, with Fuhrman a 25-year-old woman tasked with playing a vicious nine-year-old again 13 years later. Other productions would’ve recast the role, but the producers are determined to work with the star again, cooking up a prequel which tests the limits of digital de-aging, returning tiny threat Esther to power in a picture that weirdly took an eternity to become a reality. Patience is rewarded, to a certain degree, by “First Kill,” which has a better handle on the absolutely ridiculous premise of “Orphan,” striving to come up with its own level of absurdity to top what’s come before, wisely dialing down some of the distasteful aspects of the 2009 endeavor to nail a more enjoyable B-movie ride. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Co-writers Alison Brie and Jeff Baena previously collaborated on 2020’s “Horse Girl.” They share a fondness for bizarre material and deep character work, playing with tonality and comedy as they visit some shadowy psychological spaces. The duo returns with “Spin Me Round,” which has the initial vibe of an upbeat workplace farce, but Baena (who directs) and Brie (who stars) aren’t committed to a straightforward tale of everyday pressures and absurdities, committed to strangeness that’s slowly massaged into the material. Much like “Horse Girl,” “Spin Me Round” has moments of greatness, but the work eventually runs out of inspiration, getting grabby with silliness and sinister business in the second half, which doesn’t line up with the breezy peculiarities of the first half. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The fate of the universe is decided inside a rest stop men’s room in “Glorious,” which is the latest offering in COVID-19 production limitations, pitting man versus an unseen entity positioned on the other end of a glory hole. Writers Joshua Hull, David Ian McKendry, and Todd Rigney have the difficult task of making something mysterious and threatening while stuck inside of a bathroom for most of the run time, and they manage to get somewhere with the strange premise. “Glorious” favors lead performances from Ryan Kwanten and J.K. Simmons, who deliver intensity that helps to build suspense primarily through conversations, but director Rebekah McKendry has the challenge of making a single location feel like the middle of a cosmic battleground, shaping a successful sense of mystery to the picture. There’s not a lot to the feature, which occasionally struggles to dream up challenges for the characters, but grotesqueness remains, along with an intriguing puzzle of motivation, keeping this small production engrossing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Immaculate Room” presents the experience of two characters who’ve chosen to remain in isolation for 50 days, without access to the world outside, simply stuck with each other in a bare space, left with only themselves to deal with. It’s a take on a social experiment, offered some cinematic extremity by writer/director Mukunda Michael Dewil, who sets out to make a mess of the arrangement, toying with psychological breaks and challenges, working to transform the endeavor into a thriller of sorts. The human condition isn’t thoroughly analyzed in the feature, but Dewil has some compelling ideas to share on the strain of such stressful cohabitation, offering a study of slow mental breakdowns, wild mood swings, and bitter relationship inspection that comes to haunt the players during this lengthy, punishing game of endurance. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Spy Kids” was released 21 years ago, and it remains a powerful influence over family entertainment to this day. The Robert Rodriguez film was a delight, mixing decent acts of slapstick and silliness with a plot concerning the empowerment of children, turning them into superheroes. It found an audience and was promptly transformed into a brand name, and now “Secret Headquarters” is basically trying to tell the same story, only with a more Marvel-y approach and the use of a single set to house most of its property damage. Co-writers/directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost are tasked with making a lively adventure with junior high Avengers, and the first half of “Secret Headquarters” has the right tone and sense of exploration to keep it at least mildly interesting. The back nine of the production doesn’t sustain any fun factor, with the endeavor becoming too heavy with conflict and dreadful acts of comedy, bringing the feature to a halt long before it concludes. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

What’s left to be said about Diana, Princess of Wales? Since her death in 1997, she’s been the subject of countless news reports, books, and all sorts of media endeavors. Recently, the life and times of Diana were turned into a high-profile feature (2021’s “Spencer”), and the difficult realities of her life were transformed into a Broadway-ready theatrical event in “Diana: The Musical.” Her story has been dissected in every possible way, feeding what appears to be an endless appetite to revisit the details of her time as a member of the Royal Family, and her eventual departure from such British order, becoming a pop culture figure. “The Princess” is a documentary that tracks Diana’s days from her time as a teenager to her death in Paris, but director Ed Perkins seems aware of the fatigue such a saga could potentially trigger, aiming to explore the decades strictly through film and video of Diana, with media reports serving as commentary. There are no stuffy interviews with “experts,” and no crude recreations, just the footage itself, superbly edited by Jinx Godfrey and Daniel Lapira, who assemble a rich understanding of public turbulence and internalized emotion, allowing the highlights and horror of Diana’s experience to lead the way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Emily the Criminal” is out to capture this particular moment in time. In an age of financial instability and fear, here comes writer/director John Patton Ford with a tale of one woman’s quest to free herself from the bondage of debt, student debt to be specific. It’s a topic that’s commanded attention and debate over the last few years, and Ford is trying to make such a personal struggle easily understood for audiences, using an underworld journey to best identify the pressures of payments in an age of growing poverty. Ford is on to something different with “Emily the Criminal,” which has a crisp understanding of frustrations and anger tied to the loan business, providing a universal sense of stress, which makes for powerful cinema. The rest of the feature isn’t that well-observed, with Ford turning to formula to connect the dots with his character study, which doesn’t bring much texture to the viewing experience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Fall” is an exploitation movie that has a deep desire to be taken seriously as an offering of drama and suspense. Co-writers Jonathan Frank and Scott Mann (who also directs) come up with a decent exercise in thriller cinema, sending two twentysomething women up a T.V. tower for a social media adventure, soon stranding the pair on top of the rusted structure, leaving them to deal with all sorts of challenges to their safety. It’s a simple recipe for cheap thrills, but those expecting a cool 75-minute-long ride of danger and disaster are instead offered 107 minutes of iffy screenwriting choices and melodrama. There’s not nearly enough tension to support the limited scope of “Fall,” which sets up a dire situation of endurance in an unusual location, but doesn’t have a large enough imagination to really bring it to life, content to slog through banal interpersonal issues and predictable near misses. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com