They combined forces on comic book pages, and now they’re set to conquer animation. “Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” brings together two beloved superhero properties, though with wildly disparate backgrounds and standings in pop culture history. Screenwriter Marly Halpern-Graser completely understands the assignment and does a terrific job uniting Batman and the Turtles to face a common foe. A few of them, actually. Action-packed and humorous without being excessively goofy, “Batman vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” does really well within budget animation standards, with director Jake Castorena presenting a stylized, PG-13 extravaganza that’s peppered with enjoyable characters and major showdowns, giving fans the breezy, bruising sit they’ve been waiting for. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

David Dastmalchian makes his feature-length writing debut with “All Creatures Here Below,” and the actor makes a leap to take control of his career as a character actor, scripting himself a leading role in this downbeat drama. Taking inspiration from Terrence Malick and John Steinbeck, Dastmalchian and director Collin Schiffli present an American story of poverty and travel, trying to find the humanity in pure survival and denial. This is a not a cheery tale of misbegotten liberation, it’s something far grittier and troubling yet impressively managed by the production, which manages to find poetry within a dire living experience. Dastmalchian isn’t afraid to go to dark spaces with the material, but his attention to character behavior cuts through any bleakness, getting to know the personalities presented with unsettling intimacy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s been a long time since Johnny Depp played a normal human being. Perhaps he’s never played a role perfectly straight, at least since megafame arrived to claim his everyman appeal. “The Professor” provides the most earthbound Depp performance in a very long time, but that doesn’t mean the actor is ready to holster all his thespian quirks. Instead of Depp losing contact with reality to entertain himself, he’s challenged to play a man facing the end of his life, with all sorts of sobering feelings triggered after such a revelation. It’s not an easy turn for anyone, but Depp makes an attempt to dial down his eccentricities for writer/director Wayne Kramer, working hard to follow the helmer’s often bizarre tonal journey that begins with laughs and tries to end with tears, only most of the emotion doesn’t track as clearly as it should, periodically inspiring Depp to manufacture his own version of the movie with expected exaggeration. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2017’s “A Dog’s Purpose” had the advantage of being based on a popular novel by W. Bruce Cameron, giving fans a chance to see the book translated for the big screen. Schmaltz was piled high and its sense of humor was dismal, but “A Dog’s Purpose” found its audience, becoming a hit film. And with any box office success comes a sequel, following Cameron’s lead with “A Dog’s Journey,” which is also based on his work, continuing the adventures of Bailey, the canine who loves to die. While the first feature tried to shoehorn existential consideration into a picture that was mainly about extracting tears and arranging poop jokes, “A Dog’s Journey” doesn’t put in the same effort, eschewing deep thoughts to become a tired melodrama, playing like a Tyler Perry movie, but with dogs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Edward Zwick has made a few terrific features during his lengthy career (including “Legends of the Fall” and “Glory”), but in recent years, he’s lacked the ability to find decent project, dealing primarily with duds such as “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” and “Love & Other Drugs.” “Trial by Fire” represents Zwick’s effort to get his moviemaking mojo back, turning to the reliably of message-minded cinema for inspiration. The subject here is the death penalty, which has been examined in many pictures, and “Trial by Fire” doesn’t seem to recognize this reality, going through the motions when it comes to unlikely connections and persistent doubt, while the screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher heads to extreme manipulation to squeeze some suspense out of what’s a surprisingly uneventful film. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After struggling to find their footing with their remake of the French chiller, “Martyrs,” directors Kevin Goetz and Michael Goetz aim to bring a more American crisis to life with “A Violent Separation,” which sorts through family hostilities and murder in a rural southern location. The setting is familiar but always has potential, and screenwriter Michael Arkof has a vision to braid together domestic issues and resentments, aiming for a grand sweep of simmering hostilities. “A Violent Separation” doesn’t meet all its creative goals, but the helmers do try to manufacture gut-rot acts of guilt and maintain a mood of paranoia, with hopes to get the feature up to speed as something suspenseful and meaningful when it comes to the ties that bind. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

While dabbling in television direction, Amy Poehler makes her feature-length helming debut with “Wine Country,” and it’s amazing how long it’s taken her to make the career leap. To help cushion the experience, Poehler has stacked the cast with friends and frequent collaborators, trying to give the effort a lived-in feel to best support the material, which examines the anxious highs and lows of a 50th birthday party weekend in Napa Valley, California. Joined by screenwriters Liza Cackowski and Emily Spivey, Poehler guides a pleasingly scattered production, merging her skills with casual comedy with tales of tattered bonding, unleashing incredibly talented people on a production that welcomes shenanigans. There’s room for sobering realities, but “Wine Country” mostly remains silly and quite funny, with Poehler happy to let her cast run wild with emotional mood swings. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It feels uncomfortable to criticize “Poms” for its many filmmaking issues. It’s a harmless picture that’s meant to inspire an older audience commonly unrepresented in mainstream releases, presenting them with mildness all around. However, such vanilla interests fail to sustain the viewing experience, with the feature playing like a basic cable production, showing no interest in amplifying jokes or developing compelling obstacles for characters who could use a little more in the way of personal and athletic challenges. “Poms” is made for a specific audience, but that crowd deserves a little better than this movie, which has the potential to tear off into a proper farce, only to be more comfortable as a saccharine, predictable underdog story. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Third time’s the charm? Not in the case of “The Hustle,” which is a remake of 1988’s “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” which was a remake of 1964’s “Bedtime Story.” The tale of two con artists and their special way with manic swindling is certainly ripe for a periodic reworking, and the new film delivers an update with a female point of view, turning to Anne Hathaway and Rebel Wilson to play parts previously worked over by Michael Caine, Steve Martin, Marlon Brando, and David Niven. The shake-up is necessary, but Jac Schaeffer’s screenplay isn’t adventurous, playing the do-over game by reviving scenes from the earlier features, unwilling to color outside the lines with a premise that could do with a change in scenery and plotting. If you’ve seen “Bedtime Story” or “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” you’ve seen “The Hustle,” only the newest version is least effective, least refined version of the tale. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

The world of “Pokemon” has been around since 1996. However, its true popularity has always been a mystery, finding the fanbase treating the brand as a secret code (at least in America), permitting its producers to make a fortune without the burden of overexposure, with the last wave of “Pokemon” mania hitting in 2016, after the release of a beloved augmented reality game. The source material has been turned into movies before, plenty of them, but they’ve been animated, some very cheaply too. Now comes “Pokemon: Detective Pikachu,” which brings the characters and their battles to the big screen with a large budget and the participation of U.S. actors, giving this universe its first real test of global appeal since the late 1990s. People seem to love “Pokemon,” and “Detected Pikachu” tries to be respectful of such adoration, blending fan service with blockbuster intentions, coming up with a feature that’s enjoyable, but only when it takes matters seriously. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Tapping in the social issue zeitgeist, “Working Woman” takes a very potent look at the state of sexual harassment in the workplace. It’s an Israeli production from co-writer/director Michal Aviad, who uses brief moments of personal invasion to create an overall view of horror, approaching the subject from an achingly human point of view. “Working Woman” isn’t a message movie or a melodrama, but an unsettlingly realistic assessment of shame and confusion, examining how a spirit is diminished, and nearly destroyed, by unprofessional and criminal actions. While small in scale and deeply internalized, the feature is tremendously powerful and frightening, skipping hysterics to cut to the core of the hot button issue. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It was difficult enough to bring “The Lord of the Rings” saga to the screen, and now movie producers seek out the source of all the fantasy magic with “Tolkien,” which serves as a bio-pic of the famed Middle-Earth creator, J.R.R. Tolkien. Instead of returning to the depth of fantasy that turned the Englishman into a household name, “Tolkien” tries to remain an emotional event, studying how small ideas from a brilliant mind develop into iconic pages filled with creatures, quests, and harrowing acts of survival. The production can’t fit in everything and it shows, but the feature remains powerful in parts, with actor Nicholas Hoult doing a superb job pulling out the inner life of the author, giving much more than a simple understanding of creative influences. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For those who complain about the death of originality in filmmaking these days, here’s “The Professor and the Madman,” which explores the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Now there’s a tale that’s rarely explored, with the production taking inspiration from a Simon Winchester book to bring such specificity in invention to the screen. It’s a strange subject matter, but one worth investigating, bringing in actors Mel Gibson and Sean Penn to dramatize an unlikely partnership forged by a mutual love of words and obsession. “The Professor and the Madman” has screenplay issues, messing around with tonality one too many times, but there’s something interesting in the central crisis of language, with the production capturing the fever of research and breakthroughs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There are not a lot of sellable elements for “Tater Tot & Patton.” It’s a low-budget movie set in South Dakota, missing any sort of traditional cinematic polish. One of the picture’s main stars in Jessica Rothe, who recently watched her star rise after participating in two “Happy Death Day” features, making her beloved in genre circles. Beyond that, the production has to rely on emotional textures and gorgeous imagery, and thankfully there’s both. While the title suggests something poppy, “Tater Tot & Patton” is more reminiscent of early 1970s filmmaking, where initial unease, slightly comedic in tone, is only masking abyssal pain and addiction, with writer/director Andrew Kightlinger (“Dust of War”) using the stillness of his locations to mine some real heartbreak, finding interesting drama along the way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com