The latest addition to the new wave of dogsploitation movies, “A Dog’s Way Home” receives its inspiration from the author that helped to reignite canine fever at the multiplex. Writer W. Bruce Cameron co-scripts this adaptation of his 2017 novel, which essentially crosses the same dramatic terrain as “A Dog’s Purpose,” his 2010 book that was turned into massively successful 2017 film (a sequel is due out later this year). Cameron has created a career out of tales of four-legged devotion, and while it does away with the mysticism of the previous effort, “A Dog’s Way Home” is not short on dewy depictions of animal relationships and the healing powers of pooch presence. What’s added here is a layer of darkness that’s unexpected, helping to dilute some of the saccharine storytelling most productions feel they need to connect the dots with this type of family entertainment. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Upside” is a remake of the 2011 French comedy, “The Intouchables,” which conquered the box office during its initial European release, but failed to find much monetary action in America. Perhaps this is why director Neil Burger has decided to try his luck with a do-over, tapping into the material’s audience-pleasing ways to deliver a perfectly mediocre version of a lukewarm dramedy. “The Intouchables” wasn’t high art, but it delivered flavorful performances without completely giving itself over to broadness. “The Upside” tries to show the same restraint, but Burger is stuck between delivering a thoughtful take on friendship and fear and giving the world yet another Kevin Hart comedy. There’s not much to bungle here, but Burger doesn’t push the material with any noticeable creative force. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

The average escape room is meant to provide a fun ride for competitors, often used as a team-building exercise that requires a sense of camaraderie to help solve complex puzzles with tactile clues. Making a horror move out of the setting is relatively easy, and a few productions have already employed the tight confines and panicked sleuthing to fuel some nightmare scenarios. “Escape Room” is perhaps the highest profile offering of the bunch, putting pressure on the production to come up with something amazing to attract audiences already used to watching a perversion of gamesmanship. What “Escape Room” offers is repetition, atrocious editing, and screwy plotting, with director Adam Robitel (“Insidious: The Last Key”) not satisfied with the simplicity of frenzied people fighting to crack codes and scramble for objects. Instead, an epic is attempted, with the faint hope of a franchise-starter for a first chapter that never knows exactly what it’s doing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

“Rust Creek” pulls a bit of a switcheroo on its audience. It’s being marketed as a nail-biter, offered up as a chilling tale of survival in the deep woods of the American south. There are sections of the picture devoted to such irresistible thrills, but the endeavor is content to leave the nerve-shredding stuff behind for long stretches of screen time. The screenplay (credited to Julie Lipson and Stu Pollard) is more interested in character-based entanglements than straight scares, which gives “Rust Creek” a more intriguing dramatic pull, juggling the needs of genre entertainment with a deep psychological inspection of the crisis at hand. It’s not a tightly constructed endeavor, which hurts it in the long run, but the movie has a vision for something different while still tending to expectations. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Meredith Danluck has some observations on the state of marriage and the depths of discovery when dealing with a loved one. She touches on grief and longing, self-absorption and confusion. “State Like Sleep” samples a bit of everything from its cinematic plate, but it never remains anywhere for very long. In fact, the feature feels very long, with “State Like Sleep” not just a title, but a description of the picture’s atmosphere, with Danluck dropping a dose of Ambien into her detective fiction, often making the viewing experience frustratingly inert while it deals with potentially fascinating details concerning cohabitational betrayal and the loneliness of love. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There was once a time when Will Ferrell made funny movies. It hasn’t happened for a few years now, with 2017 finding the actor struggling to survive “Daddy’s Home 2” and “The House,” reaching new low points in his wildly uneven career. 2018 brings “Holmes & Watson,” which reunites Ferrell with John C. Reilly, his screen partner in the hits “Talladega Nights” and “Step Brothers.” There’s supposed to be magic with this reunion, but someone didn’t tell writer/director Etan Cohen, who almost completely tanks the partnership with a massively disappointing endeavor that not only doesn’t contain a single laugh, it rarely tries to be humorous in the first place. “Holmes & Watson” is a grab bag of gags from the helmer who gifted the world “Get Hard,” with Cohen completely incapable of triggering even a smile with the surefire tag-team action of Ferrell and Reilly, who always seem to be aware how much of an uphill climb they face with this lousy material. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Karyn Kusama is doing a fine job rebuilding her career after enduring two critical and commercial duds with “Aeon Flux” and “Jennifer’s Body.” 2015’s “The Invitation” returned Kusama to greatness, masterminding a macabre, sneaky chiller that pulled off the slow-burn approach with confidence, and now there’s “Destroyer,” her take on the burnt-out cop subgenre, only here the emphasis isn’t on hard-boiled antics, but a full corrosion of soul. There’s action and suspense, but the material is suited to Kusama’s interests in character and mood, and Nicole Kidman strips away all glamour to play a burning husk of a woman finally facing the music after years spent dissolving in guilt. “Destroyer” is steely work from Kusama, but also wonderfully textured and mindful of cliches, playing them up or breaking them completely when the moment calls for it. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

Barry Jenkins broke through to the big time with 2016’s “Moonlight.” The writer/director crafted a beautiful, unusual effort and managed to ride its unexpected success all the way to Oscar gold, with the feature memorably claiming the Best Picture award, guaranteeing intense concentration on whatever the helmer was preparing for his follow-up. “If Beale Street Could Talk” continues Jenkins’s evolution as a formidable screen artist, assuming the challenge of bringing author James Baldwin to a wide audience, adapting a 1974 novel about the state of love and incarceration in Black America. Baldwin had a specific way of communication, artful and contentious, and such a tone is gently translated to film by Jenkins, who shows expected confidence with “If Beale Street Could Talk,” working to precisely convey Baldwin while maintaining his own elegiac vision for personal crisis. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Technically, Leprechaun has returned already, multiple times. 1993’s “Leprechaun” was a genre lark created to offer oddity to curious audiences, and while success was desired, I doubt anyone associated with the production expected the brand name to carry on for five sequels and one dismal reboot. And now the pint-sized Irish demon is back, just in time for…Christmas. Okay, so the timing is a little strange for “Leprechaun Returns,” but the spirit of ghoulishness is pleasantly revived in what’s actually a direct sequel to the original film. While Jennifer Aniston and Warwick Davis have decided to sit out this homecoming (not a surprise), director Steven Kostanski tries his best to revive the magic(?) of the first chapter, delivering plenty of blood and quips, though his helming powers aren’t impervious to lengthy stretches of screentime with obnoxious characters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Taking possession of her career, Karen Gillan steps behind the camera to make her feature-length directorial debut with “The Party’s Just Beginning.” While certainly not an actress who gravitates toward chipper roles, Gillan clearly wants to flex some dramatic muscles with the endeavor (she also scripts), creating a profoundly dark descent into depression with a story that juggles time and levels of helplessness, giving the star her first major test as a performer. Gillan is quite successful with certain aspects of “The Party’s Just Beginning,” and she commits to almost impossible bleakness with the effort, but her performance carries the film, while direction keeps it on the move, presenting low-budget style and darkly comic touches to make the viewing experience survivable. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com