“Strange Harvest” is a movie that’s been made to resemble a television show. Writer/director Stuart Ortiz makes an unusual creative choice with the picture, which is meant to resemble an episode of true crime T.V., aiming to transform a study of a serial killer into something slick and formulaic, hoping to entice viewers used to such journeys into darkness that streaming companies tend to favor, bringing real-world horror to an audience that loves the stuff. Despite the appearance of realism, “Strange Harvest” is a fictional study of menace concerning the brutality of a murderer known as Mr. Shiny and his reign of terror across a California town. Ortiz creates a mostly credible study of such evil, using interviews and crime scene media to generate an authentic atmosphere of dread for the endeavor. As a technical exercise, the feature delivers on its invented reality, making for an interesting examination of storytelling. Dramatically, the offering is a bit lacking, as there’s a reason why this kind of programming typically runs under an hour in length. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Kristin Scott Thomas has created an impressive career as an actress, working with some of the finest filmmakers around, taking in experiences with such talent as Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, Joe Wright, and Robert Altman. “My Mother’s Wedding” is Thomas’s directorial debut, finally taking command of her own production, and she goes a semi-autobiographical route with co-writer (and husband) John Micklethwait, digging into her own past, which involved the presence of two fathers in her life. This experience fuels the screenplay, following three estranged siblings trying to make sense of terrible loss in their lives and their mother’s hope for love again, confronted by change and reflection during a celebratory weekend. “My Mother’s Wedding” is a smaller picture with milder dramatic goals, but Thomas holds it together with help from a talented cast and sincere emotion, exploring how these characters handle their feelings and their maturity when reconnecting with their past. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Greasy Strangler” was released in 2016, introducing film nerds to the curious anti-comedy vision of writer/director Jim Hosking. The picture was a wild ride of ideas and textures, and while it didn’t always hold together, the movie offered inspired goofiness at times, delivering an edgy understanding of a peculiar sense of humor. Hosking graduated to a slightly bigger moviemaking challenge in 2018’s “An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn,” offered some name actors and a decent budget to continue his exploration of oddity, coming up with another interesting study of lunacy. The effort was largely ignored by viewers, sending Hosking back to the world of small-scale storytelling for “Ebony and Ivory,” which actually doesn’t contain a plot. It’s more of an experience, following two characters as they deal with each other in a remote location. Hosking continues his hunt for slow-burn strangeness with the offering, but his creative drive is noticeably lacking this time around, showing more concentration on repetition in a feature that’s not easy to endure, even during its most inspired moments. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Pickup” is an Eddie Murphy action comedy where co-star Pete Davidson is assigned all the funny lines. Something definitely went wrong during the development of the project, resulting in a decidedly underwhelming viewing experience where the actor capable of extracting laughs from the material is hired to play the straight man, and the director is Tim Story, who specializes in generic entertainment (“Ride Along,” 2019’s “Shaft,” 2004’s “Taxi”). The helmer adds another dud to his resume with “The Pickup,” which hopes to deliver big thrills with plenty of car stunts, while hilarity is meant to emerge from Davidson, who’s working extra hard to remain energetic in the endeavor, acting like a puppy who really wants a forever home. The screenplay is no help, taking few creative risks as Story is hired to provide as vanilla a viewing experience as possible, delivering an instantly forgettable feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2022’s “The Bad Guys” began life as a book series by author Aaron Blabey, but the writer has gone far beyond his original premise of animal hoodlums and their battle with decency. Blabey’s imagination has taken the series into downright cosmic directions, following his creative impulses into challenging narrative territory, making for an unexpected ride of risk-taking storytelling, especially in the world of children’s literature. The brain-scramble approach hasn’t come for the cinematic incarnation of “The Bad Guys,” which remains content to be just a good time for young audiences, keeping up with animal high jinks and heavy action, really playing up the master criminal aspect of the series. “The Bad Guys 2” is more of the same, quietly denying Blabey’s insanity while it moves forward with cartoon bigness, generating a second helping of colorful characters and bright voice work, while animation remains stylish for this return to criminal temptation for the morally dubious bandits. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The television show “Police Squad!” debuted in 1982 and only lasted six episodes. It offered broad humor and sharp visual gags, allowing creators David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker to extend their brand of wild comedy after the success of “Airplane!” The trio revived their idea for the big screen in 1988’s “The Naked Gun,” which became a sizable hit for Paramount Pictures, who eventually ordered two sequels that also did significant business. It’s been a long time since Lt. Frank Drebin busted crime on the big screen, and while star Leslie Nielsen has passed away, co-writer/director Akiva Schaffer (“Hot Rod,” “Popstar,” “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers”) hopes to revive the spirit of his biggest career triumph in, well, “The Naked Gun,” which plops Liam Neeson in the main role of Drebin’s son (don’t do the math). It’s inspired casting, as Neeson has a funny side to his gruff screen presence that doesn’t get much attention, but the bright, silly highs of the 1988 movie are missing in 2025, which certainly commits to the rat-tat-tat approach of the ZAZ creation, but doesn’t share its inspired sense of humor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Michael Jai White has been steadily building a directorial career over the last 14 years, periodically taking control of his action movies. His last effort was 2023’s “Outlaw Johnny Black,” a mediocre attempt to continue what 2009’s delightful “Black Dynamite” started, with White going weirdly bloated with his light comedy, unable to recapture the same magic. “Trouble Man” finds White returning to the Blaxploitation subgenre, now with an acceptable run time (90 minutes) and a more direct script by Michael Stradford. The production doesn’t win on style or mystery, but it’s a surprising amount of fun, finding White encouraging a certain level of silliness while also overseeing conflicts, including several resolved through martial arts contests. “Trouble Man” maintains a sense of humor, and White does what he can with his limited budget, clearly having a good time bringing the main character and his specific way of doing business with others to life. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

We don’t get too many kid adventure movies these days. The family film marketplace is loaded with animated offerings and live-action versions of animated offerings, but “Sketch” is trying to provide a different sort of jolt for fans of PG-rated entertainment, returning to the 1980s and the Amblin years for inspiration. Writer/director Seth Worley (making his feature-length debut) concocts an unusual study of panic in the endeavor, which follows the actions of kids and adults finding their real-world troubles replaced by fantasy ones as a child’s drawings come to life, ready to terrorize the community. “Sketch” plays a fun game of humor, heart, and (mild) horror in the effort, and Worley proves himself to be an imaginative storyteller with limited resources. He stays attentive to character and offers some amusing thrills and chills in the picture, making it a pleasant cinematic alternative for those seeking a more adventurous moviegoing experience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“She Rides Shotgun” is an adaptation of Jordon Harper’s 2017 book, tracking the desperation of a man marked for death who’s trying to keep his estranged daughter alive while they figure out a way to make it to some sort of safe space. Screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski embark on a challenge to turn the intimate story into a cinematic experience, bringing the material’s emotional content to the screen while also preserving hits of threat and pursuit to keep the endeavor at least passably exciting. Director Nick Rowland (“Calm with Horses”) has some difficultly knowing when to cut short all the speechifying going on the movie, but he mostly connects with characterization and especially performance. Young Ana Sophia Heger is surrounded by talented actors in the feature, but she manages to best them all with a powerful turn as a girl caught up in a dangerous situation with a father she barely knows. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Body horror pays a visit to couples therapy in “Together,” which is the feature-length filmmaking debut for Michael Shanks. He heads into Cronenberg Country with the endeavor, using the ways of the flesh to explore a corporeal breakdown between two people who’ve stopped communicating with each other, on their way to living separate lives. The universe has other plans, and Shanks labors to create a nightmare to follow on multiple levels of interpretation, spending the first half of the picture creating a successful mystery concerning possible evil and a potential break-up. “Together” makes a few questionable creative decisions as it hunts for an ending, limiting the lasting impact of its dramatic mission, but the movie remains vivid enough to engage, finding pockets of ugliness to investigate, and the writing has a few things to share about the struggles of cohabitation and partner support. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Co-writer/director Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia (“The Platform,” “The Platform 2”) delivers a fascinating story in “Rich Flu,” which imagines a new global pandemic, but the illness only reaches the most affluent of people. It’s a different kind of fright involving the privileged class, and an absolutely ripe idea for cinematic inspection, opening the door to a satiric take on the true power of the powerful, or perhaps horror could be summoned as desperation sets in for those unaccustomed to struggle. For the first half, Gaztelu-Urrutia pursues a tone of panic, following the main character as she gradually understands the danger coming for her, desperate to make sense of a situation that’s beyond comprehension. Gaztelu-Urrutia can’t maintain suspense in the film’s second half, but “Rich Flu” isn’t even interested in maintaining pace and pressure, eventually reaching for a Big Message that takes an hour for the helmer to investigate, only to finally arrive at a forgone conclusion. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There have been reports suggesting that “War of the Worlds” was shot in 2020, and the film certainly plays like a production trying to deliver screen intensity while maintaining COVID-19 guidelines. It’s a screenlife take on the 1898 H.G. Wells novel, which has been explored in all forms of media (and will continue to be exploited as a public domain option for B-movie producers), putting music video director Rich Lee in charge of a global alien invasion story that’s explored only through computer and phone screens. Scale normally associated with the brand name isn’t present here, and suspense is missing as well. “War of the Worlds” feels very amateurish and undercooked, out to sell panic and paranoia with limited resources and a script (by Kenneth A. Golde and Marc Hyman) that’s painfully routine, aiming to merge a paint-by-numbers family drama with worldwide destruction. There’s a lot of keyboard action and screen switching, and perhaps there’s a Big Idea on the state of surveillance in America, but it’s all turned into generic mush as Lee has little to work with beyond remote production clumsiness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com