Three years ago, director Tom Hooper tried to wrap his arms around the world with his ambitious adaptation of the hit musical, “Les Miserables.” With “The Danish Girl,” Hooper takes a break from bigness to inspect the life and times of Einar Wegener, who eventually transformed into Lili Elbe, becoming one the first recipients of sex reassignment surgery in the 1920s. It’s an intimate story that demands careful handling, and perhaps Hooper is too respectful of the conflict at hand, as his approach to “The Danish Girl” is to treat the effort as a museum piece, draining the tale of life as the picture slowly welcomes melodrama. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Body” is a psychological chiller that doesn’t have much to work with. It basically contains three main characters and a single location, with writer/directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen scrambling to transform a simple idea into string of pulse-pounding moments. Minimalism has its advantages here, but “Body” isn’t quite the nail-chewer it hopes to be, missing a degree of insanity and eventful storytelling as it tries to update the Hitchcock experience with millennial attitudes. It’s a shockingly brief picture (68 minutes long before end credits) and not without its pressure points, but the feature lacks prolonged snap, only coming alive in certain charged moments. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Actor Stephen Dorff hasn’t found his groove in recent features, but he’s making an effort to shake up his filmography with oddball choices that attempt to show off some range. In “American Hero,” Dorff portrays a member of the X-Men in a way, playing a man with telekinetic powers facing a troubling existence in a forgotten land. It’s an aggressive performance, but it ends up the only element of the picture that makes sense. Writer/director Nick Love (“The Sweeney”) submits a crude, confused tale of soulful awakening with “American Hero,” habitually unsure what to do with the characters or even how to tell the story, leaving Dorff to do all the heavy lifting as the endeavor spins out of control. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s probably best to pay attention to the Martin Scorsese executive producer credit on “The Wannabe.” Why Scorsese is supporting the picture isn’t known, but few of the ideas contained in Nick Sandow’s screenplay are familiar, including hero worship involving members of organized crime and obsessive drug consumption leading to manic episodes of destructive behavior. Indeed, “The Wannabe” plays like second cousin to “Goodfellas” at times, but even a little homage can’t salvage a wholly unpleasant and meandering viewing experience. Sandow’s intent is to explore a confused mind, but he emerges with 90 minutes of pointless confrontations and softball acting, leaving little story to chew on. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2007, writer/director Michael Dougherty set out to redefine Halloween horror with “Trick ‘r Treat,” a clever anthology effort that emphasized eeriness over pounding terror. For his follow-up, the helmer aims to shake up another holiday with “Krampus,” a Christmas-set chiller that’s trying to scare during the season of giving. Again avoiding cheap thrills, Dougherty creates an entertaining monster mash with the picture, which blends yuletide sensitivities involving dysfunctional families and the wrath of ghoulish creatures. Strangely, the production doesn’t aim to create a roller coaster ride of oddity, preferring to step carefully with its genre offerings, leaving the endeavor feeling slack at crucial moments, but it’s still satisfying overall. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Comparisons to “Bad Santa” will undoubtedly be made repeatedly, but “Uncle Nick” isn’t as conventional as the inexplicably enduring Billy Bob Thornton comedy. Arriving at the holiday season with plans to dissect a dysfunctional family at their very worst, director Chris Kasick and writer Mike Demski (both veterans of “Attack of the Show”) cook up a sharp, sarcastic effort that celebrates the wonderfully deadpan delivery of star Brian Posehn, using the comedian’s elongated way with an uncomfortable moment to give “Uncle Nick” the proper amount of bitterness to help support this domestic unraveling. Hilarious and profoundly dark, the feature is an interesting counterpoint to holiday cheer, offering an engaging lump of coal for those who prefer their Christmas thoroughly soiled by bad behavior. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The director of “The Great Beauty” and “This Must Be the Place,” Paolo Sorrentino returns to screens with “Youth.” Stepping further into English-language filmmaking, the helmer arrives with a star-studded cast to realize this meditation on aging and experience, with Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Jane Fonda, and Rachel Weisz turning in capable work to best bring out the flavors of Sorrentino’s screenplay. Idiosyncrasies do remain in “Youth,” and the picture tends to value atmosphere over dramatics. It can be a struggle to figure out what Sorrentino wants from his feature, but when all else fails the effort, the ensemble is there to provide a passable sense of focus, creating memorable scenes of introspection. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“MI-5” isn’t just a run-of-the-mill spy thriller, but a big screen spinoff of “Spooks,” a British television series that found a home in America on deep cable. While the title is generic and the plot promises the basics in paranoia cinema, “MI-5” (titled “Spooks: The Greater Good” around the world) actually comes through with surprising clarity, finding pockets of suspense even while it samples material found in dozens of small screen productions. Credit director Bharat Nalluri (“Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day”), who keeps the picture alert and on the move, confronting the familiarity of it all with commitment to speed and a general awareness that while his effort isn’t going to look like a blockbuster, it can periodically play like one. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Wonders” is a special creation that demands a certain level of patience with its winding, almost directionless storytelling. There are many subplots and feelings to explore, but its primary focus remains on a coming-of-age tale concerning a teen girl in the midst of an adolescent awakening while living in a painfully remote part of the world. “The Wonders” is shapeless, but it has meaning and sensitivity, better with moments of contemplation and familial interaction than it is with a larger depiction of dysfunction. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com