The Canadian production "Tu Dors Nicole" presents a journey into the painful early moments of adulthood, tracking the titular character (played by Julianne Cote) as she experiences the slow death of juvenile comfort, pushed out into a world she wants little to do with. Instead of mounting a valentine to ennui, writer/director Stephane Lafleur finds a slightly quirkier edge to "Tu Dors Nicole," paying attention to the comedic possibilities of the material along with its stinging, immensely relatable realities in connection to the last summer of a post-college life. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

1980's "Demonoid" is about a severed hand that kills. For some, the review ends there, scratching a B-movie sweet spot that promises exquisite horror and camp. The feature isn't completely unleashed, but writer/director Alfredo Zacarias certainly strives to give viewers a sufficiently berserk ride, filling the feature with violence, action, and the central image of a roving hand on the hunt for fresh victims. As bottom-shelf insanity, "Demonoid" is tremendously entertaining and bluntly bizarre, with Zacarias orchestrating a chase picture that touches on marital unrest, spiritual challenges, and Satanic omnipresence, while star Samantha Eggar classes up the joint with a semi-committed performance, selling the oddity of an unstoppable hand and its determination to possess all those who come into contact with it. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The plot of "Frightmare" (also known as "The Horror Star") is so delicious, so ripe with potential, it's almost enough to carry the feature on its own. A loving tribute to horror cinema, with all its shadowy encounters and ghoulish events, the effort has its heart in the right place, cooking up a premise that places die-hard fans in the middle of their very own scary movie. It's a long night of survival for a group of dim college students, yet the nightmare never finds a particularly gripping momentum, with writer/director Norman Thaddeus Vane so involved in creating atmosphere, he forgets to sustain tension throughout the feature. "Frightmare" is terrifically shot and the lead performance from screen veteran Ferdy Mayne is appropriately grandiose, but the production needs a little more air in its tires, often found slogging along with genre elements that demand a more animated execution. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Returning to WWII for inspiration, "Home Fires" is the latest ITV series to take advantage of the wartime setting, although this program is about the road to conflict, identifying the tension building in rural England as the area prepares for the inevitable. For this tale, an adaptation of the book "Jambusters" (oh, how I wish that title was kept) by Julie Summers, the focus is on the female, tracking the development of a local Women's Institute and the varied lives of its troubled members. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

"The Widower" is a limited ITV series (spread out over three episodes) based on the case of Malcolm Webster, who orchestrated a murder and prolonged embezzlement schemes while living a seemingly average life as a nurse and loving husband/boyfriend to various women. It's true crime without salacious details, electing to charge ahead with a sense of the macabre, capturing prolonged insanity and bizarre turns of crime and punishment with wonderful performances and a sure pace. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Cold War was big business for writer/director Nicholas Meyer in 1991, with one of his biggest hits, "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," managing to rework global tensions to fit a space opera, emerging with a thoughtful, clever sequel, one of the best in the series. Meyer is a little more direct with his political interests in "Company Business," which offers a traditional take on spy games and government hubris. A Euro-scented buddy comedy that isn't all that interested in producing laughs, "Company Business" is jumble of ideas from the normally measured Meyer, who scrambles to arrange a puzzle of motivations and secrets that play into an era-specific dismantling of national muscle. Perhaps the least effective effort from Meyer, the feature certainly isn't lazy, just uninspired, missing secure direction necessary to make this sophisticated mix of attitudes and locations gripping. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With the one-two punch of "Billy Madison" and "Happy Gilmore," Adam Sandler created his own subgenre of dumb guy comedies, filled with absurdities, grotesqueries, and non-acting. Spreading the love, Sandler brought in comedian friends and "Saturday Night Live" co-stars to help populate the productions, even extending star vehicles to a chosen few. 1998's "Dirty Work" was intended to bring big screen glory to star Norm Macdonald, fitting his specialized sense of humor for multiplex distribution, saddling the untamable comic with a plot that demanded a little more than expertly timed wisecracks. Audiences weren't interested in Macdonald or "Dirty Work" during its initial theatrical release; The Sandler Effect didn't come through. However, what's here isn't immediately dismissible, and while the feature contains all sorts of unpleasant material, it's actually quite entertaining and periodically hilarious. It's barely an effort from director Bob Saget, but the movie has its moments if expectations are brought down as low as humanly possible. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While Sharon Stone is best known for her seductive work in the 1992 thriller "Basic Instinct," there was a decade of career ups and downs she had to manage before worldwide stardom changed everything. "Scissors" is a 1991 release that I'm positive the actress would rather have scratched off her filmography, but if there's a single picture that epitomizes Stone's wayward professional direction during the lean years, it's this ridiculous chiller. Submitting herself to writer/director Frank De Felitta, Stone is completely lost in "Scissors," left with nothing to do but make horrified faces as the screenplay fumbles around for a tone of mystery that's psychologically stained by sexual dysfunction. It's a bad movie, emerging as unintended camp as performances aim for the rafters and De Felitta struggles to stitch together even a basic sense of coherence as the screenplay plays an extended game of make-em-up to suggest sophistication. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When "Mannequin" debuted in 1987, little was expected of the romantic comedy. Leading with the charms of stars Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall, and riding on the wave of a hit theme song in Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," the feature managed to beat the competition and becoming one of the top-grossing pictures of the year. Of course a sequel was going to happen, but just how could there be a second chapter to the story of a window dresser falling in love with his enchanted mannequin? Well, there isn't one. Instead of expanding the original saga, the producers go the remake route, simply reviving the original plot with a new pair of lovers, only investing in the return of Meshach Taylor as Hollywood Montrose, who revives his flamboyant ways to act as the bridge between the movies. 1991's "Mannequin Two: On the Move" (titled simply "Mannequin: On the Move" during the main titles) is a production that certainly isn't difficult to understand from a financial point of view, but creatively, it's a mess, shamelessly rehashing the original film with a new round of magic, montages, and cartoon villainy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com