“Float” is an adaptation of a book by author Kate Marchant. This is not the usual literary translation, with Marchant finding success on a social media platform devoted to Gen Z writers looking for eyeballs on their work. Potential box office success for a project like this was established with the release of 2019’s “After,” which spawned a franchise of heated romantic tales for younger viewers. “Float” is chasing the same idea, only Marchant’s work is aiming for a more tender examination of wounded people finding one another in small-town Canada. Co-writer/director Sherren Lee looks to provide a human story of burgeoning communication, crafting something that’s easy on the senses and possibly relatable for some audience members. It’s not the most stirring viewing experience, but the picture has a welcome gentleness and interest in emotional needs to keep it going. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Screenwriters Christine Lenig, Luke Spencer Roberts, and Justin Matthews are challenged to produce an interesting story for “Upgraded,” which is competing with a hundred other movies in the film year that deal with misunderstandings, mishaps, and the tingles and tangles of new love. And they manage to create an interesting professional life for the main character, who works in an art auction house, getting caught up in mistakes and misrepresentation during an assignment in London. There’s a lot to explore with this vocation and ambition, and “Upgraded” finds ways of making this section of the picture involving, offering a riff on “The Devil Wears Prada,” with Marisa Tomei in the Meryl Streep role. It’s the rest of the feature that’s disappointing, as the ways of attraction tend to disrupt what actually works in the endeavor, making moments of passion more of a nuisance in this romantic comedy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Matthew Vaughn enjoys making noisy movies that slip all too easily into overkill. He didn’t start out that way (2004’s “Layer Cake”) but he’s become that way, for most of his career. He’s spent the last decade trying to transform “Kingsman” into a viable franchise (the box office failure of a 2021 prequel didn’t help the cause), and he’s not giving up the fight, returning with a big-budget superspy extravaganza, “Argylle,” which is very much in the same vein as a “Kingsman” sequel, only instead of gentlemanly violence with a collection of heroes and villains, there’s a literary world of characters to untangle here. Scripted by Jason Fuchs (“Pan,” “Ice Age: Continental Drift”), “Argylle” starts off with a spring in its step, only to become a cinematic equivalent of a headache, with Vaughn losing his mind trying to wow viewers with gonzo visuals, turns of plot, and CGI overload. It’s an iffy idea for adventuring turned into a rough 139-minute-long viewing experience, with excess the goal here, not cleverness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There’s always been some type of rivalry between DreamWorks Animation and Disney, resulting in movies that were similar, perhaps intentionally so, going back to the “Antz” and “A Bug’s Life” collision of 1998. There’s some of that feeling surrounding the release of “Orion and the Dark,” which, at times, plays much like 2015’s “Inside Out,” following the adventure of a child getting used to the reality of the world around him. He’s joined by the creatures in his mind, but instead of emotions, the eponymous character interacts with multi-colored “Night Entities.” There are moments when the pictures are quite similar, but “Orion and the Night” isn’t quite as close to the heart as “Inside Out,” with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (making his family film debut) offering a slightly less enthusiastic understanding of growing pains and phobias. It remains a charmingly animated endeavor with a welcome message on the ways of bravery, but it also feels a little too tired at times, and not because the subject matter involves sleep. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Television writer and actress Laura Chinn makes her directorial debut with “Suncoast.” It’s a semi-autobiographical tale of a young woman’s quest for human connection during a time of tremendous emotional demands and typical adolescent awkwardness, with Chinn using her experience with a dying sibling in Florida to inspire a study of family dynamics and loneliness, with a little real-world headline news of the day helping to add some perspective to the story. Chinn scripts with authority for half of the feature, creating deeply wounded characters who have no idea how to interact with each other, left to manage some kind of routine that’s impossible to follow for long. There are two sides to “Suncoast,” which creates a frustrating viewing experience, with the potential for a sensitive, knowing examination of difficult relationships repeatedly disrupted by the banalities of teen cinema. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Tiger’s Apprentice” is an adaptation of a 2003 YA novel by author Laurence Yep, who created a tale about a boy making contact with the magic that surrounds him, emerging in the form of mythology based on the Chinese zodiac. It’s a tale of adventure and discovery that seems perfectly suited for animation, and certainly the success of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” has influenced the production, with the feature not exactly turning down an opportunity to vaguely resemble the 2018 hit film. While the endeavor isn’t endowed with an enormous budget, the picture remains flashy, with vivid color and smooth action, and the central exploration into zodiac-inspired heroism and history holds attention. It offers younger viewers blasts of creature antics and villainy, bringing select sequences to life as danger increases for the main character, who’s newly exposed to a different level of reality. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Leah McKendrick has been an actress for over 15 years, appearing in an assortment of shorts and features. She attempts to find more control over her creative outputs with “Scrambled,” going triple threat with the endeavor, claiming credits in direction, screenwriting, and acting for this seemingly personal effort. The story concerns the battle of a single woman in her thirties trying to envision a future of parenthood for herself, unsure if she really wants to commit to the responsibility as she decides to freeze her eggs. McKendrick touches on a sensitive subject with “Scrambled,” hoping to reach universal concerns about motherhood and loneliness with the picture, using comedy as a way into some heavy feelings about love and loss. It's this tonal juggling act that becomes an issue for the helmer, who can’t manage mood swings in the film, making for an erratic sit with weirdly unlikable characters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Snoop Dogg isn’t much of an actor, but his simple screen presence has certainly livened up a few movies over the years. For “The Underdoggs,” Snoop Dogg has created a lead role for himself, also co-hatching the story for the pee-wee football saga, which lifts liberally, as they all do, from the 1976 classic, “The Bad News Bears.” Once again, it’s the hardened, light-headed coach put in charge of rascally kids against his will, with underdog cinema expected to form around all the formula concocted by screenwriters Isaac Schamis and Danny Segal, who have zero interest in adding some originality, or even passable human emotions to the feature. “The Underdoggs” is woefully cliched, but it’s not without a few laughs and some dependable kids sports energy, in need of more inspired leadership, with director Charles Stone III putting in the least amount of effort to boost the endeavor’s appeal. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Bryan Greenberg has been in the acting trenches for quite some time now, and he’s been steadily employed, taking supporting roles here and there. Greenberg looks to acquire a new level of career power with “Junction,” also stepping behind the camera to make his directorial debut, claiming credit for the screenplay as well. The helmer’s heart is in the right place, taking on the horrific systems of corruption involved with the opioid epidemic, following a community of characters as they navigate addiction, ethics, and legal affairs while in the midst of dealing with the nightmare of oxycodone. Greenberg hopes to create a low-budget take on “Traffic” and other drug-related pictures, but he ends up with a clumsy television movie instead. “Junction” should be tougher and more cinematic in its depiction of human decay, but the production doesn’t have that kind of energy, with tedious melodrama prized instead. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Jade Halley Bartlett makes her filmmaking debut with “Miller’s Girl,” and she offers an ambitious tale of seduction and power with the material, which has a distinct theatrical quality to it. The movie examines an unsettling relationship between a high school writing teacher and his top student, who’s quite capable of reaching inside the older man’s mind in an effort to tap into his fantasies. Bartlett isn’t making a thriller with “Miller’s Girl” (which is co-produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg), but something slightly more sinister, toying with the influence of sexuality as it beguiles and destroys in equal measure. The writing stays close to character, generating some powerfully intimate moments, and those highlights are enough to carry a somewhat unsteady picture, but one that offers fascinating sequences of manipulation, finding horror in the hotness of it all. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Seeding” isn’t shy about hiding its horror, with the opening shot of the film following a filthy baby around a desert area, with the kid snacking on a severed finger. The concept of the movie isn’t exactly obscured either, with the next shot in the endeavor a car driving along a trail that forms the image of a spermatozoon. Writer/director Barnaby Clay is ready to deliver an unnerving viewing experience with “The Seeding,” but he’s not always in a hurry to share frights with the audience, going the slow-burn route with this tale of a man stuck in the wild, pulled into a situation of imprisonment that’s not what it initially seems. The writing portions out details of doom carefully, with Clay looking to generate a heavy atmosphere of confusion and frustration, finding his way to some crazy acts of torment in a compelling feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“We Are the World” was released globally on March 7th, 1985. It served as the foundation for the U.S.A. for Africa movement, where a large assortment of musical stars of the 1980s came together to sing an anthemic song about the healing power of love and unity, endeavoring to raise money for famine relief in Africa. The record captured the imagination (and wallets) of listeners, emerging as one of the biggest singles of its release year, becoming omnipresent and representative of what such a project could achieve. There are stories to be shared about the making of the tune, and documentarian Bao Nguyen tries to sort through the incredible details of it all with “The Greatest Night in Pop,” which examines the herculean effort to create the song and corral all the diverse personalities involved in the music scene at that time. There are no twists or turns here, just a straightforward understanding of the moment, and Nguyen does an extraordinary job bringing order to chaos with this massively entertaining picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com