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There was a time when going to the movies was more than just choosing a title and finding the best seat. The person selling the ticket might know you and your family; somebody would inevitably cause trouble during the show (although that seems to have only gotten worse lol); the building probably had something that needed to be fixed; and the theater could function as a neighborhood gathering place as much as a place to watch a film. ONCE UPON A TIME IN A CINEMA understands that experience and the larger idea of cinema of the day, and David Gleeson's affection for those places gives the movie its best moments.

Aysanat Edigeeva spends the majority of BURNING being observed rather than understood. As Asel, a young mother grieving the death of her firstborn, she has the guarded existence of someone living in a place where every motion can be interpreted by somebody else. Neighbors notice her behavior, her mother-in-law’s rituals, her husband’s frustration, and the family’s isolation, then fill the gaps with whatever explanation makes the most sense to them. Director Radik Eshimov lets that casual observation shape the horror. The people watching aren’t short on confidence, even when what they actually know is remarkably limited.

STARSUCKERS is a wonderful dark comedy about celebrity worship, and writer/directors Brett and Jason Butler are smart enough not to put all of the blame on the celebrities. The people doing the worshipping are every bit as important to the joke as the people doing the worshipping. Chuck and Eileen may just be ordinary people lucky enough to spend a weekend with their idols. The film is far more interested in what admiration does to someone's judgment once proximity to fame begins to feel like an opportunity. So I’m intentionally avoiding talking about one of my favorite parts about the film, because I think it adds such a unique bit of flair to the stylization; I want everyone to experience it as is!

L.A. Guns are several decades removed from the Sunset Strip era that made their name, but LIVE FROM THE GUILD THEATRE isn't interested in treating them like nostalgia. Recorded at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park, California, during the band's 2025 run behind LEOPARD SKIN, this performance mixes the songs longtime fans expect with enough newer material to make the concert feel connected to where the band is now. Phil Lewis and Tracii Guns remain the obvious focal points, and both perform with the confidence of musicians who know exactly what an L.A. Guns crowd came to hear.

At nearly two hours, 30 YEARS OF GARBAGE: THE GARBAGE PAIL KIDS STORY has considerably more to say about a bunch of gross-out trading cards than anyone really might expect. Joe Simko and Jeff Zapata go all the way back to the original artists and Topps employees who created the Garbage Pail Kids, then follow the property through playground, angry adults, lawsuits, merchandising, an infamous movie, its disappearance, and eventual return. There's a lot of good stuff here. There's also so much of it that the documentary eventually starts to feel like it doesn't know when enough is enough.

FAREYE is at its best when writer/director Hayden Mclean stops explaining things and lets Khalil take in the world around him. The 13-minute short follows a Jamaican boy escaping an abusive home, but Mclean isn't interested in keeping him trapped within that trauma. His attention shifts toward what happens when Khalil encounters a community offering something his home doesn’t. Safety, music, faith, and the possibility that life could be formed by more than fear.

Casper Kelly has a very specific sense of humor, and BUDDY may be the clearest version of it yet. The director behind TOO MANY COOKS and writer of Nicolas Cage’s feature MANDY takes on the forced cheerfulness of a 90s children’s show. It keeps pushing until the smiles, songs, costumes, and lessons about friendship start looking threatening. Then he pushes considerably further to the breaking point and beyond. What could have been another movie trying to turn childhood nostalgia into horror instead becomes a funny, violent, surprisingly thoughtful story about people raised to follow the rules of a world they never chose.

A SCENT is the kind of true story that could easily be overplayed. A nurse discovering that she can detect Parkinson's through smell sounds almost unbelievable, yet Johnny Russell's 18-minute drama treats that less as a medical miracle than as something capable of altering a career, a marriage, and a woman's confidence in what she knows. Keeping the focus there gives the short a foundation that proves considerably more interesting than just celebrating an extraordinary ability.

An attempt at perfection is Alison Mitchell’s first mistake. Thanksgiving hasn’t even begun when THE FAMILY RECIPE starts piling on the responsibilities; there’s a very specific kind of comedy that comes from watching someone cling harder to a plan just because everyone around her is making it impossible. Writer/director Karl Ryan Erikson’s feature debut understands the anxiety behind hosting a family holiday almost as well as it understands the affection behind it all. Nobody has to be flat out “mean” for Thanksgiving to become a disaster. Sometimes it only takes relatives shoved into one house, children being children, a husband making a mistake, and a cherished recipe book disappearing when it’s needed most.

There’s a stark difference between recreating 70s exploitation cinema and recreating the feeling of being trapped inside it. SOUTHERN NIGHTMARE spends quite a bit of its run time trying to do both. Writer/director Charlie Steeds has no interest in washing away the racism, misogyny, sexual degradation, cruelty, or sheer ugliness that defined some of the era’s most vile movies. He wants the discomfort, the sleaze, the grime, and eventually the cathartic pleasure of watching terrible people receive consequences delivered with considerably more force than restraint. That approach makes this a difficult movie to recommend to a general audience and an easy one to understand on its own terms.

Gus and Clark aren’t trying to overthrow the government. They want a mortgage. That ordinary goal makes the nightmare of (0, ∞) hit harder than a story built around revolution ever could. Writer/director Mar Sudac takes eleven minutes, one married couple, and a bureaucratic requirement, then turns this all into one of the most unsettling and unexpectedly hopeful pieces of speculative fiction I’ve seen in some time.

Otis already looks tired; MEETING YOUR MAKER only had to explain why. The weariness is there in his face, his posture, and the way he carries himself as he moves through a television studio, preparing to celebrate the 300th episode of the children’s show that made him a star. He’s a puppet surrounded by bright colors and manufactured happiness, but writer/director Gregory JM Kasunich doesn’t treat that as a joke. The funny part is that Otis is a puppet. The reason the movie works is that his exhaustion feels completely human.

Thibaut and Jimmy didn’t just grow up apart. They grew up with access to entirely different versions of what life could offer them. One became a celebrated conductor traveling between orchestras, while the other works in a school cafeteria and spends his free time playing trombone with a community brass band in northern France. Directior/co-writer Emmanuel Courcol could have used that disparity for a story about long-lost brothers discovering that they’re more alike than anyone thought. THE MARCHING BAND is far more interested in the uncomfortable question that comes afterward. How much of the distance between them was ever their choice?

I wasn’t sure what to expect here; I intentionally avoided reading about the film because the premise sounded so intriguing. PENNY LANE IS DEAD understands that friendships never look as perfect from the inside as they do looking back on them. Penny, Toni, Amy, and Kat know exactly where one another’s weak spots are, which jokes will sting, and how quickly affection can turn into embarrassment or resentment. Writer/director Mia-kate Russell spends enough time inside that little ecosystem that when a prank pushes the night into something much more dangerous, the bloodshed feels like an escalation rather than a completely different movie.

REAP THE WHIRLWIND: FOUR FILMS WITH ANGELA MAO works particularly well as a snapshot of Angela Mao at the beginning of her career and the rapid development that followed. THE ANGRY RIVER sees her in 1971, still settling into the screen presence that would soon make her one of Hong Kong action cinema’s defining stars, while THE HIMALAYAN arrives only five years later with Mao carrying herself with far greater confidence. That progression gives the collection an identity beyond just putting together four of her films, particularly as director Huang Feng repeatedly finds new settings, characters, and action styles through which Mao can demonstrate how quickly she was growing as a performer.