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ANIMAL TALES OF CHRISTMAS MAGIC is built with a very specific audience in mind — and it’s an audience that responds to motion, colors, and stories told in broad strokes meant to comfort more than challenge. This animated anthology collects five shorts created by a team of women directors from several countries, each contributing a standalone winter-themed tale centered around kindness, generosity, and simple emotional lessons. The result is a quieter, lighter experience crafted for the smallest viewers, those still enchanted by snowflakes, animals in scarves, and uncomplicated messages about doing good.

WALUD begins with the kind of grounded, unvarnished simplicity that often hides something devastating beneath its surface. There’s no dramatic overture, no forced urgency — just the Syrian desert, a woman’s daily routine, and the sense that the world around her is closing in. It’s this lived-in presentation that gives the film its punch. The story follows Amuna, a middle-aged woman living under ISIS rule with her husband Aziz, whose authority is built on dogma and fear rather than true power. When he returns home with a much younger second wife, the fragile order of Amuna’s life splinters in ways neither she nor her oppressor can fully control.

WILD STYLE exists in a category of its own. Even calling it a film feels slightly restrictive because it operates as something more fluid—a document, a collaboration, and a street-level snapshot of a culture forming its identity. Watching the new 4K restoration, what stands out immediately is how much of its power comes from its authenticity. It isn’t about arranging the early hip-hop scene into a perfect narrative; it’s about capturing it as honestly, messily, and vibrantly as it existed in 82.

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL knew what it wanted to be, a movie designed not to terrify with realism but to entertain through mood, timing, and mischief. It’s the rare mid-century shocker in which the craft behind the scares becomes part of the fun, amplifying a sense of playful menace that still holds up decades later. With a newly restored limited-edition Blu-ray giving the film a polished presentation, this classic William Castle offering feels reinvigorated rather than merely preserved. (ironically, the 1999 remake was one of those rare instances where I appreciated the remake as much as the original.)

PAIKAR begins with a confrontation—one that has lived in the filmmaker’s body for years. Dawood Hilmandi returns to the world he left behind to face the man whose silence shaped him, and in doing so, the film becomes an exploration of everything exile fails to erase. The title, a family nickname meaning “war” or “warrior,” mirrors the story's tone. It speaks to the cultural and emotional armor passed down through generations, the kind that grows heavier the longer it goes unexamined. The documentary moves with the patience of someone trying to understand the parts of himself that were inherited rather than chosen.

THE SHIPWRECKED unfolds like a long, unbroken breath—one held for thirty years and released in a film that carries the weight of distance, homesickness, and the ache of leaving a country that shapes you even after you’ve built a life somewhere else. Diego Gutiérrez returns to Mexico not with the intention of reclaiming the life he once had, but with the quiet, painful awareness that returning does not heal everything. Instead, he observes. He listens. He records people whose stories reflect the fractures, hopes, and contradictions of a place both familiar and forever altered. The result is a documentary that operates on a deeply human level, anchored in contemplation rather than urgency.

THE DISINVITED taps into something painfully human before it taps into anything horrifying: the sting of no longer belonging. Before the violence, before the unraveling, before the final descent into outright nightmare, the film establishes something more recognizable than most thrillers dare to touch. A revoked wedding invitation. A circle of friends who have quietly moved on without you. A desperate need to reclaim even one piece of the identity you lost. Director/co-writer Devin Lawrence takes that emotional fracture and follows it to its harshest conclusion, building a film that thrives on discomfort rather than theatrics.

TANGLED UP IN CHRISTMAS leans straight into the familiar territory of holiday storytelling, but where it finds its footing is in the dynamic between two sisters who couldn’t be more opposite. At its core, this is a small-scale Christmas movie that blends family tension, personal growth, and a budding romance – all packed inside a frantic 48-hour timeframe. The result is a story that understands exactly what its audience wants: a slice of warmth, a dose of chaos, and a reminder that the holidays rarely go according to plan.

ILSA: HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS offers up the energy you expect from a follow-up to one of the most notorious exploitation films ever made. This sequel wastes no time shifting its setting, tone, or sense of morality. Instead, it leans harder into the heightened absurdity that made the original so infamous, while also developing its own flavor of desert-soaked chaos. It’s a film that never pretends to be respectable, never hides behind restraint, and never tries to reinvent its own notoriety. It doubles down — proudly and without apology. For viewers who have a soft spot for exploitation cinema, that brazenness is the pull.

PAUL arrives with the energy of a public-access sci-fi legend that escaped into a studio movie, and that’s part of why it still works. It’s built on a familiar premise — two comic-book obsessives on a road trip accidentally pick up an alien — but Greg Mottola leans into that simplicity rather than pretending it needs to evolve into something bigger. What emerges is a comedy that isn’t chasing genre reinvention. It’s interesting how friendship, fandom, and accidental responsibility collide when circumstances shift from fantasy to real-world stakes. The result is a film that feels unmistakably rooted in its era while also carving out a tone that hasn’t aged as quickly as one might expect.

FRENZY MOON arrives with an unapologetic confidence in what it wants to be: a creature feature built on practical effects, contained chaos, and a love for old-school monster filmmaking that refuses to fade. Director Gregory Lamberson has been part of the underground horror landscape long enough to know exactly what he’s reaching for, and his intention is crystal clear. He openly states his desire to create a werewolf film without leaning on digital shortcuts. That spirit flows through every frame — from the full-body suits to the puppetry work to the constant attempt to keep something tactile and unpredictable on screen.

BLOOD RED opens with a sense of finality even before a word is spoken, the kind of atmosphere that tells you a world is holding itself together by instinct rather than optimism. Martin Imrich’s debut feature arrives as a stark, deliberate piece of hybrid filmmaking, rooted in the rhythms of rural Eastern Europe and shaped by the long shadow of agricultural life and the kinds of tasks that define survival rather than ambition. Shot in black and white and cut with the patience of someone who understands the value of stillness, this film occupies the space between documentation and sculpted narrative. It’s not unusual for a director’s first feature to lean on influence. Still, Imrich wears his inspirations openly, even bringing in Béla Tarr as a story advisor—a choice that signals exactly the kind of experience he’s aiming for.

Some documentaries make it clear that they aren’t interested in spectacle. They’re interested in people—real, complicated people—whose lives contain more texture than any narrative could ever replicate. VIVA VERDI! belongs in that space. It isn’t a film about opera, though the walls of Casa Verdi vibrate with music. It isn’t simply an exploration of aging, though the residents range from their late seventies to past one hundred. It’s a portrait of a community shaped by creativity, remembrance, resilience, and a sense of purpose that refuses to dim with time.

Holiday comedies don’t need to reinvent the wheel to be enjoyable. Most rely on a simple formula: keep things light, create a cheerful backdrop, sprinkle in sentimentality and chaos, and let the cast carry the story. THE CHRISTMAS LETTER has every opportunity to fit into that category — the kind of seasonal distraction you can throw on without thinking, something to fill a cozy December evening with laughs and some familiar faces. In the right circumstances, that’s exactly what this could have been.

Some films set expectations from the opening scene, not through craft or tension, but through a quiet realization that what you’re about to watch will fall far short of its ambitions. THE CARETAKER lands squarely in that category. It’s not aggressively bad, nor is it a disaster beyond repair. Instead, it’s the kind of experience where you very quickly stop trying to take anything seriously because the movie itself doesn’t seem capable of holding its own weight. It’s the definition of a film to put on in a room full of friends who enjoy laughing at the choices, performances, and technical misfires that become more entertaining than the intended story.

There’s a unique kind of intensity that comes from watching films made during a period when cinema had no safety protocols, no creature comforts, and no separation between artist and environment. GRASS and CHANG represent two of the clearest examples of that uncompromising spirit. Together, they form a double feature that documents survival in ways modern adventure films could never replicate, because directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack weren’t staging performances. They were standing beside people enduring very real threats—rivers that could kill, snow that froze skin on contact, animal encounters with outcomes that weren’t predetermined. These films present nature not as a backdrop, but as an active force that puts every individual on equal footing with the terrain.

The heart of I’M “GEORGE LUCAS”: A CONNOR RATLIFF STORY isn’t the costume, the wig, or the extensive knowledge of a galaxy far away. It’s the question of what drives someone to continue creating when the audience remains niche and the rewards don’t always match the effort. That tension forms the spine of Ryan Jacobi’s documentary, which follows comedian Connor Ratliff through years of performing as George Lucas in a one-of-a-kind comedy hybrid that sits somewhere between performance art, fandom commentary, and an ongoing experiment in communal creativity. This isn’t a film about Star Wars, even though the iconography is ever-present. It’s a film about the artist behind the persona, the toll that long-term passion projects quietly take, and the complicated relationship between personal identity and the work someone chooses to keep alive.

THE DONN OF TIKI sets out to do something bolder than the standard lifestyle documentary. Instead of creating a nostalgic highlight reel of bamboo décor, hurricane glasses, and island-themed escapism, this film goes directly after the myth. Donn Beach — original architect of the tiki bar and one of the most unapologetically self-constructed men in American hospitality — lies at the center of a world built on exaggeration, reinvention, and pure spectacle. The film’s ambition is clear from its opening minutes: it wants to peel back layers of invention without flattening the sheer charisma that made Beach a cultural force in the first place.

Some films reveal their staying power — not with spectacle, not with over-the-top theatrics, but with an emotional unease that lingers long after the final image. THE OGRE OF ATHENS belongs firmly to that category. This story begins as a simple case of mistaken identity and gradually becomes a deeply human, socially charged examination of how people reshape themselves to survive. It’s a film that has lived several lives: a commercial failure upon release, a modern classic in retrospect, and now a newly restored discovery for audiences who may not realize its true influence. The film’s ambition is bold, its execution striking, and its resonance undeniable.

Something is undeniably charming about a series that was built to entertain above all else. THE FANTÔMAS TRILOGY embraces that impulse with a wide grin, pulling together a trio of films that blend chaos, larger-than-life criminal theatrics, and the breezy spectacle of sixties European filmmaking. Visiting these films today — especially through the meticulous restorations of the new Masters of Cinema release — is like discovering a gleeful corner of cinema that never concerned itself with limits. These movies aim to thrill, amuse, and astonish, and they do so with the kind of unapologetic style that contemporary productions rarely attempt.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s LA NOTTE doesn’t rush to introduce conflict or carve emotion into neat, digestible pieces. Instead, it begins with an unnerving quiet — the kind that seeps into a relationship long before anyone is willing to name it. The film exists in that liminal space where two people remain tethered by routine but long detached from anything that resembles intimacy. What begins as a visit to a dying friend becomes a slow unraveling, the kind that doesn’t snap but frays strand by strand until there’s almost nothing left to hold.

ELEVEN DAYS, ELEVEN NIGHTS 2 exists in that unmistakable pocket of late-80s and early-90s erotic cinema where melodrama, sensuality, and mystery all collide in ways that are more about mood and movement than intricate storytelling. Joe D’Amato, who practically defined the aesthetic of Italian softcore through sheer volume and instinct, returns to the world of Sarah Asproon—this time with Kristine Rose taking over the role—and shapes a sequel that isn’t trying to reinvent the genre so much as embrace exactly what viewers come to this kind of film expecting. But beneath the surface-level seduction and soap-operatic plotting, a surprisingly cohesive structure emerges, making this entry more engaging than its reputation suggests.

There’s something undeniably special about a tribute that doesn’t feel performative, but instead feels like a community showing up because they genuinely couldn’t imagine not being there. YOU GOT GOLD: A CELEBRATION OF JOHN PRINE captures that feeling with clarity. Rather than shaping itself as a dramatic biography or even a traditional documentary, it leans into something more immediate: the electricity of live performance mixed with the intimacy of people sharing memories. It’s built from honesty, affection, and loss — all the things that defined Prine’s songwriting from the beginning.

THE THING WITH FEATHERS takes a familiar theme—grief manifesting into something physical—and pushes it somewhere more unpredictable. It’s not a traditional horror experience, and it’s not exactly a straightforward drama either. Instead, it sits in the uncomfortable middle, leaning into the messiness of grief without softening its edges. That choice gives the film a unique strength, but also leads to some unevenness that holds it back from its full potential. Still, it’s hard to deny that this is one of Benedict Cumberbatch’s most grounded, vulnerable performances in years.

There’s an unmistakable ache in the opening minutes of THE ISLAND CLOSEST TO HEAVEN, the kind of emotion that doesn’t scream but settles in as soon as Mari begins her journey. Director Nobuhiko Obayashi leans into that space between childhood and adulthood—where curiosity is louder than confidence, and where grief burns underneath even the brightest moments. This is a film that provides something delicate and introspective, a story built around a promise a father made to his daughter and the search for meaning that follows after he’s gone.