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TATSUMI opens in a corner of the underworld most films only mention in whispers: the person who shows up after the violence to clear the scene. That detail immediately tells you what kind of story this is—less about the swaggering side of organized crime and more about the residue it leaves on people who never get a headline. Tatsumi is a fisherman by day and a cleaner for local yakuza by night, a man whose life is defined by proximity to the worst moments of other people’s choices. When his ex-girlfriend is murdered and her teenage sister Aoi charges headlong toward payback, he steps in—partly out of guilt, partly out of duty, and partly because he recognizes a path that can only end one way.

SERIOUS PEOPLE starts with a straightforward, sharp what-if: right as a music-video director is about to become a father, the biggest job of his career lands in his inbox. He wants to be there for the birth and maintain his momentum. The solution he lands on is very Los Angeles—don’t miss the gig; just find someone to play you. From that premise, the film builds a funny, awkward, and occasionally bracing exploration of authorship, ego, and the economy of attention that treats human beings like interchangeable brand assets.

From the moment the opening frames of this story, the sense is clear: this is not simply a holiday feature-ette about a classic Christmas song, but a layered portrait of life. MORE THAN SANTA BABY positions its subject, composer Philip Springer, not only as the writer of the immortal “Santa Baby,” but as a figure whose career spans decades, transitions, reinventions, and a burning creative fire. The project is directed by his daughter, Tamar Springer, and from that personal standpoint, the film carries an intimacy many music documentaries miss.

Ali and Katie begin their relationship with the kind of strength that feels unstoppable — two people building a shared life in New York, thinking only of the promise ahead of them. But reality is never polite enough to wait for love to settle in. This film captures that moment when external forces make a private relationship suddenly feel like an open case file. It is grounded in the emotion that comes with starting over, particularly when one partner’s right to remain is always negotiable.

Nazisploitation has always traded on provocation. The marketing, the titles, the posters — all designed to generate moral panic and curiosity. SS EXPERIMENT LOVE CAMP belongs to that lineage, and its reputation precedes it by nearly fifty years. What’s surprising, revisiting it now, is how little the film has beyond the provocation. For a movie engineered to shock, it’s curiously monotonous, a cycle of cruelty-as-spectacle that rarely builds tension, depth, or even consistent pulp momentum. The result lands squarely in the middle for me: not good, not unwatchable, where notoriety does more heavy lifting than the filmmaking.

The most striking thing about COME SEE ME IN THE GOOD LIGHT is how unafraid it is to embrace joy. That statement might seem simple, almost naïve, considering the film centers on the living reality of an incurable cancer diagnosis. Yet there’s nothing naïve happening here — this is a documentary that insists life is meant to be lived, even when the clock is no longer subtle about its presence. Director Ryan White captures this belief through the relationship between poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley, who face the brutality of illness with a partnership that balances a delicate rope between humor and heartbreak. The result is a film that feels remarkably alive, present, and emotionally precise.

WTO/99 is a reminder of a moment when the ground beneath a nation shifted, and tens of thousands of everyday people believed they could push back hard enough to make the world listen. It tells the story of the 1999 Seattle protests not by explaining what happened but by immersing you directly into the chaos, emotion, and urgency of those four days. Through nothing but archival footage and a meticulously assembled structure, the documentary pulls viewers into a fight that many dismissed at the time as fringe anger — but now feels unsettlingly prophetic.

STEVE SCHAPIRO: BEING EVERYWHERE focuses on the power of the person behind the lens. Instead of stacking talking heads or rushing through decades of iconic imagery, the documentary does something more intimate: it sits with Steve Schapiro. It lets him tell the stories that shaped his perspective. As he recalls the moments that defined a career spent moving between Hollywood and the heart of American social movements, the film reminds you that history doesn’t just happen in front of a camera — sometimes it’s preserved because someone showed up with one.

ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO approaches the well-documented couple with a fresh, tightly focused experience: eighteen months in New York City that culminate in a single concert with a very specific purpose. Rather than assembling a gallery of outside commentators to tell the story, the film puts the period itself in the foreground—television, news breaks, game shows, political broadcasts—then lets John Lennon and Yoko Ono move through that commotion as artists trying to make their actions matter. It’s an elegant structural choice. The result isn’t a scrapbook of greatest hits, but a portrait of process: how two people shaped their lives around a cause and recalibrated their approach as the stakes changed.

UNLICENSED is the kind of film that understands the real battle always happens long before anyone steps foot into a boxing ring. Danny Goode was once a man who defined himself by winning—career, financial, and the thrill of a life lived fast. But after a stint in prison for insider trading, he emerges into a world that has moved on without him. The shame doesn’t just linger; it settles into every relationship he once took for granted. In just the first few minutes, it’s clear the film isn’t interested in glamorizing the comeback. It wants you to feel the weight of a man who’s starting from below zero.

SUPERCLAUS takes place in a world where Santa has grown just a bit restless. He loves his Christmas duties, sure — but all the attention goes to SuperClaus, a fictional superhero version of himself celebrated in a blockbuster franchise adored by kids and marketed into oblivion. One bump on the noggin later, Santa believes the fantasy is reality, and suddenly the North Pole has a hero with a misplaced identity and no brakes.

BULL RUN dives into the intoxicating world of high finance from a refreshingly personal angle. It follows Bobby Sanders, a former hockey player, as he tries to force himself into a career that looks great on paper but feels hollow in reality. He wants to belong to the world of big money and fast decisions, but every step forward raises the same question: what’s the point if you lose yourself in the climb?

This was a strange one, and when I say strange, I mean it both in the context of the film, but also just the experience. At its best, SALLYWOOD is a story about caretaking—of a career, of a dream, of a person you’ve decided to believe in even when others have moved on. Writer/director Xaque Gruber frames the film from the point of view of Zack (Tyler Steelman), a young writer who grew up haunted—in a good way—by Sally Kirkland’s work in ANNA. He shows up in Los Angeles with hope and little else. Through an amusing encounter that belongs to the city’s mythology, he’s suddenly carrying bags, answering calls, and trying to stage/manage a comeback for his idol. The film treats that arrangement with a mix of sincerity and bemused self-awareness; it knows this is the kind of story people roll their eyes at, then quietly root for anyway.

Director Alan Govenar frames Jasper not only through the horror that made national headlines in 1998, but through the people who refused to let that be the final sentence. We meet elders and organizers whose lives have been shaped by segregation, disenfranchisement, and the grind of being asked to “move on.” The film’s title is literal: the voices are measured, firm, and rarely performative. You feel the thesis in their cadence—progress, if it holds, comes from neighbors stacking real moments until a counter-narrative becomes the town’s muscle memory.

There’s a particular flavor of crime thriller that thrives on the tension between ambition and inevitability — the moment when someone reaches for the big score even though every warning sign tells them they’re speeding into disaster. THE PERFECT GAMBLE fits that mold, focusing on two men who should know better yet charge into danger because the lure of control, validation, and reinvention is too strong to resist. It’s a story about building a future on unstable ground and hoping you can outrun the collapse. There is a very made-for-TV vibe to the film, but it works, in a nostalgic kind of way.

James Mangold’s 3:10 TO YUMA understands that the heart of a Western isn’t in the gunfire—it’s in the moments between shots, when a man decides what kind of person he wants to be. This 2007 remake of the 1957 classic transforms Elmore Leonard’s story into a human drama of conviction versus corruption, anchored by two powerhouse performances from Christian Bale and Russell Crowe.

There’s a quietly terrifying moment in adulthood when you realize people expect you to have a roadmap for who you are and what you want — and worse, that you’ve internalized those expectations without ever questioning whether they’re truly yours. (DON’T KNOW) HOW TO BE takes that moment and stretches it over one emotionally loaded evening, turning a birthday visit into a confrontation about identity, love, and what it means to exist confidently in a world where everyone thinks they know what’s best for you.

With a final frame that will stick with you forever, the strength of HAPPY BIRTHDAY lies in its quiet defiance. Sarah Goher’s feature debut unfolds in Cairo, where one girl’s attempt to celebrate her friend’s birthday becomes an act of resistance against an entire social order. What begins as a seemingly gentle story about childhood friendship soon reveals itself as something far more piercing — a confrontation with the invisible systems that define who is allowed to dream and who is not.

There’s a moment in A BEAR REMEMBERS that crystallizes what the film does best: it makes history feel like something you can reach out and touch — or something that might reach back. This 20-minute short transforms a simple idea into something emotional and haunting without ever resorting to spectacle. It’s a story about a mysterious sound troubling a remote village, but it resonates because it’s ultimately about what happens when the bonds that hold a community together begin to unravel, unnoticed.

STEAL THIS STORY, PLEASE! understands that journalism, at its best, is not a set of hot takes—it’s a muscle memory for asking difficult questions when the room would prefer silence. The film follows Amy Goodman across three decades of reporting and the daily grind, framing the Democracy Now! anchor not as a sainted outlier but as a working reporter who refuses to internalize the limits imposed by corporate consolidation, political intimidation, or apathy. Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin shape that vision into a narrative: a story about the persistence required to keep a public square open when the gatekeepers continually change the locks.

DECIBEL locks a musician and a music mogul in an isolated studio and asks a question the music business keeps dodging: what happens to soul when the system optimizes it? The premise is pointed—a promising musician, Scout, is invited to a high-tech recording sanctuary run by Donna, a brilliant, exacting figure who believes the future of music is less about blood and breath and more about training data and control (typical billionaire…). That setup isn’t just timely; it’s personal. Every scene feels like a negotiation between two incompatible definitions of creativity: one that accepts messiness, and one that treats mess as a bug to eliminate.

AFTER DARK is a compact morality play about what we owe a stranger when our instincts disagree. In ten minutes, it sets up a classic 'what would you do' scenario: a man on his way home meets a young woman who needs help getting to the station. He decides to walk with her. From there, the film becomes a tug-of-war between two impulses—compassion and self-protection—played out on quiet streets where every footstep sounds like a decision.

THE MASK is the rare studio comedy that fully understands its star as both actor and special effect. Jim Carrey’s face, posture, and body language were already a cultural event in 1994; this film turns that energy into its own premise. Stanley Ipkiss is a pushover with a kind heart and a habit of apologizing for occupying space. The mask he finds doesn’t create a different person; it detonates the person he’s been holding back, then paints him green and lets him sprint across the screen. That simple idea—your repressed self, set free—is what gives the movie its lasting power. The jokes go big, the gags go bigger, and yet the concept remains clear enough to anchor all the chaos.