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THE WEEDHACKER MASSACRE aims to be a slasher parody — a scrappy meta-horror that tries to outwit its own limitations by acknowledging them. It’s the kind of production that lives somewhere between homage and chaos, where enthusiasm often outweighs precision. There’s a certain charm to that balance when it works; when it doesn’t, the cracks show fast. This one sits somewhere in between — funny in moments, frustrating in others, but undeniably sincere about its love for the genre it’s poking at.

I’m a sucker for documentaries, and an even bigger sucker for Halloween, so this had me psyched! SCREAMITYVILLE is less a traditional documentary and more of a love letter to Halloween itself — an ode to neighborhood creativity, lights, and the strange comfort found in the eerie hum of suburban extravaganza. At just under an hour and a half, it abandons typical documentary conventions for something more immersive and sensory in flavor. It’s not about explaining; it’s about experiencing. Director Ryan Archibald trades interviews and context for texture and tone, crafting a chronicle of how ordinary front yards transform into worlds of imagination each October.

DAIEI GOTHIC VOL. 2 hands us the quiet authority of films that treated ghost stories as grand morality plays rather than pulp diversions. There’s no need for spectacle or cheap thrills here — the unease comes from atmosphere, consequence, and the persistence of guilt. The collection of three restorations — THE DEMON OF MOUNT OE, THE HAUNTED CASTLE, and THE GHOST OF KASANE SWAMP — this second volume continues the mission of exploring Japan’s kaidan tradition with grace and gravity. These are stories of haunting, but also of humanity, where the supernatural acts as both punishment and mirror.

There’s a rare kind of comfort in a documentary that understands its place in the holiday canon without trying to redefine it. BEST CHRISTMAS MOVIES EVER! knows exactly what it wants to deliver — warmth, nostalgia, and the cheerful spirit of cinematic tradition — and it does so with confidence and sincerity. This extended version takes the concept of revisiting beloved Christmas films and transforms it into an affectionate, celebratory conversation about why these stories continue to define the season. It isn’t about revelations or deep dives into production history; it’s about rekindling the feelings these movies create and honoring the people who made them special in the first place.

VINDICATION SWIM approaches the biopic like a test of endurance, not just for its protagonist but for its production. The film recreates Mercedes Gleitze’s historic 1927 swim across the English Channel with striking authenticity, capturing both the physical and psychological toll of her journey. What sets this dramatization apart is its commitment to realism—shot in the actual Channel, with lead actress Kirsten Callaghan performing the demanding swims herself. That choice transforms the sea from setting to adversary, grounding the film’s grandeur in sweat, current, and cold.

THE ISLAND centers on a teacher and his students, cut off from the mainland and confronted by a family whose way of life turns everything they believe in upside down. It’s a survival horror premise you’ve seen before—civilization trapped in the wild—but the way this 1985 Hong Kong film filters that scenario through humor, class friction, and a streak of maliciousness gives it a lived-in personality.

The film opens with laughter and kids sprinting under a bright Florida sky as if the world itself is their playground. That energy is the hook: the promise that childhood can generate its own fireworks even when the grown-ups are scrambling to keep the lights on. THE FLORIDA PROJECT understands that contradiction intimately. It sets the thrill of summer freedom right next to the reality of near-homelessness, and refuses to flatten either side of the equation. The result is a compassionate, observed portrait of a community living week to week, where joy is real and consequences don’t wait.

Some stories are so unbelievable that they almost sound like a myth, and KÖLN 75 takes one of those and turns it into something direct, anxious, and alive. The film doesn’t worship the legendary Keith Jarrett concert; it strips away the reverence to show how a masterpiece nearly fell apart before the first note was even played. At its center isn’t Jarrett himself, but Vera Brandes, the promoter who refused to let the night collapse. It’s good to know that you don’t need to be familiar with this story, or even the concert itself, to be able to appreciate this film. It was an incredible experience, and it only adds to it that there's a truth to it all.

When grief becomes routine, it’s no longer healing—it’s survival. THE MOURNING OF is a delicate and haunting meditation on loss, directed and written by Merced Elizondo, that captures the rituals we build to keep memories alive. Instead of exploring grief as a single moment of heartbreak, this short film peeks into the quiet, repetitive gestures that define a person trapped between remembrance and recovery. What begins as an empathetic story of mourning slowly turns into a portrait of obsession, showing how even love and sorrow can corrode when left unchecked.

The quiet moments where genius is born are exactly where KEY OF GENIUS finds its cadence. Directed by Daniel Persitz and co-written by Academy Award winner David Seidler, this twelve-minute short film distills the extraordinary true story of Derek Paravicini—blind, autistic, and gifted with a musical intuition that transcends comprehension—into a moving portrait of mentorship, discovery, and connection.

Released in 1992, BODY PUZZLE stands as one of the final gasps of Italy’s once-glorious giallo tradition—a cinematic language defined by color, style, and perversity. By the early ’90s, audiences had shifted toward Hollywood thrillers like THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and what icon Lamberto Bava crafted here feels like a haunting farewell to a genre that once ruled Italian horror. However, it is certainly not without its charm.

There’s a reason ILSA, SHE WOLF OF THE SS continues to haunt conversations about exploitation and censorship nearly fifty years after its release. It’s not a film that hides behind metaphor or restraint—it’s raw, offensive, and proudly coarse. What makes Kino Lorber’s new 4K UHD restoration noteworthy isn’t that it redeems the film, but that it confronts it. This is one of the most notorious examples of 70s grindhouse excess—filmmaking that dared viewers to recoil and look closer.

FLYING DUO is a delicate, personal, and unmistakably authentic short film that captures the ache of displacement through humor, heart, and subtle artistry. Written by Emma Brunet-Campain and directed by Robyn Faye, this ten-minute exploration of loneliness and friendship becomes a celebration of persistence—both within its story and behind the scenes. It’s the kind of short that makes viewers remember the first time they felt swallowed by a city and found comfort in someone who understood.

Idris Elba’s DUST TO DREAMS is a compact, performance-driven short about inheritance—of places, pain, and the courage it takes to keep a legacy alive. Set in Lagos, the film centers on a shy young woman suddenly responsible for her mother’s struggling nightclub, only to be confronted by a father she barely knows. It’s a simple premise, yet the emotions underneath are anything but: grief, resentment, and a stubborn hope that refuses to leave the stage even as the lights flicker.

Trevor Morris makes a striking directorial debut with BUTTERFLY ON A WHEEL, a short film that feels deeply personal yet universally resonant. Morris approaches filmmaking with the same precision he brings to music — layering emotion, rhythm, and structure into something that hums with authenticity.

HANS ZIMMER & FRIENDS: DIAMOND IN THE DESERT plays like a summation of a remarkable career and a statement piece of an icon. Across two and a half hours, the film assembles a setlist of music that marks modern blockbuster memory—DUNE, GLADIATOR, INTERSTELLAR, THE LION KING—then reframes them as living, breathing pieces written for a stage that expects the music to carry everything on its own. This isn’t “clips with an orchestra.” It’s a concert movie that treats the score as the story, letting a hand-picked band and an arena-sized production translate what audiences usually feel under dialogue and picture into a direct, physical experience.

Sequels to revolutionary comedies almost always face impossible expectations, and AIRPLANE II: THE SEQUEL is no exception. Released in 1982, just two years after the smash hit AIRPLANE!, this follow-up attempted to recapture the lightning in a bottle by sending the disaster parody into outer space. The setup is simple but ripe for gags: the first commercial lunar shuttle malfunctions, its computer system goes haywire, and Ted Striker (Robert Hays) once again must save the day, all while reconciling with Elaine (Julie Hagerty). With a cast stacked with recognizable names like Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves, William Shatner, Rip Torn, and Sonny Bono, the film had every opportunity to ride high on the original’s momentum.

THE LITTLES is a short film that proves you don’t need sprawling mythology or elaborate dialogue to leave an impression. (Although I have nothing to confirm this with, I couldn’t stop thinking that this was a horror homage to the 80s animated series THE LITTLES) At only seven minutes long, it takes a deceptively simple event—a child stubbing her toe on a loose floorboard—and transforms it into a portal to a stranger, more unsettling world. With just one spoken line of dialogue, the film demands that atmosphere, visuals, and sound shoulder the full weight of the story. That gamble pays off.

EDGAR ALLAN POE’S THE OVAL PORTRAIT has the right ingredients on paper: a cursed painting, three strangers bound by a past they don’t understand, and the perfect setting—a peculiar antique shop—that practically begs for haunts, whispers, and the feeling that every object carries a memory. What it lacks is the connective tissue that makes a Gothic thriller feel alive. The mood is present, the premise is clear, and a handful of shots achieve the eerie stillness the story calls for. But the execution, especially across the ensemble, pulls attention away from the tension the film is trying to build.

Some films capture the pulse of New York; others catch its indescribable core. THE FRENCH ITALIAN exists somewhere in between—an offbeat comedy of errors about artistic delusion, noisy neighbors, and the complicated way self-importance masquerades as creativity. It’s as funny as it is uncomfortable, not because of how it’s written, but because it's not afraid to shine a light on the satirical elements within the production.

Some horror emerges from the shadows, while others are born in plain sight—shimmering under fluorescent lights, smiling through self-help slogans, and whispering promises of self-improvement. THINESTRA lives in that unsettling space between vanity and survival, turning a mirror toward modern body culture and daring the audience to look closer, even when it hurts to do so.

WHERE DID THE ADULTS GO? arrives as a narrative feature from Academy Award nominee Courtney Marsh, a filmmaker already known for blending intimate storytelling with social conscience. The film presents a seemingly simple scenario: three siblings, a family house, and the anniversary of their parents’ death. But it’s through this structure that Marsh builds something richer—a study of grief, inheritance, and identity, anchored by performances that balance vulnerability with tension.

The hook is simple enough to pitch in a sentence: a high-school kid gets dumped, finds out she’s pregnant, and decides keeping the baby might win him back and give her life direction. The film takes that impulse seriously without mocking it, then dismantles the fantasy with clear eyes and a sense of humor that never condescends. IF THAT MOCKINGBIRD DON’T SING is a teen pregnancy dramedy that respects its characters’ naïveté while insisting on accountability; it allows Sydnie’s (Aitana Doyle) hope to be sincere and simultaneously shows why “fixing” your life by having a baby is a fragile plan at best.

Every so often, a filmmaker comes along who embraces the absurdity of a genre without apology. Steven Kostanski has made a career out of that blend. With DEATHSTALKER, he doubles down on his affection for monsters, gory practical effects, and the earnest joy of throwback fantasy. This reimagining of Roger Corman’s sword-and-sorcery staple arrives with all the foam-crafted cave walls, smoke-drenched battlefields, and stop-motion monstrosities you’d expect, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else. The result is a noisy return to pulp fantasy, one that knows its audience and rewards them with exactly the kind of spectacle they crave.

There’s a difference between describing the past and confronting it. AMONG NEIGHBORS traces one town’s suppressed history with a patient, unflinching gaze. Yoav Potash constructs the film from voices that are vanishing and artifacts that have been literally unearthed, shaping a moral inquiry that never loses sight of individual lives. The story is simple: elders from the Polish town of Gniewoszów share memories of Jewish neighbors whose presence has been erased from the streets, cemeteries, and official narratives. Yet, as the conversations deepen, so does the film’s focus, circling the murders that occurred after the war ended and the ramifications of telling the truth in the present day.