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Some pandemic stories flood the screen with chaos because it makes the fear easier to process. NO MORE TIME goes in the opposite direction — it drains the world until there’s barely anything left. The setting of empty cabins in the mountains, half-finished sentences on the radio, and two people trying to hold onto themselves even as the world outside forces everyone into a state of survival that looks more feral than human. It’s a pandemic movie, but it isn’t recreating headlines. It’s more interested in the slow deterioration of trust when catastrophe becomes normal.

There’s a rule that most horror films embrace without question: fear is loud. Doors slam, footsteps echo, voices distort, and the score claws its way into the viewer like a physical force. HAUNTERS OF THE SILENCE rejects that approach. Its opening passages establish a different kind of dread — one built on stillness, interrupted breaths, and the quiet weight of unresolved memory. Rather than giving in to fear, it studies it, letting isolation become as threatening as any creature or loud jump scare. I want to start with clarity: this film wasn’t for me, but some will absolutely love it.

BITTER DESIRE offers up the kind of premise that could easily fuel a tight, grounded thriller: a wounded police officer, a nurse who isn’t who she claims to be, and a home that becomes a battleground for misplaced trust. Conceptually, it’s a setup built for tension. The problem is that the final film never finds a way to make that tension feel convincing. What emerges instead is a well-intentioned project that struggles to rise above its limitations, even though you can see the filmmakers cared deeply about getting it made.

This scene leans heavily on risk and proximity rather than emotion, framing the action around secrecy, impulse, and the thrill of getting away with it. The setup is simple but effective: two step siblings pushing past hesitation in a place where discretion actually matters, with someone else present but unaware.

A world-ending disaster usually brings along chaos, cities crashing into rubble, and a camera shouting over the noise. WE BURY THE DEAD works in the opposite direction. The catastrophe has already happened. It’s quiet now. Ash settles, bodies lie where they fell, and the survivors are left to clean up the pieces without answers or time to process. The film is built around a simple idea: when the dead refuse to stay buried, grief doesn’t disappear; it intensifies. Zak Hilditch approaches the premise with restraint, focusing less on gore and more on the fallout of a world that suddenly made no sense.

This documentary approaches Julian Assange like the eye of a storm, not a martyr standing on a hill. THE SIX BILLION DOLLAR MAN treats him as a symbol caught between governments, surveillance systems, fractured narratives, and the terrifying frame of a world where information itself is weaponized. Eugene Jarecki’s award-winning return to the political documentary form is the kind of film that’s less interested in what Assange did, moment to moment, than in what his existence reveals about how power operates today. It’s confident, concentrated, and structured with the tension of a political thriller, even as it tackles territory that’s been explored before. What’s new is the scale and the access.

DELINQUENT SCHOOLGIRLS is the kind of film that doesn’t ask whether its premise is appropriate, logical, or even remotely defensible. It simply launches into chaos with commitment, reflecting a period of exploitation filmmaking built on shock value, budgets, and whatever concept could draw attention on a marquee. Watching it today is less about the story—which barely exists—and more about experiencing a very specific corner of 1970s grindhouse cinema, one where boundaries were pushed mostly because no one involved believed any existed. This new addition to the PSYCHO TRONICA line embraces exactly that, packaging a notorious title with a much-needed restoration that leaves every rough edge intact.

TIMESTAMP is constructed without narration, interviews, or commentary, yet there is not a moment when the film feels silent. On the surface, it documents school life in Ukraine during the ongoing Russian invasion. That premise alone would suggest something direct and investigative, a chronicle of crisis through the eyes of children and teachers. Instead, the film achieves something more: it captures the persistence of the ordinary while the extraordinary becomes constant. Every scene appears calm, but danger is never more than a siren away. The documentary’s design makes normalcy feel like an act of resistance.

KILL THE JOCKEY feels like a film built of fragments of a nightmare that somehow reflect the logic of someone who no longer trusts reality. Luis Ortega structures the movie around a simple known truth: Remo was once good. He was a renowned jockey, admired, reckless, and so consumed by bad habits that talent couldn’t save him from becoming a liability. Everything that follows comes from that truth cracking open. The film begins in the world of debt, violence, and desperation, and by its final stretch, it becomes something symbolic rather than literal.

FLATHEAD grounds itself in the return of a man to a place that shaped him long before he understood what shaping meant. Cass Cumerford’s late-life journey back to Bundaberg isn’t framed as a grand pilgrimage or a dramatic reckoning. Instead, it plays out as a conversation with the past spoken in pauses, glances, and stories pieced together from strangers who seem to know him without really knowing him. The film meets Cass without nostalgia for the “old” Australia or skepticism about the new one. It wanders with him, the way memory does: less in a straight line, more in unfinished thoughts and gentle contradictions.

DOGMA is, without question, my favorite Kevin Smith film. I can’t help but be biased, but I feel like the film is nearly perfect in almost every way. The release limbo that the film has been in has caused a ton of chaos in the collector community. The 25th-anniversary 4K UHD release is more than a format upgrade; it’s a reintroduction to a movie that predicted a cultural collision between spirituality and organized extremism long before it defined mainstream discourse. Comedy rarely stays relevant for twenty-five years. This one did because its target isn’t belief—it’s the machinery built around belief and the complacency that follows.

TOWNSEND approaches therapy from an unusual angle, turning the concept inward and making the therapist the one searching for answers. The show follows Dr. Patrick Townsend, a celebrity psychologist whose life has publicly fallen apart. Instead of rebuilding his credibility through a redemption arc, the pilot puts him in a space where he’s questioning everything he used to present as expert guidance. It carries a dry, irreverent sense of humor that acknowledges how strange it can be when a person trained to guide others must confront his own lack of clarity.

THE HANDMAID’S TALE always carried a specific goal, but experiencing all six seasons together intensifies how its atmosphere of dread became its greatest tool and, later, its toughest limitation. The vision defined the early seasons; they weren’t content with simply imagining a collapsed America but actively interrogated how a society with democratic roots could break itself into something monstrous. This isn't just a setting—it’s an autopsy report. The first season, especially, remains one of the strongest debuts in modern television, propelled by the raw immediacy of Elisabeth Moss’ performance. She built June Osborne not as a symbol of rebellion from the outset, but as someone dragged toward resistance through repeated psychological and physical shattering. (The irony is how familiar many aspects of the series look to the real world we’re living in.)

A bachelor party comedy usually starts with the same expectation: chaos, hangovers, bad decisions, and some attempt at clarity before the credits roll. STRIPPER BOYZ takes that blueprint and flips the premise, creating a surprisingly sincere experience without sacrificing the absurdity of watching two lifelong friends attempt to become male revue performers. Stephen brings his best friend Joe to Las Vegas for a bachelor weekend, and instead of hiring entertainment, the two decide they'll be the entertainment. Their mission is framed like a joke, but the film doesn’t treat it as a punchline. The goal is confidence, body positivity, and pushing past the kind of self-doubt that often hides behind humor. The result is a hybrid film that plays like both a narrative buddy comedy and a documentary about pushing beyond your comfort zone.

Most crime stories often live or die by how quickly the filmmaker can establish danger, desire, and motivation. SLOPPY SUNDAY is less concerned with building a sprawling criminal ecosystem than it is with capturing the exact moment a young woman decides she no longer wants to belong to someone else’s version of survival. The film follows Sweetheart, a young sex worker who quits working under her abusive pimp and tries to find a way out of town before she’s dragged back into the same world. The idea is simple, the execution is tight, and the short’s energy comes from watching a character who looks like she could be overpowered at any moment make decisions that flip that assumption on its head.