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ROBOT CHICKEN has always been a sugar-rush of stop-motion mayhem—blink and an entire sketch can go off the rails. Collected as a complete-series set, the show’s two decades crystallize into a collection of pop-culture obsessions: toys, comics, late-night TV, forgotten cereal mascots, video-game NPCs, and every blockbuster myth we’ve collectively carried around since childhood. The stop-motion craft, the tactile charm of roughed up action figures, the caffeinated timing—none of it should age well, and yet it does, because the core is specificity. The jokes don’t just reference the satire; they reconstruct tiny universes with the zeal of kids on a bedroom floor at 2 a.m., then torch them for a punchline.

FAMILY GUY may be past its 25th birthday, but this Halloween special proves the Griffins can still make mischief feel fresh. A show that’s never shied away from blending parody with musical theater, FAMILY GUY doubles down on that formula in its new Halloween one-off, A LITTLE FRIGHT MUSIC. Debuting exclusively on Hulu, the special serves as a mission statement for the series' enduring appeal: irreverence delivered with precision, bolstered by a willingness to skewer both pop culture and suburban mundanity. For a series now past its 25th anniversary, the decision to anchor a holiday special in original music is both a nod to its history and a reminder that the show can still surprise.

Dave Chappelle’s KILLIN’ THEM SOFTLY is the rare kind of comedy special that manages to feel both of its time and timeless. Shot in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Theatre back in 2000, this HBO debut didn’t just capture a rising star — it proclaimed a cultural force. Twenty-five years later, Warner Bros. Discovery is marking its legacy with a new DVD release, offering fans an opportunity to revisit the hour that catapulted Chappelle from a cult comic to a household name.

For a generation that grew up with Vee in animated form, VAMPIRINA: TEENAGE VAMPIRE isn’t just a new series—it’s a graduation, a chance to see a beloved character wrestle with bigger stages, bigger secrets, and the universal growing pains of finding yourself. VAMPIRINA: TEENAGE VAMPIRE takes the beloved character, swaps animation for live action, and keeps the beating heart (or not beating in Vee’s case)—music, friendship, and the struggle of fitting in—front and center. A tween vampire leaves Transylvania for a performing-arts boarding school in the human world, where she has to juggle secret identity anxieties, artistic ambition, a loving (and protective) family, and an overzealous ghost chaperone who complicates even the simplest moments. The fact that this is the character’s first live-action portrayal gives it a built-in curiosity factor, and the two episodes I screened suggest a series designed to balance hijinks with a serialized emotional arc.

SPAWN lives in the peculiar sweet spot where a bold comic-book world collided with late-’90s studio filmmaking. You can feel the era in every choice: aggressive CG, a hard-edged soundtrack, and a go-for-broke villain performance that threatens to hijack the movie. Yet beneath the glaze and scorched-earth aesthetic, there’s a sharp hook—a tragic antihero whose pain is as compelling as his power. That core keeps the film from toppling under its own extravagance and makes a modern revisit surprisingly enjoyable, even while the seams show.

COUNTED OUT makes a simple, potent claim: in a world arranged by code, statistics, and algorithms, math is a language of power—and literacy in that language affects who gets hired, who gets heard, and who gets a real say. Vicki Abeles builds that claim into a focused documentary that treats mathematics not as a test to pass but as a civic tool. The result is engaging, unusually clear, and sincere about the shame and anxiety that many people still carry from their school days.

AKASHI is a story that wears its duality on its sleeve—bridging continents, generations, and emotional timelines. Director Mayumi Yoshida transforms her award-winning short into a deeply personal feature, one that explores grief, romance, and the weight of secrets handed down through family. From the outset, this isn’t framed as just a homecoming drama but as a reckoning with identity. Kana (played by Yoshida herself), a struggling artist who’s been living in Vancouver, returns to Tokyo for her grandmother’s funeral. In that journey back, the film opens layers of memory and buried truths that ripple through the lives of those left behind.

THE ART OF ADVENTURE tracks an irresistible premise with a simple confidence: two curious young Canadians—painter Robert Bateman and biologist Bristol Foster—set off in 1957 in a suped up Land Rover nicknamed “Grizzly Torque,” roaming across Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Australia with a sketchbook, a 16mm camera, and more nerve than budget. Director Alison Reid doesn’t just recount where they went; she shows how a road trip crystallized into a lifelong mission, translating awe into action. The result is a buoyant, clear-eyed documentary that feels like a road movie first and a career retrospective second. That order matters—the film offers a lived experience, then threads it to legacy.

UNDELETABLE is the rare short that understands how comedy and pain are often the same sound at different volumes. It traps a grieving daughter and lets every misstep, every backspace that isn’t possible, every awkward correction, reveal a life cracking in real time. In seven minutes, the film pulls off an emotional high-wire act: it’s funny because you recognize the panic of leaving a message you can’t edit. It’s devastating because the stakes are as high as they could be. That double exposure—humor laid directly over heartbreak—is the film’s engine.

SYNTHESIZE ME proves that fifteen minutes can be expansive when emotion and metaphor are intertwined. Dutch-Indonesian filmmaker Bear Damen crafts a deeply personal story framed within the world of a grieving family. Set in a town near Mexico City in the late 80s, the film channels the instability of its setting into a potent metaphor for human relationships. At its heart is Violeta, a teenager played with energy and quiet sorrow by Ivana Plantier, who uses her late mother’s neglected synthesizers as a lifeline to memory.

There’s something timeless about the idea of a high school newspaper—enthusiastic teenagers chasing stories that feel monumental within their own microcosm. DIRTY BOOKS takes that premise and infuses it with both humor and a commentary on how journalism and ethics collide, even at the most novice level. This 16-minute short film demonstrates that with the right execution, small stories can have just as much impact as sprawling feature films.

A DIWALI DILEMMA begins in the fluorescently-lit cubicles of a workplace that doesn’t celebrate diversity so much as commodify it. Mala, an overworked employee, is compelled by her toxic boss to organize a Diwali party as a superficial gesture of inclusion. Already running on fumes, she numbs herself with too many drinks and collapses. What follows is a night of reckoning, guided by three mentors from her past, who force her to confront how far she has drifted from the dreams she once had of becoming.

Few cult studios embodied the DIY ethos of the VHS era quite like Full Moon Features. Nowhere is that clearer than in THE DOLLMAN TOYBOX: DOLLMAN X DEMONIC TOYS COLLECTION, a five-disc, eight-film set from 101 Films’ Black Label line. For the first time, the complete run of crossover madness — from Tim Thomerson’s tiny space cop to Baby Oopsie’s foul-mouthed reign of terror — has been gathered in one package. The result is less about perfection and more about persistence: a living archive of what happens when imagination refuses to die, even under the tightest budgets.

PEARLS wastes no time in plunging the viewer into a story that feels equal parts absurd, unsettling, and disturbingly relatable. With only fifteen minutes to make its mark, Alastair Train’s short film approaches the horrors of fertility struggles through a lens of body horror, distorted imagery, and the kind of creeping discomfort that stays long after the credits fade. It’s not a film that politely asks for attention—it forces it, much like the invasive presence of the oysters at its core.

This documentary manages to take something as familiar as baseball and remind us how much weight it can carry beyond the confines of a field. DIAMOND DIPLOMACY is one of those rare films that doesn’t just tell the story of a sport, but instead reshapes how we understand its place in the world. In under ninety minutes, it captures more than 150 years of history between the United States and Japan, demonstrating how the game became a vessel for unity, resilience, and repair.