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Some documentaries try to shape hardship into something refined and inspirational. WITHOUT WARNING chooses a different path. It presents survival as it actually unfolds: frightening, unpredictable, and shaped as much by instinct and vulnerability as by bravery. Bridgett Watkins’ story has every element of a dramatic adventure, yet filmmaker Steve Scearcy keeps the focus on the human being at the center, not the myth. That approach grounds the film, giving it weight beyond the headlines. It isn’t a tale framed as triumph for its own sake; it’s a chronicle of a woman facing the kind of danger most people will never encounter and pushing forward anyway, even when fear and obligation collide in uncomfortable ways.

SAY YES! TO OWN YOUR SUCCESS enters the crowded personal-development world with a surprisingly grounded tone. Ron Stein isn’t writing from the mountaintop, preaching at readers through recycled motivational catchphrases. Instead, he builds his guidance out of lived experience—decades of real jobs, real mistakes, sudden pivots, and the kind of unexpected successes that only show up after you’ve stopped waiting for permission. What makes the book stand out is its blend of memoir and framework, creating something more substantial than the usual “new year, new you” fluff. Stein provides structure, energy, and just enough storytelling to keep the lessons anchored in real-world stakes.

A documentary built over nearly two decades asks the filmmaker to commit not just to a subject but also to the gradual shifts that come with age, loss, reinvention, and the unpredictable changes life throws at someone living unapologetically. PEACHES GOES BANANAS embraces that view and uses it as a core strength, capturing Merrill Nisker — better known as Peaches — at various points where confidence, exhaustion, humor, ambition, and tenderness collide. Director Marie Losier isn’t interested in shaping Peaches into a conventional documentary figure. Instead, she lets the footage accumulate naturally, turning the film into an extended conversation between two artists as they attempt to understand one another across changing landscapes, careers, and personal histories.

There’s a particular comfort in a series that knows exactly where it wants to stand from the moment it starts. ART DETECTIVES positions itself in that space where charm meets well-built cases, letting its mysteries feel grounded without being bleak. Instead of leaning on shock or cynicism, it trades in curiosity — the pull of art history, the tension of hidden motives, and the strange ways priceless objects can warp otherwise reasonable lives. With that foundation, the series lands securely in the cozy-crime sphere, but with just enough edge to keep its stories from fading into formula.

Season 3 of THE WALKING DEAD: DARYL DIXON wastes no time reminding you why these characters earned such longevity in the first place. There’s a confidence to this chapter, the kind that only emerges when a series knows its identity and trusts its cast to carry emotion without forcing spectacle. The return of Carol makes this even clearer; she doesn’t simply rejoin the story — she reorients it. The season carries the energy of a long-delayed conversation finally happening, the kind that personalizes every step Daryl and Carol take across a Europe that feels both expansive and claustrophobic. There’s real comfort in their reunion, but also an earned tension in how differently they’re approaching the idea of “home,” turning what could have been straightforward fan service into something richer.

Some sports documentaries feel like they’re just there to inform, and others feel like coming home again. THE SHUFFLE easily falls into the second category, wrapping itself in Chicago pride and decades-old memories of a team that didn’t just win — they dominated, they entertained, and they embraced a swagger the NFL had never seen before (or since.) For anyone who grew up with the 1985 Bears as mythology or who still references “The Super Bowl Shuffle” as if it were a sacred text, this short documentary plays like a time capsule cracked open at exactly the right moment. And with the Bears finally having a good, if not great season again (not on the level of the ‘85 Bears, but beating the Super Bowl champs from last year ain’t nothing), watching this film feels like a celebration more than a history lesson.

Some films work best when they make you feel like you’ve wandered somewhere you shouldn’t be, and THE HOUSE WITH LAUGHING WINDOWS thrives in that space. It’s a film that doesn’t need cheap shocks or exaggerated theatrics to keep you unsettled. Instead, it grounds its horror in isolation, suspicion, and the sinking realization that some communities hide rot beneath a perfectly still surface. Watching it today, restored in 4K and given the level of care Arrow Video reserves for films with genuine artistic vision, it becomes clear why this title quietly earned its reputation as one of the most disturbing entries in Italian horror — not because of what it shows, but because of what it makes your mind fill in.

SORORITY BABES IN THE SLIMEBALL BOWL-O-RAMA earns its cult status reputation through sheer, unapologetic chaos. This is a movie with no interest in restraint, perfection, or logic; instead, it embraces the kind of charm that defined late-night cable horror throughout the ’80s. It’s crude, clumsy, horny, and relentlessly silly — and that’s exactly why it has endured for decades among the trash-cinema faithful.

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.