Minier‘s Hometown News Site

At first glance, THE ODD JOB feels like an easy sell. Graham Chapman, just off the height of Monty Python’s success and on the cusp of LIFE OF BRIAN, co-writes and stars in a dark comedy about a man so desperate that he hires someone to kill him. Directed by Peter Medak and featuring David Jason, Diana Quick, Richard O’Brien, and Carolyn Seymour, the film assembles a lineup of British talent that should, by all accounts, have guaranteed success. Yet the result is something stranger: a black comedy that teeters between brilliance and commonness, remembered today as much for its production oddities as for its jokes.

AIRPORT arrives with the kind of Hollywood bravado only 1970 could muster: a sprawling ensemble, a bestselling novel as source material, and the promise of spectacle wrapped in a glossy studio production. George Seaton’s adaptation of Arthur Hailey’s hit book doesn’t just chart one perilous night at Lincoln International—it all but invents a genre, laying down the tarmac for a decade of big-budget disaster films to follow. Watching it now, especially in Kino Lorber’s new 4K restoration, is to witness the moment when melodrama, spectacle, and procedural collided at cruising altitude.

The film opens in winter and lingers there—not for elegance, but for the way snow transforms a place and how people move through it. That choice tells you a lot about how MY SUNSHINE operates. Hiroshi Okuyama favors small gestures and unforced moments, letting the season become a quiet metronome for emotional time. The story tracks a boy written off as the worst on his hockey team, the girl whose figure skating seems to promise escape, and a coach who recognizes something familiar (and faintly wounded) in both of them. What starts as mentorship gradually reshapes itself into a delicate triangle—supportive, protective, and then, inevitably, strained.

The movie begins where myth and rumor often intersect: a cramped apartment, a hungry city, and a young woman seeking a way out. QUEEN OF MANHATTAN isn’t just recreating a time and place; it’s arguing that 1970s–80s Times Square functioned like an engine—one that chewed people up, spit them out, and occasionally turned someone into a legend. In centering Vanessa Del Rio’s rise, the film threads a needle biopics often miss: it treats the adult industry as labor, not a punchline, and it respects the performer’s intelligence about her own image. The result is a pulpy, neon-drenched portrait with moments of tension, even when it leans a bit too hard on familiar rags-to-riches cliches.

BROWNSVILLE BRED anchors us firmly in the lived-in reality of memory, community, and survival. Elaine Del Valle’s debut feature feels less like a conventional movie and more like an act of reclamation — the reshaping of pain, resilience, and cultural identity into a narrative that refuses to compromise its truth. Adapted from Del Valle’s acclaimed stage play and autobiographical novel, and expanded from her SXSW Audience Award-winning short, the film emerges as a raw yet vibrant testament to the power of storytelling born from personal experience.

CHAIN REACTIONS isn’t a “making-of.” It’s a meditation on why a scrappy 1970s horror film keeps rattling around in our collective headspace, and how it continues to shape artists five decades later. Alexandre O. Philippe treats the subject with the same introspective rigor that has become his signature: isolating a foundational text, assembling an eclectic group of icons, and asking not what happened on set, but what the film did—and still does—to our senses, our anxieties, and our art. The result is a confident, idea-forward documentary that’s equal parts criticism, confession, and cinematic séance.

I had heard about this series for years, but this was my first time diving in, so, of course, I had to binge it all! The return trip to Mike White’s luxury pressure cooker trades cabanas for kombucha, repositioning the show’s signature social X-ray inside a Thai wellness resort that promises transcendence while serving the same old human mess. Season 3 doesn’t try to reinvent the series so much as refine its favorite maneuver: assemble combustible personalities, apply the slightest pressure, and watch entitlement dress itself up as enlightenment. The setting may sell serenity, but the show understands that people who book “transformational experiences” tend to arrive pre-transformed into exactly who they will remain.

Few animated shows have survived as many cancellations, revivals, and resurrections as FUTURAMA. After more than two decades, the series continues to prove that it thrives on unpredictability. Season 13 is a confident continuation of the show’s ability to merge science fiction satire with absurd, although mostly family-friendly comedy. It’s a season that dares to be both silly and smart, sometimes struggling, but still delivering a nostalgic yet fresh experience that feels like exactly what fans signed up for.

When the crime world collides with mentorship, the results can be both explosive and surprisingly tender. LONDON CALLING leans into that contradiction with gusto, offering an action-comedy that’s equal parts shootouts, road movie, and unlikely bonding. Directed by Allan Ungar, who previously collaborated with Josh Duhamel, the film aims to deliver entertainment that recalls the buddy movies of the 1980s and 1990s while carving out a contemporary spin.

Awkwardness has long been comedy’s secret weapon, and DOIN’ IT embraces that awkward edge with enthusiasm. Lilly Singh steps into her first leading role on the big screen, playing Maya, a thirty-year-old software engineer who never quite grew out of the shadow of her strict upbringing. What starts as an absurd setup— a virgin suddenly tasked with teaching high school sex education — gradually morphs into something deeper, a story about shame, self-acceptance, and finding one’s voice. The film doesn’t always strike the perfect balance between raunchy gags and genuine commentary, but it has enough personality and honesty to make the experience worthwhile.

DON Q opens with a man who never stopped narrating his life like a legend. Al Quinto’s days are small—errands, conversations, rituals—but in his head they add up to a coronation. He’s convinced he’s the one who can restore Little Italy to a version of itself that probably never existed, the way he imagines. That gap between the story he tells and the one the neighborhood is living is the film’s heartbeat, and it’s where both drama and humor are created.

POCKET PRINCESS on the surface is miniature: stop-motion, threadbare fabrics, papier-mâché edges, and a dollhouse scale that invites you to lean in. The undercurrent is anything but small. Olivia Loccisano utilizes the tactile limits of the medium—visible seams, deliberate roughness, and handmade textures—as an emotional buffer, allowing the film to confront material that many live-action features refuse to touch. That choice isn’t just aesthetic; it’s a thesis. The deception keeps us from flinching long enough to process what the story is actually saying.

There’s “gritty New York,” and then there’s Night of the Juggler—a movie that wears late-’70s/early-’80s NYC like a bruise. The premise is ruthlessly simple: a teen is abducted by a psycho; her father, a hard-charging ex-cop, tears across the city to find her. What lifts it above the logline is the film’s breathless velocity and its tactile sense of place. This is 24 hours as demolition derby: foot chases, cab chases, subway chases—stitched so tightly you barely have time to blink.

THE BETRAYAL begins with a single decision that sets everything else in motion. A loyal warrior is asked to shoulder a false charge of murder to shield his clan from political fallout. He accepts with the understanding that he’ll go into hiding for a year and then be welcomed back once the storm has passed. But what sounds like a temporary sacrifice quickly mutates into a permanent exile. Promises evaporate, protections vanish, and the clan that asked for loyalty quietly abandons him. From that point on, the film is less about one man’s mistake than about how an entire system uses honor as both carrot and weapon.

The best way to approach these companion pieces is to imagine two visits to the same corner—same storefront, same faces drifting in and out—but on different days of the week. One day is all about listening; the next is about letting the room talk. SMOKE is the quiet one: a neighborhood drama that sneaks up on you through ordinary conversation and the small rituals that give people meaning. BLUE IN THE FACE is the loud cousin: faster, looser, full of diversions and drop-ins that feel like a street party. Put together, they celebrate how a place can organize a life, and how a life can reorganize a place.