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THE ESCORT takes a setup that starts with familiarity and uses its limited runtime to explore the hidden intentions that can surface when two people enter a room for entirely different reasons. At just 15 minutes, the film avoids the usual pitfalls that plague short-form dramas by refusing to oversell its premise or rely on shock. Instead, it draws its tension from the evolving dynamic between its two characters. Tommy, fragile and hesitant, hires Lucy for companionship, yet the encounter gradually shifts into something different. The film is concise, focused, and grounded in performance without ever drifting into melodrama.

ROSA opens with a chaotic, good-natured confidence that helped define mid-’80s Hong Kong action comedies: momentum, humor, and officers sprinting toward a case they may not fully understand. It’s a setup that suggests mayhem, anchored by Yuen Biao at maximum physicality. What the film actually delivers is a loose-limbed comedy that circles its premise for almost an hour before unlocking the exact thing audiences came for — a tightly choreographed fight sequence that proves why everyone involved is still remembered.

MONK IN PIECES is the kind of documentary that understands how to observe an artist without smothering them in over-explained reverence. Instead of shaping Meredith Monk into a wrapped-up narrative, the film approaches her career the way she approaches sound — through fragments, repetition, variation, and purposeful gaps. That makes this a rare documentary about a major artist that doesn’t treat her as an artifact but as a living, evolving presence. The film stands in the territory of works that feel both informative and—maybe more importantly—alive.

FAMILIA feels like a memory that refuses to fade, touching every part of the story, no matter how hard its characters try to cover it up. Francesco Costabile’s film approaches violence and generational trauma with unflinching realism, never leaning on sensationalism but instead embracing a grounded, emotional tone that makes every choice feel weighted. It’s a film that builds pressure quietly, allowing its characters to sit in the lingering aftermath of choices made long before the opening scenes. The kind of drama that proves more compelling in reflection, particularly because of the precision of its performances and the layers Costabile threads through the narrative.

Some films unfold at a pace that demands patience, not because they’re unfocused, but because they’re interested in small moments of human behavior rather than constant escalation. TARIKA is built in that tradition. It’s a story about a father and daughter living on the outskirts of a Bulgarian village, surrounded by people who respond to anything unfamiliar with hostility rather than empathy. That premise alone is heavy, but Milko Lazarov approaches it with an understated tone, anchoring the film in a relationship that feels deeply personal. The film’s quietness isn’t a stylistic pose; it’s an extension of the characters' isolation.

There’s a certain kind of short film that doesn’t aim to shock through twists or visuals, but through honesty. ROSALIE is one of those stories. It presents a situation that could play out behind any closed door in America, and it carries the weight of something deeply human: Nadine, a woman who’s overwhelmed, stretched to the extremes, and fighting the internal storm of an unplanned pregnancy she doesn’t want. At the same time, her closest friend, Carolyn, carries her own heartache — an infertility struggle that shapes every reaction she has to Nadine’s decision. With only twenty minutes to work with, the film doesn’t waste time circling its themes. Instead, it moves with precision, grounded in realistic dialogue, and the painful contradictions that arise when two people love each other but want entirely different outcomes.

If there’s one franchise that defines ’70s disaster cinema—all its ambition, excess, sincerity, and unintended comedy—it’s this one. AIRPORT: THE COMPLETE 4-FILM COLLECTION isn’t just a lineup of big-cast thrillers; it’s a snapshot of how the industry embraced spectacle before CGI, leaning entirely on elaborate sets, recognizable faces, and the promise that danger at high altitude automatically meant an event film. Watching the four movies together is like watching the decade itself change: the melodrama, the procedural vibes, the escalation of spectacle, and eventually the unrestrained theatrics of a studio system intent on outdoing itself at any cost.

The first thing that strikes you about 100 LITERS OF GOLD is how it leans into the reality of everyday people who make questionable choices for understandable reasons. Writer/director Teemu Nikki, who has built a career on mixing empathy with sharp-edged satire, brings that same sensibility to this story of two middle-aged sisters whose lives revolve around the small traditions that define their identity. In this case, that tradition is sahti — the rustic, unfiltered, almost mythical farmhouse beer that carries an outsized level of pride in rural Finland. Nikki’s personal connection comes from a family of brewers and regards the drink as a cultural anchor, not just a beverage.

Stories about identity often pretend clarity exists. YES REPEAT NO doesn’t. It opens in a rehearsal space—blank walls, no escape—and immediately confronts you with the impossibility of its own assignment. Three actors arrive to audition for one role: Juliano Mer-Khamis, a Palestinian-Jewish actor, director, activist, and political contradiction who lived his life refusing to fit into a narrative easy to summarize. Instead of shaping a linear biopic, the film traps its cast in a room where identity becomes something volatile, argumentative, and agonizingly fragile. The goal isn’t to recreate Mer-Khamis; it’s to force each performer to collide with the truths he embodied.

STATIONED AT HOME feels like one long exhale—the kind of film that settles into its own early and never forces its way into sentimentality. Set across a single frostbitten Christmas Eve in 1998, it follows Ralph, a quiet night-shift taxi driver who wants one simple thing: to finish his shift in time to witness the International Space Station glide overhead at 5:47 a.m. It’s a small wish, almost painfully modest, but the film treats it like something sacred. That decision defines the entire experience. Rather than turning Christmas Eve into a hectic, fate-changing night, the movie allows its stillness to become its center. It’s aimless in a purposeful way—reveling in humanity, unexpected intersections, and the kind of fleeting connections that add up without ever announcing themselves.

SPEED TRAIN throws everything it has — and everything it can imagine — straight at the viewer, hoping the combined chaos will be enough to propel it across the finish line. It’s not the worst thing out there, far from it, but it’s also not the streamlined, high-concept sci-fi thriller it’s clearly dreaming of being. Instead, it becomes a chaotic mashup of competing tones and clashing genres: part futuristic action movie, part hyper-stylized cyberpunk thriller, part super-cheerleader fight flick, part prison-break sci-fi, and occasionally something that weirdly resembles a cheer-themed remix of GAMER on a train. It’s a lot. Sometimes too much. But there’s also an earnestness beneath the excess that keeps it from derailing completely.

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY arrives as the final entry in the duo’s long and storied relationship with Universal’s iconic monsters, and you can feel that sense of winding down in its tone. Where earlier films blended horror and comedy with surprising precision, this one leans far more into the gags, misunderstandings, and adventure-tinged silliness. It’s not aiming for atmospheric tension or Gothic moodiness; instead, it embraces the familiarity of its formula and relies on the duo’s chemistry to carry a story that, while thinner than their earlier outings, offers an easygoing, family-friendly charm.

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE INVISIBLE MAN is the sort of hybrid that surprises you with how well it holds up. On paper, merging hard-boiled noir with comedy and a classic Universal Monster could’ve easily collapsed into chaos. Instead, the film plays like a confident fusion, one where the mystery grounds the slapstick, and the slapstick injects life into the mystery. It’s not as iconic as the duo’s showdown with Frankenstein’s monster, but it stands out as one of their most consistently entertaining team-ups.

There’s a reason ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN remains one of the most beloved films in both Universal Monsters history and classic comedy cinema: it takes its premise seriously enough to let the horror icons shine while never losing sight of what makes Abbott and Costello such an effective duo. This film walks a razor-thin line between tones that should clash but somehow mix into a unified, endlessly rewatchable experience. It’s the rare crossover where everyone involved gives their all, and decades later, that commitment still radiates from every frame.

There’s a charm to ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE that comes from watching two comedic titans wander into a story that was never designed for their style of humor. It’s a strange collision of tones: the fog-drenched streets of a classic horror tale smashed into a vaudeville-rooted comedy act that refuses to take anything seriously. That tension doesn’t always play out as we hope. Yet, there’s an undeniable fascination in seeing the story unfold, especially when Boris Karloff steps into frame with the kind of gravitas that reminds you how powerful the Jekyll/Hyde legend has always been.

TRIPLE THREAT delivers a unique and specific career portrait. What makes this set stand apart isn’t just that it brings together three distinct films from different periods of Sammo Hung’s rise; it’s that each film captures him at a crossroads. You’re not just watching Hung’s growth as a performer — you’re seeing him feel out new territory, sharpen his instincts, and redefine what Hong Kong action cinema could look like at the moment it needed reinvention. Packing THE MANCHU BOXER, PAPER MARRIAGE, and SHANGHAI, SHANGHAI into one release isn’t just a gesture in archiving a legend. It’s a reminder of why Hung became one of the most adaptable and influential artists in the industry.

Horror doesn’t always rely on chaos to pull you under, and in this case, it waits patiently and makes you feel the dread creeping in from the edges. THE WAILING embraces that philosophy from its first frame. It’s a film designed around the slow press of fear rather than loud punctuation. By the time its three timelines begin to fold into one another, Director and co-writer Pedro Martín-Calero has built something genuinely unsettling. Not because it tries to scare you every few minutes, but because it treats horror as a symptom of deeper wounds that refuse to close.

This isn’t a spy thriller interested in the usual games of covert operations or gadget-ready theatrics. Instead, Co-Directors/Writers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani approach the genre in a way we haven’t seen before. The film follows a 70-year-old ex-spy living in a luxury hotel on the Côte d’Azur whose routine shatters when the woman in the adjoining room disappears. Yet the disappearance is only the first card to fold. What follows is a spiral through fractured memories, illusions, and the ghosts of a past shaped by espionage, desire, and fantasy.

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.

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.

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.