Minier‘s Hometown News Site

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.

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.

TANGLED UP IN CHRISTMAS leans straight into the familiar territory of holiday storytelling, but where it finds its footing is in the dynamic between two sisters who couldn’t be more opposite. At its core, this is a small-scale Christmas movie that blends family tension, personal growth, and a budding romance – all packed inside a frantic 48-hour timeframe. The result is a story that understands exactly what its audience wants: a slice of warmth, a dose of chaos, and a reminder that the holidays rarely go according to plan.

ILSA: HAREM KEEPER OF THE OIL SHEIKS offers up the energy you expect from a follow-up to one of the most notorious exploitation films ever made. This sequel wastes no time shifting its setting, tone, or sense of morality. Instead, it leans harder into the heightened absurdity that made the original so infamous, while also developing its own flavor of desert-soaked chaos. It’s a film that never pretends to be respectable, never hides behind restraint, and never tries to reinvent its own notoriety. It doubles down — proudly and without apology. For viewers who have a soft spot for exploitation cinema, that brazenness is the pull.

PAUL arrives with the energy of a public-access sci-fi legend that escaped into a studio movie, and that’s part of why it still works. It’s built on a familiar premise — two comic-book obsessives on a road trip accidentally pick up an alien — but Greg Mottola leans into that simplicity rather than pretending it needs to evolve into something bigger. What emerges is a comedy that isn’t chasing genre reinvention. It’s interesting how friendship, fandom, and accidental responsibility collide when circumstances shift from fantasy to real-world stakes. The result is a film that feels unmistakably rooted in its era while also carving out a tone that hasn’t aged as quickly as one might expect.

FRENZY MOON arrives with an unapologetic confidence in what it wants to be: a creature feature built on practical effects, contained chaos, and a love for old-school monster filmmaking that refuses to fade. Director Gregory Lamberson has been part of the underground horror landscape long enough to know exactly what he’s reaching for, and his intention is crystal clear. He openly states his desire to create a werewolf film without leaning on digital shortcuts. That spirit flows through every frame — from the full-body suits to the puppetry work to the constant attempt to keep something tactile and unpredictable on screen.

BLOOD RED opens with a sense of finality even before a word is spoken, the kind of atmosphere that tells you a world is holding itself together by instinct rather than optimism. Martin Imrich’s debut feature arrives as a stark, deliberate piece of hybrid filmmaking, rooted in the rhythms of rural Eastern Europe and shaped by the long shadow of agricultural life and the kinds of tasks that define survival rather than ambition. Shot in black and white and cut with the patience of someone who understands the value of stillness, this film occupies the space between documentation and sculpted narrative. It’s not unusual for a director’s first feature to lean on influence. Still, Imrich wears his inspirations openly, even bringing in Béla Tarr as a story advisor—a choice that signals exactly the kind of experience he’s aiming for.

Some documentaries make it clear that they aren’t interested in spectacle. They’re interested in people—real, complicated people—whose lives contain more texture than any narrative could ever replicate. VIVA VERDI! belongs in that space. It isn’t a film about opera, though the walls of Casa Verdi vibrate with music. It isn’t simply an exploration of aging, though the residents range from their late seventies to past one hundred. It’s a portrait of a community shaped by creativity, remembrance, resilience, and a sense of purpose that refuses to dim with time.

Holiday comedies don’t need to reinvent the wheel to be enjoyable. Most rely on a simple formula: keep things light, create a cheerful backdrop, sprinkle in sentimentality and chaos, and let the cast carry the story. THE CHRISTMAS LETTER has every opportunity to fit into that category — the kind of seasonal distraction you can throw on without thinking, something to fill a cozy December evening with laughs and some familiar faces. In the right circumstances, that’s exactly what this could have been.