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ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL enters its sixth season with the confidence of a series that knows exactly what it represents: a calm breath in an increasingly chaotic world. What makes this chapter particularly compelling is the way it folds lingering wartime tension into the daily rhythms of life in the Yorkshire Dales. There is no attempt to turn the series into a sweeping historical epic. Instead, it remains grounded in the homes, farms, surgeries, losses, and repairs that shape its characters’ lives. That restraint is part of why the show continues to work as well as it does. This season understands that healing rarely arrives all at once; it emerges in pieces, often through quiet moments rather than dramatic revelations.

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.

Some films set expectations from the opening scene, not through craft or tension, but through a quiet realization that what you’re about to watch will fall far short of its ambitions. THE CARETAKER lands squarely in that category. It’s not aggressively bad, nor is it a disaster beyond repair. Instead, it’s the kind of experience where you very quickly stop trying to take anything seriously because the movie itself doesn’t seem capable of holding its own weight. It’s the definition of a film to put on in a room full of friends who enjoy laughing at the choices, performances, and technical misfires that become more entertaining than the intended story.

There’s a unique kind of intensity that comes from watching films made during a period when cinema had no safety protocols, no creature comforts, and no separation between artist and environment. GRASS and CHANG represent two of the clearest examples of that uncompromising spirit. Together, they form a double feature that documents survival in ways modern adventure films could never replicate, because directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack weren’t staging performances. They were standing beside people enduring very real threats—rivers that could kill, snow that froze skin on contact, animal encounters with outcomes that weren’t predetermined. These films present nature not as a backdrop, but as an active force that puts every individual on equal footing with the terrain.

TALES OF THE WALKING DEAD takes a franchise that has been running for over a decade and asks a simple question: what else can this world hold? Instead of tracking one group of survivors week after week, this anthology tells six self-contained stories set at different points after the outbreak, with distinct tones, locations, and a rotating cast of familiar and new faces. On paper, it’s exactly what this universe needed: permission to experiment. On screen, the result lands firmly in that middle category where ambition is undeniable, individual episodes stand out, but the season as a whole never quite becomes essential.

The heart of I’M “GEORGE LUCAS”: A CONNOR RATLIFF STORY isn’t the costume, the wig, or the extensive knowledge of a galaxy far away. It’s the question of what drives someone to continue creating when the audience remains niche and the rewards don’t always match the effort. That tension forms the spine of Ryan Jacobi’s documentary, which follows comedian Connor Ratliff through years of performing as George Lucas in a one-of-a-kind comedy hybrid that sits somewhere between performance art, fandom commentary, and an ongoing experiment in communal creativity. This isn’t a film about Star Wars, even though the iconography is ever-present. It’s a film about the artist behind the persona, the toll that long-term passion projects quietly take, and the complicated relationship between personal identity and the work someone chooses to keep alive.

THE DONN OF TIKI sets out to do something bolder than the standard lifestyle documentary. Instead of creating a nostalgic highlight reel of bamboo décor, hurricane glasses, and island-themed escapism, this film goes directly after the myth. Donn Beach — original architect of the tiki bar and one of the most unapologetically self-constructed men in American hospitality — lies at the center of a world built on exaggeration, reinvention, and pure spectacle. The film’s ambition is clear from its opening minutes: it wants to peel back layers of invention without flattening the sheer charisma that made Beach a cultural force in the first place.

Some films reveal their staying power — not with spectacle, not with over-the-top theatrics, but with an emotional unease that lingers long after the final image. THE OGRE OF ATHENS belongs firmly to that category. This story begins as a simple case of mistaken identity and gradually becomes a deeply human, socially charged examination of how people reshape themselves to survive. It’s a film that has lived several lives: a commercial failure upon release, a modern classic in retrospect, and now a newly restored discovery for audiences who may not realize its true influence. The film’s ambition is bold, its execution striking, and its resonance undeniable.

Something is undeniably charming about a series that was built to entertain above all else. THE FANTÔMAS TRILOGY embraces that impulse with a wide grin, pulling together a trio of films that blend chaos, larger-than-life criminal theatrics, and the breezy spectacle of sixties European filmmaking. Visiting these films today — especially through the meticulous restorations of the new Masters of Cinema release — is like discovering a gleeful corner of cinema that never concerned itself with limits. These movies aim to thrill, amuse, and astonish, and they do so with the kind of unapologetic style that contemporary productions rarely attempt.

Michelangelo Antonioni’s LA NOTTE doesn’t rush to introduce conflict or carve emotion into neat, digestible pieces. Instead, it begins with an unnerving quiet — the kind that seeps into a relationship long before anyone is willing to name it. The film exists in that liminal space where two people remain tethered by routine but long detached from anything that resembles intimacy. What begins as a visit to a dying friend becomes a slow unraveling, the kind that doesn’t snap but frays strand by strand until there’s almost nothing left to hold.

ELEVEN DAYS, ELEVEN NIGHTS 2 exists in that unmistakable pocket of late-80s and early-90s erotic cinema where melodrama, sensuality, and mystery all collide in ways that are more about mood and movement than intricate storytelling. Joe D’Amato, who practically defined the aesthetic of Italian softcore through sheer volume and instinct, returns to the world of Sarah Asproon—this time with Kristine Rose taking over the role—and shapes a sequel that isn’t trying to reinvent the genre so much as embrace exactly what viewers come to this kind of film expecting. But beneath the surface-level seduction and soap-operatic plotting, a surprisingly cohesive structure emerges, making this entry more engaging than its reputation suggests.

There’s something undeniably special about a tribute that doesn’t feel performative, but instead feels like a community showing up because they genuinely couldn’t imagine not being there. YOU GOT GOLD: A CELEBRATION OF JOHN PRINE captures that feeling with clarity. Rather than shaping itself as a dramatic biography or even a traditional documentary, it leans into something more immediate: the electricity of live performance mixed with the intimacy of people sharing memories. It’s built from honesty, affection, and loss — all the things that defined Prine’s songwriting from the beginning.

THE THING WITH FEATHERS takes a familiar theme—grief manifesting into something physical—and pushes it somewhere more unpredictable. It’s not a traditional horror experience, and it’s not exactly a straightforward drama either. Instead, it sits in the uncomfortable middle, leaning into the messiness of grief without softening its edges. That choice gives the film a unique strength, but also leads to some unevenness that holds it back from its full potential. Still, it’s hard to deny that this is one of Benedict Cumberbatch’s most grounded, vulnerable performances in years.