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BFFS offers up the kind of chaotic energy that feels like it was designed to shake the buddy comedy out of its formula. Directed by Constantine Paraskevopoulos, who also co-stars, and written by Adam Rifkin, the film is a brash, messy, and sometimes brilliant examination of how friendships can both elevate and destroy us. What starts as a nostalgic reunion turns into an escalating spree of bad decisions, practical jokes, and criminal escapades that blur the line between loyalty and lunacy.

OPEN WIDE is a ten-minute short that proves sometimes the scariest setups aren’t about haunted houses or supernatural monsters, but about what can happen when human desire collides with dysfunction. Directed by Sam Fox, who co-wrote and produced alongside Lara Repko, the film turns a seemingly playful night into a nightmare that gnaws at both faith and intimacy. It’s uncomfortable and intentionally disorienting, utilizing a limited canvas to create something with impact that extends well beyond its brief runtime.

THE LAST OF US: SEASON 2 tightens its focus. Five years after the first season’s finale, the show returns with a run of seven episodes and a story that refuses to flinch. If the initial outing centered on the hope between two survivors, this chapter is about what it costs to protect a lie—and what revenge demands when that lie collapses. The season makes hard, sometimes polarizing choices, but it also finds a dark, somber clarity about grief, loyalty, and the way violence echoes long after the trigger’s pulled.

HARD HAT RIOT is more than a historical documentary—it’s a time capsule that reopens a wound still visible in the American political landscape. Directed by Marc Levin and premiering September 30, 2025, on PBS’s American Experience, the film revisits May 8, 1970, when New York City’s streets became a battlefield between construction workers and student anti-war demonstrators. On its surface, it was a violent clash; in retrospect, it was a pivotal cultural and political rupture that continues to echo through modern debates on patriotism, class identity, and dissent.

DEATH OF A LADIES’ MAN does not approach its subject matter with subtlety, nor does it attempt to play things safely. Instead, the film revels in contradiction—both tragic and absurd, poetic and sardonic, tender and biting. It’s an ambitious tonal cocktail that is carried almost entirely by the strength of Gabriel Byrne, who delivers one of those rare performances that feels like both a summation of a career and a startlingly raw revelation. With Buffalo 8 handling its VOD release, the film is poised to reach a wider audience in 2025 than it did during its initial festival run, and its themes remain as relevant now as they were when Matthew Bissonnette first conceived them.

There are movies you just watch, and then there are movies you simply surrender to. THE CAT is the latter. Lam Nai-Choi’s cult oddity barrels forward with a confidence that dares you to keep up: a goo-monster antagonist, body-possession, a tag-team of good-guy extraterrestrials… and, yes, a black cat who throws down like a stunt professional. It reads like a dare on paper and plays like a dare on screen, marrying Hong Kong action with creature-feature messiness and the elastic logic of pulp sci-fi. If that sounds like a lot, it is—and that excess is exactly the point.

This film explores topics and subject matter that may be incredibly difficult to watch and process. It’s not an easy watch, but it's a reality that feels true to the world. WEIGHTLESS finds tension in ordinary moments: a glance across a field, a joke that lands too sharply when you already feel too much. Set at a summer health camp bordered by forest and sea, the film follows fifteen-year-old Lea as she attempts to change her body and, more so, the way she inhabits her own life. That aim sounds simple; the execution is anything but. The camp’s routines—measured portions, group activities, quiet hours—promise control. What the program can’t regulate is attention, and the film understands that attention can be as intoxicating, as painful, and as formative as any number on a chart.

PRIDE & PRAYER is less about giving answers and more about daring to live inside the questions. In her debut feature-length documentary, Canadian-Kurdish filmmaker and performer Panta Mosleh turns the camera on herself, exploring the clash between two pillars of her identity: her Muslim faith and her queerness. The result is a deeply intimate film that offers no easy resolutions but instead presents a raw and ongoing negotiation of belonging. For anyone who has ever felt pulled in opposite directions by community, belief, and personal truth, this film will resonate deeply.

There’s a quality to DEAD OF WINTER that suits its title perfectly. Set in the frozen wilds of northern Minnesota, this thriller doesn’t waste time dressing its story in excess. Instead, it strips everything down to bare survival, the cold gnawing at both body and spirit, and places Emma Thompson at its center as a widow forced into a harrowing fight for another woman’s life. At once tense, emotional, and somewhat traditional, Brian Kirk’s film succeeds largely because of its lead’s presence and the unforgiving landscape she’s trapped within.

Some stories feel too far-fetched to be real, but COCAINE QUARTERBACK: SIGNAL-CALLER FOR THE CARTEL proves that truth can be more over the top than fiction. This three-part Prime Video documentary traces the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of Owen Hanson, a Southern California native whose trajectory from walk-on football player at USC to international drug trafficker reads like a cautionary parable about ambition, ego, and temptation.

DOLLY never lets the heart settle. It’s a grim fairytale, a film that treats survival as a messy rather than a triumphant montage. Rod Blackhurst leans into folk horror with the confidence of someone who knows the lineage—Grimms, New French Extremity, the scrappy terror of 70s American horror—and then pushes the tradition into something thornier and more personal. Macy is our core, but this is also the rare monster story that invites the audience to look directly at the mask and wonder what fragile human needs might be hiding underneath. The premise is brutally straightforward: a young woman is abducted by a monstrous figure who intends to “raise” her. The execution is anything but simple. The film’s sting comes from the way it frames captivity not just as restraint, but as emotional reprogramming—a ritual of forced dependency that echoes the most unsettling fairy tales.

SHAPE OF MOMO is a patient, deeply human drama that draws its strength from silence as much as from dialogue. Tribeny Rai, making her feature film debut, crafts a story that feels intimate yet expansive, grounded in the textures of Himalayan village life but resonating with universal questions of duty, independence, and identity. The film is rooted in the community, tradition, and expectation. Yet, it also carries an undercurrent of rebellion, pushing against the constraints that women often inherit when family and culture collide.

BODY BLOW doesn’t just resurrect the heyday of the erotic thriller — it rips it apart, drenches it in excess, and rebuilds it through a proudly queer lens. Dean Francis crafts a crime saga that feels nostalgic for the audacity of the 90s and radical in its refusal to trim its edges. The film declares itself a work of defiance: dirty, dangerous, and designed for audiences hungry for something riskier than what genre cinema typically allows.

The fourth entry swaps survival chaos for white-knuckle emotion. THE CONCORDE… AIRPORT ’79 isn’t shy about what it wants to be: a glossy, globe-trotting thriller that straps you into an icon of aviation and keeps yanking the yoke. The plot is simple and loud. A jet-setting TV reporter carries information that could expose a powerful ex-lover; he responds with sabotage, missiles, and one wildly public attempt after another to ensure the story never sees the light of day. It’s pulp in a tailored suit—lean on nuance, heavy on spectacle.