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The Kindness That Cuts Both Ways

When Fall is Coming (Quand vient l'automne)

WHEN FALL IS COMING makes it clear that home life can be a costume. François Ozon sets the table with warmth and ritual—country air, routine, a grandmother fussing over lunch—then lets a single, pointed decision unshackle everything we know. The incident isn’t loud; it doesn’t have to be. In this house, gestures carry more weight than speeches. That’s the film’s core: a story of love and control disguised as everyday caretaking, with a grandmother who tells herself she’s fixing what years of hurt have broken.

Resistance Written in Everyday Routines

There Was, There Was Not

THERE WAS, THERE WAS NOT stands as both an act of storytelling and an act of preservation. Emily Mkrtichian’s debut feature documentary explores a homeland under siege and the women who endure within it, weaving myth and reality together until the line between the two becomes impossible to separate. By centering four Armenian women living in Artsakh, the film transforms geopolitical headlines into lived truths. A chronicle of resilience, weaving the fabric of a community through the daily acts of survival, work, and resistance.

Growing up While the World Changes

Fairyland

The heartbeat of this story is small, human, and resilient. FAIRYLAND traces a father-daughter bond through years when San Francisco felt like a home for reinvention—first euphoric, then devastating. It refuses melodrama and loud marks, favoring the fragile honesty of two people figuring each other out in real time. It isn’t trying to be a grand statement so much as a lived-in memory: the awkwardness of new routines, the quiet stubbornness of love, the mistakes we defend until we can’t anymore.

Handmade Mayhem That Still Hits

Robot Chicken: The Complete Series

ROBOT CHICKEN has always been a sugar-rush of stop-motion mayhem—blink and an entire sketch can go off the rails. Collected as a complete-series set, the show’s two decades crystallize into a collection of pop-culture obsessions: toys, comics, late-night TV, forgotten cereal mascots, video-game NPCs, and every blockbuster myth we’ve collectively carried around since childhood. The stop-motion craft, the tactile charm of roughed up action figures, the caffeinated timing—none of it should age well, and yet it does, because the core is specificity. The jokes don’t just reference the satire; they reconstruct tiny universes with the zeal of kids on a bedroom floor at 2 a.m., then torch them for a punchline.

Brian and Stewie Hit the Right Notes

Family Guy Halloween Special: A Little Fright Music

FAMILY GUY may be past its 25th birthday, but this Halloween special proves the Griffins can still make mischief feel fresh. A show that’s never shied away from blending parody with musical theater, FAMILY GUY doubles down on that formula in its new Halloween one-off, A LITTLE FRIGHT MUSIC. Debuting exclusively on Hulu, the special serves as a mission statement for the series' enduring appeal: irreverence delivered with precision, bolstered by a willingness to skewer both pop culture and suburban mundanity. For a series now past its 25th anniversary, the decision to anchor a holiday special in original music is both a nod to its history and a reminder that the show can still surprise.

A Stand-up Hour That Defined an Era

Dave Chappelle: Killin' Them Softly

Dave Chappelle’s KILLIN’ THEM SOFTLY is the rare kind of comedy special that manages to feel both of its time and timeless. Shot in Washington, D.C.’s Lincoln Theatre back in 2000, this HBO debut didn’t just capture a rising star — it proclaimed a cultural force. Twenty-five years later, Warner Bros. Discovery is marking its legacy with a new DVD release, offering fans an opportunity to revisit the hour that catapulted Chappelle from a cult comic to a household name.

Music, Mischief, and a Beating Undead Heart

Vampirina: Teenage Vampire (first two episodes)

For a generation that grew up with Vee in animated form, VAMPIRINA: TEENAGE VAMPIRE isn’t just a new series—it’s a graduation, a chance to see a beloved character wrestle with bigger stages, bigger secrets, and the universal growing pains of finding yourself. VAMPIRINA: TEENAGE VAMPIRE takes the beloved character, swaps animation for live action, and keeps the beating heart (or not beating in Vee’s case)—music, friendship, and the struggle of fitting in—front and center. A tween vampire leaves Transylvania for a performing-arts boarding school in the human world, where she has to juggle secret identity anxieties, artistic ambition, a loving (and protective) family, and an overzealous ghost chaperone who complicates even the simplest moments. The fact that this is the character’s first live-action portrayal gives it a built-in curiosity factor, and the two episodes I screened suggest a series designed to balance hijinks with a serialized emotional arc.

Chaotic, Campy, Curiously Captivating

Spawn [Limited Edition]

SPAWN lives in the peculiar sweet spot where a bold comic-book world collided with late-’90s studio filmmaking. You can feel the era in every choice: aggressive CG, a hard-edged soundtrack, and a go-for-broke villain performance that threatens to hijack the movie. Yet beneath the glaze and scorched-earth aesthetic, there’s a sharp hook—a tragic antihero whose pain is as compelling as his power. That core keeps the film from toppling under its own extravagance and makes a modern revisit surprisingly enjoyable, even while the seams show.

The Hidden Arithmetic of Everyday Life

Counted Out

COUNTED OUT makes a simple, potent claim: in a world arranged by code, statistics, and algorithms, math is a language of power—and literacy in that language affects who gets hired, who gets heard, and who gets a real say. Vicki Abeles builds that claim into a focused documentary that treats mathematics not as a test to pass but as a civic tool. The result is engaging, unusually clear, and sincere about the shame and anxiety that many people still carry from their school days.

Returning Home Means Facing Unfinished Business

Akashi

AKASHI is a story that wears its duality on its sleeve—bridging continents, generations, and emotional timelines. Director Mayumi Yoshida transforms her award-winning short into a deeply personal feature, one that explores grief, romance, and the weight of secrets handed down through family. From the outset, this isn’t framed as just a homecoming drama but as a reckoning with identity. Kana (played by Yoshida herself), a struggling artist who’s been living in Vancouver, returns to Tokyo for her grandmother’s funeral. In that journey back, the film opens layers of memory and buried truths that ripple through the lives of those left behind.

Two Friends, One Planet, a Lifetime in Motion

The Art of Adventure

THE ART OF ADVENTURE tracks an irresistible premise with a simple confidence: two curious young Canadians—painter Robert Bateman and biologist Bristol Foster—set off in 1957 in a suped up Land Rover nicknamed “Grizzly Torque,” roaming across Africa, India, Southeast Asia, and Australia with a sketchbook, a 16mm camera, and more nerve than budget. Director Alison Reid doesn’t just recount where they went; she shows how a road trip crystallized into a lifelong mission, translating awe into action. The result is a buoyant, clear-eyed documentary that feels like a road movie first and a career retrospective second. That order matters—the film offers a lived experience, then threads it to legacy.

The Call You Can’t Redo

Undeletable

UNDELETABLE is the rare short that understands how comedy and pain are often the same sound at different volumes. It traps a grieving daughter and lets every misstep, every backspace that isn’t possible, every awkward correction, reveal a life cracking in real time. In seven minutes, the film pulls off an emotional high-wire act: it’s funny because you recognize the panic of leaving a message you can’t edit. It’s devastating because the stakes are as high as they could be. That double exposure—humor laid directly over heartbreak—is the film’s engine.

Father and Daughter Face the Silence

Synthesize Me

SYNTHESIZE ME proves that fifteen minutes can be expansive when emotion and metaphor are intertwined. Dutch-Indonesian filmmaker Bear Damen crafts a deeply personal story framed within the world of a grieving family. Set in a town near Mexico City in the late 80s, the film channels the instability of its setting into a potent metaphor for human relationships. At its heart is Violeta, a teenager played with energy and quiet sorrow by Ivana Plantier, who uses her late mother’s neglected synthesizers as a lifeline to memory.

A Smart, Funny Story About Modern Media

Dirty Books

There’s something timeless about the idea of a high school newspaper—enthusiastic teenagers chasing stories that feel monumental within their own microcosm. DIRTY BOOKS takes that premise and infuses it with both humor and a commentary on how journalism and ethics collide, even at the most novice level. This 16-minute short film demonstrates that with the right execution, small stories can have just as much impact as sprawling feature films.