If The Harder They Come is Jamaica’s Scarface, then Rockers is its Ocean’s Eleven, if the heist involved a bunch of legendary musicians stealing back their dignity (and a motorbike) from the upper class.

Originally intended to be a documentary, director Ted Bafaloukos realized that the reality of the Kingston reggae scene was already more cinematic than anything he could script. He cast the genre’s actual giants, playing versions of themselves, and let the cameras roll in the streets, the shanties, and the recording studios.

Leroy “Horsemouth” Wallace is a drummer living on the edge of poverty, trying to make an honest living by selling records. He buys a shiny red motorbike to get his distribution business off the ground, but it isn’t long before thugs steal it.

By the way, Monica Madgie Craig, who plays his wife here, is his real-life spouse, and those are their children in the movie.

When the police prove to be useless, Horsemouth doesn’t just mope. He rounds up a literal Hall of Fame of reggae icons, including Dirty Harry, Burning Spear and Big Youth, to launch a Robin Hood-style counter-offensive. They aren’t just looking for a bike; they’re looking to redistribute the wealth.

This isn’t a Hollywood sanitized version of Jamaica. It’s raw, it’s loud, and the Patois is so thick and glorious that original US screenings required subtitles. Rockers is a vibrant, sun-soaked middle finger to the establishment. It’s a film where the actors are actually the soul of a nation, and the stakes feel massive because the struggle for the little guy is universal. Whether you’re here for the sociology or just to see Gregory Isaacs look cool in a suit, you can’t lose.

Here’s a wild fact: Ashley Higher Harris is a healer in real life, as well as playing one in Rockers. During production, his herbs healed one of the sound guys from a severe skin allergy.

The MVD release of this film has a 2025 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative; select scene commentaries; “Jah No Dead: The Making of Rockers,” a feature length documentary about the making of the film featuring interviews with Eugenie Bafaloukos, Todd Kasow, Kiddus I, Eddie Marritz and many more; archival interviews with director/writer Ted Bafaloukos and producer Patrick Hulsey; music videos; a poster gallery; a trailer; radio ads; a collectible 4K LaserVision mini-poster; reversible cover art and a limited edition 4K LaserVision slipcover. You can order it from MVD.

I guess after fifty years of independent filmmaking, Lloyd Kaufman has earned the right to do whatever the hell he wants, even if I never end up liking most of it. In this movie, what he wants is to take a giant dump on the Bard of Avon.

If you thought Tromeo and Juliet was the final word on Troma’s relationship with William Shakespeare, you clearly haven’t been paying attention to the last two decades of Tromaville history. While most directors mature or elevate their style, Lloyd is still down in the sewer. Literally. A lot of time spent in a toilet.

The setup is classic The Tempest, if Shakespeare had been addicted to social media and Big Pharma kickbacks. Lloyd stars in a dual role as Prospero Duke, a disgraced scientist, and his villainous sister Antoinette.

Prospero was once a big deal in the pharmaceutical world until he was betrayed by Antoinette and the corporate titan Big Al (Abraham Sparrow). Now, he lives in a derelict crack house in the ruins of New Jersey with his daughter Miranda (Kate McGarrigle). When Big Al and his entourage of social justice warriors, corrupt politicians and corporate sycophants take a cruise ship past his hideout, Prospero uses a massive quantity of Whale Laxative to create a literal shitstorm of biblical proportions.

Beneath the layer of filth — and it is a thick layer —  Kaufman is actually saying something. He’s taking aim at the opioid crisis, the performative nature of social media activism and the way corporate entities weaponize wokeness for profit. Does he do it subtly? No, he does it with a sledgehammer made of rubber vomit.

#ShakespearesShitstorm is the culmination of everything Lloyd has been preaching since the days of The Toxic Avenger. It’s DIY, fiercely independent and refuses to apologize for existing.

Debbie Rochon is in it. That’s good enough for me.

This includes an introduction by Lloyd Kaufman, producer and cast commentaries, trailers, behind-the-scenes features, and original songs from the movie. You can get it from MVD.

Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, this movie is all about honor among thieves within a jagged, frozen landscape. We’re in the middle of a brutal winter where an indigenous game warden, Harlan (Joel Kinnaman), and a poacher he’s just busted, Ani (Cara Jade Myers), find themselves in a precarious alliance when they discover a plane carrying millions has gone down in a lake that’s more ice than water. 

As you can imagine, they aren’t the only ones looking for the payday.

This isn’t just a race against the clock; it’s a race against hypothermia. The film leans heavily into the atmosphere of the high-altitude wilderness. You can almost feel the frostbite creeping in through the screen.

Kinnaman plays it stoically, carrying that weary, “I’ve seen too many winters” energy. While Myers, who was in Killers of the Flower Moon, is the standout here, providing the spark of unpredictability that keeps the dynamic from feeling like a standard buddy-cop retread.

Icefall succeeds because it understands that the environment is a more effective villain than any guy with a gun. The sound design is punctuated by the terrifying crack of thinning ice, a sound familiar to anyone who grew up watching 70s disaster cinema. 

It’s a lean, mean, and cold-blooded thriller that doesn’t waste time on flowery dialogue when a flare gun or a survival knife can do the talking.

Most people know Ray McKinnon as the tortured preacher from Deadwood or the guy who created Rectify. Most people know Walton Goggins as one of the most electric character actors of his generation. But before they were icons of the new Prestige TV era, they were two guys from the South making some of the weirdest, most soulful, and downright funniest indie cinema of the early 2000s under their Ginny Mule Pictures banner.

Randy Pearson (Ray McKinnon) is a good ol’ boy who is perpetually one bad decision away from total disaster. This time, he’s stepped into it deep by borrowing money from the Mob. When the bill comes due, and the Italians come knocking in rural Georgia, Randy has to turn to the only people left who haven’t completely written him off.

This leads to McKinnon pulling double duty, playing both the hapless Randy and his estranged, gay twin brother, Cecil. It’s a performance that could have devolved into a cheap caricature in lesser hands, but McKinnon gives it a surprising amount of heart.

But let’s be real: the movie belongs to Walton Goggins as Tino Armani. Imagine a modern-day prophet who obsesses over high fashion, cooks high-end Italian meals in the middle of the woods and has a supernatural knack for making money appear and disappear. Goggins plays Tino with a flamboyant, mysterious energy that feels like he stepped out of a Fellini film and got lost in a Cracker Barrel. Throw in the late, great Lisa Blount (Prince of Darkness) as Randy’s long-suffering wife, and you’ve got a mafia comedy that is way more interested in character quirks than hits and heists.

There’s even an uncredited Burt Reynolds in this.

This special edition release also includes the Academy Award-winning The Accountant and a making-of feature. You can order this from MVD.

With the bank closing in and a flask of whiskey usually within arm’s reach, Tommy O’Dell (Walton Goggins) and his brother David (Eddie King) find a savior in the most unlikely form: a mysterious, nameless, beer-chugging Accountant (Ray McKinnon) who arrives like a Southern Gothic ghost in a beat-up car.

If you only know Walton Goggins and Ray McKinnon from their recent turns in Fallout or Deadwood, you need to take a trip back to 2001. This isn’t just a short film; it’s a 40-minute masterclass in Southern Noir and a blueprint for the brilliance this duo would later bring to the screen together.

Produced by Goggins and written/directed by McKinnon, The Accountant feels like a lost Flannery O’Connor story that stumbled into a pack of Camels and a case of PBR. McKinnon plays the titular figure with a frantic, twitchy genius. He doesn’t just crunch numbers; he treats the tax code like a weapon of war, downing beers with a speed that would make a frat boy weep while explaining how the syndicate, a web of corporate conspiracies, is out to kill the American farmer.

As he works to save the O’Dell farm from foreclosure, he takes the brothers on a booze-fueled crusade, preaching his gospel on the decline of the family farm and his personal quest to preserve the dying embers of Southern culture through some truly unconventional (and legally dubious) methods.

McKinnon and Goggins have a shorthand that feels lived-in. Goggins plays the desperation of a man losing his legacy with a raw energy that perfectly anchors McKinnon’s high-wire, philosophical act. It’s darkly hilarious right up until the moment it breaks your heart. One minute you’re laughing at the sheer volume of beer being consumed, and the next, you’re staring at the crushing reality of generational poverty and the big machine grinding the little guy down.

The Accountant won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short and it’s easy to see why. It’s a dense, literary piece of filmmaking that manages to be wildly entertaining without ever feeling like a lecture. This movie also went on to celebrate a Dirve-By Truckers’ song, “Sink Hole:

“I’ve always been a religious man
But I met the banker and it felt like sin
He turned my bailout downThe banker man lit into me
And spread my name around

He thinks I ain’t got a lick of sense
‘Cause I talk slow and my money’s spent
I ain’t the type to hold it against
But he better stay off my farm

‘Cause it was my daddy’s and his daddy’s before
And his daddy’s before and his daddy’s before
And a loaded burglar alarm

Lots of pictures of my purdy family
In the house where we was born

House has stood through five tornadoes
Droughts and floods and five tornadoes
I’d rather wrastle an alligator
Than to face the banker’s scorn

Cause he won’t even look me in the eye
He just takes my land and apologize
With pen, paper and a friendly smile
He says the deed is doneThe sound you hear is my daddy spinning
Over what the banker done

Like to invite him for some pot roast beef
And mashed potatoes and sweet tea
Follow it up with some ‘nana pudding
And a walk around the farm

Show him the view from McGee Town Hill
Let him stand in my place and see how it feels
To lose the last thing on earth that’s real
I’d rather lose my legs and arms

Bury his body in the old sink hole
Under cold November skies

Then damned if I wouldn’t go to church on Sunday
Look the preacher in the eye”

You can get this from MVD.

Australia knows the apocalypse. Here’s another entry in their oeuvre of end of the world madness, one that feels like a collision between a Romero social commentary and a Nicholas Sparks novel that took a very wrong turn into a bio-weapon testing site.

An experimental weapon test off the coast of Tasmania goes south (literally), wiping out Hobart and turning the surviving population into The Empty. They aren’t quite zombies. They’re brain-dead husks until their motor functions kick back in and they start wandering around with a sudden case of the munchies.

Ava Newman (Daisy Ridley) is an American physiotherapist who joins the cleanup crew with a side quest of finding her missing husband, Mitch (Matt Whelan). She teams up with Clay (Brenton Thwaites), a volunteer who looks like he’s got more baggage than a Qantas flight, and they go AWOL on a motorcycle to trek across the Tasmanian wilderness. They soon meet Riley (Mark Coles Smith), a lone soldier who locks Ava in a bathroom, makes her wear his dead wife’s clothes and insists on a slow dance. 

As if that’s not weird all on its own, he’s also preserving his pregnant, undead wife in a shrine, and he’s already felt the baby kick. That’s when everyone learns that the dead — like a father digging a grave for his family — are just finishing out their earthly missions.

Ava finally finds Mitc — SPOILERS –, and we learn their marriage was a wreck of infertility and infidelity. Even worse? Mitch spent his final hours cheating on her. And then Riley’s undead wife — SPOILERS 2: THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL — miraculously and biologically impossible gives n birth to a healthy baby.

This is as much a grief meditation as it is a horror movie. Director and writer Zak Hilditch said that it “…started as an exploration of grief, following the death of my mother, dealing with the trauma of that and finding a way to move through it. I never in a million years thought that, by the end of writing the screenplay, I would have infused it with zombies. But this notion of unfinished business wouldn’t leave me alone.“

We Bury the Dead has some good new ideas amongst the expected zombie moments, even if they’re not zombies. They’re not, totally, right?