We’ve all seen the heist movie formula. You’ve got the methodical thief, the grizzled cop who doesn’t play by the rules and a labyrinth of L.A. freeways that might as well be a character themselves. Usually, these things play out exactly how you expect. But Crime 101? It feels like director Bart Layton (the guy who gave us The Imposter) decided to take Don Winslow’s novella and inject it with enough adrenaline to make the 405 look like a parking lot.

Is it a masterpiece? Probably not. Did it bomb at the box office, much to the confusion of anyone who likes seeing stars like Hemsworth and Ruffalo share a screen? Absolutely. But really, who cares about the opening weekend receipts other than the fatcats counting up the numbers? Movie lovers care about the grit, the sweat and the sheer audacity of a film that tries to be a classic crime thriller in a world that’s moved on to superheroes and sequels.

Chris Hemsworth plays Mike (or James, if we’re being formal), your classic one last job guy who lives by a code: no guns, no blood, no mess. Naturally, that all goes to hell the second he gets grazed by a bullet. He’s the professional to Ruffalo’s Lou Lubesnick, a detective who is essentially the human embodiment of a stale coffee cup and a bad divorce.

And then there’s Barry Keoghan as Ormon. Keoghan has been making a play for being the reigning king of playing absolute sociopathic weirdos. Here, he’s a biker who brings the kind of unpredictable, unhinged violence that turns a clean heist into a bloody mess. He’s the wrench in the gears, and frankly, he steals every scene he’s in.

The film’s strength is in its pacing. Layton keeps the wheels turning, weaving together the heist mechanics with the desperate lives of the people involved. Halle Berry’s Sharon is the brains of an insurance broker who’s sick of being overlooked. Watching her try to navigate the moral ambiguity of working with a criminal is a highlight.

Where it gets sticky—and maybe why the general public stayed away—is the tone. It’s not quite a high-octane actioner, and it’s not quite a gritty noir. It sits in that strange middle-ground space that fans of 70s crime cinema will love, but might leave the average popcorn-muncher scratching their head.

But for those same film fans, the legendary Nick Nolte pops up as the fence. Seeing him chewing the scenery in a supporting role is the kind of treat that makes a movie worth watching all by itself. And it’s always a joy to see Jennifer Jason Leigh in a film.

Crime 101 is a slick, stylish and ultimately melancholy look at guys who spend their lives trying to outrun their pasts on the concrete arteries of Southern California. It’s got a 1968 Camaro, a tense standoff at the Beverly Wilshire, and enough double-crosses to keep you guessing until the final frame.

Did it lose $17 million? Sure. But sometimes the biggest box office flops are the ones that deserve a second life on late-night cable or a dusty shelf in your collection. 

You can get this from Deep Discount.

Gong Do-hee (Yoon Jeong-hee) is at the top of the food chain as a successful corporate tycoon living the high life. But she’s haunted. After a vivid, chilling dream about her deceased twin sister, she decides to ditch the boardroom and take a drive to the coast, looking for a little peace.

Instead, she finds a nightmare. She gets snatched and ends up stranded on a remote island, held captive by a gruff, isolated fisherman who has a delusional, unwavering conviction that she is his runaway wife. It’s a terrifying reversal of fortune: one day you’re calling the shots in the city, the next you’re a prisoner in a shack, forced to inhabit a life that isn’t yours.

This is modernist Korean cinema at its most daring. It’s shot through the lens of the 1970s—a dark, oppressive era for the country—and you can feel that tension in every frame. Kim Soo-yong uses the island’s isolation to turn the screws on the audience. It’s claustrophobic, surreal and deeply unsettling.

What makes this special is the subtext. Back in the day, the censors were watching everything, but Kim managed to weave a powerful, biting message about political oppression and the loss of individual identity right into the narrative. It’s the kind of high-stakes, everything-is-being-taken-from-me cinema that hits harder when you realize what the director was up against.

The fisherman’s delusion isn’t just a plot point; it’s a terrifying exploration of how easily a person can be erased. When someone tells you who you are long enough, do you start to believe it? Knowing the history of 1970s Korea adds a layer of dread to the film. 

Splendid Outing is a haunting piece of work that proves the most effective horror isn’t always supernatural—sometimes, it’s just the sudden, brutal removal of your autonomy.

The Radiance Films release of this film has a new 4K restoration by Radiance Films, audio commentary by Ariel Schudson, interviews with Lee Chang-dong and assistant director Chung Ji-young, and a visual essay by Pierce Conran. It comes in a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow with a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Chung Chong-hwa and Pierce Conran and archival writing by Director Kim Soo-yong, It’s a limited edition of 2500 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings. You can get it from MVD.

Raizo Ichikawa, a name that should be etched into the brain of every genre fan for his work in the Shinobi series, plays an honorable samurai who makes the ultimate sacrifice. When a murder goes down, he steps up to take the rap, protecting his clan with the promise of a quiet exile and a triumphant return in a year.

Spoiler alert: Honor is a lie. When the year is up, the promise is broken and our hero finds himself a marked man hunted by the very people he bled for. Stripped of his home and disillusioned by the rigid, hypocritical bushido code, he faces the only two options left to a man betrayed: die as a scapegoat or burn the whole system to the ground with his sword.

Ichikawa brings a weary, soulful intensity to the role that elevates it beyond your typical action hero fare. You feel every ounce of his disillusionment in his eyes before he even draws his blade.

Director Tokuzo Tanaka, who cut his teeth assisting the legendary Akira Kurosawa, brings a stark, biting precision to this one. Filmed in stunning black-and-white ‘scope, the movie looks like a high-contrast charcoal sketch of a nightmare. It sits comfortably in the same dark, cynical orbit as giants like Harakiri and Sword of Doom. It’s cold, it’s cruel and it’s visually magnificent.

This isn’t about heroes winning the day; it’s about the crushing weight of institutional betrayal and the singular, terrifying focus of a man with nothing left to lose.

This Radiance Blu-ray has a high-definition digital transfer by Kadokawa, select-scene audio commentary by Japanese film historian Tom Mes, a visual essay by film critic Philip Kemp, comparing The Betrayal with the original Orochi the Serpent and a visual essay on director Tokuzo Tanaka by Tom Mes. You can get it from MVD.

Grzegorz Królikiewicz’s Through and Through (or Na wylot, if you want to be authentic) makes your standard crime thriller look like a Saturday morning cartoon. We’re in 1930s Kraków, and the world is gray, hungry and cruel. Jan (Franciszek Trzeciak) is an architect who can’t catch a break, and Maria (Anna Nieborowska) is his partner in this bleak, suffocating dance. They are the definition of the forgotten—poverty-stricken, constantly humiliated by a society that has no room for them and pushed to the absolute edge.

When you’re pushed that far, the line between moral and necessary” just evaporates. Desperation takes the wheel, and they commit a crime that’s less about malice and more about a cry for existence. But don’t go in expecting a straightforward police procedural; this is a descent, plain and simple.

Królikiewicz doesn’t shoot scenes like a normal director; he fragments them. He uses claustrophobic, intense close-ups that feel like they’re invading your personal space, and the sound design is pure, unnerving dissonance. It sounds like a headache, but it’s actually a masterpiece of tension.

When this hit Cannes back in the day, people were throwing around names like Dostoevsky. It’s a deep dive into the psychology of the downtrodden, stripped of all glamour and served cold.

Through and Through is a heavy, challenging, and essential piece of Polish cinema that refuses to be ignored. It’s not a fun Friday night flick—it’s an experience. If you’re into films that challenge your perception of how a story can be told or if you just want to see how high-art misery can be transformed into pure, uncompromising cinema, get your hands on this.

The Radiance Blu-Ray release has a new 2K restoration supervised by cinematographer Bogdan Dziworski, a new interview with critic Michał Oleszczyk and three short films by Królikiewicz. It comes in a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow, with a limited-edition booklet featuring new writing by critic Ela Bittencourt. As always with Radiance, this limited edition of 3000 copies is presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with a removable OBI strip, leaving the packaging free of certificates and markings. You can order it from MVD.

Badland drops us right into the wreckage of Jerry Rice’s life. He’s a guy who made it out of Fallujah only to find himself trapped in a different kind of war back home. Between a soul-crushing job at a gas station and a marriage that’s hitting the rocks, it doesn’t take much for the pressure to blow. Following a false accusation that acts as the final spark, Jerry snaps, leaving his old life in literal ruins and taking his young daughter, Celina, on the lam.

They’re ghosts in the machine, drifting through the desolate American heartland, living in squats and motels while the news brands Jerry a monster. Celina, who has a chillingly innocent way of chatting with God like He’s a buddy sitting at the breakfast table, renames herself Rose and tries to find a normal life in the fading town of Fineman. But you can’t outrun the past. When they cross paths with Max, a local sheriff who’s also a veteran, the walls start closing in. It’s a collision course between two men who understand the same darkness.

Badland feels like the cinematic equivalent of a bruised rib. It’s bleak, it’s quiet, and it captures that specific, suffocating feeling of being an outsider in your own country. It eschews the typical action-hero-on-the-run tropes for something much more uncomfortable: a character study of a man who has lost his compass. The cinematography emphasizes the decay of small-town America, making every abandoned farmhouse and lonely highway feel like a tomb.

The way Celina/Rose handles the trauma, almost filtering it through her conversations with the Divine, adds a haunting, ethereal layer to what would otherwise be a straightforward crime thriller. It’s deeply unsettling to hear a child talk about such heavy topics with a terrifying, calm clarity.

This isn’t a popcorn movie. It’s a slow-burning tragedy about the cycles of violence we bring back from the desert and the impossible choices we make when we think we’re protecting the people we love. It’s a rough ride, but it stays with you long after the credits roll.

The Ruby Max Entertainment/MVD release includes extras such as a commentary by director Francesco Lucente and cinematographer Carlo Varini, interviews with Jamie Draven and Joe Morton, an electronic press kit, makeup VFX, a music press kit, auditions, deleted scenes and the soundtrack on CD. You can get it from MVD.

Hadiya is twelve years old, living in an Egyptian village where the elders’ traditions are absolute and cold. When she’s promised to one of these men, she realizes that the only way to save herself and her village is to flee.

The stage is set: she has to cross the unforgiving desert to find her father and bring justice to the community. But there’s a massive problem: a Western corporation is looming over the village like a vulture, trying to bleed their water supply dry. She isn’t alone, though. Her only companion is her family goat, Sparrow. But out in the heat, reality starts to warp. The goat begins to speak to her—with the voice of her mother who passed away—becoming the only guide she has in a landscape that wants her dead.

This isn’t your standard survival flick. With Oscar-winner Mira Sorvino and John Savage bringing some serious acting muscle, the film grounds its more surreal elements in hard-nosed drama. It’s a road movie where the road is nothing but sand, shifting horizons and the encroaching madness of thirst.

Whether it’s reality or just a hallucination brought on by the sun, Hadiya’s journey is one for the books.

You can get this from MVD.