Category Archives: Movie reviews

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Polk County Pot Plane (1977)

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In August of 1975, a bizarre chapter in Polk County, Georgia history was written.

A large cargo plane loaded with marijuana crash-landed, and no one could figure out how to remove it. More than four decades later, the incident remains one of the strangest and most memorable events in the county’s history.

What followed that summer night involved a hijacked cargo aircraft, an international drug-smuggling operation and a chain of events that thrust quiet Polk County into the center of a story that seemed more suited to a Hollywood crime thriller than rural Georgia. Yet for the residents who witnessed it, the Pot Plane incident was very real.

The New York Times reported on it, saying “In normal times, Seals W. Swafford, the sheriff of Rolk County up in the North Georgia hills just across the Alabama state line, spends most of his time worrying about how to oversee 313 square miles of territory with just two deputies to serve papers and keep cars moving on the two highways into and out of town.

“Our main problem in Polk County is traffic,” says the 46‐year‐old sheriff, a taciturn but amiable man. “A grave problem. Then we get this airplane. . .”

“This airplane” is a red, white and blue, 93‐foot, four-engine DC‐4 cargo plane that rests incongruously at the end of a rutted, stump‐lined field on the top of a nearby mountain in the middle of nowhere.

The plane landed on the night of Aug. 3 with a cargo of marijuana, and now no one knows quite how to get it out. Meanwhile, it has become something of a tourist attraction.”

Former Army pilot Robert G. Eby was arrested, along with four co-defendants, as the pilot for the Douglas C-54 Skymaster in a field that had been cut into a dense wooded area. This strip’s lights? A string of 100-watt lightbulbs. The operation was part of a much larger drug-smuggling network that had transported thousands of pounds of marijuana and hashish from Colombia into the United States using surplus military aircraft. Although police seized part of the shipment and linked the plane to a massive trafficking operation, prosecutors were unable to prove Eby was the pilot.

The case ultimately fell to pieces due to insufficient admissible evidence. Not even any sticks and stones? Well, whatever, as the abandoned plane remained stranded on the mountain and became a local curiosity after authorities struggled to figure out how to remove it.

According to Secret Handshake Cinema, that’s where James West Jr. comes in. He was an ex-Marine who became a maverick politician, passing a law that allowed women to conceal carry guns in their purses and flying into work every day via helicopter.

He bought the plane, the mountain and access to all of the men who pulled off this crime — all to make this movie.

If you’ve ever sat around wondering what would happen if two guys who looked like they’d been auditioning for a Lynyrd Skynyrd roadie position since 1973 were handed a script about the Dixie Mafia and a plane affectionately dubbed Big Bird, then stop what you’re doing. You’ve found your movie.

The film introduces us to Oosh (Don Watson) and Doosh (Bobby Watson). These guys aren’t actors; they are forces of nature. With full beards, wild hair and thick Southern drawls that make Boomhauer from King of the Hill sound like he’s practicing for a Shakespearean monologue, the Watson brothers are the beating heart of this flick. They don’t have careers in this movie; they just exist. They smoke, they drink, they drive too fast, and they work for the local drug kingpins.

Oosh and Doosh, who help pilot Big Bird, a DC-4 cargo plane, onto a makeshift mountaintop airstrip in rural Georgia. After unloading a shipment of marijuana into an RV, they are immediately pursued by local law enforcement in a chaotic series of crashes involving police cars, a bulldozer and their own battered vehicle. The pair is eventually arrested and jailed after the shipment is lost and their escape attempt fails.

Rather than eliminate them for botching the operation, a group of local crime bosses decides to break Oosh and Doosh out of jail and send them on another smuggling run. The duo is dramatically rescued from a prison rooftop by helicopter and soon finds themselves involved in more over-the-top adventures, including a massive tractor-trailer chase that destroys police cruisers and culminates in a semi-truck smashing through a house. After accumulating a large debt to their criminal employers, Oosh and Doosh rob an armored car in an attempt to make things right, leading to a shootout, more casualties and yet another high-speed pursuit.

That climactic scene where our heroes break out of jail via a helicopter, dangling for their dear lives hundreds of feet above a small Georgia town? That’s not a green screen. That’s not a stunt double. That is Don and Bobby Watson holding on for dear life.

The film’s climax recreates the real-life landing of the famous pot plane on Treat Mountain. As a local radio announcer reports that the aircraft will be auctioned off, Big Jim himself pilots Big Bird back into the spotlight, taking off from the mountaintop runway and soaring into the sky. The movie ends by celebrating the legendary airplane and the local folklore surrounding its exploits, using a string of car crashes, stunts and chases to transform a true Georgia drug-smuggling incident into a good-ol’-boy action-adventure.

Beyond acting in the movie, Big Jim also directed and produced it.  The script came from Jim Clarke. This was the only film from both, but they had support from cameraman Allen Facemire (who shot hicksploitation classics like Cockfighter and Moonrunners before being the DP for Under the Rainbow), editor Angelo Ross (whose work on Smoky and the Bandit had to come in handy here; he also edited Who Killed Teddy Bear?, The Cross and the Switchblade, Mr. No Legs, King Frat and the paintball slasher Masterblaster), producer Robert W. McClure (Hot Summer In Barefoot County, Trucker’s Woman), cameraman William D. Barber (who also shot camera on Empire of the Ants, Cat People, Face/Off, Rsh Hour and so many more movies) and cameraman Jerry Crowder (DP on UFO: Target Earth and J.C.),

Re-released by Paragon Video as In Hot Pursuit, this movie is a fixture on Mill Creek sets.

PS: This post on House of Schlock is where some of the images came from and is packed with info, including the fact that this movie was shown on television as part of the late-night Movie Greats series and a rumor that High Times publisher Tom Forcade was involved with this movie. This is soon disproved in the comments, as an anonymous poster writes, “He never owned the rights to distribute the movie or to put it on tape. The movie appeared on VHS shortly after James I. West, Jr., handed over a copy to Tom’s people during negotiations.”

You can watch this on YouTube.

WEIRD WEDNESDAY: Point Blank (1967)

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Yeah, Lee Marvin might be the coolest person to ever live.

And Point Blank?

This film has more swagger in its first five minutes than most modern action movies have all put together.

Marvin was in London filming The Dirty Dozen, but already had his sights set on his next move: an adaptation of Donald Westlake’s hard-boiled pulp classic, The Hunter. He sits down with director John Boorman to go over the script, and they reach the same conclusion almost immediately: it’s absolute trash.

But that character, Walker? That cold, unkillable force of nature? That was pure gold.

So, Marvin does what only Lee Marvin could get away with. He calls a meeting with the big brass at the studio, the producers, his agent, and Boorman. He walks into that room like he owns the place—because, let’s be honest, he did—and lays down the law. He asks if he has script approval. They nod yes. He asks if he has approval over the principal cast. They nod yes again.

Then, he said, “I defer all those approvals to John.”

Just like that, Boorman—a guy fresh off the boat and doing his very first Hollywood feature—is handed the keys to the kingdom. He had final cut, complete creative control and the total backing of the biggest tough guy in the business. That’s how you get a movie as uncompromising and weird as Point Blank. 

After being betrayed and left for dead by his partner on the abandoned rock of Alcatraz, Walker (Marvin) returns to Los Angeles like a ghost haunting his own life. He’s not just looking for his $93,000; he’s looking for something, anything and heaven help anyone who stands in his way.

This isn’t your grandfather’s detective story. Boorman used avant-garde techniques, fractured timelines and bold color palettes to create an atmosphere of existential torpor.

The story starts on Alcatraz. Walker and his buddy Mal Reese (John Vernon; Marvin didn’t think Vernon was strong enough to contend with him. Marvin then punched him in the stomach during a fight scene, causing the actor to yell that he was an actor, not a fighter.) pull off a massive heist, but Reese is a snake. He puts a few slugs in Walker, makes off with the loot and steals Walker’s wife, Lynne (Sharon Acker), for good measure.

Walker should be dead. Maybe he is — we’ll get to that.

Walker tracks Reese to a heavily guarded apartment, using Reese’s own lover, Chris (Angie Dickinson), as his inside woman. The scene where Reese goes over the balcony while clinging to a bedsheet? It’s pure, beautiful chaos. Walker then hits the high-level guys — Carter (Lloyd Bochner), Brewster (Carroll O’Connor) and the mysterious Fairfax (Keenan Wynn) —one by one. Every time he gets close to the money, it slips through his fingers, replaced by more violence.

The genius of the plot isn’t in the heist; it’s in the surreality. Walker’s confrontation with Chris at Brewster’s house is bizarre. One minute, she’s slapping him, taunting him through a speaker system, hitting him with a pool cue and then—boom—they’re in bed. It doesn’t make sense in a standard movie, but in this movie’s world, it’s the only thing that does.

And that ending? Walker hides in the dark, watching the hierarchy of The Organization cannibalize itself while the money just sits there on the ground. He doesn’t even take it. He just stands there, a phantom who’s done his job and has nowhere left to go.

Is Walker a man, a ghost or a manifestation of post-WWII trauma? Boorman keeps his cards close to his chest, and honestly, that’s what makes the movie work.

On the commentary track for this, Boorman said that another adaptation, Payback, was so poorly made that Mel Gibson must have used the original script he and Marvin had thrown away. Boorman was joined by Steven Soderbergh for that commentary, who said that Point Blank was “a film that I’ve stolen from so many times.”

Back to being cool. There are just some actors — and therefore, the characters they play — so effortlessly and effusively cool that we can’t believe they’re alive. Like Clint in High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider, that’s the only explanation our geeky and awkward minds can offer up as to why Marvin’s Walker can walk the same world as us.

JUNESPLOITATION: Hot Fuzz (2007)

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DAY 10: Private Eyes!

Hot Fuzz isn’t just a blockbuster. It’s a masterclass in genre homage. It’s the kind of movie that feels like it was curated by a record store clerk who spent his entire teenage years alternating between Michael Bay blowouts and classic British murder mysteries. It’s loud, it’s bloody, it’s hilarious, and it’s absolute perfection.

Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg) is the ultimate super-cop. He’s so good, so efficient, and so damn professional that he’s making the rest of the Metropolitan Police look like a bunch of muppets. The solution? Ship him off to the sleepy, idyllic village of Sandford, Gloucestershire. The thinking is that if he’s bored to tears by paperwork and lost swans, he’ll just quit.

But Sandford isn’t just tea and crumpets. It’s a place where people keep dying in accidental ways—decapitations, gas explosions and conveniently falling masonry. Angel, paired with the bumbling, action-movie-obsessed Danny Butterman (Nick Frost), realizes something sinister is rotting beneath the village’s Village of the Year veneer.

Spoiler warning: It turns out the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance (NWA) is more of a murderous secret society than a concerned group of citizens, all obsessed with protecting their pristine town stats at any cost. It leads to one of the most glorious, over-the-top third acts in cinema history. Forget high-brow detective work; by the time the shotgun-wielding, sea-mine-toting finale kicks in, the movie transforms into the very thing it was paying tribute to.

Edgar Wright filled this thing with people we love. Keep your eyes peeled for Peter Jackson as a Father Christmas-clad slasher, Cate Blanchett as Angel’s ex, and Bill Nighy as the Chief Inspector. Just as much as the cameos are the references. Hot Fuzz is a massive love letter to Bad Boys II and Point Break, while the NWA constantly saying they’re doing things for the greater good makes them seem straight out of The Wicker Man. 

But it’s a real action movie, too! Simon Pegg and Nick Frost didn’t just phone it in. They trained with real firearms instructors and studied police procedures to ensure the action sequences looked legit, even when they were shooting while jumping through the air.

In a world of bloated, humorless action movies, Hot Fuzz stands tall. It understands that you can mock a genre’s tropes while simultaneously honoring them. It also has one of the grossest things I’ve seen, as Timothy Dalton falls face-first toward a miniature church steeple.

With references to A Fistful of Dollars, The French Connection, McQ, Death Wish, The Omen and Lost Highway, as well as a starring role for the video collections of director Edgar Wright, his brother Oscar and his friend Joe Cornish, this movie is a total joy of cinema for me. I’ve watched it more times than I can count and always come back for more.

JUNESPLOITATION: The Wages of Fear (1953)

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DAY 9. Thrillers!

Forget your standard-issue action movies where the hero waltzes through gunfire with a quippy one-liner. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear is the cinematic equivalent of a panic attack stretched across two and a half hours. It makes modern thrillers look like Sunday afternoon cartoons.

We find our quartet of heroes — if you can call them that — rotting away in Las Piedras, a South American backwater that serves as a collective drain for the world’s losers. There’s Mario (Yves Montand), a sarcastic Corsican playboy; Jo (Charles Vanel), a washed-up Parisian gangster whose tough-guy veneer is paper-thin; Bimba (Peter van Eyck), a stoic German haunted by the death of his father in a concentration camp and Luigi (Folco Lulli), an Italian cook who has just received a death sentence in the form of a lung condition.

They are trapped, broke and desperate. When a massive fire erupts at a Southern Oil Company well, the corporation — which effectively owns the town and treats the locals like disposable biological hardware — offers $2,000 to anyone willing to drive two trucks loaded with unstable nitroglycerin over 500 kilometers of terrain that would terrify a mountain goat.

We don’t just watch the suspense. We’re passengers. The middle hour is a relentless, pulse-pounding crawl through a series of impossible obstacles, such as a stretch of road so poorly maintained it creates rhythmic vibrations guaranteed to trigger a detonation, a wooden platform that requires driving backward and a boulder blocking the path that requires a precision-timed blast, leading to the harrowing demise of Luigi and Bimba.

The dynamic between Jo and Mario is the film’s psychological core. As the trip progresses, Jo’s legendary gangster grit dissolves into pathetic cowardice, forcing Mario to reconcile his hero-worship of the older man with the reality that Jo is a liability, not a leader.

Everything about this production screams cinematic nightmare, which only adds to the grit on screen. Filming was paused for seven months due to financing issues. When it resumed, torrential rains hit, flooding the set and keeping the cast and crew trapped in a Nîmes hotel for over a month. Then, Clouzot broke his ankle, several dozen local Romani extras went on strike, and the pyrotechnics used for the oil fire sequence nearly turned the actual shooting location into a massive wildfire.

The legendary Jean Gabin famously turned down the role of Jo, fearing that playing a coward would ruin his image as a screen idol. We also almost missed out on Montand; both Gérard Philipe and Serge Reggiani were considered for the role of Mario. The role of Linda, Mario’s devoted and tragic lover, is played by Véra Clouzot, the director’s own wife, adding an intimate, mournful layer to the film’s cynical conclusion.

The film’s ending is the ultimate universe-is-laughing-at-you punchline. After surviving the literal impossible, the triumph is rendered utterly hollow by a moment of reckless, post-traumatic hubris. It’s a gut-punch that cements the film’s status as a bleak, existential work of art.

The Wages of Fear brought Clouzot international fame, winning both the Golden Bear and the Palme d’Or at the 1953 Berlin and Cannes Film Festivals, respectively. Its success allowed him to direct another film that has lived on past the director, Les Diaboliques.

If this all sounds familiar, well, it’s been remade several times, and its influence hasn’t always been called out. Violent Road AKA Hell’s Highway was directed by Howard W. Koch (Ghost, The Odd Couple) and stars Brian Keith; a 2024 French Netflix remake and even an episode of MacGyver, “Hellfire,” in which MacGyver is thrust into an emergency when an oil well erupts into an uncontrollable fire, and he must traverse rugged terrain to retrieve volatile, aged dynamite from a remote mine.

The best-known remake is, of course, William Friedkin’s Sorcerer, which is more faithful to Georges Arnaud’s novel. Is it any happier? Let’s ask Friedkin: “I wasn’t prepared for my success or failure. I felt … buffeted by fate without any control over destiny. That’s one of the themes of Sorcerer. No matter how much you struggle, you get blown up.“

You can watch this on Tubi.

JUNESPLOITATION: Kung Fu Zombie (1981)

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DAY 8: Zombies!

Pang (Billy Chong), a skilled martial artist, lands a local thug, Lu Dai, in jail after foiling a robbery. Upon his release, a vengeful Lu Dai hires a bumbling Taoist priest named Wu Lung to animate a small army of zombies to take down Pang.

Lu Dai is killed by his own trap, and his ghost haunts the priest, demanding to be resurrected. The priest attempts to put Lu Dai’s spirit into the corpse of a recently deceased serial killer, Kwan Wei Long. Because the killer is so evil, he returns as a powerful, free-willed vampire.

After Pang’s father — the man who trained him brutally all of his life to be a killing machine — dies, the priest tries to use his body to host Lu Dai’s spirit. The ritual is interrupted, resulting in the thug and the father sharing control of the body, forcing Pang to battle his own father’s reanimated corpse while also fighting the vampire.

You may dislike this for being incredibly cheap and for its erratic subtitle translations, such as calling corpses “salted fish.” Not me. I loved it.

Chong (born Chuang Chen Li) had an extensive career in both Hong Kong and Indonesia. Some of his other notable martial arts films include Jade Claw, A Hard Way to Die, Kung Fu Executioner, A Fistful of Talons and Kung Fu Beyond the Grave. Later in his career, he became a major household name in Indonesia, where he wrote, directed, and starred in several popular television series, including Deru Debu and Sapu Jagad.

Why do I love it? It has the balls to rip off Morricone’s Exorcist II: The Heretic score, has someone kick a man’s head clean off his body, and a vampire bad guy who not only comes out to the Bond theme but also has hands on fire. How did they do that effect? They set a man’s hands on fire, that’s how.

Oh yeah — director Shan Hua also made Portrait In Crystal, Bloody Parrot, Dynamo and Inframan. He knew what he was doing.

You can watch this on YouTube.

MGM/ALLIANCE ENTERTAINMENT 4K UHD RELEASE: Crime 101 (2026)

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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.

RADIANCE BLU-RAY RELEASE: Splendid Outing (1978)

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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.

RADIANCE FILMS: The Betrayal (1966)

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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.

RADIANCE BLU-RAY RELEASE: Through and Through (1973)

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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.

RUBY MAX ENTERTAINMENT/MVD BLU-RAY RELEASE: Badland (2007)

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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.