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.

Natalie (Kaiti Wallen) is a young woman who finally resurfaces after being missing for 15 years. She’s shell-shocked, struggling with PTSD and caught in the middle of a nightmare with two men claiming to be her father.

On one side, there’s Calvin (Jerry Hayes), the man she’s returned to. He’s an influential entrepreneur with a big house and a cold, detached aura. On the other side, there’s the man who held her captive for all those years, Bobby Nash (played by the director, Harley Wallen). Bobby is the one who fed her the story that Calvin is a monster and her true protector.

The movie isn’t about the kidnapping. It’s about the mental prison that lingers long after the chains are removed. Is Natalie finally safe, or has she just traded one cage for another?

Watching Fathers is like taking a ride down a back road at midnight. It’s dark, it’s twisty, and you aren’t entirely sure where you’re going to end up. Wallen doesn’t hold your hand; he throws you into the confusion alongside Natalie, using quick, jarring cuts that make you question the reliability of every single memory she has.

Kaiti Wallen does a heavy lift here. Portraying a character whose identity has been systematically dismantled is no easy task, and she captures that fragile, wide-eyed terror perfectly. Harley Wallen playing the kidnapper? It’s a bold move, and he makes Bobby disturbingly charismatic and relatable, which honestly makes the whole thing even harder to watch.

The only downside I have to share is that the ending feels somewhat abrupt, and some of the color balance seems to lean toward the blue side of the color wheel, making things look needlessly washed out. But other than that, for the budget, this movie makes a big swing toward telling a dark tale. It feels real, like something you’d watch on Dateline.