FOLLOWING FILMS - Podcast, Movies, Music, and More

Joel Schumacher’s Falling Down (1993) is as much a Rorschach test as it is a smog-choked thriller. Released at a point of intense cultural volatility in American history, specifically on the heels of the 1992 Los Angeles riots that exploded after the acquittal of 4 LAPD officers who beat Rodney King on videotape, and during an economic recession that left white-collar workers feeling increasingly precarious, the film captured a precise, ugly, and resonant cultural nerve. Viewed today, it feels less like a relic of the nineties and more like an uncanny, predictive text for the modern landscape of alienation, political polarization, and online radicalization. It is a film about the fracturing of the American Dream, told through the perspective of a man who believed the marketing copy, only to find himself bankrupt in a world that no longer recognizes him. The narrative architecture of the film is deceptively simple, adopting a classic Odyssean structure transposed onto the gridlocked asp...

Steven Soderbergh has spent the better part of the last few decades operating less like a traditional Hollywood auteur and more like a restless cinematic mechanic. He is the kind of director who will follow up a massive, star-studded studio hit with a micro-budget experiment shot entirely on a mobile phone, seemingly just to see if he can pull it off. This unpredictable streak makes his filmography incredibly erratic, but it also means that when he hits the sweet spot, the results are wildly entertaining. With his feature, The Christophers, working from a razor-sharp script by Ed Solomon, Soderbergh manages a particularly tricky tonal pivot. On paper, the project looks like a standard, slick art-world heist movie. In execution, however, it transforms into an intimate, blackly comedic chamber piece that cares far less about the mechanics of the crime than it does about family trauma, artistic ego, and the transactional nature of modern relationships. The narrative introduces us to Julia...

Six decades ago, Gene Roddenberry introduced the world to Captain James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock, and a visionary five-year mission that would fundamentally change pop culture. To celebrate sixty years of boldly going where no one has gone before, Paramount Home Entertainment has unveiled a massive 60th Anniversary celebration for Star Trek: The Original Series, complete with premium physical media releases and a brand-new digital storefront for collectors. Dropping on Star Trek Day (September 8), the definitive television milestone is getting a major upgrade. Fans can now pre-order Star Trek: The Original Series - The Complete Series on both Blu-ray and DVD. The national release collects all 3 seasons and 79 episodes—featuring previously enhanced visual effects—all housed in sleek, commemorative 60th-anniversary packaging. The Ultimate Fan Prize: Amazon's Exclusive Gift Set Die-hard Trekkies (or is Trekers? Y'all can figure this out on your own) looking for something extra special c...

When the BBC and BritBox first announced a new spin on Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy , it sounded like a genuinely exciting gamble. Screenwriter Siân Ejiwunmi-Le Berre and director Meenu Gaur decided to drag the 1939 story forward to 1954, swapping out the book's standard lead for Luke Obiako Fitzwilliam, played by David Jonsson, a sharp Nigerian diplomat heading to a new post at Whitehall. It is a fantastic concept on paper. Injecting mid-century Britain’s rigid class structure and post-colonial anxieties into a cozy village whodunit should have given a dusty story a razor-sharp edge. But now that the adaptation has landed on physical media, it is clear that these big thematic swings get totally tripped up by bizarre visual choices and a script that cannot decide if it wants to be a political drama or a proper detective story. The setup works perfectly at first, grabbing the audience with the same hook Christie used. On a train ride to London, Luke crosses paths with Miss Lavin...

The history of independent cinema is cluttered with odd, forgotten mutations that exist at the exact crossroads of high art and low trash. One of the most fascinating artifacts from this twilight zone is Sugar Cookies, a 1973 psychosexual thriller that eventually found a unexpected home in the Troma Entertainment library. Long before Troma became synonymous with toxic mutants, exploding vehicles, and hyper-kinetic slapstick gore, the company’s co-founder, Lloyd Kaufman, was cutting his teeth on a completely different style of counterculture filmmaking. Co-written by Kaufman and director Theodore Gershuny, Sugar Cookies is a sleek, seedy, and surprisingly layered exploration of grief, exploitation, and identity. Originally slapped with an X rating before being re-edited, it stands out as a unique cinematic anomaly: an erotic B-movie that behaves like an art-house homage to Alfred Hitchcock. At the center of this sordid tale is Max Pavell, played with a greasy, manipulative charm by Geor...

To look at the cultural landscape today is to see the fingerprints of Dr. Frank-N-Furter everywhere. Gender fluidity is a mainstream topic, camp aesthetics govern high-fashion red carpets, and the concept of interactive, communal cinema is a celebrated art form. Yet fifty years ago, the vessel that carried these ideas into the global consciousness was a destitute, bizarre British rock musical that bombed spectacularly during its initial American theatrical release. Directed by Linus O’Brien, the documentary Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror arrives as both a celebration and an interrogation of this survival story. Crucially, the filmmaker happens to be the son of Richard O’Brien, the eccentric genius who wrote the original stage show and played the cadaverous butler Riff Raff. This familial connection gives the film an emotional baseline that elevates it far above standard, talking-head nostalgia. Rather than settling for a standard chronological list of production trivia, Str...

Kristoffer Borgli has carved out a genuinely weird, unsettling niche in modern cinema. He loves poking at the fragile ways we build our egos and social identities, and with The Drama, he moves away from the viral internet infamy of his previous work to tear apart something much older: the deeply performative ritual of a modern wedding. On paper, it sounds like a standard psychological thriller or a pitch-black comedy about domestic secrets. In reality, the movie functions as a relentless, high-stress endurance test of what unconditional love actually means. Borgli doesn't just tell a story; he weaponizes the audience's expectations, flipping a standard romantic setup on its head to create something deeply deeply uncomfortable. It moves with the slow, agonizing inevitability of a car crash you can't look away from. To get the full, gut-punch effect of what he’s doing here, you absolutely have to walk into the theater knowing as close to zero as possible. The marketing did a ...

Approaching a seventh entry in an animated franchise naturally invites a certain degree of skepticism. When it was revealed that Pierre Coffin and Patrick Delage were bringing the denim-clad, yellow agents of mayhem back to theaters in Minions and Monsters , anticipating franchise fatigue felt completely justified. In a studio ecosystem that frequently prioritizes safe, corporate formulas over creative exploration, the massive cultural presence of these characters can easily overshadow the genuine artistry that built them. However, stepping out of the theater alongside my ten-year-old son, I was struck by a rare and incredibly welcome realization: this project is far more than a studio meeting a box-office requirement. Minions and Monsters serves as a gorgeous, deeply affectionate, and remarkably poignant tribute to the dawn of cinema, a film that wears its enormous, beating heart openly on its yellow sleeve. The story transports audiences back to 1927, capturing Old Hollywood in the ...

  Luca Guadagnino is taking on the AI arms race in what is shaping up to be one of the most anticipated and timely films of the year. In a massive power move, NEON has officially acquired the worldwide rights to Artificial from Amazon MGM Studios, fast-tracking the star-studded tech thriller straight into this year's Oscar race. The project marks a major acquisition for NEON. The film tackles a story that couldn't be more relevant to the cultural zeitgeist, chronicling the explosive, high-stakes days leading up to the sudden firing and dramatic reinstatement of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. With the fate of world-altering technology hanging in the balance, Guadagnino brings his signature visionary direction to a Silicon Valley pressure cooker. To bring this modern drama to life, an incredible ensemble has been assembled, featuring Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman, Yura Borisov as Ilya Sutskever, Monica Barbaro as Mira Murati, and Mark Rylance as Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton. The p...