FOLLOWING FILMS - Podcast, Movies, Music, and More

With Die My Love, Lynne Ramsay has once again proven that she is one of the few filmmakers working today who possesses the rare ability to inject poetry into every frame of her work. Adapting Ariana Harwicz’s visceral novel was always going to be a high-wire act; the source material is a jagged, stream-of-consciousness descent into the claustrophobia of motherhood and domesticity, but Ramsay handles it not with the heavy hand of a traditional dramatist, but with the precision of a surgeon and the soul of a painter. This is a film that demands your total, unblinking presence. It is a masterpiece of sensory immersion that reminds us why we go to the cinema: to feel something that words alone cannot quite capture. From the opening sequence, it is clear that Ramsay is operating at the height of her powers. Her style has always been defined by a certain tactile intimacy, and here, that intimacy is heightened to a point of exquisite tension. She doesn't just show us the protagonist’s wor...

Joe Dante is a mad scientist of the suburban variety. He takes the familiar comforts of our living rooms and the mundane routines of our lives, then he injects them with a frantic cartoon energy that feels like it might burst at the seams. Seeing Innerspace for the first time on a grainy VHS tape back when I was eleven or twelve years old felt like discovering a secret transmission from a much cooler, more chaotic dimension. My parents had a top-loading VCR in our basement that made a heavy mechanical clunk when you pushed the tape down, and that sound was the starting bell for a journey into the microscopic. Back then, I didn’t know who Dennis Quaid was and was only familiar with Martin Short as Ed Grimley, but to me, after watching Innerspace, they were the two halves of a perfect comedic brain. The movie starts with a premise that should be terrifying, a miniaturized pilot injected into the body of a hypochondriac grocery clerk, but Dante turns it into a high-speed chase that never ...

Blue Sunshine (1977), written and directed by Jeff Lieberman, occupies a strange and unforgettable corner of 1970s horror cinema. Neither a conventional slasher nor a supernatural shocker, it is a paranoid conspiracy thriller disguised as a grindhouse exploitation film. Its central image—otherwise ordinary people suddenly going violently insane and losing their hair in clumps, might sound absurd on paper. Yet the film transforms that pulpy premise into something genuinely unsettling and, at times, eerily plausible. At first glance, Blue Sunshine seems to fit right in with the low-budget horror of its era, coming out around the same time as heavy hitters like Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. But Lieberman’s film actually predates the slasher boom. It feels closer in spirit to paranoid thrillers like the '78 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers or the political distrust found in The Parallax View. Rather than centering on a masked killer, the movie builds dread around ...

If you want to understand the exact moment that high fantasy on the big screen transitioned from campy fairy tales into something visceral, blood-soaked, and operatic, you have to look at John Boorman’s 1981 masterpiece, Excalibur. Long before Peter Jackson brought a literalist grit to Middle-earth, Boorman was out in the Irish countryside capturing a version of the Arthurian legend that feels less like a history lesson and more like a collective fever dream. It is a film that exists in a state of constant, shimmering intensity, where every suit of armor glows with an otherworldly chrome and every forest seems to be breathing. It is easily one of the most beautiful and deeply strange movies ever made, and it remains the definitive cinematic take on the rise and fall of Camelot. The story follows the entire arc of the legend, starting with the brutal, rain-slicked nights of Uther Pendragon and ending with the misty departure to Avalon. What makes Boorman’s approach so unique is that he ...

If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like if an Italian filmmaker tried to rip off The Omen, Star Wars, and Close Encounters of the Third Kind simultaneously while high on espresso and fever dreams, you’ll find your answer in the 1979 madness that is The Visitor. This isn't just a movie; it’s a psychedelic artifact of a time when the cinematic rulebook was thrown out the window in favor of pure "vibes" and avian-based violence. The film opens in a blinding white void where an intergalactic warrior named Jerzy—played with a magnificent, weary gravitas by the legendary John Huston—meets a cosmic, bald Christ-figure played by Franco Nero. They are surrounded by dozens of bald children in a scene that looks like a high-fashion cult meeting. They are locked in a multi-dimensional war against "Sateen," an ancient evil force whose genetic legacy is currently manifesting on Earth in the form of a foul-mouthed eight-year-old girl named Katy who lives in Atlanta. It...

I went into Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 totally expecting the standard sequel escalation, you know, bigger jumps, louder stings, and animatronics dialed up to nightmare levels. I figured the studio would just take the "more is more" approach that usually kills horror franchises by the second installment. But honestly? The movie actually knows exactly what it’s trying to be, and it stays remarkably disciplined. It’s "gateway horror" in the truest sense. It’s built for tweens who want the thrill of being scared without the actual lifelong trauma of a hard-R slasher, and it handles that balance with a ton of confidence. It understands that for a ten-year-old, the sound of a mechanical joint clicking in a dark hallway is way more effective than a bucket of fake blood. The film sets the stakes early with a heavy flashback to 1982, showing us the origin of the tragedy at the very first Freddy’s location. It’s a grim opening that establishes the long-standing rivalry and the...

Double Impact (1991), directed by Sheldon Lettich and starring Jean Claude Van Damme in a dual role, is a deliriously entertaining artifact of early 1990s action cinema. Equal parts martial arts showcase, revenge melodrama, and globe trotting crime thriller, the film embraces excess at every level. It is not subtle, nor is it especially concerned with narrative plausibility. But what it lacks in restraint, it compensates for with muscular energy, unapologetic style, and the novelty of seeing Van Damme fight quite literally himself. The premise is pure pulp. Identical twin brothers, Chad and Alex Wagner, are separated as infants after their parents are murdered in a Hong Kong business conspiracy. Raised in radically different environments, they grow into contrasting men. Chad, brought up in California by a family retainer played by Geoffrey Lewis, becomes a polished, charismatic martial arts instructor. Alex, who remains in Hong Kong, grows into a streetwise smuggler with a chip on his ...

Keeper from 2025 continues Osgood Perkins’s exploration of slow-building psychological horror, reaffirming his reputation as a filmmaker more interested in dread than spectacle. Like his previous work, the film resists conventional horror rhythms and instead focuses on atmosphere, emotional unease, and the quiet terror of isolation. Keeper is not designed to shock in obvious ways. It unsettles through patience, ambiguity, and a steady erosion of safety that lingers long after the film ends. The narrative centers on a remote setting and a small group of characters whose sense of control gradually dissolves. Perkins has always favored confined spaces and limited perspectives, and Keeper follows that tradition closely. The film unfolds at a deliberate pace, allowing the audience to sit with discomfort rather than escape it. Events are presented without urgency, which paradoxically increases tension. The absence of constant explanation forces the viewer to observe closely and draw their ow...

Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) occupies a fascinating and sometimes underappreciated place in the slasher canon. Arriving just one year after Sean S. Cunningham’s surprise hit Friday the 13th, the sequel had the unenviable task of continuing a story that seemed, on the surface, neatly wrapped up. Instead of merely repeating the original’s formula, Part 2 subtly reorients the franchise, laying down many of the elements that would come to define Friday the 13th as a long-running series rather than a one-off success. While it may lack the novelty and shock value of its predecessor, it compensates with atmosphere, character, and, most importantly, the first fully realized incarnation of Jason Voorhees as the franchise’s central menace. One of the most striking aspects of Friday the 13th Part 2 is how it reframes the mythology of Crystal Lake. The opening recap reframes the ending of the first film, reasserting Jason’s drowning as the primal trauma of the series while quickly moving past Pam...

Michael Crichton’s Westworld (1973) is a deceptively simple science-fiction thriller that has grown more significant with time. On its surface, the film is a high-concept adventure about a futuristic theme park where wealthy guests can live out fantasies without consequences. Beneath that surface, however, lies an unnervingly clear-eyed warning about technological arrogance, corporate hubris, and humanity’s blind faith in systems it barely understands. Though modest in scale and restrained in style, Westworld remains influential precisely because of its clarity and restraint. The premise is immediately compelling. Delos, a high-end amusement resort, offers three immersive worlds, Westworld, Medieval World, and Roman World, populated by lifelike androids programmed to serve human desires. Guests can drink, fight, seduce, and kill without fear of retaliation. The androids, known simply as robots, are designed to malfunction safely: if something goes wrong, they shut down. Or so the desig...

Roofman is one of those rare films that takes an unbelievable true story and transforms it into something quietly meaningful. Directed by Derek Cianfrance, the 2025 film resists easy categorization. It is not a traditional crime thriller, nor is it a straightforward comedy or romance. Instead, it is a thoughtful and surprisingly warm character study that finds humanity in an unlikely place. By focusing less on spectacle and more on emotional truth, Roofman becomes a film that lingers long after it ends. The story follows Jeffrey Manchester, portrayed by Channing Tatum, a former Army reservist who earns the nickname “Roofman” by robbing fast food restaurants through their roofs. After being imprisoned, Manchester escapes and secretly lives inside a closed Toys “R” Us, constructing a strange but functional life while remaining hidden from the world. On paper, this premise sounds absurd. In execution, it becomes poignant. The film treats Manchester’s situation not as a gimmick, but as a r...

T eenage Mutant Ninja Turtles  (1990) occupies a fascinating spot in pop-culture history. It arrived at a moment when the ninja turtle craze was at full commercial saturation, cartoons, toys, arcade games, and yet it chose, somewhat boldly, not to simply replicate the candy-colored tone of the Saturday morning series. Instead, director Steve Barron and the filmmaking team looked back toward Eastman and Laird’s original Mirage comics, blending grit and humor into a film that was darker, moodier, and more grounded than most viewers, especially parents, expected. That unexpected tonal mix is precisely why the film still holds up more than three decades later. Visually, the movie is immediately defined by its practical effects. Jim Henson’s Creature Shop created the turtle suits, and they remain one of the film’s greatest strengths. These suits could so easily have slipped into camp or awkward immobility, but instead they manage a delicate magic trick: the turtles look tactile, weight...