FOLLOWING FILMS - Podcast, Movies, Music, and More

Under Siege occupies an interesting and now rather nostalgic place in the action-movie landscape. Released in 1992 and directed by Andrew Davis, the film is both a quintessential product of its era and a surprisingly polished entry in the “Die Hard-on-a-[insert location here]” subgenre. It stars Steven Seagal at the height of his box-office popularity as Casey Ryback, a Navy cook who is, of course, not merely a cook, but a former elite operative demoted for insubordination. When terrorists take control of the battleship USS Missouri, Ryback becomes the only person aboard capable of stopping them. The result is a tight, contained thriller that pairs efficient action mechanics with memorable villains and an earnest, slightly self-serious tone that oddly works in its favor. At its core, Under Siege succeeds because of its simplicity. The premise is clear, stakes are straightforward, and the geography of the story, a massive battleship, creates a sense of claustrophobic escalation. Unlike ...

Catch Me If You Can is one of those rare films that manages to be breezy and exuberant while quietly sneaking up on you with emotional weight. Directed by Steven Spielberg and released in 2002, it tells the story of Frank Abagnale Jr., a teenage con artist who successfully impersonates a Pan Am pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer while cashing millions of dollars in fraudulent checks. On the surface, that premise sounds like the setup for a slick caper. But the true pleasure of the film lies not just in its clever scams and period style; it’s in how Spielberg turns a crime story into something more tender—an exploration of identity, loneliness, and the longing to belong. Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as Frank Abagnale Jr. is the film’s emotional engine. He plays Frank not as a mastermind from the outset, but as a frightened, reactive kid with razor-sharp instincts. This nuance matters. The film doesn’t lionize fraud; instead, it roots Frank’s actions in disruption—his parents’ divorce, fin...

Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002) is a sleek, propulsive science-fiction thriller that stands out not only for its imaginative vision of the future but also for the philosophical questions it raises about free will, justice, and the ethics of surveillance. Adapted loosely from a short story by Philip K. Dick, the film combines Spielberg’s instinct for spectacle with a darker, more paranoid tone, resulting in one of the most intellectually engaging mainstream sci-fi films of the early 2000s. Set in Washington, D.C. in the year 2054, Minority Report imagines a society in which murder has been virtually eliminated thanks to the “PreCrime” division of law enforcement. PreCrime relies on three psychic “precogs” who can foresee murders before they happen. When the system predicts a killing, police intervene and arrest the future murderer moments before the act occurs. The premise is both elegant and unsettling: if a crime is prevented, can it still be considered a crime? And if the f...

Sequels often arrive with an unspoken promise: more of what worked last time, just louder. The Black Phone 2 takes a different, riskier path. Rather than attempting to recreate the suffocating simplicity of the original film, director Scott Derrickson expands the world, the themes, and the emotional burden placed on its characters. The result is a sequel that is darker, messier, and more ambitious, a film less interested in pure terror than in what happens after terror has already done its damage. The first Black Phone was defined by confinement. Its power came from a single basement, a single monster, and a child forced to grow up far too quickly. The sequel opens that space dramatically, both physically and psychologically. Finney and Gwen Shaw are no longer trapped children; they are survivors carrying the invisible weight of what they endured. This shift alone signals that The Black Phone 2 is not trying to be a repeat experience. It wants to examine the long shadow of trauma rathe...

Justin Tipping’s HIM is a genre hybrid that merges sports drama, psychological thriller, and stylized horror into one disorienting, fever-dream narrative about ambition, identity, and the cost of greatness. Produced by Monkeypaw, the film embraces an operatic sense of dread, pairing football mythology with ritualistic imagery to create something that feels both familiar and deeply uncanny. Whether every choice lands will vary by viewer, but its aesthetic boldness and thematic ambition make it an undeniably distinctive entry in contemporary horror storytelling. At the heart of the film is Cameron Cade, a young quarterback whose trajectory appears predetermined; he’s the type of athlete scouts whisper about, the kind fans attach their dreams to. That dream collapses when Cameron is violently attacked by a stranger, leaving him with a traumatic brain injury just before the scouting combine. The attack is staged with unsettling intimacy: lingering camera movement, muffled sound, and sudden...

Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale brings the long-running saga of the Crawley family to its graceful conclusion. As the third film following the hit television series, it arrives with the heavy task of providing closure to one of Britain’s most beloved period dramas. It succeeds in delivering emotional satisfaction and nostalgic charm, even if it rarely ventures beyond familiar territory. From its opening moments, the film immediately immerses viewers in the refined world that has always defined Downton. The camera glides across the grounds, the music swells, and we return to the comforting rituals of a house where tradition still rules. The production design, costumes, and cinematography continue to be exceptional. Every frame feels carefully polished, a visual love letter to the elegance of 1930s England. There’s a tangible affection behind the filmmaking, as if everyone involved is saying farewell to a place that has come to feel real over the years. Julian Fellowes’s script continu...

Some movies don’t just entertain, they sneak into your life and set up shop in your memories, becoming part of the folklore of your youth. Freaked (1993) is one of those films. Directed by Tom Stern and Alex Winter (yes, that Alex Winter, the “Bill” half of Bill & Ted), it’s a carnival of grotesques, a live-action cartoon of corporate evil, celebrity rot, and mutant rebellion. It’s also one of the funniest, most spectacularly weird comedies ever buried by a studio. My connection to Freaked began the way so many cult-movie obsessions do, with a rented VHS tape. A friend spotted the bizarre cover art at Video Update, took a chance, and brought it to what we generously called a “party” (really just a few comedy nerds eating chips and watching weird movies). We put it on that night and were instantly hooked. From then on, Freaked became a fixture in our little circle. Whenever someone new joined the group, we’d run through the essential films on our mental list, and if they hadn’t see...

John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness (1994) stands as one of the most fascinating and unsettling horror films of its decade. It’s a movie that explores the breakdown of reason and the dangerous power of imagination, blending Lovecraftian cosmic terror with sharp commentary on mass culture and belief. By the mid-1990s, Carpenter was already known for crafting tightly controlled horror films that questioned the limits of reality, and this film pushed those ideas to their most disturbing extreme. What he created is both a love letter to horror fiction and a warning about how stories can consume the people who believe in them. The story follows John Trent, played with growing unease by Sam Neill, a skeptical insurance investigator who prides himself on his logic. At the start of the film, Trent is locked in a psychiatric hospital, raving about the end of the world. From his padded cell, he recounts how he got there, beginning with what seemed to be an ordinary job: tracking down the mi...

#ShakespearShitstorm is an unfiltered explosion of absurdity, a film that refuses to play by anyone’s rules, not even its own. Directed and co-written by Lloyd Kaufman, the founder of Troma Entertainment, this outrageous adaptation of The Tempest blends Shakespearean farce with a torrent of toilet humor, social commentary, and political mockery. It’s equal parts carnival sideshow and angry protest song, dripping in fake blood and bile but strangely committed to its own warped moral compass. The story roughly follows the bones of Shakespeare’s play. Kaufman plays Prospero Duke, a disgraced scientist betrayed by his power-hungry sister and a corrupt pharmaceutical empire. Banished from polite society, he hides away with his daughter Miranda and plots revenge. Years later, when a ship full of his enemies crosses his path, he conjures a storm — or in this case, a wave of drug-induced diarrhea, that leaves them stranded in his bizarre kingdom. The survivors stumble into a world of grotesque...

William Friedkin’s Rampage is one of those strange, half-buried works that seems to have fallen through the cracks of both its era and its director’s reputation. Shot in 1987 but not properly released in the United States until 1992, the film was reshaped, delayed, and nearly lost amid legal and studio troubles. That liminal history fits its tone: Rampage feels suspended between the moral horror of the 1970s and the slick procedural fascination of the 1990s. It’s a disturbing, intelligent, and uneasy hybrid, a courtroom thriller haunted by the logic of a horror movie. The film is loosely based on the real crimes of Richard Chase, a serial killer nicknamed “The Vampire of Sacramento.” In Friedkin’s fictional retelling, the murderer becomes Charles Reece (Alex McArthur), an outwardly ordinary young man driven by bloodlust and delusion. After committing a series of gruesome killings, he is captured and put on trial. The prosecution, led by district attorney Anthony Fraser (Michael Biehn),...