FOLLOWING FILMS - Podcast, Movies, Music, and More

Alex Russell’s Lurker is the kind of movie that makes you want to set your phone on fire and move to a cabin in the woods, yet you can’t look away from it for a single second. Premiering at Sundance before hitting theaters via Mubi in late 2025, it’s a psychological thriller that feels less like a fictional story and more like a biological study of the modern fame machine. It’s a film about the jagged, blurry line where fandom ends and stalking begins, and how easily the people we admire can become the people we own. At the center of this spiral is Matthew Morning, played by Théodore Pellerin with a jittery, desperate energy that is deeply uncomfortable to watch. Matthew is a retail worker in Los Angeles, the kind of guy who feels like he’s constantly auditioning for a life he hasn't been invited to yet. His break comes when a rising pop star named Oliver, played by Archie Madekwe, walks into his store. Matthew doesn't just ring him up; he performs for him, playing a deep cut f...

Zak Hilditch has a gift for making the end of the world feel uncomfortably small and intimate. In We Bury the Dead, he moves away from the global panic of These Final Hours and the period piece dread of 1922 to give us something that feels like a heavy, dirt-stained funeral shroud. Set in the immediate, muddy aftermath of a U.S. military experiment gone wrong off the coast of Tasmania, the movie isn't interested in the why of the catastrophe as much as the how of the mourning. It is a film about the physical, back-breaking labor of grief, and it is easily the most grounded work Daisy Ridley has ever put on screen. The setup is bleak and procedural. An experimental weapon detonates, wiping out Hobart and leaving the rest of the island’s population brain-dead. But as the military and civilian volunteers quickly realize, these bodies don't stay still. They regain motor function, becoming a quiet, stumbling breed of the undead that are more tragic than they are terrifying. Ridley p...

The Good Shepherd, directed by Robert De Niro and written by Eric Roth, really doesn’t play by the usual spy movie rules. Forget the fast-paced fights and car chases you’d get with Jason Bourne. This movie moves with a cold, measured chill, almost clinical. It digs into the early days of the CIA, charting a path from 1939 to 1961, and centers on Edward Wilson, a guy so bottled up, you sometimes wonder if there’s anything left alive inside him. Matt Damon gives him this strange, haunted presence. His experience in Yale’s Skull and Bones and the grit from surviving WWII carve away whatever warmth he once had. Watching him change from a sensitive, poetry-reading student to a hardened counter-intelligence officer, you start to see the birth of America’s old-boy, secret society elite, where loyalty to the club comes before honesty to the country. Wilson doesn’t just fit into this world, he’s completely swallowed by it. The heart of the story is the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, a botched atte...

If you haven’t seen Arthur Penn’s The Chase (1966), imagine something way stranger and sweatier than your typical mid-sixties thriller. It’s like watching a town on the edge of a nervous breakdown, the kind of feverish drama that feels both old-fashioned and disturbingly ahead of its time. Sam Spiegel produced it, Lillian Hellman wrote the screenplay (based on Horton Foote's work), and the result is messy, ambitious, and totally gripping. There’s this wild clash: Old Hollywood glitz against the dark, chaotic mood of New Hollywood. In the middle stands Marlon Brando, looking tired, grounded, and quietly heroic while everyone else spirals into madness. Honestly, I couldn’t stop thinking about Ari Aster’s Eddington when I watched it, another film that dives headfirst into messy polarization. The story seems straightforward at first: Bubber Reeves (Robert Redford) escapes prison. He’s not some sinister outlaw, just unlucky as hell, but his return to Tarl, Texas, basically rips the mask...

If you’d stepped into a Milwaukee dive bar back in the nineties, there’s a damn good chance you would’ve run into Mike and Claire Sardina. They weren’t just some random tribute act working the weekend shift; they were a local institution, two dreamers who managed to turn a shared obsession with Neil Diamond into a lifelong survival strategy. The new film Song Sung Blue captures that specific brand of Midwestern grit perfectly—the kind of life that’s draped in cheap sequins and hairspray but still smells like a long, honest Tuesday night shift at a neighborhood hair salon. It’s a story about the beauty found in the imitation of greatness and the very real stakes of living a life on the fringes of the spotlight, and honestly, it’s one of the most grounded musical biopics I've seen in years. The movie kicks off in 1987 at the Wisconsin State Fair, which is pretty much the ultimate setting for a story about salt-of-the-earth dreams. We meet Mike, a guy with a massive voice and an even ...

Hanky Panky is one of those films that feels like it was built almost entirely around the personality of its star. Released in 1982 and directed by Sidney Poitier, it pairs Gene Wilder with Gilda Radner in a comic thriller that mixes mistaken identity, espionage, and romantic comedy. It is not usually listed among Wilder’s greatest achievements, yet it has a curious charm that makes it worth revisiting, especially for anyone interested in his screen persona during the early eighties. The story centers on Michael Jordon, played by Wilder, an architect in New York who lives a tidy and unremarkable life. His routine is upended when a mysterious woman asks him to deliver a package and then disappears under violent circumstances. Before he can process what has happened, he is mistaken for someone else and pulled into a conspiracy involving stolen government documents. Wilder’s character is perpetually confused, exasperated, and frightened, which of course is where much of the comedy comes f...

Heaven is a deeply personal and unconventional documentary, one that reflects Diane Keaton’s lifelong fascination with spirituality, architecture, memory, and the unseen forces that shape human belief. Rather than offering a journalistic investigation or a rigid theological argument, Keaton approaches the subject of heaven as a question, an idea filtered through culture, art, history, and personal reflection. The result is a meditative, impressionistic film that feels less like a documentary in the traditional sense and more like a cinematic essay, guided by curiosity rather than certainty. From the outset, Heaven makes clear that it is not interested in defining heaven as a single, authoritative concept. Keaton structures the film around a series of encounters with artists, architects, scholars, clergy, and everyday people, each offering their own interpretation of what heaven means to them. These perspectives range from religious doctrine to secular metaphor, from literal belief in a...

10 Rillington Place, from 1971, stands as one of the most unsettling and rigorously controlled crime films ever produced, a work that eschews sensationalism in favor of a quiet, creeping horror rooted in everyday spaces and human weakness. Directed by Richard Fleischer and based on the real-life crimes of John Christie, the film approaches its subject with an almost clinical restraint, allowing the true terror to emerge not from graphic violence but from the slow accumulation of dread. Rather than presenting Christie as a theatrical monster, the film depicts him as an unremarkable, softly spoken man whose ordinariness becomes the most frightening element of all. At the center of the film is Richard Attenborough’s extraordinary performance as John Christie. Attenborough resists the temptation to exaggerate Christie’s eccentricities, instead crafting a portrait of a man who appears timid, helpful, and vaguely pitiable. Christie’s halting speech, downcast eyes, and carefully measured move...

Suspect from 1987 is a legal thriller that blends courtroom drama with political intrigue and romance. Directed by Peter Yates and starring Cher, Dennis Quaid, and Liam Neeson, the film occupies a distinctive place in late nineteen eighties cinema. It is not a fast-paced or sensational thriller, but rather a measured and character-driven story that focuses on power, corruption, and moral responsibility within the American justice system. While it did not become a defining classic of the genre, Suspect remains a thoughtful and engaging film anchored by strong performances and a serious tone. The story follows Kathleen Riley, a public defender played by Cher, who is assigned to represent Carl Wayne Anderson, a deaf homeless man accused of murdering a government employee. Anderson is portrayed by Liam Neeson in a largely silent role that relies heavily on physical presence and emotional restraint. As Kathleen begins to investigate the case, she uncovers inconsistencies in the evidence and...

Pulse from 1988 is a quietly unsettling science fiction horror film that reflects a very specific cultural anxiety of its time. Directed by Paul Golding and starring Cliff DeYoung, the film takes a familiar suburban setting and turns it hostile through an unseen electrical force. While it never achieved mainstream success, Pulse has endured as a minor cult film, remembered less for spectacle and more for its atmosphere and unsettling ideas about technology, family, and trust. The story centers on David Rockland, a young boy who spends the summer with his father, Bill, following his parents’ divorce. Bill, played by Cliff DeYoung, lives with his new wife, Ellen, in a seemingly ordinary Los Angeles neighborhood. Almost immediately, David begins to notice strange and threatening behavior from the house itself. Lights flicker, appliances malfunction, and the electrical system seems to act with malicious intent. As the danger escalates, David finds himself struggling to convince the adults ...

Fackham Hall arrives as something of a minor miracle. At a time when theatrical comedies are increasingly rare and full-blooded parody films rarer still, it feels almost anachronistic to sit in a cinema and watch a movie whose primary goal is simply to make the audience laugh. Not chuckle politely or exhale through the nose, but laugh openly and often. That alone makes Fackham Hall worthy of attention, but the film justifies its existence far beyond novelty. I went into the film having only seen a handful of the properties it is parodying. I am certain there are references and genre specific jokes that passed me by entirely, aimed at viewers deeply familiar with a certain tradition of stately homes, hushed scandal, and rigid class structures. Yet the film never makes that a problem. It understands something essential about parody that many lesser examples forget. Recognition can enhance a joke, but it should never be the joke itself. Like the classic spoof films that inspired it, Fackh...

Icefall is a stark and tense survival thriller released in 2025 that places human desperation against the overwhelming power of nature. Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, the film attempts to combine crime drama, wilderness survival, and character-driven tension into a single frozen narrative. While it does not fully escape familiar genre patterns, Icefall succeeds in creating a cold atmospheric experience that is often gripping and occasionally haunting even when its storytelling falters. The story centers on Harlan, a Native American game warden played by Joel Kinnaman, who arrests a notorious poacher during a routine patrol in a remote frozen region. What initially appears to be a simple law enforcement encounter quickly spirals into something much more dangerous when Harlan learns that the poacher knows the location of a sunken plane filled with millions of dollars beneath the ice of a frozen lake. This revelation draws criminal interests into the area and forces uneasy alliances to fo...

Shelby Oaks is an ambitious and deeply personal horror film that wears its influences openly while still striving to carve out its own unsettling identity. Directed by Chris Stuckmann, the film arrives with a unique weight behind it, not only because of its genre aspirations but because it represents a critic turned filmmaker stepping directly into the medium he has analyzed for years. The result is a movie that feels both reverent toward horror history and intensely concerned with the emotional fallout of obsession, guilt, and belief. A particularly notable comparison is Roger Ebert, whose transition from criticism to filmmaking resulted in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, written with Russ Meyer. While the film is wildly different in tone and intent from Shelby Oaks, it stands as a reminder that critics have occasionally made bold, unconventional leaps into creation. Ebert’s script was unapologetically excessive, satirical, and deeply aware of the cinematic landscape it was commenting...

Frightmare from 1981, directed by Norman Thaddeus Vane, is a raw, abrasive slice of American regional horror that thrives on excess anger and outsider energy. Where many early eighties slashers leaned into formula and body count,s this film feels more like a scream of frustration blasted straight onto celluloid. It is messy mean spirited and frequently uncomfortable, but those qualities are exactly what give it its cult power. Frightmare is not interested in polish or restraint. It wants to disturb, provoke, and overwhelm. The story centers on Conrad Radzoff, a former mental patient recently released from an institution after years of confinement for violent crimes. He moves in with his sister and her husband and quickly begins to unravel under the pressures of normal life. His grip on reality is tenuous at best, and his violent urges are barely contained. As Conrad drifts from job to job and situation to situation, his resentment toward society builds, eventually exploding into a seri...