FOLLOWING FILMS - Podcast, Movies, Music, and More

When Parks and Recreation first hit the air, Chris Pratt’s Andy Dwyer was the soul of the show. He was the lovable, dim-witted goofball who lived in a pit and played in a band called Mouse Rat. There was an inherent, puppy-dog vulnerability to Pratt back then, a human-ness that felt unmanufactured. We rooted for him because he felt like the guy next door who just happened to be hilarious. Fast forward to 2026, and the Pratt-ification of Hollywood has moved into a sophisticated and effective new phase with Mercy. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov, this is a screenlife techno-thriller that feels less like a movie and more like a high-stress Zoom call from hell, and it is here that Pratt finds a way to weaponize that old Pawnee charm into something far more visceral. The film is set in a grim, near-future Los Angeles. Pratt plays Detective Christopher Raven, a man who has spent his career championing the Mercy program, an AI-driven judicial system designed to eliminate human bias and legal re...

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 ...

Oliver Hermanus has a particular knack for capturing the kind of longing that feels like it’s vibrating just under the skin. With The History of Sound, he’s taken Ben Shattuck’s prose and turned it into a film that feels less like a traditional period romance and more like a fragile, scratched recording of a memory. It premiered at Cannes before making its way to us via Mubi, and while it carries the aesthetic weight of a high-end historical drama, it’s the intimate, almost whispered connection between Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor that keeps it from ever feeling like a museum piece. The story starts in 1917, in the shadow of a world about to break apart. Lionel (Mescal) and David (O’Connor) are students at the New England Conservatory of Music, two young men who find each other in a pub and instantly bond over a shared obsession with folk music. Their connection is immediate and physical, a brief window of warmth before the United States enters World War I. The conservatory shuts ...

I’ve never made it to the Laurentian Mountains, but every time I see them on screen, they just seem so peaceful. Huge, quiet, beautiful. But Dream Eater doesn’t care about any of that calm. In this one, the mountains stand there frozen, almost judging, as a single cabin’s world crumbles inside. This isn’t your typical found footage scare fest, either. Dream Eater, directed by Jay Drakulic, Mallory Drumm, and Alex Lee Williams, proves there’s still plenty of life and dread left in a genre people love to dismiss as played out. Forget cheap jump scares or flashy effects. The filmmakers dig deep, focusing on the small, uncomfortable unraveling of the people at its center, until the whole thing feels a bit too real. I'm genuinely shocked by what Blind Luck Pictures pulled off on a $100,000 budget. They turned next to nothing into something huge. In the film, Mallory is a documentary filmmaker. Her boyfriend Alex is starting to lose himself to a violent sleep disorder, and it’s getting w...

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...

 THE BLUES BROTHERS: THE ESCAPE OF JOLIET JAKE is a bold and deeply affectionate continuation of the Blues Brothers legacy. Forged from a collaboration between Dan Aykroyd’s family and the estate of John Belushi, this graphic novel seeks to pick up where the classic 1980 film left off, while honoring the irreverent spirit, frenetic energy, and soulful heart that made the original such a beloved cultural touchstone. The result is both a nostalgic homage and a fresh creative chapter, a story that leans on its roots while daring to ask: what happens next for Jake and Elwood after their wild ride through Chicago? The narrative begins by revisiting the end of the original film: Jake “Joliet” Blues and his brother Elwood are jailed after their “mission from God” to save their childhood orphanage ends in arrest. From there, the graphic novel fast-forwards, exploring how the two brothers deal with confinement, legacy, and the restless pull of the blues. Rather than merely rehashing th...

Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon is an elegy disguised as a conversation. Set over a single evening in 1943, the film imagines one long, whisky-soaked night in the life of lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke), the once-celebrated half of the songwriting duo Rodgers & Hart. While the musical Oklahoma!—Rodgers’s first collaboration with Oscar Hammerstein II—opens to thunderous applause across town, Hart sits at a bar wrestling with the loss of relevance, friendship, and self-worth. The title, borrowed from his most famous song, doubles as a metaphor: a reminder that brilliance sometimes burns out before anyone notices it’s gone. The entire film unfolds inside a mid-century Manhattan watering hole, where Broadway producers, chorus girls, and newspapermen drift in and out as Hart drinks, jokes, rants, and occasionally charms them. Robert Kaplow’s screenplay, adapted from his stage play, refuses conventional biopic structure. There are no flashbacks, montage sequences, or swelling musical cu...

Good Boy (2025) is a horror film that manages to feel both familiar and startlingly fresh. At its core, it's a haunted-house story, but the choice to tell it almost entirely from the perspective of a dog makes the experience distinctive. Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever, is not only the central character but also the emotional anchor of the entire film. By grounding the narrative in his view of the world, director Ben Leonberg creates a lens that is at once limited and deeply affecting: we see what Indy sees, we feel what he senses, and we share his frustration when he cannot communicate the danger he perceives. The premise is straightforward yet effective. Todd, played by Shane Jensen, inherits his family’s farmhouse and decides to leave city life behind. The building has stood empty for years, carrying with it the kind of folklore and whispered rumors that every good haunted house should. Todd, curious and somewhat idealistic, is drawn to the idea of reclaiming the prop...

Alex Proyas’s Dark City is a noir-infused science fiction mystery that blends philosophical musings with striking visual storytelling. Released in 1998, it came just a year before The Matrix, and though less commercially successful, it remains a cult favorite and a profoundly influential work in its own right. With a dense atmosphere, shadowy aesthetics, and themes of identity and reality, Dark City is a fascinating meditation on what it means to be human—wrapped in a pulpy detective tale with science-fiction flair. The film opens with protagonist John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) waking up in a bathtub in a grimy hotel room, suffering from amnesia. A dead body lies nearby. He quickly discovers he’s being pursued—not only by the police, led by the world-weary Inspector Bumstead (William Hurt), but also by a group of pale, sinister figures known only as “The Strangers.” As Murdoch scrambles to uncover the truth about his identity and his past, he begins to notice peculiarities about the city ...

Andrew Ahn’s 2025 reimagining of The Wedding Banquet breathes vibrant, contemporary life into Ang Lee’s 1993 classic, proving that some stories—when handled with heart, humor, and vision—grow deeper with time. While the original film offered a poignant reflection on gay identity and familial obligation in a pre-marriage equality era, Ahn’s version builds upon that foundation, crafting a richer, more complex tapestry of queer experience, immigrant culture, and chosen family in a world where acceptance still carries weighty caveats. At its core, The Wedding Banquet (2025) is a screwball comedy of errors built on a foundation of very real, very modern anxieties: reproductive healthcare, green card limbo, generational trauma, and the fear of never being enough for the people we love. But what distinguishes Ahn’s version from so many modern remakes is that it doesn’t chase nostalgia. Instead, it revisits the soul of the original—its humanity, messiness, and quiet subversion—and expands it w...

Gilles Legardinier’s Mr. Blake at Your Service! is a whimsical, heartwarming film that melds English wit with French charm in a story about grief, healing, and rediscovery. Adapted from Legardinier’s own best-selling novel ( Complètement Cramé! ) and brought to life under his directorial guidance, the film offers a compelling blend of comedy, emotional depth, and feel-good nostalgia. With the legendary John Malkovich in the title role, the movie leans into its strengths—rich character interactions, quirky humor, and a universal message about second chances. At the center of this tale is Andrew Blake, a widowed English businessman who finds himself aimless and emotionally adrift after the death of his wife, Diane. Seeking solace, he travels to France to revisit the manor where he and Diane first fell in love. However, a misunderstanding turns his quiet pilgrimage into something far more unexpected—he ends up being mistaken for a domestic job applicant and is “hired” as a butler at the...

Some films don’t just ask for your attention—they seize it. Swordfish, Dominic Sena’s slick 2001 cyber-thriller, is one of those unapologetically brash entries in the action genre that embraces the excesses of the early 2000s while packing enough adrenaline, style, and intrigue to remain a fascinating watch even decades later. At the time of its release, Swordfish arrived in theaters with a storm of controversy and polarized critical reception. But from a modern lens, it’s easier to appreciate what the film was trying to do—and, in many ways, succeeded in doing. This is not a meditative character study or a grounded depiction of cyber-espionage. Rather, Swordfish is a kinetic, neon-lit opera of bullets, code, and moral ambiguity that explores the gray spaces between patriotism, terrorism, and the price of freedom. It’s ambitious, daring, and surprisingly layered if you’re willing to dive beneath the surface gloss. At its core, Swordfish spins a high-stakes tale of hacking and high-tech...

Directed by Po-Chih Leong and released in 1984, Hong Kong 1941 is a historical drama set during the harrowing months leading up to the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong during World War II. Starring Chow Yun-Fat, Alex Man, and Cecilia Yip, the film blends personal drama with political upheaval, offering a bittersweet meditation on love, friendship, and the human cost of war. While not as internationally known as some of Chow Yun-Fat’s later films, Hong Kong 1941 remains a powerful piece of Hong Kong cinema, notable for its emotional depth and social commentary. The film begins in the months leading up to December 1941, just before the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. The city is on edge—tension lingers in the air, and rumors of war swirl. Amid this backdrop, the film introduces three central characters: Nam (Cecilia Yip), a wealthy young woman confined by family expectations; Fei (Chow Yun-Fat), a charismatic and ambitious aspiring actor from the mainland; and Keung (Alex Man), Nam’s loy...