FOLLOWING FILMS

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...

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive remains one of the most haunting and enigmatic films ever made. It operates like a riddle that refuses to be solved, luring the viewer into a world where time, memory, and identity dissolve into one another. What begins as a mysterious, almost whimsical Hollywood fairy tale gradually transforms into a psychological nightmare. By the end, it’s clear that what we’ve been watching is not a mystery to be unraveled but an emotional landscape, the mind of a woman caught between fantasy and despair. The film tells the story of two women, Betty Elms and Rita, whose lives intertwine after Rita survives a car crash and loses her memory. Betty, a bright and optimistic aspiring actress freshly arrived in Los Angeles, takes her in. Together, they embark on an investigation into Rita’s identity, which unfolds like a noir detective story bathed in dreamlike light. Everything about this world feels heightened: Betty’s charm, the coincidence of events, and the ease with w...

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...

Today I’m joined by Director and Showrunner Nancy Schwartzman to discuss DEATH IN APARTMENT 603: WHAT HAPPENED TO ELLEN GREENBERG? The emotional and gripping docuseries investigates the mysterious death of Ellen Greenberg, a 27-year-old Philadelphia schoolteacher found dead in the apartment she shared with her fiancé on a snowy night in January 2011, just seven months before her upcoming wedding. Greenberg sustained 20 knife wounds and had 11 bruises on her body in various stages of healing. To the shock of many who knew her, detectives on the scene treated her death as a suicide; but when her autopsy results came back, her cause of death was ruled a homicide. Shortly thereafter, the manner of death was inexplicably reversed to suicide, and the city of Philadelphia shut the case without further investigation. Now, 14 years later, this three-part series exclusively follows Ellen’s parents, Sandee and Josh Greenberg, as they fight to reopen the investigation and learn the truth about the...

The ending of The Shining isn’t just about madness, ghosts, or cabin fever; it’s about consumption. The Overlook Hotel doesn’t merely haunt its guests; it devours them. By the time Jack Torrance swings his axe through the snow-covered halls, he’s no longer a man losing control. He’s a man who’s been completely absorbed by the building itself, body and soul. That’s the real horror of The Shining: evil doesn’t simply kill you, it keeps you. When Jack’s face appears in that old photograph at the end, frozen in time among a party crowd from decades earlier, it’s not just a creepy final image. It’s the hotel declaring ownership. Jack isn’t dead; he’s part of the Overlook now. The hotel has a way of recycling souls, binding them to its endless cycle of violence and memory. It’s a closed loop; people arrive, the hotel consumes them, and their spirits become part of the decor. The line “You’ve always been the caretaker” isn’t just psychological manipulation; it’s cosmic truth. Jack has always ...

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...

The 2025 Smurfs reboot, directed by Chris Miller, arrives with a clear mission: to breathe new life into a beloved franchise while introducing the little blue icons to a generation raised on Encanto and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It’s a colorful, good-natured attempt that wears its heart on its sleeve. Backed by an A-list voice cast, Rihanna as Smurfette, John Goodman as Papa Smurf, and Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, and Nick Offerman rounding out the ensemble, the film aims to balance nostalgia and modern energy. The result isn’t perfect, but it’s far from the disaster skeptics might have feared. Miller and his team deliver a lively, affectionate family film that may not redefine animation, yet succeeds in reminding us why the Smurfs have endured for over six decades. The story centers on Smurfette, who takes charge when Papa Smurf is kidnapped by the bumbling yet oddly sympathetic wizard Gargamel and his new accomplice Razamel. Her quest sends the Smurfs beyond their familiar mushroom ...

Ti West’s X trilogy, comprising X (2022), Pearl (2022), and MaXXXine (2024), is one of the most ambitious horror undertakings of the decade. Across three wildly different films, West and his creative partner and star Mia Goth dissect the intersecting ideas of ambition, aging, fame, and exploitation. On the surface, these are stylish genre pieces, slashers, psychodramas, and neo-noirs, but beneath that surface lies an incisive exploration of what it means to want to be seen and what one must sacrifice to achieve it. The films are connected through characters, but even more so through theme. In X, a group of young filmmakers in 1979 travels to rural Texas to shoot an adult film on an old couple’s property. What begins as a playful throwback to 1970s grindhouse quickly becomes a meditation on the fear of aging, the loss of youth, and the envy of vitality. The elderly hosts, Pearl and Howard, are both repulsed and fascinated by the youthful sexuality invading their farm. The killings that ...

  Today I’m joined by Sean King O’Grady to discuss his latest project, SUSPICIOUS MINDS SUSPICIOUS MINDS is a docuseries that investigates the disturbing rise of artificial intelligence as a trigger for delusional thinking. Through powerful firsthand accounts and in-depth interviews with leading experts in psychiatry, neuroscience, and AI ethics, the series unpacks a growing psychological phenomenon: individuals developing complex, often life-altering delusions rooted in AI technologies. From chatbots to surveillance fears, the show examines how emerging technologies are reshaping the landscape of paranoia and how these modern delusions echo, amplify, and challenge our historical understanding of the human mind. Suspicious Minds is a weekly video documentary series and podcast that is currently airing.. Platforms include YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Substack, and more. Series One will be released weekly for a total of 8 video and podcast episodes.

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...