FOLLOWING FILMS

  Hey everyone, welcome back to The Following Films Podcast, where we dive into the art, craft, and passion behind the movies. Today I’m joined by Sid Abbruzzi Water Brothers: The Sid Abbruzzi Story follows the life of surf and skate core legend and cultural icon Sid Abbruzzi, and his commitment to protecting the sports’ history and culture. Through a mix of never-before-seen archival film, large format cinematic footage, and personal interviews from culture giants like Tony Hawk, Shepard Fairey, Selema Masekela and more; we are taken on a journey through surfing and skating history - from 1960s Newport to Santa Cruz, Cocoa Beach, South Africa's Jeffrey's Bay, and beyond.  As Sid approaches the age of 72, the film captures the final days of his famous Water Brothers Surf & Skate shop as it is set to be demolished and the impact it had on the surf and skate community. The documentary emphasizes the importance of memory, personal history, and living in the moment, reminding...

#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),...

Ultraman Arc marks another milestone in Tsuburaya Productions’ ever-expanding Ultra Series, debuting in 2024 as a story about hope, imagination, and responsibility. Rather than following the usual formula of an alien hero swooping in to save humanity, the series reframes Ultraman as a symbol of human creativity itself. It is a show that blends heartfelt character drama with the wonder and spectacle of classic tokusatsu. At the center is Yuma Hize, a rookie member of the Scientific Kaiju Investigation and Prevention team, or SKIP. Yuma is kind, idealistic, and often unsure of himself, but his compassion becomes the bridge between humanity and Ultraman Arc, a luminous being who takes shape from Yuma’s imagination. Unlike many previous hosts, Yuma is not chosen because of strength or bravery, but because of empathy and creativity. His partnership with Arc feels less like a contract and more like a dialogue between human emotion and cosmic potential. The supporting cast gives the series it...

Ari Aster’s Eddington is a film that defies easy classification. It is a sprawling, strange, and hypnotic reflection of a nation unraveling under pressure, a psychological and political fever dream set against the fractured landscape of 2020 America. Part social satire, part descent into madness, it captures a moment in history with such raw intensity that it feels both uncomfortably familiar and impossible to look away from. The story takes place in a small desert town in New Mexico, a place that seems forgotten by the world until it becomes a battleground for the country’s cultural and ideological wars. The film opens with a haunting image of a lone figure staggering across the desert at dawn, a visual motif that recurs throughout the story, people lost in vast, empty spaces, searching for meaning in an age of noise. From the beginning, Aster establishes that this is not just a portrait of a town but a mirror held up to an entire nation. Joaquin Phoenix plays Joe Cross, the town’s we...

My guest today is a true legend in the world of action filmmaking. Daniel Bernhardt joins me to discuss his starring role in Steven Kostanski’s reimagining of the Roger Corman B-Movie classic Deathstalker. The Kingdom of Abraxeon is under siege by the Dreadites, heralds of the long-dead sorcerer Nekromemnon. When Deathstalker recovers a cursed amulet from a corpse-strewn battlefield, he's marked by dark magick and hunted by monstrous assassins. To survive, he must break the curse and face the rising evil. Death is just the beginning… of great adventure!" Deathstalker is now playing theatres everywhere.

When Æon Flux hit theaters in 2005, it was already burdened by expectation and misunderstanding. Fans of Peter Chung’s surreal MTV animated series expected a cerebral, avant-garde vision of dystopia. Mainstream audiences, lured by the marketing promise of a sleek sci-fi action film starring Charlize Theron, expected kinetic gunfights and a clear narrative. What arrived was something in between, a film simultaneously too strange and too conventional, too cerebral for popcorn audiences yet too compromised for the cult crowd. Still, two decades later, Æon Flux remains an oddly fascinating artifact of early-2000s science fiction cinema, a film whose stylized visual design, though very much of its time, continues to hold up because of its craft and conviction. Directed by Karyn Kusama, then fresh off her indie breakthrough Girlfight, and written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, Æon Flux is set in the 25th century, four centuries after a virus wiped out most of humanity. The survivors live in ...

When Public Enemy dropped Black Sky Over the Projects: Apartment 2025 in late June, it landed like a thunderclap, a reminder that Chuck D and Flavor Flav still make music that demands to be heard, felt, and confronted. The October 10th arrival of the CD and vinyl editions doesn’t just mark a reissue date; it feels like a full-circle moment, a chance to hold something solid from a group that’s always treated hip-hop as more than disposable noise. Even this deep into their career, Public Enemy still sounds urgent. The record kicks off with “SIICK,” a loud, muscular fusion of hip-hop and rap-rock grit that opens the album like a siren. The guitars slice through the mix while Chuck D’s voice booms like a town crier on the edge of chaos. The song feels like an announcement, not of nostalgia, but of persistence. “Confusion (Here Come the Drums)” is one of the album’s most dynamic tracks. Layers of percussion, noise, and distortion form a wall of rhythm that keeps threatening to topple over b...

Photo credit EPiC- Elvis Presley in Concert Following a rousing world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, Baz Luhrmann’s EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert has found its global distributors. NEON has acquired U.S. rights to the film, while Universal Pictures Content Group will handle international distribution, with a worldwide theatrical rollout planned for 2026. Described as a “one-of-a-kind cinematic experience,” EPiC brings Elvis Presley back to the stage in a way audiences have never seen before. The film combines newly unearthed archival materials—including unseen footage from Presley’s legendary Las Vegas performances in the 1970s, 16mm reels from Elvis on Tour, and intimate 8mm film from the Graceland archives—with rare audio of Elvis reflecting on his own life and legacy. Produced by Sony Music Vision, Bazmark, and Authentic Studios, EPiC transforms decades-old footage into what Luhrmann calls an “electrifying cinematic odyssey.” The result, critics at TIFF noted,...