FOLLOWING FILMS

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 ...

David Mackenzie’s Relay is a rare kind of modern thriller: coolly intelligent, quietly unnerving, and built on ideas rather than explosions. It unfolds in a version of New York that feels both contemporary and haunted by the ghosts of older conspiracy films. At the center of it all is Riz Ahmed, giving one of his most quietly magnetic performances as Ash, a professional go-between who makes a living brokering deals between whistle-blowers and the corporations they threaten to expose. It’s an ethically ambiguous job, and the film never lets him or the audience forget it. The concept is simple but ingenious. Ash uses an old assistive communication system, a phone relay service originally designed for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, as his cover. It allows him to pass information between opposing parties while concealing his own identity. He is a middleman of secrets, a man who thrives in the murky space between truth and silence. When Sarah Grant, played by Lily James, contacts h...

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...

When Tenacious D release something under the “Complete Masterworks” banner, there’s always an expectation that it will be more than just a concert video. These collections are designed to serve as historical records, celebrations, and playful artifacts of a band that’s always blurred the line between comedy duo and serious rock act. With The Complete Masterworks Vol. 3, Jack Black and Kyle Gass once again attempt to capture lightning in a bottle, this time presenting their arena-filling modern incarnation alongside the eccentric animated visions that have defined their last creative phase. It’s ambitious, sprawling, and very much a love letter to fans—though not without a few quirks that reveal the challenges of bottling up the “D” experience. At the center of the release is a full concert filmed at London’s O₂ Arena in June 2023, part of their Spicy Meatball Tour. From the opening notes it’s clear the duo have no trouble scaling their act for an arena setting. One of the dangers for T...

Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck, adapted from Stephen King’s novella, is one of those rare films that defy easy categorization. It is not a horror film, despite King’s reputation and Flanagan’s own long résumé of gothic tales. Instead, it is a meditative piece that explores what it means to live, to connect, and to leave traces behind. Told in reverse chronological order, the story unspools like a puzzle, inviting the audience to piece together a life that feels both intimate and vast. The film begins not with a birth but with an ending. The world is falling apart—technology sputters, societies unravel, and the sky itself seems to be collapsing. Amid this chaos, strange billboards appear carrying a simple message: “Charles Krantz, 39 Great Years. Thanks, Chuck.” No one knows who Chuck is, or why his life seems linked to the unraveling of reality. In this opening act, the apocalypse is less a spectacle than a metaphor. Cities crumble quietly, people cling to each other, and the end of...

Victor Danell’s film Watch the Skies—released in Sweden as UFO Sweden back in 2022 but only arriving internationally in 2025—emerges as a curious hybrid: part adolescent adventure, part heartfelt family drama, and part nostalgic throwback to the era of VHS tapes, synthesizer soundtracks, and Spielberg-inspired encounters. At its core is a story about searching: a teenager scouring for the truth about her missing father, a ragtag community of ufologists chasing evidence of alien contact, and filmmakers experimenting with new technology in the hope of connecting across cultures. The result is uneven but memorable, a picture that dares to mix earnest emotion with sci-fi spectacle and cutting-edge presentation. The narrative orbits around Denise, played with a striking mix of toughness and vulnerability by Inez Dahl Torhaug. Denise has grown up in foster care, hardened by abandonment but still carrying the wound of her father’s disappearance. Her father was not just a parent but a passiona...

Celine Song’s second feature, Materialists, arrived with considerable anticipation after the quiet impact of Past Lives. Where that debut leaned into memory, fate, and transnational longing, her new film turns to the glossy, transactional world of contemporary romance in New York City. The story follows Lucy, a professional matchmaker played by Dakota Johnson, whose work involves pairing wealthy clients with ideal partners according to an unspoken calculus of desirability, pedigree, and prestige. Her skill at navigating this terrain is challenged when she finds herself caught between two men: John, an ex-boyfriend (Chris Evans) who represents a more precarious, emotionally raw kind of intimacy, and Harry, a wealthy, polished suitor (Pedro Pascal) who embodies the kind of security and social perfection her business is designed to sell. The conceit allows Song to probe a world where dating often resembles a marketplace more than a personal journey. By choosing a protagonist whose profess...

The Last Horror Film is one of those curious artifacts from the early 1980s that lives in the borderland between exploitation and meta-commentary. Directed by David Winters and starring Joe Spinell alongside Caroline Munro, the movie is often overlooked in the broader horror conversation, but it has qualities that make it worth discussing. Part slasher, part satire, and part psychological portrait, it occupies a strange, messy but fascinating place in horror history. The story follows Vinny Durand, a New York cab driver with big dreams of making movies. His life, however, revolves almost entirely around his obsession with horror actress Jana Bates. When Jana travels to the Cannes Film Festival, Vinny follows her, carrying a camera and his delusions. He is convinced that if he can just get close enough, he will convince her to star in his film. Once he arrives at Cannes, however, events spiral. Jana finds herself surrounded by threatening phone calls, unexplained disappearances, and vio...

Rebel Wilson has built her career on broad comedy, but in Bride Hard she takes a swing at mixing slapstick with action heroics. The premise is playful enough: a secret agent agrees to be maid of honor at her best friend’s wedding, only for the big day to be hijacked by mercenaries. What follows is a mash-up of spy antics and bridal chaos. It’s the kind of idea that almost feels like a parody sketch stretched into a feature, but the film leans into the silliness with enough enthusiasm to keep it moving. The story centers on Sam, Wilson’s character, who is torn between professional instincts and personal loyalty. She wants to support her best friend Betsy, played by Anna Camp, on her big day, but when heavily armed villains crash the ceremony, duty calls. The structure borrows from the classic one-hero-against-many template, but instead of an office tower or airplane, the battlefield is a lavish wedding venue covered in flowers and lace. That contrast between danger and décor creates som...