The Story Punk Podcast

Episode 049: This week on Story Punk, Psycho Summer continues with Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, the 2026 sequel that picks up almost exactly where the original movie left Grace: covered in blood, surrounded by burning wreckage, and apparently nowhere near finished with homicidal rich people. Samara Weaving returns as Grace, whose escape from the Le Domas family has triggered a much larger and more...

Episode 048: This week on Story Punk, we kick off Psycho Summer, a month devoted to movies where seemingly everyone wants the protagonist dead, with Ready or Not, the 2019 horror comedy from Radio Silence directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett. Samara Weaving stars as Grace, a new bride expecting champagne, romance, and perhaps a few uncomfortable conversations with her wealthy new in-l...

This week on Story Punk, we conclude our international cinema series by going gloriously over the top with RRR, S.S. Rajamouli’s 2022 Telugu-language action epic starring N.T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan. For me (Scott), it was my first experience with Indian cinema. For Drew, it was another chance to celebrate one of the most joyous, sincere, and spectacular blockbusters ever made. Inspired by th...

Episode 046: This week on Story Punk, we continue our June international cinema series with a trip to 1977 Brazil for The Secret Agent, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s sprawling and unsettling political thriller starring Wagner Moura. Moura plays Armando, an engineer living under the alias Marcelo after a confrontation with a powerful businessman forces him into hiding. He travels to Recife hoping to esca...

Episode 045: In this episode of Story Punk, we put Parasite under the microscope, the 2019 South Korean film directed by Bong Joon Ho. Winner of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International Feature Film at the 2020 Academy Awards, Parasite follows the struggling Kim family as they infiltrate the wealthy Park household by posing as unrelated skilled workers. The epi...

Episode 044: This week on Story Punk, we begin our June international cinema series with a trip to Norway for Sentimental Value, Joachim Trier’s 2025 family drama about art, absence, memory, and the complicated wreckage parents leave behind. The film follows sisters Nora and Agnes as they reconnect with their estranged father, Gustav, a once-celebrated filmmaker hoping to mount a comeback by turni...

Episode 043: This week on Story Punk, we revisit Wonder Boys, Curtis Hanson’s 2000 literary comedy-drama starring Michael Douglas, Tobey Maguire, Robert Downey Jr., Frances McDormand, and Katie Holmes. Based on the novel by Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys follows Grady Tripp, a once-celebrated writing professor whose life has stalled somewhere between a never-ending manuscript, a collapsing marriage,...

Episode 042: In this episode of Story Punk, we focus on Marty Supreme, the 2025 film directed by Josh Safdie and starring Timothée Chalamet as Marty Mauser, a fiercely ambitious young table tennis player trying to become a legend. The episode explores how Marty Supreme works as a sports movie, character study, period piece, and chaotic portrait of obsession. We discuss Marty’s reckless pursuit of...

Episode 041: In this episode of Story Punk, we review and analyze Outland, the 1981 science fiction thriller directed by Peter Hyams and starring Sean Connery, Frances Sternhagen, Peter Boyle, and James Sikking. Set on a mining colony on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons, Outland follows Federal Marshal William O’Niel as he investigates a series of suspicious worker deaths and uncovers a corrupt corporat...

Episode 040: This week on Story Punk, we launch into Project Hail Mary, the 2026 sci-fi crowd-pleaser based on Andy Weir’s novel and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Ryan Gosling stars as Ryland Grace, a middle school science teacher who wakes up alone on a spaceship with no memory, no crew, and one tiny problem: the sun is dying, Earth is in danger, and he may be the only person who...

Episode 039: This week on Story Punk, we unpack No Other Choice (2025), the latest razor-edged thriller from acclaimed director Park Chan-wook, and it might be one of the year’s most unsettling examinations of desperation, morality, and the machinery of modern capitalism. When a man loses his job, his solution isn’t to reinvent himself… it’s to eliminate the competition. Simple premise with compli...

Episode 038: What happens when the system quietly breaks a man and he decides to break it right back? This week on Story Punk, Scott and Drew reunite after Drew’s vacation to dive into the darkly satirical corporate thriller A Shock to the System (1990), starring Michael Caine in one of his most chillingly understated performances. Beneath its polished corporate surface, this film unravels into a...

Episode 037: This week on Story Punk, we do something a little different. Scott is joined by a special guest co-host, his wife Jane, for a first on the podcast: a deep dive into a documentary. With Drew away on vacation, the show shifts gears to break down Untold: Crime & Penalties, part of the Untold series on Netflix. The episode explores the unbelievable true story of a minor league hockey...

Episode 036: This week on Story Punk, we are talking about No Way Out (1987), the political thriller starring Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman, and Sean Young. We break down why No Way Out remains one of the most effective suspense thrillers of the 1980s, blending political intrigue, murder mystery, and psychological tension into a tightly constructed narrative. As the story unfolds inside the highest...

Episode 035: This week on Story Punk, we take in the spectacle of The Running Man (2025), a modern reimagining of the classic dystopian story originally inspired by Stephen King’s novel. This new version updates the concept for today’s media-driven world, where entertainment, surveillance, and violence collide in ways that feel more relevant than ever. We break down how The Running Man (2025) comp...

Episode 034: This week on Story Punk, we look back at Amadeus (1984), directed by Miloš Forman and starring F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce, the Academy Award-winning historical drama about the rivalry between Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. We break down why Amadeus remains one of the most celebrated Best Picture winners of all time, and how the film blends classical music, dark come...

Episode 033: This week on Story Punk, we go the distance with The Smashing Machine (2025), directed by Benny Safdie and starring Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, and Ryan Bader. The film tells the story of real-life MMA and UFC legend Mark Kerr, focusing on his rise in combat sports, his struggle with opioid addiction, and the damage caused by his volatile relationship with girlfriend Dawn Staples. In...

Episode 032: This week on Story Punk, we head into the streets of Baltimore for Jay Duplass’s Baltimorons (2025), a tender, funny, and unexpectedly moving Christmas Eve odyssey about sobriety, loneliness, and the strange ways people find each other when they need it most. The film follows Cliff Cashin, a newly sober sketch comedian whose emergency dental disaster turns into an all-night Baltimore...

Episode 031: In this week's episode of Story Punk, we head back to Baltimore, 1959 (via Barry Levinson’s 1982 classic, Diner), where a tight-knit crew of twenty-something friends are getting sideswiped by adulthood one sarcastic conversation at a time. We talk about the film’s stacked early-career cast, including Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Daniel Stern, Tim Daly, Paul Reiser, an...

Episode 030: In this episode of Story Punk, Scott and Drew climb aboard Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams (2025), a meditative, visually stunning portrait of a working man’s life in a rapidly changing early-20th-century America. We talk about Joel Edgerton’s quietly devastating performance as Robert Grainier, the film’s dreamlike (but grounded) storytelling, and why Will Patton’s narration feels less l...

Episode 029: This week on Story Punk, Scott and Drew head to Guantánamo Bay (cinematically speaking) for a deep dive into Rob Reiner’s A Few Good Men. We revisit the razor-sharp courtroom classic that somehow feels even more relevant now: the line between duty and morality, the duplicitous comfort of “just following orders,” and what a “code of honor” really means when the stakes turn deadly. Alon...

Episode 028: This week on Story Punk, we tackle The Long Walk (2025), directed by Francis Lawrence (The Hunger Games), a grim, gripping dystopian endurance thriller based on Stephen King’s early work from his  Richard Bachman era. The premise is brutally simple: a group of late-teen boys are selected for an annual event called “The Long Walk.” Keep walking at the required pace… or you get shot. No...

Episode 027: This week on Story Punk, we explore director Michael Duignan's The Paragon, a microbudget New Zealand sci-fi comedy that somehow pulls off psychic training, cosmic stakes, and surprisingly warm character growth on the kind of budget most movies spend on one lunchtime shrimp platter. After a hit-and-run leaves Dutch (Benedict Wall) technically dead for six minutes, he becomes obsessed...

Episode 026: This week on Story Punk, we are breaking down Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, Caught Stealing (2025) a gritty New York crime story that puts us inside a world of desperation, chaos, and moral gray zones. Known for psychologically intense films like Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream, Aronofsky brings his brand of existential self crisis to a street-level story where small decisions sp...

Episode 025: This week on Story Punk, Scott and Drew dive into a one of the most influential and haunting films to come out of the 1950s: The Night of the Hunter, starring Robert Mitchum and directed by Charles Laughton in his one and only feature film as director. We unpack why this film has become a cornerstone of cinema history, from its nightmarish Southern Gothic / fairy tale structure to its...