Pop Culture Happy Hour

Pop Culture Happy Hour

Get obsessed with us. Four days a week, Pop Culture Happy Hour serves you recommendations and commentary on the buzziest movies, TV, music, books, videogames and more. Join arts journalists Linda Holmes, Glen Weldon, Stephen Thompson, and Aisha Harris - plus a rotating cast of guest pop culture aficionados. The Happy Hour team leaves room at the table for exploring a range of reactions and opinions on every bit of the pop universe. From lowbrow to highbrow to the stuff in between, they take it all with a shot of cheer. Make your happy hour even happier with Pop Culture Happy Hour Plus! Your subscription supports the podcast and unlocks a sponsor-free feed. Learn more at plus.npr.org/happyhour

Episodes

Jurassic World Rebirth And What's Making Us Happy

July 3, 2025 • 21 mins
Jurassic World Rebirth is the latest reboot of the beloved franchise. This time around Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey head to a fresh island of mutant dinosaurs, where they experience a familiar mix of splashy kills and not-so-subtle morality tales. But can the film live up to the magic of the original Jurassic Park?

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Squid Game

July 2, 2025 • 12 mins
Netflix's Korean drama Squid Game became a worldwide phenomenon, winning six Emmys and inspiring countless Halloween costumes. The series has now reached its bloody finale. As the current game concludes, more people die and we find out whether Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) and others can finally end the games for good.

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The Bear

July 1, 2025 • 22 mins
The Bear is back for a new season. The FX on Hulu series sees Carmy and Sydney (Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri) trying to get the restaurant they opened together on its feet before they run out of money. Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) is thrown by his ex-wife's approaching wedding and what it's going to mean for him. Plus there's scallop drama, secret negotiations, and guest stars both new and old.

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M3GAN 2.0

June 30, 2025 • 18 mins
The horror comedy M3GAN spawned memes, made a fortune, and even taught us a lesson about the dangers of outsourcing our humanity to AI. The sequel, M3GAN 2.0, pans out to tell a bigger story about an even deadlier AI killing machine — and brings back the original M3GAN for some hi-tech robot-on-robot violence. Though M3GAN was defeated at the end of the original film, her tech remains — and it's found its way into a rogue AI assas...
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F1 And What's Making Us Happy

June 27, 2025 • 24 mins
If you like cars that go fast, you'll be glad to know they go very fast in F1 The Movie. The film stars Brad Pitt as a veteran Formula 1 driver and Damson Idris as the young hotshot, who's very talented but a little too cocky. With nine races left in the season, they have to win one, or the whole team could crash and burn.

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Ironheart

June 26, 2025 • 16 mins
Ironheart is a fun new Marvel series following Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne), a brilliant young woman we first met in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. To fund her inventions – including a suit a lot like the one Iron Man used to wear – she falls in with a gang of criminals who rob from the rich led by The Hood (Anthony Ramos). But when her ambitions place the people she loves in danger, she's forced to reckon with her past and he...
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Best Pixar Movies, Ranked

June 24, 2025 • 26 mins
It's been nearly 30 years since Toy Story kicked off a historic run of animated films. So now seemed like a good time to discuss the best of the best — YOUR picks for the greatest Pixar films of all time. Thousands of you voted, and we've got the results.

To see our listener's full ranking of Pixar film, check out the list on Letterboxd - at letterboxd.com/nprpopculture

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Elio

June 23, 2025 • 18 mins
In the new Pixar film Elio, a lonely kid dreams of being abducted by aliens. And then one day, it happens. Eager to find a place to belong, Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) volunteers to save the aliens from a dangerous enemy. Along the way, he makes a friend and starts to think about Earth a little differently. The film was directed by Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi (Turning Red) and Adrian Molina (Coco).

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28 Years Later And What's Making Us Happy

June 20, 2025 • 21 mins
The new apocalyptic horror film 28 Years Later takes place in the same world as 28 Days Later, where a deadly virus transformed the citizens of the U.K. into rabid blood-spewing creatures. The new film brings back the original's director and screenwriter, Danny Boyle and Alex Garland. It's set on a small island where a group of survivors (including Jodie Comer and Aaron Taylor-Johnson) eke out a modest existence. A desperate expedi...
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Watch This: Pee-Wee As Himself

June 18, 2025 • 16 mins
The new HBO documentary Pee-Wee As Himself isn't the boilerplate Hollywood profile you think it is. You get the biographical details you expect – how young avant-garde artist Paul Ruebens created the persona of Pee-Wee Herman, and the meteoric rise and fall that followed. But you also get a sense of what it cost Reubens to insist that Pee-Wee wasn't simply a persona, but in fact a real person. It's streaming now on Max.

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The Life of Chuck

June 17, 2025 • 18 mins
Stephen King's work has often contemplated the inevitability of death. But his latest adaptation, The Life of Chuck is a life-affirming film that challenges the cynic in everyone. It has a big cast including Tom Hiddleston, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jacob Tremblay, Mark Hamill, and Nick Offerman. The film was directed and written for the screen by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass).

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Materialists

June 16, 2025 • 18 mins
Should you date for love or financial security? That's the central premise of the new movie Materialists. It stars Dakota Johnson at the center of a love triangle with Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans, and is directed by Celine Song (Past Lives).

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How to Train Your Dragon And What's Making Us Happy

June 13, 2025 • 19 mins
Disney has been remaking its animated classics for years to great financial success – Lilo & Stitch has been dominating the box office for weeks now. So it's no surprise that DreamWorks is now getting in on the action with a remake of How to Train Your Dragon. It's full of epic battles, majestic countrysides and, of course, dragons galore.
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Almost Famous

June 12, 2025 • 20 mins
In Almost Famous, writer and director Cameron Crowe looks at the ecosystem surrounding a rising rock band in the early '70s. Starring Patrick Fugit, Kate Hudson, Frances McDormand, and many more, the movie is a coming-of-age story that touches on journalism, sex, rock 'n' roll, parenthood, and the perils of trying to be cool. Almost Famous turns 25 this year, so today we are revisiting our conversation about the movie.

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Summer Blockbusters

June 10, 2025 • 21 mins
Fifty years ago Steven Spielberg's Jaws was released in theaters, kicking off the summer blockbuster phenomenon. And you know a summer blockbuster when you see one: It's a film that's hugely popular and as a result, financially successful, and seen by lots of people. But not everyone has seen every last one of them. Today, we fill in some personal blockbuster gaps, and finally see a movie that absolutely everyone saw, except for us...
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The Phoenician Scheme

June 9, 2025 • 18 mins
Wes Anderson's new film The Phoenician Scheme is classic Wes Anderson, complete with a great cast delivering heightened dialogue and stylized cinematography. It stars Benicio del Toro as one of Europe's richest men, an amoral industrialist, who, along with his daughter (Mia Threapleton) and a tutor (Michael Cera), travels to convince his business partners to fund his latest venture. But where does the film rank among Anderson's pas...
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Ballerina And What's Making Us Happy

June 6, 2025 • 21 mins
John Wick's back in a spinoff new film, Ballerina, starring Ana de Armas. She plays a ballerina-turned-assassin making her way through the international criminal underworld, and crossing paths with some new and familiar faces — including the one and only Keanu Reeves.

To access bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening for Pop Culture Happy Hour, subscribe to Pop Culture Happy Hour+ at plus.npr.org/happy.

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Adults

June 4, 2025 • 19 mins
Every generation gets its versions of a "20-somethings hang out and make mistakes" sitcom, such as Living Single, Friends, New Girl and Broad City. Now Gen Z's got the FX/Hulu series Adults. The silly new series is about a group of friends cohabitating in Queens, New York and it makes for fun and possibly all-too-relatable TV fodder.

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Watch This: Mountainhead

June 3, 2025 • 20 mins
Succession creator Jesse Armstrong is back with Mountainhead, a new movie with characters who are just as wealthy, powerful, and insecure as the Roy family. Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Ramy Youssef and Cory Michael Smith star as four tech moguls gathering for a low-key guys' weekend of poker. But business and unchecked, overinflated egos quickly lead them all down a very dark path.

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Bring Her Back

June 2, 2025 • 18 mins
The hit Australian horror movie Talk To Me was both very good and deeply unsettling. Now its directors (Danny and Michael Philippou) have returned with Bring Her Back, which ups the ante when it comes to disturbing, nightmarish storytelling. The film stars Sally Hawkins as a woman whose grief manifests in terrifying, ugly ways.

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