Derek Malcolm has been covering the worlds of tech and entertainment for more than two decades.
Before coming to How-To Geek in 2025, Derek was a contributing editor and writer for the A/V and Home Theater section at Digital Trends, where he wrangled and wrote everything from what to watch on Netflix to reviews, explainers, and guides on the latest Bluetooth speakers, turntables, projectors, and other A/V gear.
Based in Toronto, Derek graduated from Humber College's Journalism program in 1999, after which he started covering the worlds of music, movies, TV, and celebrity for publications such as TV Guide, Hello! magazine, and Inside Entertainment. He then got the bug for covering tech and gadgets in 2006, when he served as editor-in-chief of Canadian tech magazine Connected for more than a decade.
An avid skier, when all the snow's gone Derek can be found at home spinning vinyl with his daughter or cheering on his favorite F1 team, McLaren.
It doesn't take too much digging around on Paramount+ to find a few movies that you might consider favoritesâcomfort food flicks you could watch again and again, quirky classics anchored around one famous line, or, in the case of my top pick this week, something to pay homage to a star gone too soon.
If a bit of nostalgiaâbacked by some big awards and solid reviewsâis alright with you this week, here's a rock-and-roll road-trip dramedy, a sci-fi mission to Mars, and one of the best entries in a famous slasher franchise.
As a music-obsessed kid growing up in the '90s, my bedroom floor was littered with issues of Rolling Stone, SPIN, and the NME. These music bibles were the reason I became a journalist in the first place, and Cameron Crowe's road-trip dramedy, Almost Famous, hit me with all those feels when it was released in 2000.
The Oscar-winning semi-autobiographical film is a coming-of-age story that Crowe basically lived. Set in 1973, it follows 15-year-old William Miller (Patrick Fugit), who manages to score a cover-story assignment for Rolling Stone that lands him on the tour bus of the fictional band Stillwater (an amalgam of The Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, whom Crowe actually covered). Dubbed "the enemy" by the band, William chases a one-on-one interview with the aloof guitarist Russell Hammond (Billy Crudup), while falling for the free-spirited queen of the band's groupies, Penny Lane (Kate Hudson).
Meanwhile, William's infuriated mother (Frances McDormand) tries to coax him home as the band implodes and the heartache starts. Full of memorable momentsâlike the bus-ride Tiny Dancer singalong, and Russell, high on LSD, proclaiming from a rooftop, "I am a golden god!"âAlmost Famous is one of the greatest movies ever made.
Paul Verhoeven's 1990 sci-fi extravaganza Total Recall is a campy, mind-bending visual-effects feast that is still so much fun to watch, even today, making it hard to pass up when you come across it on streaming. The Oscar-nominated (and Special Achievement Award winner for special effects) film has so much going for it, it's well worth the hour-and-53-minute runtime.
For starters, it stars Arnold Schwarzenegger in all his one-liner, butt-kicking glory, as Douglas Quaid, a man living in 2084 who goes to a company called Rekall to have memories of a vacation to Mars implanted in his brain. The story, loosely based on Philip K. Dick's trippy short story We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, spirals from there as the procedure inadvertently unlocks suppressed memories Quaid was clearly meant to forget. Suddenly, the woman he thought was his wife (Sharon Stone) is trying to kill him, a hired gun named Richter (Michael Ironside) is hunting him, and he goes to elaborate lengths to get to Mars, where he joins up with a rebel force to fight a repressive regime.
Come for Arnold and his brilliant Austrian-tinged one-liners ("Consider that a divorce!"), stay for Mary the three-breasted mutant and the iconic "Two Weeks" scene with the ground-breaking animatronic exploding head.
If Hayden Panettiere's most recognizable television roles were Heroes' regenerating cheerleader Claire Bennet and Nashville's feisty country-pop diva Juliette Barnes, then her most famous film role was undoubtedly the Scream franchise's horror-obsessed-fan-turned-FBI-agent, Kirby Reed. The world lost the 36-year-old actress far too soon earlier this month, so why not pay a bit of a tribute to the star with Scream VI this week?
After campaigning hard to bring the character back after she was left for dead in 2011's Scream 4, Panettiere got her wish in 2023 in this, the sixth entry in the famed franchise, and a direct sequel to 2022's soft reboot. This time, Kirby returns as an FBI agent who's been pulled to New York after Ghostface follows survivors of the Woodsboro killingsâsisters Sam (Melissa Barrera) and Tara Carpenter (Jenna Ortega), and twins Chad (Mason Gooding), and Mindy Meeks-Martin (Jasmin Savoy Brown)âto Manhattan.
Looking for a fresh start at college, the group instead finds a new, more aggressive Ghostface stalking them. Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) and Kirby are pulled into the hunt, with neither coming out unscathed. Scream VI is the first film in the franchise without Neve Campbell's Sidney Prescott and is one of Panettiere's last films.
Just because these three movies are some of my favorites, it doesn't mean you're going to like any of them. I hope you do, but if not, we have tons more suggestions for youâacross all the major streaming servicesâover at How-To Geek's streaming section.
