Following our conversation with the film's director Pascal Plante, we dive into one of the year's best films, Red Rooms: a thriller tailor made for our disaffected, hyper-mediated moment that asks many unsettling questions about the way emerging technologies sever us from empathy, create paras...
2024-11-18 05:54:56 +0000 UTC View Post
Filmmaker Pascal Plante (director of Red Rooms, one of our favorite movies of the year) joins to discuss Spanish filmmaker Alejandro Amenábar's 1996 debut, Thesis. While riveting simply at the topical level of its tense genre thrills, the movie also metatextually concerns itself with the moving image as a mediated reflection of our corporeal realities, the push-pull of commercialism and artistry, and the ethics of satisfying a violent ...
2024-11-18 05:30:59 +0000 UTC View Post
George Washington University ungergrad and Liberal Currents contributor Sami Gold just informed us that there's an election coming up in the good ol' US of A, so we decided to discuss a foundational text of presidential cinema - Oliver Stone’s brilliant, frenetic JFK. Meticulously composed on several different film formats, masterfully edited in a radical, experimental style, and structured as a steady unraveling of institutional footings, the film stands as one of the finest formal evocat...
2024-11-04 21:18:31 +0000 UTC View Post
An impromptu decision to do something "Halloween-y" led us to 1994 meta-slasher Wes Craven's New Nightmare, the seventh installment in the long-running A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, which sees Craven returning to the director's chair for the first time since the original installment and OG Nightmare final girl Heather Langenkamp returning, playing a semi-fictionalized version of herself. Several layers more complex than the premise ...
2024-11-04 21:09:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Justice Warrior Ben Clarkson returns to discuss the 1997 action thriller The Jackal, starring Bruce Willis, Richard Gere, and Sidney Poitier in his final film role. Ostensibly a remake of the the 1973 Fred Zinneman film The Day of the Jackal (itself an adaptation of Fred Forsyth's 1971 debut novel of the same name), the film attempts to update the story of lethal methodology and intrigue to a contemporaneous post-Cold War, "End of History" milieu that s...
2024-10-22 15:11:36 +0000 UTC View Post
Writer, curator, and author of the upcoming book Revolutionary Desires: The Political Power of the Sex Scene, Xuanlin Tham joins us to discuss the work of Taiwanese New Wave director Tsai Ming-liang and his 1994 film Vive L'Amour. It's a quietly devastating exploration of longing, desire, and urban alienation about a trio of young Tapei residents who, unbeknownst to one another, all occupy the same luxury model apartment.
We discuss the cont...
We take a moment away from the 90s to share our thoughts on Coralie Fargeat's latest brash body-horror festival darling The Substance, starring Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley. It's a stylish, blunt provocation ostensibly targeting the oppressive brutality of patriarchal beauty standards that feels completely at odds with its own intentions, often reinforcing the very ideology it purports to be railing against.
We discuss the film's formal elements, and how the...
2024-10-14 19:24:52 +0000 UTC View Post
Writer, researcher, and fellow podcaster John Semley joins the program to discuss Buffalo '66, directed, written by, and starring the ever-controversial Vincent Gallo and co-starring Christina Ricci, Anjelica Huston, and Ben Gazzara. It's a film of profound beauty, humor and humanity, and although Gallo claims the movie is non-autobiographical, it nonetheless draws from deep reservoirs of personal experience in its depiction of alienation and the grace that can bring...
2024-10-09 14:09:30 +0000 UTC View Post
Twitter-banished Brazilian Gus Lanzetta makes a long-awaited and triumphant return to discuss Iain Softley's sexy, stylish Hackers. Impressively researched and committed to creating a dazzling, expressionistic visual style to evoke the sensations of exploring the uncharted corners of the world wide web, the film is both an ode to the young, brilliant minds at the forefrunt of cyberspace and an anthropological time capsule of a subcutlure that would aesthetically info...
2024-09-30 07:23:09 +0000 UTC View Post
Independent filmmaker Zach Clark joins to discuss the work of punk auteur legend Jon Moritsugu and his 1994 cult favorite Mod Fuck Explosion. A riff on classic Hollywood tales like West Side Story, the film is brash, outrageous, occasionally reprehensible, and is (in Zach's words) less about teen angst so much as it simply is teen angst manifested onscreen.
We first discuss the singular style of Moritsugu as filmmaker, his movies' n...
Journalist and writer Séamus Malekafzali returns to the program to discuss Johnny Mnemonic. Directed by artist Robert Longo and adapted by William Gibson from his own short story, the film was met with lukewarm box office reception and critical derision upon initial release, but has since endured as a classic of 90s cyberpunk aesthetics and startling prescience in its depiction of a 21st century dystopia overrun with corporate malfeasance, an increasingly atomized t...
2024-09-24 22:56:53 +0000 UTC View Post
You voted for it, we watched it.
We discuss the winner of our Patron Poll, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s The Double Life of Veronique - A new film to both Hit Factory hosts, and one that has become an instant favorite.
Enigmatic, ethereal, and steeped in a gentle magical realism, the film finds ways to make grand the quotidian and the interior emotional plane of existence, transcending attempts to articulate its ...
2024-09-06 06:35:25 +0000 UTC View PostHey Hit Factory Patrons,
We've got a Premium patron-exclusive episode dropping next week on 8/30/2024, and we'd like you all to decide what film we'll be discussing on said episode. We went a little off the beaten path here, but are excited about every one of these choices. Another fun thing - whichever film wins will be a first watch for BOTH Hit Factory Hosts.
The poll ends Tomorrow 8/24 at 11:59p PST, so act fast!!!
The films are... 2024-08-24 01:53:20 +0000 UTC View Post
Director, co-writer, and star of The People's Joker (one of our favorite films of the year), Vera Drew joins for a discussion of the sexy, taboo-breaking, teen thriller Cruel Intentions. A 90s update of the 18th century Peirre ...
2024-08-23 15:29:15 +0000 UTC View Post
No new episode this week, but we do have a special BONUS episode from our friends at Upstream Podcast who recently covered Carlee's piece "The Puritanical Eye: Hyper-mediation, Sex on Film, and the Disavowal of Desire" for Lo Specchio Scuro as part of their Patreon reading series. Enjoy!
What do sex scenes in film have to do with the crushing weight of capitalism? How hav...
2024-08-16 22:05:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Writer, programmer, and filmmaker Juan Barquin joins to explore the work of M. Night Shyamalan and his breakout feature, The Sixth Sense. Now somehwat underrated in Shyamalan's impressive oeuvre, even and especially by M. Night die-hards, the film is a patient, startling, and deeply human ghost story that also functions as gorgeous melodrama, introducing Shyamalan's career-long pet themes of parenthood, familial reconciliation, the beauty of otherness, and the ...
2024-08-06 18:49:46 +0000 UTC View Post
Writer, critic, and editor of the Electric Dreams newsletter Fred Barrett joins the show to discuss the neon-drenched, saxophone-laden, softcore erotic thrills of Nico Mastorakis' In the Cold of the Night. The film is a hazy, dreamlike cut of meathead De Palma references, prolonged sex scenes, and fascinating gestures toward deep state mind control conspiracies that make for a truly singular thriller punching well above its presumed weight.
We disucss the hist...
Film lover and zine-er Katie Stebbins joins to discuss Alan J. Pakula's smart, understated legal thriller Presumed Innocent featuring Harrison Ford in one of his finest performances. Taut, richly detailed, and featuring a considerable bench of "that guy" character actors (including John Spencer, Joe Grifasi, and Brian Dennehy), the film rises above the usual theatrics of the Grisham-era Hollywood legal drama with a crackerjack, densely-packed script that rewards upon...
2024-07-28 00:37:48 +0000 UTC View Post
We sat down for a brief conversation with Alex Cox, the director of Repo Man, Sid & Nancy, Walker, and many more to talk about the state of filmmaking today, the sensations Alex hopes one feels when watching his films, and the sanctity of digital media and curation in an era of endless, decontextualized content streams.
Alex is currently crowdfunding what may be his last movie, a Western version of Nicolai Gogol's book Dead Souls.
2024-07-28 00:04:11 +0000 UTC
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Producer and filmmaker Chadd Harbold returns to the show to discuss Terrence Malick's awe-inspiring WWII epic The Thin Red Line. The film marked Malick's return to the director's chair after a 20 year absence from filmmaking and features an ensemble cast of dozens of recognizable faces, including many massive stars of the period reduced to mere minutes of screen time and a handful of lines of dialogue. Based on the James Jones novel of the same name, the movie is unl...
2024-07-28 00:03:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Another solo Aaron & Carlee episode as we dig into an oft-forgotten erotic thriller of the early 90s, Nicholas Kazan's Dream Lover, starring James Spader and a post-Twin Peaks Mädchen Amick. A story of love, lust, and betrayal, the film exhibits a disorienting, fragmented editing style that adds fascinating dimensions to its characters' psyches and indicts the film's ostensible victim, Spader's Ray Reardon, in his own deception as more and more lay...
2024-07-15 05:29:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Hit Factory's Chief Canadian Correspondent and host of Junk Filter Podcast Jesse Hawken is back to discuss the work of French genre provocateur Claude Chabrol and his 1995 thriller 'La Cérémonie' starring Sandrine Bonnaire and Isabelle Huppert. Inspired by the true story of Christine and Lea Papin - two French sisters who, as live-in maids, were convicted of murdering their employer's wife and daughter in 1933 - the film follows Sophie (Bonnaire) a housekeeper for a wealthy family in Britta...
2024-07-15 05:27:02 +0000 UTC View Post
We've reached the halfway point of 2024, which means it's time to sit down with the joint CEOs of Hit Factory LLC and discuss some of the best films of the year, recent finds, and new additions to the CarleeCore™ Canon.
Sit back as Carlee (the preeminent online authority on horny movies) shares her read on Luca Guadagnino''s 'Challengers', Aaron talks through a few international features topping his best of the year list, and we both explain why 'The People's Joker' director Vera Drew...
2024-06-30 01:18:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Producer and co-host of Die Hard On A Blank Podcast and recovering Lars Von Trier superfan Liam Billingham joins to discuss enigmatic Danish provocateur Lars Von Trier and his breakout Cannes award-winning feature 'Breaking the Waves' starring then-newcomer Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgård, and the late Katrin Cartlidge. The film, set in a small comminuty in the Scottish Highlands in the 1970s, tells the story of Bess McNeill, a simply, godly woman who marries outsider oil rig worker Jan. Whe...
2024-06-24 01:02:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Filmmaker, critic, video essayist and author Scout Tafoya joins the show to discuss the work of undersung journeyman Bruce Beresford and his brilliant 1991 film 'Black Robe', a story of faith, the frontier, and the church as a pernicious vestige of the European colonial project. Set amidst the 17th Century French conquests of North America in modern-day Quebec, the film follows the titular Black Robe, Father Laforgue, a Jesuit Missionary tasked with bringing Christianity to the indigenous pop...
2024-06-24 00:33:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Filmmaker, producer, writer, and podcast guest extraordinaire Jared Bailey joins to discuss one of the iconic texts of 90s popular cinema, 'Forrest Gump' directed by Robert Zemeckis and winner of the 1994 Academy Award for Best Picture (among many others). For all its swings at grandeur, the film is a deceptively simple one in premise: An ordinary man reflects on his life, regaling passersby with his stories about coming of age in America from the 1950's onward and detailing the instances in ...
2024-06-24 00:30:44 +0000 UTC View Post
Mad Max maestro George Miller has a new film in theaters, so writer/producer/co-creator of Fox's 'Sleepy Hollow' & co-host of Podcast Like It's... Phil Iscove joins to discuss the work of the visionary director and his brilliant, underseen sequel to everyone's favorite talking pig movie, 'Babe: Pig in the City'. Following the breakout success of 1995's 'Babe', Miller delivered a darker, more adventurous story that sees the titular pig braving a cold, indifferent Metropolis (featuring a fa...
2024-05-28 22:35:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Filmmaker, writer, and dude with an insanely high midi-chlorian count Neil Bahadur joins to discuss George Lucas's return to the Star Wars saga with the prequel trilogy kickoff 'Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace'. Met with ambivalence by most, genuine revulsion by others upon its initial release in the summer of 1999, the film (and the prequel trilogy more broadly) have seen a continued reappraisal, especially in the era of so many soulless Disney-era Star Wars productions. The Phanto...
2024-05-22 18:14:59 +0000 UTC View Post
Writer, critic, and Hit Factory Discord all-star Jason Miller returns to the show to discuss Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan's 'Center Stage', an experimental biopic exploring the life and work of Chinese silent film star Ruan Lingyu who achieved an unprecedented celebrity before tragically taking her own life at only 24. Ruan is played magnificently by Maggie Cheung in one of her first "serious" (and arguably one of her very best) performances. The film brilliantly forgoes a traditional biop...
2024-05-11 16:54:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Writer, comedian, and Lydia Tár's former publicist Daniella Mazzio joins to discuss Gus Van Sant's sharp, pitch-black satire of media, true crime, and a patently American brand of late 20th Century celebrity, 'To Die For'. The film is based on the Joyce Maynard novel of the same name, itself inspired by the true life trial of Pamela Smart, who seduced a teenage boy and coerced him and a friend to murder Smart's husband. The film features an excellent ensemble cast, including Joaquin Phoenix,...
2024-05-11 16:52:02 +0000 UTC View Post