Hit Factory

London-based film writer Esmé Holden joins us to discuss David Cronenberg's M. Butterfly. Based on the Tony Award-winning David Henry Hwang play - itself based on the the real life relationship between Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu, a Beijing opera singer - Cronenberg's film embraces the conventions of melodrama while thoughtfully exploring gender & queernes and weaving a complex romance tragically undone by the conventions and bigotries of the colonial-capitalist order.

We begin by discussing the films explorations of gender, queerness, and transness, and how Cronenberg showcases an exceptionally forward-thinking and nuanced portrayal of these concepts in an era of films content with caricature, stereotype, and parody. Then, we consider how M. Butterfly presents a ground-zero for further explorations of the body, its presentation within societal perfrormance, and the fluidity of sexual expression that would become hallmarks of Cronenberg's signature style throughout the next few decades. Finally, explore the complicated ideological stictures that confine the film's protagonists and how capitalism's myopic definitions of identity continue to hinder self-actualization in its subjects.

Follow Esmé Holden on Twitter.

Read Cinema Year Zero.

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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish. 

Get access to this entire episode as well as all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.

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 parasocial complexes, and push toward frightening new modes of nonconsensual connectivity and surveilance.

We continue our contemplations on Haneke's "Violence and the Media", and how Red Rooms explores notions of equivalency amongst the images on our screens. Then, we praise Plante's formal control and ethics, how he constructs his 21st century milieu, what he chooses to show and how he shows it. Finally, we caution against passivity when engaging with mediated forms and why our moment demands that we make meaning of our realities, even as powerful forces work toward our mindless complicity in ever-expanding horrors.

Red Roomsis available now on VOD and on Region A Blu Ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.

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 culture's sublimated desires for shocking, exploitative imagery. 

We discuss Amenábar's preternatural capacity behind the camera; how his ability to mystify with the language of cinema allows viewers to recognize their complicity in the film's graphic scenarios as spectators while never sacrificing the raw thrills of moviegoing. Then, citing Michael Haneke's writing, we discuss the nature of violence in media, the responsibilites of the artist, and the morbid concept of mindless entertainment. Finally, we connect the film's subject matter to that of Pascal's latest, discussing parallels, distinctions, and the reward of watching films that assume their audience's intelligence. 

Red Rooms is available now on VOD and on Region A Blu Ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.
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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish. 

Get access to this entire episode as well as all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.

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 evocations of political radicalization ever made for the silver screen.

We discuss the film's groundbreaking formalism, how it creates an unmooring effect on behalf of its viewers, and charts the cacophonous frenzy of conspiracy thinking. Then, we talk about where Stone sits in relation to the film's protagonist Jim Garrison, what the film gets very wrong, and why the minutiae doesn't ultimately matter in the borader context of its critique of empire. Finally we look to the upcoming election, share our personal thoughts on the outcomes, and what it means for Palestinian resistance and political movements in our own country.

Follow Sami Gold on Twitter.

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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish. 

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 initially suggests, New Nightmare brings the franchise back to its roots, examining childhood trauma and ideation and offering thoughtful considerations about Craven's legacy as a storyteller and how his films have affected those who participate in bringing his nightmarish visions to life - a full two years before Craven's smash hit Scream would go on to mine similar thematic territory with its meta explorations of genre.

We discuss the film's self-reflexive look at the Nightmare franchise, and how Craven attempts to ellicit new fears from purposefully identifiable rehashes of his work. Then, we discuss the film's surprisingly intricate exploration of Langenkamp as performer and icon - how the film reckons with audience expectations and seeks atonement for turning its star into curio for our own catharsis. Finally, we discuss reference, reflexivity, and homage and consider why Craven's self-quoting offers more than the empty nostaligia-laden iconography of so many current films. 

Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.
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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish. 

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 Frederick 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 sees a collaboration between US intelligence, Russian police, and a former IRA sniper to stop Bruce Willis's titular shapeshifting hitman from assassinating (spoilers) an analogue of Hillary Clinton. While there are some fun bells and whistles, and a heaping of Bruce Willis disguises, the movie ultimately represents diminishing returns on the promise of this type of movie, forsaking procedural thrills for something far more rote and predictable. 

We begin with an extended discussion of form and film language, why it's meaningful in the context of our current media landscape, and what an illiteracy toward formalism suggests about the way culture engages with everything we see via a screen. Then, we discuss the distinctions between Fred Zinneman's 1973 thriller and its 90s update: what it does well, and where it goes very, very wrong. Finally, we expound on the film's sociopolitcal moment, and what its moralizing of its most compelling character says about the broader cultural trends of nationalism in the mid-90s.

Justice Warriors Vol. 2: Vote Harder is out now. Find your copy HERE.

Follow Ben Clarkson on Twitter. 

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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish. 

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 context of early 90s Tapei, its status as a bustling center of rapid economic growth and a hub for global commerce, and how this unique urban setting coupled with Tsai's outsider status as a Malaysian-born transplant inform his cinema. Then we explore the distinctive formal components of Tsai's filmmaking, its radical underpinnings, and its rejection of commodifying language or labels. Finally, we look to Tsai's evolution across the decades since Vive L'Amour and how his self-referential and increasingly sparse approach has further liberated his cinema from the strictures of capitalist impulses.

Follow Xuanlin Tham on Twitter

Pre-Order Revolutionary Desires: The Political Power of the Sex Scene from 404 Ink

Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.
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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish. 

Get access to this entire episode as well as all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.

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 they so frequently contradict the film's messaging. Then, we talk about the the movie's many (empty) reference points and why they are indiciative of the diminishing returns of a generation of filmmakers interested in aesthetic homage to great filmmakers without seriously contending with their themes. Finally, we consider some troubling rhetoric around who the movie is for, who "genuinely" understands it, and who is excluded from this understanding. 

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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.

Get access to this entire episode as well as all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.

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 broken people back from the precipice.

We discuss the career of Vincent Gallo and his status as perpetual provocateur, often exchanging barbs with fellow flimmakers and critics alike, including a notorious saga with the late Roger Ebert. Then, we talk about the film's depthful exploration of its thoroughly unlikable character as portrayed by Gallo, and how he manages to make Billy Brown a remarkably captivating misanthrope through his particular manner and distinctive speaking cadence. Finally, we discuss Gallo's recent foray into the MAGA movement and adjacent vestiges of the right, and why his work's portrayal of ecstatic revelation feels antithetical to the politics of resentment that defines the modern conservative movement.

Follow John Semley on Twitter. 

Read John's piece on Gallo's work with The Daily Wire, "Can Conservatices Make a Real Movie?" at The New Republic.

Watch Vincent Gallo's infamous 2003 interview with Hikari Takano.

Watch Vincent Gallo confront critics on a 1998 episode of Sky TV's Movietalk.

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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.

Get access to this entire episode as well as all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.

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 inform the way the burgeoning landscape of the internet and its denizens were depicted on film throughout the rest of the decade and beyond.

We discuss the film's impressive layers of authenticity, as elicited by screenwriter Rafael Moreu alongside real-life hacker consultants (including then-teenager Nicholas Jarecki, who would later become a filmmaker himself). Then, we discuss Hollywood's attempts to visualize the unconquered, uncharted landscape of the fledgling internet, and how the film paints its protagonists as intrepid trailblazers in the same spirit as classic character motifs from the American western. Finally, we discuss the noteworthy landmark design of the film, from its production and sets, to its immaculate fashion, and its pitch-perfect, multi-volume soundtracks of contemporary electronic music.

Brazil isn't on Twitter anymore, so follow Gus Lanzetta on Bluesky.

Check out Gus's latest podcast adventure The Boku Diaries.

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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.