The party is nearing its end, the food has been consumed, and now it's time to pour yourself a rich, spicy, herbaceous(?) after-dinner drink to aid in the digestion of all your elsewhere and elsewhile 2025 year-end content...

It's the Hit Factory 2025 Digestif: A rundown of some of our favorite un-discussed films of the past year as well as some brilliant new-to-us discoveries...A low-stakes sporting event becomes a metaphor for the cinematic experience. A high school becomes a microcosm of our technofascist panopticon. A mother at the end of her rope. An artist at the end of his prime. These and more are explored within. So pull up a stool, grab yourself a glass, and kick back one more before we call it a night.
 
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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.

Denzember concludes as Journalist and host of the Turbulence podcast Séamus Malekafzali returns to the show to discuss Edward Zwick's 1998 geopolitical thriller The Siege, a film about a Muslim terrorist cell wreaking havoc on New York City, the resultant fear it stokes, and the vidictive results of martial law being enforced in an American city. Largely lost to time as an artifact of The End of History, the film nonetheless rings with a startling prescience as a pre-9/11 document of Hollywood's casual anti-Arab sentiments (even among well-meaning liberal sects), and trust in American institutions to disavow bad actors and preserve democracy.

We begin by dissecting the films amorphous, byzantine, and *totally fabricated* understanding of Middle Eastern geopolitics, and how its obfuscations function as a tool of propaganda, making the threat of Muslim extremism feel omnipresent and unknowable. Then, we consider how the film contends with imperial blowback, individuating it as mistakes by discrete actors rather than the guiding policy of America's geopolitical meddling across the globe. Finally, we reckon with the film's countless contradictions, its liberal posturing toward the "right" kind of wariness toward extremism, and its unconscious buttressing of the same ideologies that lead to fascist persecution of The Other.

Follow Séamus Malekafzali on Twitter.

Listen and Subscribe to Turbulence Podcast.

Subscribe to Séamus' Substack.

Get access to the whole Denzember experience, all of our premium episodes and bonus content, and an invite to the Hit Factory Discord by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.
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Our Denzember Theme Song is "Funk" by Oppo.

Get access to this entire episode, the entire Denzember catalog, and all of our premium episodes by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.

Roger Ebert Associate Editor Robert Daniels returns to the show to once again discuss the work of Denzel Washington and Spike Lee, this time unpacking his brilliant 1998 sports drama He Got Game. The film stars Denzel Washington as Jake Shuttlesworth, an Attica inmate who is tasked with getting his high school basketball prodigy son, Jesus (Ray Allen), to commit to playing for the governor's alma mater in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. A film as concerned with the capitalist mechanisms undergirding basketball culture as it is with acknowledging the intoxicating allure of the game's myth, Spike crafts a uniquel rewarding sports movie in a melodrama's skin. 

We begin with a discussion about Spike's formal ingenuity, and how he positions basketball as inextricable from broader Americana; a definitive part of American culture. Then, we praise the dual leading performances of Denzel Washington and NBA star Ray Allen. Finally, we disscuss the film's showstopper final act, showcasing Denzel and Allen's skills on the court in a brilliantly pitched one-on-one game that approaches the sublime, even supernatural.

Follow Robert Daniels on Twitter.

Read Robert on the musical direction of Spike Lee films at Letterboxd.

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Our Denzember theme song is "Funk" by Oppo.

Denzember continues with Culture Kitsch host Bobbi Miller joining us to discuss Kenneth Branagh's 1993 Shakespeare adaptation Much Ado About Nothing. Following his successful Henry V adaptation, Branagh returned to Shakespeare for a much airier, light-hearted affair, fashioning the classic play into an immensely pleasurable studio romantic comedy while preserving the spirit and (more importantly) the language of Much Ado..., assembling a showstopper ensemble led by Branagh, Emma Thompson, Michael Keaton, Keanu Reeves, and Denzel as Don Pedro of Aragon, nearly 30 years before he would take on The Tragedy of Macbeth.
 
We begin with a discussion of Branagh's formal tendencies, how his maximalism works for the genre, and illuminate his underremarked upon technical prowess. Then, we discuss what Branagh's Much Ado...  preserves from Shakespeare's stage, what it omits, and how these ommissions speak to the film's position as an End of History artifact interested in reifying traditional family values centered around monogamous, heterosexual couplings. Finally, we discuss how Denzel's Don Pedro is utliized narratively and thematically in the film, and how Denzel's movie star persona and race factor into our perception of the character.

Follow Bobbi Miller on Twitter.

Watch and Subscribe to Culture Kitsch on YouTube.

Get access to the whole Denzember experience, all of our premium episodes and bonus content, and an invite to the Hit Factory Discord by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.
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Our Denzember Theme Song is "Funk" by Oppo

Get access to this entire episode, the entire Denzember catalog, and all of our premium episodes by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.

Denzember 2 continues with the return of Vulture Film Critic Bilge Ebiri and a spirited discussion of Russel Mulcahy's 1991 thriller Ricochet, a film of lean premise that takes its story to absolutely batshit places at every turn. With the ever-capable journeyman director Mulcahy at the helm, a sturdy script from Die Hard writer Steven E. de Souza, and committed performances from Denzel Washington and John Lithgow, the film finds a way to make every one of its scenes memorable by maintaining its ludicrous energy from start to finish and finding lurid thrills behind every corner.

We begin with an appraisal of our experiences with Ricochet, and the delight of finding a film marketed as a boilerplate thriller doing everything it can to shock and disarm you. Then, we examine the deceptively intelligent plotting of the film, pitting Denzel's Assistant DA Nick Styles - an ambitious Black lawyer seeking opportunity in the justice system- against not just Lithgow's psycopathic murderer on a quest for revenge but also the collective biases of the media and elite centers of institutional power that readily see Styles as an interloper in their predominantly white spaces. Finally, we discuss the rare position of Denzel as a movie star, how he stands singularly as both an actor of profound versatility and one that inhabits an intoxicating Movie Star persona.

Follow Bilge Ebiri on Twitter

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Our Denzember theme some is "Funk" by Oppo.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

Denzember 2 kicks off with a conversation about Spike Lee and Denzel Washington's first collaboration, 1990's Mo' Better Blues, a film about jazz, art-making, and the pursuit of greatness at the expense of personal relationships. The terrific Minnie Zondi is our guest!

We discuss the film's tepid reception upon release, and how a (predominantly white) critical audience failed to understand the political dimensions of a film about Black music and its commercial and social appropriation. Then, we reflect on Spike Lee's career and his brilliant cohort of collaborators, including composer Terence Blanchard (making his first appearance on a Spike Lee soundtrack), cinematographer Ernest R. Dickerson, and the electric stylings of costume designer Ruth E. Carter. Finally, we reflect on the movie's complicated ending, and what we're to make of its reflections on artistry, family, and whether exceptional talents can hold the two in balance.

Follow Minnie Zondi on Twitter.

Follow Minnie on Substack.

Read Minnie's Twitter thread on Ruth E. Carter's costume work for Ryan Coogler's Sinners.

Get access to the whole Denzember experience, all of our premium episodes and bonus content, and an invite to the Hit Factory Discord by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.
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Our Denzember Theme Song is "Funk" by Oppo

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.

Better late than never, we're back with a conversation about Paul Thomas Anderson's recent critical and box office sensation One Battle After Another. PTA loosely adapts (and updates) Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland, setting the story against the backdrop of an indeterminate moment in the 21st century to tell a story of washed-up revolutionary Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is dragged back into the fray when an old enemy (Sean Penn) resurfaces and threatens his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti). The film represents the first time in over 20 years that Anderson has set a story in contemporary times, and he uses the opportunity to examine the current landscape of America, its political fissures, and to lay out his personal vision of a hopeful future staked out by the next generation...

But Anderson also readily betrays the limits of his political vision, and his myopic understanding of the circumstances that have produced and perpetuated this country's bigotries and oppressive hierarchies. While One Battle After Another offers countless pleasures as an obeject of undeniable cinematic energy and craftsmanship, it fails to elucidate a coherent sociopolitical ideology, even as it readily co-opts and aestheticizes the langauge and iconography of radical leftwing militancy.

We unpack the film's many contradictions, and key in to what makes OBAA a simultaneously riveting and frustrating watch. Then, we discuss the film's treatment of race and the cadre of brilliant Black actresses who mine depth and nuance out of Anderson's elliptical storytelling. Finally, we call for a deeper discourse about the film that makes room for its many contradictions and shortcomings, arguing that these jagged edges make the film a more urgent and enduring work than insistences on its perfection.

Read Angelica Jade Bastién, on One Battle After Another at Vulture

Read Lyvie Scott on One Battle After Another at Inverse
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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 and critic David Hering joins us from Liverpool to discuss the final film from the ingenious Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut. Originally conceived in the 1970s as a follow-up to Kubrick's landmark 2001: A Space Odyssey as a more straightforward sex comedy, the film adapts and updates Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story) into a visually stunning, phantasmagorical, and startlingly prescient dark night of the soul featuring one of Hollywood's then most famous couples that explores the psychosexual anxieties of masculinity and patriarchal power dynamics - upheld by loci of elite influence - that oppress, sublimate, and throttle our desires.

We begin by examining the metatextual maelstrom surrounding the film, and how a series of distinct discourses (Kubrick's first film in over a decade, his sudden death shortly after the film's completion, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's tabloid-ready romance) united to produce a landmark film event that was met by a befuddled critical and commercial audience alike. Then, we discuss the film's milieu, its controlled artificiality, and Kubrick's masterful use of repetition to create a uniquely dreamlike essence that beguiles even as it suggests a disquieting world of influence operating just outside of our periphery. Finally, we unpack the film's mysteries and unresolved tensions; how the film's conclusion (and iconic final line) suggest a subtle defiance toward the systems of control that minimize and abstract our libidinal, desirous agency. 

Follow David Hering on Twitter.

Check out David's work at his website.

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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.

Filmmaker Heather Landsman joins to discuss Michael Haneke's Benny's Video alongside a conversation about her latest film, the archival documentary The Best of Me, which chronicles Björk stalker Ricardo López through unvarnished, segments of his 1996 video diaries, created as a means of sharing his ideological convictions and his plan to mail the pop singer a letter bomb. The film shares some thematic connections with Benny's Video, exploring the potentially radicalizing effect of culutral ephemera, how mediation both reflects and proliferates the atomization of late capitalism, and how the distancing effect of the camera abstracts the boundaries between the incorporeal and the material.

We begin with a conversation about The Best of Me, its creation, and how we should understand the case of the deeply disturbed López. Then we discuss Michael Haneke, his perspectives on violence and the media, and we take on some of the common criticisms of his work as overly didactic or sanctimonious. Finally, we look at Benny's Video, it's considerations of mediated existence in the late 20th century, and it prescience with regard to the digital unreality we all inhabit online every day in the 2020s.

More info on The Best of Me can be found here.

Watch the trailer for The Best of Me.

Follow Heather Landsman on Twitter.

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Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.

It's Halloween, so we decided to do a "scary" one!

Podcaster, author, and emissary from the City of Brotherly Love Trevor Strunk joins to discuss Robert Rodriguez's 1998 Breakfast-Club-Meets-Body-Snatchers riff The Faculty. Boasting a memorable cast of young up-and-comers and a script written by Scream-scribe Kevin Williamson, the film is both playfully self-aware and slyly subversive in its explorations of social hierarchies and the omnipresent 90s fixation with conformity to the monoculture.

We begin by exploring how the film updates the Body Snatcher narrative, borrowing (and explicitly citing) the literary works of Robert A. Heinlen and Jack Finney, as well as both previous Body Snatchers film adaptations by Don Siegel and Philip Kaufman. Then, we contend with some of the movie's most intriguing premises - its assertions about capitalist hierarchies and how they maintain the oppression of marginalized out-groups as well as how American society impedes gratifying sexual expression (especially for women). Finally, we examine the deceptively cynical ending and what it suggests about the stickiness of the neoliberal order, its structural hold on the horizons of our sociopolitical imagination.

Follow Trevor Strunk on Twitter

Listen & Subscribe to No Cartridge

Buy Trevor's book Story Mode: Video Games and the Interplay between Consoles and Culture

Join us on Thursday November 6th, 2025 6pm PT/9pm ET for a virtual screening of FAILED STATE + Q&A w/ Dir. Christopher Jason Bell.

Purchase tickets HERE.

Hit Factory Patrons can RSVP at Patreon from our pinned post.

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.