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're back with more Danny Boyle coverage, this time discussing his latest film 28 Years Later , the long-awaited sequel to Boyle's own 28 Days Later ( as well as its sequel 28 Weeks Later) that bracingly rejects the template set by both its predecessors and the broader scope of modern blockbusters to deliver a visceral, formally daring, and narratively a...
Jul 01, 2025•8 min•Ep. 241
Film journalist and friend of the show Brandon Streussnig returns to discuss Danny Boyle's debut film Shallow Grave , a British riff on the 90s neo-noir template, self-described by Boyle and his collaborators as their take on the Coen's Blood Simple. The film chronicles a trifecta of beautiful, sociopathic yuppies sharing an Edinburgh flat (Kerry Fox, Christopher Eccleston, and Ewan McGregor) who unravel after the untimely death of their new roommate and the discovery of a suitcase full of cash....
Jun 23, 2025•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 240
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 went exceptionally long on the late John Singleton’s undersung period western Rosewood , a film (and filmmaker) whose fingerprints are all over Ryan Coogler’s recent box office sensation, Sinners . Rosewood tells the story of an independent Black township in Florida and the barbaric racial violence it faced in 1923, incited by a white woman’s false acc...
Jun 21, 2025•14 min•Ep. 239
We stayed up for three consecutive days without sleep and kept at least one hand on a microphone at all times in order to test our mettle and discuss S.R. Bindler's 1997 "gawkumentary" Hands on a Hardbody, a story of 23 contenstants in Longview, Texas squaring off in a competition of stamina to win a Nissan hardbody truck. Over the course of three days, Bindler and his crew record the ecstasy of victory, the agony of defeat, and the enormity of - as one particularly philosophical contestant puts...
Jun 10, 2025•1 hr 53 min•Ep. 238
This is a re-upload for Spotify of a conversation originally held in November of 2023. Hit Factory wishes to extend our deepest gratitude and reverence to the National Music Publishers’ Association - tireless defenders of intellectual property, guardians of taste, and brave crusaders against independent podcasts that allegedly included a brief clip of copyrighted music within a previous version of this episode. Journalist and writer Séamus Malekafzali returns to the program for a lengthy convers...
Jun 07, 2025•2 hr 14 min•Ep. 237
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 got our hands on Sofia Coppola's diary and read it to try and make sense of her dreamy, quietly devastating debut The Virgin Suicides . Adapted from the Jeffrey Eugenides novel of the same name, Coppola's film tells the story of the five Lisbon sisters as seen through the eyes of the boys they charm and perplex in equal measure. Adopting the male gaze ...
May 23, 2025•14 min•Ep. 236
We finally bring the brilliant, indelible work of Claire Denis to the pod with a discussion of her 1994 TV movie U.S. Go Home . Produced as part of the anthology series Tous les garcons et les filles de leur age… alongside work from other French visionaries like Chantal Akerman, Olivier Assayas and André Téchiné, Denis' film is an elliptical, compassionate coming-of-age story that regularly subverts expectations and never succumbs to the potentially regressive tendencies of its narrative milieu....
May 09, 2025•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 235
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. David Cronenberg returns to the big screen this week with The Shrouds , perhaps his most autobiographical film to date. The film involves grieving tech entrepreneur Karsh (played brilliantly by Vincent Cassel) who has developed the means to surveil the dead in their tombs, including his recently deceased wife. After a series of grave defacements in the ce...
Apr 25, 2025•17 min•Ep. 234
The Roxie Theater, a San Francisco landmark in the Mission District, is one of the oldest continuously operated cinemas in the United States, with its history tracing back to the early 1900s. Recently, The Roxie kicked off the public phase of their fundraising campaing, Forever Roxie , in order to purchase their buidling, invest in technology upgrades, and expand their programming. As the premier theater destination for both hosts of Hit Factory, we want to get the word out to listeners and ask ...
Apr 20, 2025•43 min•Ep. 233
We inaugurate the brilliant Taiwanese master Edward Yang with a conversation about his transcendent 1994 social satire A Confucian Confusion . Following up his staggering masterwork A Brighter Summer Day , Yang turned his attention to Taipei in the 1990s at the height of its rapid evolution into a port city of global capital and the effects this shift had on the value systems and relational dynamics of the city's people. Evoking the slapstick and breackneck pacing of more popular modes of cinema...
Apr 11, 2025•2 hr 18 min•Ep. 232
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. Xuanlin Tham, author of the new book Revolutionary Desires: The Political Power of the Sex Scene returns to the show to discuss the Wachowskis' debut feature - the sharp, sexy sapphic neo-noir Bound . Emboldened by brilliant performances from its two leads Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly, the film is both an assured and nimble stylistic calling card for t...
Mar 28, 2025•17 min•Ep. 231
Film critic and author A.S. Hamrah joins for a conversation on his recent Fast Company piece "Hollywood’s obsession with AI-enabled ‘perfection’ is making movies less human" , which details some alarming (and frankly, depressing) recent use cases of A.I. in both studio blockbuster fare and awards-contending independent releases like Brady Corbet's The Brutalist. We attempt to unpack the psychology driving the pervasive and exponential use of A.I. in moviemaking - Is there a genuine impetus on th...
Mar 14, 2025•1 hr 15 min•Ep. 230
Returning friend of the show Comrade Yui swings by to discuss the 1994 Full Moon direct-to-video masterwork Dark Angel: The Ascent. The story follows the exploits of a bored, beautiful young demon Veronica Iscariot (Angela Featherstone) as she defies the orders of her parents and the rules of hell to visit Earth and walk among the humans. It's not long before she realizes that humanity has forsaken its God-given gifts and descended into all manners of evil, which must be brutally punished. Writt...
Mar 10, 2025•1 hr 45 min•Ep. 229
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're back talking about the recently-released Babygirl , directed by Dutch actor-turned-director Halina Reijn. Despite some initial apprehensions based on the discourse and reviews from trusted sources, we both found the film to be a stylish, funny, and intelligent examination of desire, kink, and the ways that the patriarchy suppresses and rejects expre...
Feb 21, 2025•16 min•Ep. 228
Fan favorite Hard Mike returns to the show alongside newcomer Syd Bricks to discuss Paul Schrader's Affliction , one of the filmmaker's most well-observed explorations of addiction and the generational cycles of suffering that manifest as a result of leaving personal trauma and pain unresolved. The film follows Nick Nolte's Wade Whitehouse, an alcohlic, washed-up cop in a small New Hampshire town whose maladies put him at odds with his community as he circles the drain, falling deeper into his o...
Feb 14, 2025•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 227
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. Film critic Eamon Tracy returns to the show to discuss Renny Harlin's mountain-bound Die Hard riff Cliffhanger starring Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, and Michael Rooker. A taut, well-staged action thriller that served as a revitalization effort for Stallone's leading man bonafides in the early 90s after a rough patch of box office and critical bombs, ...
Jan 29, 2025•13 min•Ep. 226
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. It's a New Year and we don't feel any different! In typical Hit Factory fashion, the simple task of creating an "In/Out" list for 2025 became a discussion about the infantilization of culture, embracing cinephilia beyond marketing cycles, and how the current state of art reflects an empire in decline. If you've ever wanted to hear a movie podcast tell you...
Jan 04, 2025•14 min•Ep. 225
Brooklyn-based writer and editor Robert Rubsam joins to discuss the work of Terence of Davies and his 1992 masterwork, The Long Day Closes . An impressionistic evocation of memory and sensation, the film is the culmination of Davies' early autobiographical period, exploring the roughly 5 year period between when the filmmaker's abusive father died and when he began his time in primary school, which Davies has called "the happiest years of [his] life." We discuss the films distinctive formal appr...
Dec 28, 2024•1 hr 56 min•Ep. 224
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 discuss the winner of our latest Patreon poll: Aki Kaurismäki's The Match Factory Girl , the story of a young working class woman, Iris, looking for love and a sense of belonging in industrialized Helsinki. The final installment of Kaurismäki's 'Proletariat Trilogy', the film resembles that of a fable that takes an unexpected and comically violent turn...
Dec 18, 2024•10 min•Ep. 223
Toronto-based critic, lecturer, and author Adam Nayman joins us to look back at Billy Bob Thornton's directorial debut and acting showcase Sling Blade . Once considered a high-water mark of 90s American indie cinema success within popular culture and the awards circuit, Thornton's film is now often relegated to 'curio' status; a fascinating time capsule of the mid-90s with very little (if any) cultural purchase among today's cinephiles. We discuss the work of Billy Bob Thornton, the evolution of...
Dec 03, 2024•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 222
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 discu...
Nov 23, 2024•1 hr 47 min•Ep. 221
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 nonc...
Nov 18, 2024•12 min•Ep. 220
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 imag...
Nov 14, 2024•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 219
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...
Nov 04, 2024•11 min•Ep. 218
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 b...
Oct 30, 2024•1 hr 32 min•Ep. 217
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 intelli...
Oct 22, 2024•2 hr•Ep. 216
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...
Oct 15, 2024•2 hr 31 min•Ep. 215
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 reinfo...
Oct 14, 2024•8 min•Ep. 214
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 noneth...
Oct 09, 2024•9 min•Ep. 213
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 min...
Sep 30, 2024•9 min•Ep. 212
