Hit Factory

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, whi...

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 'Proletar...

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) cul...

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 t...

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 technologi...

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,...

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, fr...

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. S...

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...

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 sam...

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...

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 profoun...

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 explor...

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 o...

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...

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. 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...

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 Choderlos de Laclos novel ' Les Liaisons dangereuses' (aka Dangerous Liaisons), the film is a darkly comic and gleefully misanthropic erotic thrill ride featuring a top no...

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, 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 pati...

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 thri...

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 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" ch...

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 ve...

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 dia...

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. 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 diso...

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 dau...

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'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 the CarleeCore™ Canon. Sit back as Carlee (the preeminent onlin...