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,...

In honor of its upcoming 25th anniversary (as well as a chance meeting between the director and guest Matt Belenky), we're unlocking our episode on Spike Lee's 'Summer of Sam'.  Here's what we had to say about this monumental work back in the summer of 2022:  Writer Matt Belenky joins us from New York in the midst of a heat wave to discuss Spike Lee's 'Summer of Sam', an exuberant survey of Outer Boroughs New York in the late 1970s as well as a chilling study of working class anxiety,...

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 Eamon Tracy joins to discuss the brilliant James Gray and his debut feature 'Little Odessa' starring Tim Roth, Edward Furlong, and Vanessa Redgrave. Made when Gray was just 23 years old, it's a semi-autobiographical story that merges a character study of an estranged Russian-Jewish family with elements of the crime genre to arrive at...

Leeds-based film journalist and podcaster Amber T. (@hornbloodfire) joins for a double feature discussion of bad vibes connoisseur Kiyoshi Kurosawa's V-Cinema revenge thrillers 'Serpent's Path' and 'Eyes of the Spider'. Written in collaboration with 'Ringu' screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi and directed back-to-back within an incredibly short production period of mere weeks, the films sidestep Kurosawa's customary supernatural impulses seen in hits like 'Cure' and 'Pulse' in favor of...

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. Political reporter David Weigel joins to discuss the work of director Hal Hartley and his 1997 feature, 'Henry Fool'. The film, written and directed by one of the great undersung auteurs of American indie cinema during its heyday, blends a sense of sweeping literary scope with the understatedness of an indie comedy to tell a story about creativity,...

Writer and podcaster Jake Tropila returns for a dive into the dusty, hard-nosed pleasures of John Dahl's 1993 neo-noir western 'Red Rock West'. The film has been newly restored and released on blu-ray in a great edition courtesy of Cinématographe, a new sub-label from the folks behind Vinegar Syndrome. We start with a discussion of the career of John Dahl, an underrated director with a sharp style that made him a prime helmer of small, smart thrillers of the era alongside his skilled...

Writer and Senior Vice President at The Black List Kate Hagen joins to discuss Nancy Savoca's 'Household Saints', a generational tale of Italian women in New York and the shifting influences of faith, divinity, and family in their day to day lives. Long unavailable and thought lost to time, an original print of the film was discovered by the filmmakers and has received a new 4k restoration courtesy of Milestone Films. The restoration is screening theatrically all across the country and a...

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. Unofficial Hit Factory Sci-Fi Correspondent Aaron Thorpe is back to discuss the time traveling eccentricities of Terry Gilliam's '12 Monkeys' - a sort of quasi-remake of Chris Marker's 'La Jatée' (1963) featuring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt We unpack the career of Terry Gilliam, why he was seen as a studio liability in the early 90s,...

Writer and resident Gilbert & Sullivan expert Julia Sirmons joins to discuss Mike Leigh's 'Topsy-Turvy', a story of the aforementioned musical duo and the production of one of their most popular shows, 'The Mikado'. It's a film that feels at once like an outliler in Leigh's career up to that point (his first film not set in contemporary working-class London) and a pitch-perfect culmination of many of his career-long explorations. We begin with a discussion about the legacy of director...

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. Jake Serwin & Ian Rhine, hosts of the preeminent Clint Eastwood podcast Pod Casty For Me return to discuss one of the finest studio comedies of the 90s, "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery" starring Mike Myers.  We discuss the film as both a product of broader ambient 60s nostalgia in the decade and an extension of Mike Myers deep personal...

New York-based filmmaker and producer Chadd Harbold joins to discuss the 1994 Tim Burton biopic 'Ed Wood', a sincere, loving portrait of the titular filmmaker and his band of Hollywood misfits coming together to make oddball, outsider B-movies that remain enduring works to this day. We discuss Tim Burton as filmmaker, the increasingly diminishing returns of his artistry, and why Ed Wood stands as perhaps his finest achievement. Then, we talk about Martin Landau's Oscar-winning turn as the...

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. Matt Bors & Ben Clarkson, creators of the excellent sci-fi/action satire graphic novel 'Justice Warriors' join to talk about one of our main guys - Paul Verhoeven (aka Pauly V) and his landmark sci-fi/action satire 'Total Recall' starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and based on the Philip K. Dick story "We Can Remember it for You Wholesale".  We discuss...

Just in time for Sundance festivities and a whole new cycle of 'May December' discourse, we're back to discuss Todd Hayne's 1991 debut feature 'Poison'. Both the winner of the Best Feature Award at the aforementioned Park City festival and a characteristically controversial release from the filmmaker, 'Poison', based in part on the works of queer author Jean Genet, is a gripping triptych of tales (subtitled "Hero", "Horror" and "Homo" respectively) shot and edited in distinct styles and...

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. Aaron is joined by Jordan Fish and Ray Tintori of the preeminent Coen Bros. podcast, To The White Sea, to discuss the chilly, snow-capped neo-noir 'A Simple Plan', directed with uncharacteristic restraint by master stylist and Coen Brothers collaborator Sam Raimi. We discuss the career of Sam Raimi and the techniques he employs here to generate the...

It's officially 2024...Happy New Year? We're not getting our hopes up! While everyone nursed their hangovers and tried desperately to get back to "normal" everyday life, we decided to take a look back at all the things we watched in the past year and talk about some stuff that falls outside the usual scope of the show. Join us as we each count down our individual top five new-to-us watches of the past year, take time to reflect on your own highs and lows, and add some new recommendations to...

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. Universally beloved Vulture critic and Hit Factory all-star Roxana Hadadi returns to close out Denzember with a hefty chat about Mira Nair's 1991 romantic drama 'Mississippi Masala', a story of identity, the generational pursuit of belonging, and the possibility of new futures through the radical expression of love without boundaries.  We discuss...

New York-based writer Ashley Reese joins us for our a very special Christmas installment of Denzember as we discuss Penny Marshall's 1996 romantic comedy 'The Preachers Wife'. We discuss the film as a metatextual exploration of Denzel Washington's celebrity image as well as part of Whitney's second leg as an international superstar and actress. We also discuss the film's monumental soundtrack, sung by Whitney herself, an album that remains the best selling gospel record of all time. Finally...

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 continues with GQ Senior Editor Frazier Tharpe II joining us to discuss Jonathan Demme's 'Philadelphia', one of the first major Hollywood films to take on the AIDS crisis. Far from a simple "issues picture", the movie overcomes many of its retrograde positions and dubious narrative decisions through the combination of Demme's masterful...

Chapo Trap House and Movie Mindset's very own Will Menaker stops by to help celebrate Denzember and discuss Carl Franklin's 'Devil in a Blue Dress', based on the inaugural Easy Rawlins mystery novel of the same name by author Walter Mosley. It's a stylish period noir made by a filmmaker and team seemingly uninterested in reproducing the aesthetic trappings of classic film noir, instead opting for a rich and colorful evocation of parts of 1940s Los Angeles rarely seen in the movies. We...

Writer, editor and podcaster Edward Ongweso Jr. returns to the show to kick off Denzember, a monthlong celebration of our greatest living actor, with a conversation about Spike Lee's seminal 1992 biopic 'Malcolm X'. It stands as one of Lee's most triumphant achievements and one of Denzel Washington's very best performances as one of the most significant figures of 20th century America. We discuss the film's trouble gestation period, taking nearly 30 years to get to the big screen then...

An introduction to our monthlong celebration of our greatest living actor, Denzel Washington. Get access to all forthcoming Denzember episodes as well as our entire back catalog and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.....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. Creator of the "eventually, forever" newsletter and film twitter heavy Adam Sullivan joins us to discuss the brilliant Hayao Miyazaki and his 1992 film 'Porco Rosso'. Initially conceived as a short film exclusively for in-flight guests of Japan Airlines, the film eventually grew in ambition and scope and now stands as one of Miyazaki's most underrated,...

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 contracted the services of Jake Serwin, co-host of America's premier Clint Eastwood podcast Pod Casty For Me, to take on a pair of films about a professional assassin having a crisis of conscience after botching his most recent job. First up, we talk The Replacement Killers, Antoine Fuqua's first feature and Hong Kong superstar Chow Yun-fat's...

Journalist and writer Séamus Malekafzali returns to the program for a lengthy conversation about Martin Scorsese's 1995 crime epic 'Casino'. Initially viewed by critics and audiences as a retread of Scorsese's masterful crime saga 'Goodfellas', the film has since been reevaluated as a masterpiece in its own right - one enriched by the director's late period films and preoccupations. We discuss the film's dizzying construction, effectively evoking the glitz and glam of the Vegas strip through...