Hit Factory

CW: This episode contains discussion of sexual assault and violence, including abuse of minors, in relation to recent revelations in the Jeffrey Epstein case. Listener discretion advised.   

Some Big News Weeks led us to a slightly unwieldy conversation about several topics alongside Joel Schumacher's 1999 thriller 8mm. Written by Se7en scribe Andrew Keving Walker and boasting a rich ensemble cast including Nicolas Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, Catherine Keener, James Gandolfini, and Peter Stormare, the film explores elite depravity, snuff films, and the dark core of the American dream where desperate people's lives become a commodity.
We first begin with some thoughts on recent events at the Berlin Film Festival and offer our definitive answer to the question on everyone's lips, "Is cinema political?" Then, we venture into Schumacher's film, a not-very-good grisly crime thriller with some resonant considerations about the brutalization of young women within the machinery of capital. Finally, we share some personal thoughts on the most recent releases from the Epstein Files, what they tell us about the nature of power in the world, and offer up an alternative movie title for those thinking more deeply about the case's reverberations.
 
Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.
.
.
.
.
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.
Sam Raimi's new film Send Help is in theaters, so we decided to look back at the director's undersung maximalist Western pastiche The Quick and the Dead. A Raimi Movie™ through and through, the film pays loving homage to revisionist entries in the western canon like Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter, but also sacrifices some of the thematic potential of the genre's Golden Era in favor of shoot-em-up schlock and a thoroughly fun time with a knockout cast of established and up-and-coming greats including Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, and a fresh-faced Leonardo DiCaprio.

We begin with a discussion of the Western, its persistence and malleability as genre, and where Raimi's vision falls in the lineage of America's mythmaking. Then, we examine the political limitations of The Quick and the Dead, its topicality as a piece of pop filmmaking, and its reduction of symbolism to mere signifier. Finally, we discuss Sharon Stone as actor and producer, and how the film offers her an oppotunity to explore a character that runs counter to the archetypal femme fatale roles she had made her career playing thus far.

Elsewhere, we briefly discuss another great 00s thriller in our ongoing watch project - David Twohy's A Perfect Getaway and share some thoughts on the new Isaac Chotiner interview with The Quick and the Dead and Melania DP Dante Spinotti.
.
.
.
.
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.
Something new for our faithful Patrons - A conversation about all the movies, new and old, that we've been enjoying this month not covered elsewhere on the show. We hope you enjoy!
.
.
.
.
Our Theme Song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.

WTO/99 is a new, immersive archival documentary that depicts the four-day clash between the then-emerging World Trade Organization (WTO) and the 40,000+ people who took to the streets of Seattle in 1999 to protest the WTO Conference and the WTO’s impact on human rights, labor, and the future effects of continued globalization.
Aaron sat down with WTO/99 director/co-editor Ian Bell and producer/co-editor Alex Megaro to discuss the film's bracing depiction of the WTO protests, their prevailing ramifications in the 2020s, and whether the event's radicalizing groundswell is replicable in today's polarized political reality.
WTO/99 has its Bay Area debut at The Roxie next Wednesday 1/28/26. Find tickets HERE.
WTO/99 returns to the Bay Area Tuesday 2/24/28 at The New Parkway. Find tickets HERE.

Find more upcoming screenings of WTO/99.
Watch the trailer for WTO/99.
.
.
.
.
Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.

This week, we're discussing the winner of our latest Patreon poll, Senegalese auteur Djibril Diop Mambéty's Hyenas. Adapting Swiss-German playwright Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 1956 satirical tragicomedy The Visit and transposing its story onto post-colonial Senegal, the film tells the story of Dramaan Drameh, a grocer in the poor town of Colobane, whose life is upended when a former flame, Linguère Ramatou, returns to the town after decades. Having amassed a large fortune in the intervening years, Ramatou makes the township a disquieting offer - she will bestow her fortune onto Colobane in exchange for the murder of Drameh as revenge for abandoning her following a pregnancy during their brief love affair. Gorgeously-lensed, blackly satirical, and ultimately tragic, Hyenas imbues its tense tale of vengenace and greed with resonances examining Senagal's (and the greater continet of Africa's) subjugation under western capitalism in the post-colonial period.
We begin with a discussion of Senegal's cinema, its anti-colonial dimensions, and how the rhythms of Mambéty's film antagonize western modes of narrative and filmmaking. Then, we examine the film's exploration of the corrupting nature of capital, and how forces like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank acted as coercive mechanisms for privatization and neoliberal policy in Africa and throughout the developing world. Finally, we discuss the film's sexual politics, where we feel its metaphors break down in its exploration of the character of Ramatou, and where fidelity to source material occasionally muddles the film's incisive colonial critique.
Get access to all of our premium episodes and bonus content by becoming a Hit Factory Patron for just $5/month.
.
.
.
.
Our theme song is "Mirror" by Chris Fish.