"Failed State’s dedication to naturalism creates a relationship between Dale and the empty city that borders on apocalyptic." Incredible review out of last night's @hitfactorypod.bsky.social

VIRTUAL SCREENING TONIGHT! The government doesn't want you to know that a $5 patreon subscription to @hitfactorypod.bsky.social gets you access to our entire back catalog of episodes and a rsvp to this event at no additional charge.

Tonight!! Come watch this digital screening of FAILED STATE! Hosted by @hitfactorypod.bsky.social and I'll be doing a Q&A after. 9pm EST! !

Happy November! This week we do things a little differently as we have a special Clint Eastwood-themed episode with a look at TWO movies, 1999's TRUE CRIME and 2024's JUROR #2. Joining us this time is Aaron from the great podcast @hitfactorypod.bsky.social Here or wherever you get podcasts!

A good one tomorrow as we look at not one but TWO movies: 1999's TRUE CRIME and 2024' JUROR #2 in a special Clint Eastwood episode with Aaron from @hitfactorypod.bsky.social Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!

TONIGHT! Join us at the beautiful 4-Star Theater. An SF institution!

HIT FACTORY HALLOWEEN // Trevor Strunk (@nocartridge.bsky.social) joins to talk Robert Rodriguez's teen Body Snatchers riff THE FACULTY, a deceptively sharp parody with plenty on its mind about social hierarchies, 90s monoculture, & neoliberalism's hold on our sociopolitical horizons. Links below.

Josh Hartnett’s hair in this movie

SF BAY AREA - Hit Factory is hosting a screening of Heather Landsman's haunting archival film THE BEST OF ME at the fabulous 4-Star Theater TOMORROW 11/1 at 8:00pm PT. Tickets and info below.

Peter Watkins has died, one of the greatest and least known and most uncompromising filmmakers, a life well lived fighting power. www.bfi.org.uk/features/pet...

The goats of the movie podcast world, I said what I said!

HIT FACTORY HALLOWEEN // Trevor Strunk (@nocartridge.bsky.social) joins to talk Robert Rodriguez's teen Body Snatchers riff THE FACULTY, a deceptively sharp parody with plenty on its mind about social hierarchies, 90s monoculture, & neoliberalism's hold on our sociopolitical horizons. Links below.

rest in peace kitkat💔

struggled with Kore-eda a little bit...a filmmaker i found stuck in a dispassionate and unfulfilling middle ground between slow cinema's formal discipline and a mawkish dramaturgy.

NEW HIT FACTORY // The fine gentlemen of @podcastyforme.bsky.social join to discuss Hirokazu Kore-eda's delicate, understated AFTER LIFE - a meditation on death and the hereafter as well as a treatise on artmaking itself; how cinema reflects and retains memory. Links below.

sorry, i'm confused...did you get a nazi tattoo because you were drunk with some marine buddies in croatia without knowing what it meant, or because you "used to say and believe things that today [you] find abhorrent"?

The danciest film that isn't a musical.

NEW PREMIUM HIT FACTORY // @aheartofgould.bsky.social joins to discuss Brian De Palma's masterful crime saga CARLITO'S WAY which sees the filmmaker at his most formally audacious, contemplative, and breathtakingly intimate. Link below.

Aaron & Carlee of @hitfactorypod.bsky.social saw me from across the bar, really dug my vibe, and invited me to talk about 1 of De Palma’s 3 inarguable masterpieces, CARLITO’S WAY. Also: SCARFACE as a septum-gored DAS KAPITAL, “natural artifice,” and De Palma as our most underrated melodramatist:

NEW PREMIUM HIT FACTORY // @aheartofgould.bsky.social joins to discuss Brian De Palma's masterful crime saga CARLITO'S WAY which sees the filmmaker at his most formally audacious, contemplative, and breathtakingly intimate. Link below.

lol

You get literal HOURS of Gus Lanzetta guesting with those 5 bucks

the government doesn't want you to know that a $5 patreon subscription to hit factory pod gets you access to our entire back catalog of episodes and a rsvp to this event at no additional charge.

HIT FACTORY PRESENTS - Join us Thursday, November 6, 2025 for a virtual screening of Christopher Jason Bell & Mitch Blummer's FAILED STATE (2023) feat. a live Q&A w/ dir. Christopher Jason Bell. Hit Factory Patrons get access at no additional cost w/ RSVP. Buy your tickets below!

if you've talked to me about movies any time in the past year+, then you know that i think FAILED STATE is one of the best American independent films of the decade. I'm thrilled to get the chance to watch it with you all and to talk to the immensely talented Chris Bell about his work. Tap in!

This played in Ocean City! Fantastic film and Chris Bell is a super talented and great guy check this out

For its 30th anniversary I wrote about STRANGE DAYS, its prophetic vision of the future, Kathryn Bigelow’s formal mastery, and how it ends things on a bold glimmer of hope. Now live over at InReviewOnline: inreviewonline.com/2025/10/15/s...

One of the best new films I’ve seen in a long while. You don’t wanna miss this!

Folks… come through

HIT FACTORY PRESENTS - Join us Thursday, November 6, 2025 for a virtual screening of Christopher Jason Bell & Mitch Blummer's FAILED STATE (2023) feat. a live Q&A w/ dir. Christopher Jason Bell. Hit Factory Patrons get access at no additional cost w/ RSVP. Buy your tickets below!

On our latest premium episode, we discuss the work of Paul Thomas Anderson and his ambitious, sweeping 1999 ensemble drama MAGNOLIA. We also contend with PTA skepticism, articulating the director's limitations as artist alongside his singular idiosyncrasies. Link below.

I really like what Aaron said when I asked him pointedly what he thought Magnolia was about: reckoning with the truth of life, that living is often being both a recipient of and a source of pain. Interestingly and typical of PTA, he doesn’t really offer an answer.

On our latest premium episode, we discuss the work of Paul Thomas Anderson and his ambitious, sweeping 1999 ensemble drama MAGNOLIA. We also contend with PTA skepticism, articulating the director's limitations as artist alongside his singular idiosyncrasies. Link below.

updates for the pod and such will be here, but i'm mostly posting from @notoriouslightning.bsky.social these days

FOLKS! On this week’s @boxofficegross.bsky.social, we’ve got the homie @hitfactorypod.bsky.social jumping in to discuss Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese, Andre 3000 and Garrett Hedlund in a highly entertaining, unjustly forgotten genre hit: John Singleton’s FOUR BROTHERS! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b...

Introduction being delivered by @hitfactorypod.bsky.social

heard there’s a new @hitfactorypod.bsky.social about Saving Private Ryan in which @brendanhodges.bsky.social mounts a defence along the lines of this thread

JUST HAD @hitfactorypod.bsky.social ON MY PODCAST DON'T TELL ANYBODY SHHH

I also appeared on the @hitfactorypod.bsky.social to chop it up about HIGHEST 2 LOWEST. Listen here: www.patreon.com/posts/bonus-...

Since significantly more people have now seen Spike Lee’s HIGHEST 2 LOWEST, here’s my discussion with Odie Henderson about the film.

New Schlock and Awe featuring @hitfactorypod.bsky.social! We examine Michael Bay's 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, a Baysian take on America's new struggling working class: Punisher-badged security contractors. schlockandawe.substack.com/p/13-hours-t...

Want to hear me talk about Last Action Hero? Of course you do! Listen to me on @hitfactorypod.bsky.social podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h...

open.spotify.com/episode/1Lv8... An excellent @hitfactorypod.bsky.social with guest @hamrahrama.bsky.social discussing the philosophical and sociological implications of the ill-starred and reflexive adoption of generative A.I. into contemporary American studio filmmaking.

NEW HIT FACTORY // Writer @robrubsam.bsky.social joins to discuss the career of the brilliant Terence Davies and his 1992 masterwork THE LONG DAY CLOSES - an impressionistic, elliptical journey through childhood memory both warmly nostalgic and mournfully ruminative. Links below.

On this week's Junk Filter, Aaron & Carlee from @hitfactorypod.bsky.social return for a show about one of the best Psychological Westerns, Anthony Mann's MAN OF THE WEST, with Gary Cooper as an aging cowboy with a secret history of violence, confronted by his past. open.spotify.com/episode/4qCM...

Went on @hitfactorypod.bsky.social to talk with @notoriouslightning.bsky.social about everything I find poignant and profound in the life and work of Terence Davies, crystallized so perfectly in the Long Day Closes. Listen here and everywhere else: open.spotify.com/episode/6kzI...

NEW HIT FACTORY // Writer @robrubsam.bsky.social joins to discuss the career of the brilliant Terence Davies and his 1992 masterwork THE LONG DAY CLOSES - an impressionistic, elliptical journey through childhood memory both warmly nostalgic and mournfully ruminative. Links below.

finally caught up w/ GOOD ONE. hinges on a moment so abrupt, yet finely executed that it left me breathless. patiently charts the topography of middle-aged discontent before shifting to account for its wreckage, all captured within the wonderful lily collias' attuned performance. a major work!

ICYMI - we talked to Pascal Plante, director of RED ROOMS and its thematic ties to Spanish thriller THESIS. its a great conversation about art, mediated experiences, and the joy of watching a film that treats you as an intelligent participant.

Like Plante's latest RED ROOMS, Amenábar's THESIS (1996) has much to say about emerging technologies as empathy killers that derealize our corporeal experiences, diminish our discernment, and produce a flattened equivalency of violent images across screens. real & unreal merge into one.