Recluse S
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Zoom Party 1-17-26: Best/Most Interesting 2025 Movies (Aud)
🕑 Added 2026-01-18 07:02:28 +0000 UTCThe films up for consideration included del Toro's Frankenstein, Bugonia, Joachim and the Apocalypse (guess who picked that one....), Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, Weapons, Sinners, and Eddington. From my Gnostic musings, to the curious parapolitics of many of these films and on to China's censorship of Sinners, this proved to be a wide ranging discussion. We took some inevitable digression into financial interest in independent filmmaking, how recent headlines relate to these movies, racism in overseas markets, and even my own experiences with "predictive programming" in writing a script.
As always, i hope everyone enjoys and a big thank you to Laura and Orion for their invaluable insights and recommendations.
Music by: Keith Allen Dennis
https://keithallendennis.bandcamp.com/
Comments
Jason Matthews
I’m so sorry for making Recluse watch Final Destination! What I found interesting was how it boils down to a reductio ad absurdum of pop culture anti-conspiracism: “none of this bloodshed and mayhem is random, but it doesn’t matter.” The historical backstory ends up being hilariously pointless.
Orion St. Peter
We ended up chatting a little more after the episode and I clarified that I don’t see the producers as pulling all the strings in some grand notion of sowing discord, which would play into anti-semitic reductionism that I reject. I did mean to note in the episode that in spite of all the awareness of various absurd theories that Bugonia & Eddington portray, anti-semitism is never mentioned in either, even from the deep-fried-brain rantings of the mad drifter. For Teddy or Sheriff Cross to have been anti-Semitic would have been in easy alignment with the rhetoric and historical background they draw from of American theorists like B Cooper, who republished the Protocols of Zion. I assume it was to avoid making them too unlikeable, like giving Cross an African American deputy to make him seem “not racist” at first.
Orion St. Peter
I dont see China controlling what films they allow in as a sign of authoritarianism or racism, especially as we know that there is cultural and political propaganda woven into these productions. I should have pushed back against the idea that China is somehow more racist than Americans, when we are the ones who had chattle slavery into the 19th century and Jim Crow segregation into the mid 20th century. Chinese audiences being disinterested in African-American narratives is just that, are Americans racist for not being interested in African or Chinese films?
James Aydelotte
Great episode- thank you all so much. I will say my conspiracy brain has noted that the lack of hype around Frankenstein might be tied to the fact that our economy is yoked to the golem of AI and likely cursed for not learning the lesson of that ancient Semitic tale that Shelly based the original story of Frankenstein upon. I’m probably just paranoid… On the topic of Sinners being illegal in China due to supernatural themes… technically feng shui is also illegal to practice in China… important point- feng shui is not just interior decoration- it is serious magic in its real practice. The CCP is not a fan of anything that affords individual liberty or agency. Watch for that here in the near future with a new satanic panic on the horizon… why else does the 764 exist except to offer the US population a Manson family Chaos approach to the modern rebirth of the occult.
