Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club: Recent Episodes
Slate Podcasts
Surveillance. Political secrets. Paranoia. Mind control. Enter the unsettling dystopias imagined by conspiracy thrillers—fictional worlds that reflect and sometimes predict the political instabilities of their times.
Join Slate’s Sam Adams and leading culture critics as they watch and review some of the best conspiracy thrillers of the past decades, from The Manchurian Candidate to Get Out.
Learn more at slate.com/thrillers
In this final episode of Slate's Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club, Sam Adams chats with The Ringer’s K. Austin Collins about 2017’s surprise breakout Get Out. The critics discuss director Jordan Peele’s horror influences, the film’s genius casting, how the social and racial storylines play for different audiences, and how history still resonates in a contemporary plot.
Join the Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club Facebook group at slate.com/thrillers
Sam Adams and Slate film critic Dana Stevens dive deep into the original Jason Bourne trilogy series starring Matt Damon. The two discuss the different directorial approaches taken by Doug Limon and Paul Greengrass, the trajectory of Bourne’s character throughout the series, and that tense action sequence at Waterloo station in The Bourne Ultimatum. Join the Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club Facebook group by visiting Slate.com/thrillers.
In the sixth episode of Slate's Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club, Sam Adams and Time Out New York’s Joshua Rothkopf talk about John Carpenter’s They Live. The two discuss the trajectory of Carpenter’s ping-ponging career, the controversial casting of Roddy Piper as the movie’s protagonist, the film’s overt and coincidental political themes, and, yes, that fight scene. Join the Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club Facebook group by visiting Slate.com/thrillers.
In this fifth episode of Slate's Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club, Sam Adams is joined by Matt Zoller Seitz, the editor in chief of RogerEbert.com and TV critic for New York, to talk about The Parallax View. They discuss the film’s famous brainwashing scene and the Kuleshov effect, the strange character of protagonist Joe Frady, and what makes a true paranoid thriller. Learn more about the Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club at slate.com/thrillers
In the fourth episode of Slate's Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club, Sam Adams and film critic Carrie Rickey discuss Blow Out, an unconventional conspiracy thriller in which John Travolta gives one of his best performances. Adams and Rickey talk about the film’s far-fetched plotlines, its references to the Zapuder film and the Chappaquiddick incident, its unflattering portrayals of women, and how director Brian de Palma attempted to distance himself from his B-movie reputation. Learn more about the Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club at slate.com/thrillers
In the third episode of Slate's Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club, Sam Adams and writer and theater director Isaac Butler talk about Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and its unofficial sequel, Tony Scott’s Enemy of the State. They discuss how both films portrayed the paranoia of being watched, and how the concept of surveillance had to be explained to a naïve pre-9/11 audience. To learn more about and join Slate’s Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club, visit Slate.com/thrillers.
In the second episode of Slate's Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club, Sam Adams and the Washington Post’s Alyssa Rosenberg discuss the portrayals of journalism and Washington in All the President’s Men, the ultimate based-on-a-true-story political thriller on Watergate and the fall of Nixon. They also chat about how the film compares to its satirical sibling, Dick. To learn more about this members-only Movie Club, visit slate.com/thrillers, and join the exclusive Facebook group at facebook.com/groups/conspiracythrillers
In this first episode of Slate's Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club, Sam Adams talks with Mark Harris, journalist and author of Five Came Back, about The Manchurian Candidate, a tale of brainwashing, war, and politics that first made it on-screen in 1962 and was then re-made in 2004, with each reflecting the crises of their time. Learn more about the Conspiracy Thrillers Movie Club at slate.com/thrillers
