Dead Duck Film Club

"Ghost in the Shell" And Why The Matrix Owes It Everything

Ghost in the Shell (1995), directed by Mamoru Oshii and based on Masamune Shirow's manga, was released simultaneously in Japan, the UK, and the US, unusual for anime at the time.A quiet theatrical run in the West, a cult hit on VHS, and then a direct influence on The Matrix: the Wachowskis showed it to Warner Bros executives when pitching their film. Seb and George cover the 82-minute runtime and what Oshii stripped from themanga to get there. They discuss Major's identity crisis, the Puppet Master claiming asylum as a living being, and how both connect to the current AGI race. Covered: the garbage men subplot and manufactured memories, Oshii fighting for the city wandering sequences, and the link to Arthur Koestler's 1967 text The Ghost in the Machine. George argues the merge ending is a metaphor for evolution: old generation dies, new generation inherits. The 2017 remake with Scarlett Johansson gets a full run-through: what gets lost when you gut the philosophy for action. Other films mentioned: Akira, The Matrix, Blade Runner (1982), Videodrome. Warm-up: George on Trust Me, False Prophet (FLDS church documentary, four episodes); Seb on The AI Doc or How I Became an Apocaloptimist 2026. Spoilers throughout. Subscribe, leave a review, and share with a fellow film lover. Just by being here, you are part of the club.

"Funny Games" And the Violence You Asked For

Funny Games (1997), directed by Michael Haneke, is an Austrian home invasion film that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Comparisons made to Speak No Evil (original Danish) and The Coffee Table. Films mentioned: Benny's Video, The Piano Teacher, Creep, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Hostel, Kill Bill. Warm-up: Ken Russell's The Devils (1971), Suspiria (2018 remake, Dakota Johnson), Shin Godzilla, and Kristen Stewart's Chronology of Water.

"Audition" And The Loneliness Epidemic Made Flesh

Audition (1999), directed by Takashi Miike, is a Japanese horror film based on Ryu Murakami's 1997 novel of the same name. Released the same year as Ring, it holds 81% from critics and 80% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. The film caused walkouts and audience illness at its original festival screenings in Dublin and the US. Eihi Shiina plays Asami, a role she and Miike partly developed through improvisation during production, including the film's most iconic scene. Seb, Bruna, and George discuss the film's two-phase structure, the audition scene as a lens on male fantasy vs the reality of women, why a film from 1999 still maps onto the male loneliness epidemic and trad wife discourse, Asami's white costuming as a death symbol in Japanese culture, the ambiguity of the dream and flashback sequences. Films mentioned include Memories of Murder, Body Double, The Coffee Table, Ichi the Killer, The Handmaiden, Kill Bill, Possession, Censor, and Nora. Spoilers throughout.

"A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" The First Iranian Vampire Western

This week Seb and Mark are in Bad City, talking about Ana Lily Amirpour's 2014 debut A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. The Iranian vampire western. They dig into what makes this film so unlike anything else in the genre, from its punk iconography rooted in a chador and a skateboard, to its black and white California-shot vision of a fictional Iran packed with all the things you would never expect from an Iranian film. Prostitutes, queer characters, nightclubs, a vampire on a skateboard. The whole lot.

"Akira" And How It Changed An Entire Industry

Akira (1988), directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, Japan. Based on Otomo's six-volume manga series. One of the most widely referenced animated films of all time, credited with opening the Western market to Japanese animation. Its 1989 US release led to the formation of a dedicated anime distribution company for the West. Sebastien and Markc cover the plot's structural limitations (six volumes condensed into one film, large cast, multiple unresolved threads), the film's political content around youth and power, the animation's technical standard relative to its 1988 contemporaries including early Simpsons and Looney Tunes, and why those story issues don't affect his overall verdict.