Michael and Us

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/46004627

For our 200th episode, we're once again returning to our roots. We took another look at Michael Moore's first and best film, ROGER & ME (1989), and found an unsparing depiction of American capitalism that has only grown better with age. PLUS: big-tech censorship, Trump's deplatforming, and Tim Allen discovers Plato.

In the aftermath of the siege on the Capitol, we looked at a movie that depicts America as at war with itself. The 2020 action-satire THE HUNT is an "equal-opportunity offender" in which Liberal Elites hunt MAGA Chuds for sport - and like most "equal-opportunity offenders," it misses all the real targets. PLUS: thoughts on the Georgia runoff elections.

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/45808512

It's the first episode chosen by our SuperDelegate Patreon tier, and they mercifully chose a good movie: Stanley Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON (1975). We discuss the stark materialist philosophy of Kubrick's vision of a small man against the backdrop of history. PLUS: the libertarian take on human rights, staying sane in winter quarantine, and - you guessed it - Frank Stallone.

A lot of us are feeling cold, isolated, and depressed right now, so what better time to revisit Ingmar Bergman's WINTER LIGHT (1963)? We discuss crises of various kinds of faith, and the personal and political implications of the silence of God. PLUS: Why won't the pundit class (and specifically Paul Krugman) get behind a $2000 stimulus?

PATREON EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/45507789

If there's one thing we can all agree on, it's that 2020 has been a great year. To mark the end of another year of podcasting, we looked back on the movies we discussed since January, highlighting some of the key titles that captured the mood. We also hold the first-ever Michael & Us Academy Awards, handing out coveted trophies in categories ranging from Worst Movie to Best End-of-History Movie. What won? What lost? Only one way to find out.

For our annual holiday episode, we finally did the inevitable: a deep-dive into the ideology of Disney/Tim Allen joint THE SANTA CLAUSE (1994). We got a little drunk with holiday cheer on this one, folks.

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/45231887

To see out the Trump era, we looked back on an early piece of #Resistance kitsch: the feature-length (well, 50-minute) Funny or Die production DONALD TRUMP'S THE ART OF THE DEAL: THE MOVIE (2016), starring Johnny Depp. We examine how this all-star comedy really should have prepared us for how unprepared the culture industry would be to deal with #45. PLUS: Barack Obama's top movies of 2020, thoughts on The Art of the Deal (the book), and reflections on passages by Leo Tolstoy, Christopher Hitchens, and Adolph Reed Jr.

The '90s brought a wave of movies about divorced or absentee fathers/husbands, and none had more explosions than James Cameron's TRUE LIES (1994). We revisited this action classic to decipher how the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Jamie Lee Curtis marriage is a metaphor for America at the "End of History." PLUS: Pete Buttigig at McKinsey, Wong Kar-wai's "restorations," and Tom Cruise yelling about COVID.

PATREON-EXCLUSIVE EPISODE - https://www.patreon.com/posts/44978933

In one of our wildest and wooliest episodes yet, we introduce the Michael & Us community to one of our longest-standing obsessions: Pittsburgh-based right-wing movie critic Fiore Mastracci. Join us as we relish the inimitable prose of the man who no less than the Guardian newspaper called "the world's worst movie critic." PLUS: rambling, free-flowing shit-shooting about everything from Obama's memoir to British comedy to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Terry Gilliam sought to update George Orwell for the 1980s with his career-defining film BRAZIL (1985), but his future dystopia isn't animated by an ideology like Oceania's. We attempt to untangle the satire of a movie where bureaucracy itself is the problem. PLUS: we hash out our thoughts on Netflix's The Crown and the travails of Johnny Depp.