Myopia Movies

Before he was terminating cyborgs or governing California, Arnold Schwarzenegger was just a well-oiled Austrian oak with a plan and a truly alarming amount of confidence. This week we strap into George Butler and Robert Fiore's landmark bodybuilding documentary, where men in tiny shorts pursue "aesthetics" with the single-minded devotion usually reserved for religious orders. We'll be riffing on the sun-baked psychodrama of the 1975 Mr. Olympia competition, Arnold's genuinely unhinged mind games against poor Lou Ferrigno, and a supporting cast of quads that deserve their own screen credit. Expect commentary on 70s masculinity, the pageantry of competitive posing, and the sneaking suspicion that this whole film is just performance art that forgot to tell anyone. Pump up, tune in, and don't skip leg day — or this episode.

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Directed by George Butler and Robert Fiore,

Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno, Franco Columbu, Mike Katz, Ken Waller, and Serge Nubret

This week on Myopia Movie, we got a value meal coming up! We watched Super Size Me, where a documentarian eats nothing but McDonald's for 30 days straight...turns out "would you like to supersize that" was less of a question and more of a warning.

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Directed by Morgan Spurlock

This week on Myopia Movie, we got a kill screen coming up! We watched The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, where a middle school science teacher sets a record against a hot sauce magnate on a standee arcade machine...millennials, eat your heart out. 

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Directed by Seth Gordon

This week we start season 13 in earnest as we talk a month of documentaries! We watched American Movie, a film about being creative, the American Dream, and keeping the Surge nice and chilled. RIP to Uncle Billy! 

This week on Myopia Movies, we're trading the usual fictional disasters for a documented one. Chris Smith's American Movie follows Mark Borchardt — Wisconsin's answer to Orson Welles, if Orson Welles had a day job at a cemetery and financed his art through a combination of paper routes and his uncle's life savings — as he attempts, against all reason and budget, to finish his short horror film Coven.

It's not a movie about filmmaking so much as a movie about willpower, and what happens when that willpower vastly outpaces talent, funding, sobriety, and — in at least one memorable scene — the ability to say the word "coven" without flubbing it forty separate times. Mark's business partner Mike Schank drifts through every frame like a man who found inner peace by accident and never bothered to explain how. Family members get roped into acting roles they clearly didn't audition for. A wall gets punched. A head goes through a cabinet, on purpose, for art.

We riff on a lot of terrible movies here. This is that rare thing: a great one about the terrible movies other people make — and somehow ends up more heartfelt than half the scripted stuff we cover. Grab a beer, don't invest in anyone's film school dropout uncle, and let's watch a man refuse, with genuine heroism, to give up on Wisconsin's most cursed haunted house short.

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Directed by Chris Smith

Starring:

Welcome to Season 13!!!!! This week on Myopia Movies we celebrate the 4th of July and America's 250th Anniversary the only way we know how, by watching most of it be destroyed. That's right, we watched Germany's most Patriotic American Roland Emmerich's Independence Day (1996), the most badass a President has ever been on film. 

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Host: Nic

Panel: Matthew, Keiko and Emily

Directed by: Roland Emmerich

Starring:

This week on Myopia Movies, we return to a world that once united humanity… and immediately wonder if we should have just let the aliens win the first time. It’s Independence Day: Resurgence, the long-awaited sequel that answers the question: “What if we did the same movie again, but louder and with fewer speeches people remember?”

Join us as we revisit Earth, now armed with alien tech, global cooperation, and absolutely no plan when the aliens come back bigger, angrier, and apparently very into drilling.

We ask the hard questions:

We break down Roland Emmerich’s return to large-scale destruction, the film’s attempt at passing the torch to a new generation, and why sometimes “more” doesn’t actually mean “better.”

Also: we try to track the plot, which mostly involves characters running toward explosions while explaining things that don’t make the explosions make any more sense.

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End Credits

Directed by: Roland Emmerich

Starring:

This week on Myopia Movies, we boldly go… to 1986 San Francisco. Yes, this week's summer rerun is Star Trek IV, the one where the fate of the galaxy depends on two humpback whales and the crew’s ability to not completely blow their cover in the past (they fail immediately).

Join us as we explore the most charmingly bizarre entry in the franchise—a sci-fi film with no real villain, a heavy dose of environmentalism, and more comedy than you’d expect from a crew that usually debates ethics at warp speed.

We tackle the big questions:

Featuring time travel hijinks, transparent aluminum, and perhaps the most wholesome mission in Star Trek history, this episode dives into why The Voyage Home feels less like a space epic and more like a cosmic field trip that somehow works perfectly.

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Directed by: Leonard Nimoy

Starring:

This week on Myopia Movies, we put on the mask, stare into the abyss, and then complain about the lighting. We dust off a paywall episode this week as we watch Watchmen—the most philosophical superhero movie ever made, or at least the one most likely to assign you homework afterward.

Join us as we unpack a world where superheroes are less “save the day” and more “deeply complicate geopolitics.” We wrestle with questions like:

We dive into Zack Snyder’s ultra-stylized adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ legendary graphic novel, debating whether it captures the spirit of the original—or just lovingly recreates it in slow motion.

Also: we try to determine if any superhero team has ever had worse workplace chemistry, and whether the giant blue nudist is actually the least weird part of this movie.

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Directed by: Zack Snyder

Starring:

Malin Åkerman as Laurie Jupiter / Silk Spectre II

This week on Myopia Movies, we finally gamble big on Bond—real Bond. We dust off a previously paywalled episode as we’re talking high-stakes poker, parkour chases that feel like a personal insult to your hamstrings, and a version of 007 who bleeds, broods, and looks like he might actually lose a fistfight (before winning it anyway).

Join us as we break down how Casino Royale rebooted the franchise with all the subtlety of a defibrillator. We ask the important questions:

Featuring one of the greatest Bond villains to ever cry blood and a love story that hits harder than Bond’s torture scene (yes, that one), this episode dives into what makes Casino Royale not just a great Bond film—but a genuinely great film, full stop.

Also: we try to explain poker strategy with the confidence of men who absolutely should not be allowed near a casino.

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Host: Jon Copsey

Panel: Nic

Directed by: Martin Campbell

Starring:

This week on Myopia Movies, we're going full existential crisis with A.I. Artificial Intelligence — the 2001 Spielberg film based on the project Stanley Kubrick spent decades developing and wisely never finished. It's got everything you'd expect from a Spielberg joint: a family torn apart by divorce energy, social dynamics that make you want to lie down, and — in what can only be described as a creative choice — aliens. In the third act. For reasons.

A boy robot wants to be a real boy. His mom is not fully on board. His dad is very not on board. A sentient teddy bear named Teddy is, somehow, the most emotionally stable character in the film. Jude Law shows up as a gigolo robot, almost saves the movie, and is promptly sidelined so we can get back to the crying.

The film ends. Then it ends again. Then aliens arrive. Then it ends a third time.

Joining us this week is the legendary Jiggle O'Joe, who survived this film with us and only had to step outside twice.

Myopia Movies — watching the movies you loved, the movies you hated, and apparently now the movies that make you question the nature of love itself.

Directed by: Steven Spielberg (from a project developed by Stanley Kubrick)

Starring: Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Sam Robards, Jake Thomas, William Hurt, and the voice of Jack Angel as Teddy