Living in the End Times

Jacking in to director Jose Padilha's 2014 remake of Robocop to talk cyberpunk, trans, AI and agency in 2025.

Both appreciating and ultimately dismissing James Mangold's latest addition to the Bob Dylan filmography, A Complete Unknown.

On the genius of Paul Thomas Anderson's translation (2014) of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice (2009) in the current moment (2025).

Thinking about consciousness and art via the late great David Lynch's final feature film Inland Empire (2006).

A&E consider Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999) as the ritual incantation it was obviously meant to be.

Exploring the failures of psychoanalysis, Marxism, and especially late capitalism in Luca Guadagnino's 2018 remake of Dario Argento's 1977 film Suspiria.

A&E on the American election and its overlay with David Cronenberg’s 2012 adaptation of Don DeLillo’s 2003 novel Cosmopolis.

Today's moving picture, in all senses of the term, is David Robert Mitchell's 2018 stoner noir film "Under the Silver Lake," which A&E agree, is like a fine wine: better with each passing year.

A&E discuss Jane Schoenbrun's 2024 film "I Saw the TV Glow" exploring, among other topics, media's shaping of our adolescence and adulthood.

A&E chat Alex Cox's brilliant/incendiary/prescient low budget classic Repo Man (1984) in an effort to get a better handle on 2024.

A&E on the bleak freak scene that is American politics in 2024.

The first of two episodes on the BAP book Bronze Age Mindset (2018).

A&E use Juel Taylor's 2023 film They Cloned Tyrone as a way into talking 21st century biopolitics, necropolitics, Haiti, and revolution.

Found this lost episode from June 2023 while scrounging the couch cushions deep for change wherein A&E discuss the political scene as it had been unfolding to that point in World History. Plus: the neoliberalism of Cormac McCarthy's fiction.

Time to chat the next of several selections in this season of the mass market communist film: Chris Nolan's Oppenheimer, wherein labor organizing gets more screen time than quantum physics.

A&E chat Maria Demopoulos's and Jodi Wille's 2012 doc The Source Family, discussing how state agencies were always-already part of the American counterculture.

A&E discuss Daniel Goldhaber's 2022 film How to Blow up a Pipeline, asking if it's really true at this point that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

The second of two conversations on David Lynch's Twin Peaks franchise, A&E here discuss the conclusion of season 2 and the start of season 3.

Here we go: the first of two episodes on David Lynch's Twin Peaks universe, which lays bare the horror and corruption at the core of the American experiment. This episode centers on the film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, the 1992 prequel to the "Twin Peaks" television series.

A&E resurrect the discussion of Alex Garland's film Annihilation as a way into a chat about Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, and paperclip maximizers, which, you know, will soon be running the show.

In this first of (at least) two discussions revolving around David Lynch, the gents focus on the director's underrated 1997 film Lost Highway. But first! A brief encore discussion the postpunk band Silkworm and the new article on this at PopMatters.

A&E discuss John Potash's 2019 documentary "Drugs as Weapons Against Us" as a way into a conversation about the intelligence community's overt interest in the drug trade-as-social-control. Also discussed: Tupac, Bob Marley, Henry Rollins, Dylan, Nirvana, and of course (groan) hippies.

Here we go: A&E chat Stanley Kubrick's 1980 gem The Shining, wondering how it was that Kubrick saw into our unconscious. Again.

Richard Donner's The Goonies (1985). Quite possibly the strangest film of the 1980s, not so much because of the explicit treasure-hunting content of this "kids" movie so much as the subtext: child exploitation, neoliberal capitalism's obliteration of community, and other sins of the father. A&E discuss why this film still haunts the unconscious of an entire generation.

A&E note the passing of Jean-Luc Godard by revisiting his legacy generally, focusing on his 1963 film Contempt. Along the way we chat indie punkers Silkworm, the genius of Jack Palance, and the the future of film in the West.

A&E chat Alex Lee Moyer's compelling and nuanced Alex's War (2022), which survey's the career of Alex Jones from his youth in Austin, Texas, to his international fame.

A&E chat Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 masterpiece Stalker, the film that set modern science fiction on its trajectory, from Blade Runner and The Thing to Children of Men and Annihilation.

The gents chat the new Danny Boyle Sex Pistols miniseries "Pistol" and remind you that 1) we all have bool on our hands, and 2) because there literally may be no future, we need a Sex Pistols moment now more than ever.

With friend of the pod Joe back for more abuse, yr hosts chat Matt Reeves's three hour incel turf war docu-drama, The Batman, wondering why it is Americans aren't allowed to make or see good movies anymore.

Here we go: aliens, conspiracies, the nature of consciousness, and the deep state. With the Steven M. Greer doc "Unacknowledged" as our launch pad, A&E take on each of these topics in turn, if for no other reason than to wax poetic on our favorite rock band #Clutch.

A&E read the Ukraine-Russia war through the Laibach documentary film Predictions of Fire in an effort to come to grips with the fact that too many predictions seem to be actualizing. The end is nigh or something. But: there's a union within Amazon!

The hills are alive and A&E chat Paul Schrader's film The Card Counter as a way into a discussion of the events unfolding in Ukraine.

Joyce, the Irish and, finally, if Marky Mark Wahlberg's Dignam is right when he quipped "What Freud said about the Irish is: We're the only people who are impervious to psychoanalysis."

The boys unrepress our respectively repressed Catholicisms in a discussion of Ken Russell's incredible and oft-banned 1971 film The Devils. Long and short is that on the 50th anniversary of its release, The Devils is less historical drama than history of the present. In nomine Domini.

One night only and back by popular demand. The lads double-down on Jay Baruchel's Goon franchise to chat transcendence, baton passing, and how the only way out of our predicament may require plunging ourselves down to the cold cold bottom of this dirty old town.

The bros share their experience of hockey as an idea and a source of harassment and/or transcendence via discussions of the Jay Baruchel film "Goon" and the Netflix documentary on the Danbury, Connecticut, minor league squad the Trashers: "Untold: Crimes and Penalties."

A&E chat Denis Villeneuve's latest dark sci-fi bonanza Dune and wonder where we can get some of that super spice for white people.

A&E chat the new Todd Haynes film The Velvet Underground and explore why it was that Bob Dylan temporarily quit the game. Spoiler alert: not a motorcycle accident.

A&E continue our discussion of David Fincher's masterpiece Fight Club, this time talking Marla, feminism, the Left, and the existence of women in psychoanalysis.

The first of your hosts' two episodes on the significance and genius of David Fincher's 1999 masterpiece Fight Club. In this episode: experiencing the film, neoliberal political economy, the Left, and punk rock.

To all of our friends and family living in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area: we love you. But yr city is just ok. A&E explain why.

The gents chat Paul Schrader's First Reformed (2017), Taxi Driver (1976), and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) as a way into the poverty of the contemporary Christian church, Zizek, and "apocalypse" as the object of late capitalism.

Shortly before the collapse of the condo in Miami, Fla., A&E discussed at great length the degree to which Florida is the future. In so doing we focused on two Florida-based films making radical/theological arguments -- Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers and Sean Baker's The Florida Project -- in an effort to examine the horrors of the political economy we'd been discussing elsewhere.

Part 2 of our discussion of French philosopher Michel Foucault's late "neoliberal" thought and Dean's and Zamora's book The Last Man takes LSD.

Speaking of one of the Indiana Jones films, Richard Corliss somewhere wrote that we shouldn't fault a theme park for not being a cathedral. With this critique in mind, A&E discuss the latest from filmmaker Adam Curtis -- the six-part BBC series "Can't get you out of my head: An emotional history of the modern world."

The second half of our discussion of the new Andreas Malm book on pipelines, the climate movement, and violence. Spoiler: the climate fatalism current among some Western elites is the new Malthusianism.

Who needs cops when you have anarchists around?

So, like, a bunch of gamers almost crashed the U.S. economy, yes? And this is bad or something? A&E discuss. And speaking of stopping games, we begin our reading of the new Andreas Malm book on pipelines, climate change, and violence. 

Riot? Insurrection? Gathering of the Juggalos? We're still trying to figure out what exactly happened at the Capitol building in Washington, which feels, after the fact, less like a riot and more like a psyop of some sort. Plus: Social media bans not only Trump but many voices on the left and right. And you're next.

It's a New Year and yr handsome hosts kick it off with a discussion of aesthetics and the "autistic" character of America's culture industry. Topics covered include Fred Jameson, Banksy, Michel Foucault, the Marvel and DC universe films, the Mandalorian, and Cormac McCarthy.

A&E muse on the election of Joseph R. Biden as American President and wonder the degree to which his administration will be as uncool as we expect.