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.

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. 

How will Independence Day (1996) hold up? 

Host: Nic

Panel: Matthew, Keiko and Emily

Directed by: Roland Emmerich

Starring:

1. Will Smith
2. Jeff Goldblum
3. Bill Pullman
4. Mary McDonnell
5. Judd Hirsch
6. Margaret Colin
7. Randy Quaid
8. Robert Loggia
9. James Rebhorn
10. Brent Spiner
11. Harry Connick Jr.
12. Jean Smart
13. Vivica A. Fox
14. Harvey Fierstein
15. Frank Langella

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:

• Can David Levinson save the world again using vibes, intuition, and a laptop from 1996?
• Is President Whitmore still giving speeches, or just spiritually hovering over this movie wishing he were?
• And at what point does a spaceship become so large that it’s less of a threat and more of a weather pattern?

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.

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:

• Is Spock relearning humanity… or just deeply confused by 20th-century profanity?
• How does James T. Kirk manage to save the planet while also committing multiple federal crimes?
• And is this the only blockbuster where the central conflict could be solved by a really well-funded aquarium?

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.

Also: we attempt to explain the plot to someone who has never seen Star Trek, which mostly results in us sounding like conspiracy theorists yelling about whales.

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:

• Is Rorschach a moral absolutist… or just the world’s angriest inkblot?
• How does Dr. Manhattan make omnipotence feel like a midlife crisis?
• And is Ozymandias the smartest man alive—or just really good at PowerPoint presentations with catastrophic consequences?

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.

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:

• Is this the most emotionally vulnerable Bond, or just the most recently traumatized?
• How many people need to die over a card game before someone suggests Uno instead?
• And does anyone in the Bond universe understand what a normal vacation looks like?

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.

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.

How will AI – Artificial Intelligence hold up?

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

Welcome to another episode of Myopia Movies, where we dig through the dusty toy chest of childhood nostalgia to explain colonialism to kids and ask the important question: “Was this actually magical… or did we all just really want to own tiny murder-capable action figures?” This week, we’re cracking open The Indian in the Cupboard — the movie that convinced an entire generation that putting living beings in locked containers was somehow heartwarming family entertainment and a poster that asks, is this child going to eat a tiny man? 

Will the effects hold up?
Will the emotional trauma of nearly stepping on a real human being hold up?
Will anyone question giving a nine-year-old absolute power over sentient life?

Probably not.

So grab your magic key, hide your Legos before they gain consciousness, and join us as we revisit one of the most aggressively 1990s “children learn responsibility through ethically horrifying fantasy scenarios” movies ever made. It’s The Indian in the Cupboard.

This week on Myopia Movies, we head back to military school where the uniforms are crisp, the cadets are angry, and somehow Chucky has access to live ammunition. It’s Child’s Play 3 — the movie that asks, “What if summer camp, toxic masculinity, and a killer doll all collided in the least supervised environment imaginable?”

Join us as we discuss the rapid-fire sequel production schedule, why every adult in this movie seems wildly unconcerned about obvious murders, and the strange energy of turning a slasher franchise into a coming-of-age military academy drama. We also dig into the evolution of Chucky as a horror icon, the accidental comedy of the paintball sequence, and whether this is secretly one of the most aggressively early-90s films ever made.

Plus: weird pervert barbers, carnival death traps, overacting cadets, and the eternal question — why does nobody ever believe the kid about the murder doll?

Welcome to another episode of Myopia Movies, where we ruin your childhood one VHS tape at a time. This week, we’re stepping into the neon-lit fever dream that is Mannequin — a movie that asks the important question: “What if a department store mannequin came to life… and immediately dated Andrew McCarthy?”

That’s right. It’s the ‘80s, where unemployment was quirky, retail workers had unlimited creative freedom, and absolutely nobody thought to question whether this relationship required psychiatric intervention. Featuring window displays that apparently stop traffic, villainous retail executives who behave like cartoon burglars, and enough synth music to power a mall arcade for a decade, Mannequin is pure Reagan-era fantasy.

We’ll talk about Kim Cattrall somehow making “ancient Egyptian soul trapped in a mannequin” feel completely reasonable, why every department store in movies looked like Studio 54, and whether Hollywood accidentally created the world’s most charming horror premise. Plus: Hollywood Montrose steals the entire movie, James Spader continues his career-long commitment to being a smarmy weirdo, and we try to determine if this film is actually sweet… or just deeply, deeply strange.

So grab your shoulder pads, crank up Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now, and join us as we ask the timeless question: does Mannequin hold up… or should it have stayed in the display window?

How will Mannequin hold up?

Directed by Michael Gottlieb