Two for Space Jam, Please

We took a break from movies this week to discuss Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson, published in August 2020 by Random House. In it, Wilkerson contends that racism in the United States is closely akin to the caste system in India and the violence of Nazi Germany. The book’s reception has been overwhelmingly … Continue reading "Episode 45 – Caste...

Sam Levinson’s 2021 Malcolm & Marie is a pandemic movie in that it’s about two people at home who fight, cry, and make mac & cheese. It’s also not a pandemic movie in that it opens with them returning from Malcolm’s movie premiere, presumably with lots of people hugging and breathing on each other. Also, … Continue reading "Episode 44 – Malcolm & Mar...

We were in the mood for something FUN for a change so we watched the 2021 Korean space action-adventure flick, Space Sweepers. It’s got scavenger space trucks, a motley crew of likable misfits, a Jeff Bezos/Elon Musk-type on steroids, and a cute little girl who just might be a weapon of mass destruction. We, of course, … Continue reading "Episode 43 – Space Sweepers (20...

We’ve been on a run of excellent movies and Harlan County, U.S.A. is no exception. This 1976 documentary about a yearlong strike of coal miners in Harlan County, Kentucky is riveting, powerful, and one of the best depictions of collective organizing we’ve seen. A must-watch for every person out there who has to work to survive (i.e., … Continue reading "Episode 42 – Harlan...

All we have to say is WATCH THIS MOVIE! Actually, here’s a little more: Bacurau is one of the best movies we’ve seen in years. This 2019 Brazilian film is strange, funny, dark, and galvanizing, and it’s impossible to adequately capture its brilliance with a few choice adjectives. At first blush, it’s the story of a small village … Continue reading "Episode 41 –...

Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow is a Western like no other, an immigrant story like no other, and a moving, funny, tragic tale of friendship born out of the need to survive and some stolen milk. It was just the movie to watch as we huddled up in a snow-covered cabin and turned the calendar page to 2021.  Thanks … Continue reading "Episode 40 – First Cow (2019...

We took a sharp left turn and watched John Carpenter‘s 1988 action/sci-fi flick, They Live. The movie’s IMDB description is all you really need by way of introduction: “They influence our decisions without us knowing it. They numb our senses without us feeling it. They control our lives without us realizing it. They live.” And by “they,”...

We were long overdue to watch a truly good movie, and Merawi Gerima‘s poetic, quietly moving Residue, about a young filmmaker who returns home to DC to write a script about his neighborhood after being away for years, is a truly good movie. It’s an ode to childhood, an elegy for a city, and the best … Continue reading "Episode 38 – Residue (2020)"

Ron Howard’s Hillbilly Elegy, based on the 2016 memoir of the same name by J.D. Vance, is bullshit, and we take a little time to talk about why.  Referenced:  Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy edited by Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz Of … Continue reading "...

Do we think in Twitter? Can we truly opt out of social media? Have we become machines of our machines? The Social Dilemma has us tackling these questions and so much more.

Dirty. Dancing.

We dive deep into Craig Foster's man-octopus love story/documentary My Octopus Teacher. Polysemousness! Anthropocentrist narrative arcs! The leftovers of transcendentalism! Learning from the animal other! Cool octopus pics!

WHY CAN’T ANYONE ELSE TAKE A MENTAL DUMP AND/OR LET THEIR FORMAL FREAK FLAG FLY ON FILM?! we ask in our conversation about Charlie Kaufman’s 2020 I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Thanks to slfhlp for providing us some SICK BEATS for our intro and outro. As always, send yr comments, questions, and movie suggestions to twoforspacejamplease @ … Continue reading "Episod...

We did sports words and thoughts over the 2020 Netflix-ESPN documentary The Last Dance, about Space Jam actor Michael Jordan and several non-Space Jam actors on the Chicago Bulls as they pursue excellence in 90s earth basketball. Cheryl rises to the moment. Joe gets sportsbrain trying to talk about sportsbrain. Enjoy. Stay safe. Pray the … Continue reading "Episode 32 – The Last Dance&...

We talk about 2019’s The Assistant, an icy, realist examination of a tyrannical boss, sexual abuse, and complicity in the workplace. Thanks to slfhlp for providing us some SICK BEATS for our intro and outro. As always, send yr comments, questions, and movie suggestions to twoforspacejamplease @ gmail.com and subscribe on iTunes or Google Play.

We don’t have anything to say about the show that most people are watching or recently watched and are experiencing as a gummy cavity where their time was: Floor Is Lava. Don’t watch it. Or do. Nothing matters. Floor is lava. Thanks to slfhlp for providing us some SICK BEATS for our intro and outro. As always, … Continue reading "Episode 30 – Is Floor Lava? Floor...

Book club is back. We discuss the first chapter of Jackson Rising (Daraja Press, 2017) and Cooperation Jackson’s expansive vision. We don’t do Patreon or merch or anything here, but if you’re a fan of the podcast, we’d love it if you donate to Cooperation Jackson or Buffalo’s Black Love Resists in the Rust. Thanks … Continue reading "Episode 29 – Jackson R...

What does it mean in the year of our Lord 2020 to seek out media that is not produced by profit-driven, morally bankrupt, corporate machines?  Means TV — self-billed as the world’s first worker-owned, post-capitalist streaming service — is here to help answer that. They’ve got documentaries, shorts, news, cartoons, satirical Buzzfeed-y life hack videos, … Continue rea...

It wasn’t until after we recorded our conversation about Netflix’s Tiger King that we realized the hit documentary series is a mirror and what it shows is inscrutable. But that didn’t stop us! We cover labor, misogyny, Edward Said, spectacle, captivity, electoral politics, exploitation, the exotic-animal-owner-as-colonizer, polyamory, true crime, and lions, and tigers, and bears....

While we’re all marooned at home baking bread in sweatpants and trying to make friends with our very legitimate and mounting anxieties, Naomi Klein, Astra Taylor, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor had an on-fire Zoom conversation about coronavirus capitalism and how to beat it. Haymarket Books (as always, a model publisher for the people) hosted, and thousands … Continue reading "Episode 26...

For some reason we’ve been watching movies about pandemics to escape from the pandemic. We thought we’d take the Bruce Willis/Brad Pitt time-traveling, plague-spewing 12 Monkeys for a ride. We found it mostly underwhelming, so we spent the majority of the episode talking about what the FUCK is going on in the world right now, … Continue reading "Episode 25 – 12 Monkeys (199...

We’re all going to die. It took a cartoon about a writer struggling toward happiness and an alcoholic horse man / former sitcom actor (and a cat-mother-agent-former-girlfriend-of-3-boys-in-a-trench coat) ruining other people’s lives then almost terminating his own to get us to confront this seriously for the first time in a few years. THIS IS A … Continue reading "Episode 24 &#82...

Thriller novels: where JK Rowling goes to be a piece of shit and politicians like Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich dramatize their world view in the stupidest possible ways! The Obamas are too good for that: they’re diving into the movie biz via their partnership with Netflix. Their first entry is the 2019 American Factory, … Continue reading "Episode 23 – American Factory (20...

Welcome to the holiday edition of Two For Space Jam, Please! We backed our dump truck up to Cats, a movie about…Cats? Cheryl makes a spirited defense of this inflamed jellicle. Joe does not. The conversation ends w/a hostage scenario in which an armed intruder breaks into our home, puts a gun up to one … Continue reading "Episode 22 – Cats"

In our secret holiday bunker, we drank a bottle of wine, watched Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart, and then forgot to talk at all about Olivia Wilde’s Booksmart. But Cheryl has a whole lot to say about female friendship. We feel this is in the spirit of the movie. Thanks to slfhlp for providing us some SICK BEATS for … Continue reading "Episode 21 – Friendship (Booksmart,...