#687 - Homeland Empire
Added 2026-01-31 18:03:24 +0000 UTCComments
Thank you!
John W
2026-02-06 14:52:35 +0000 UTCI guess I’m the only one commenting who thought this movie sucked. Penn, del Toro and Leo all chewing the scenery; one stock character after another; buffoonish leftists; racist tropes; cliched plot. If it wasn’t a PTA project, it would be more evenly reviewed. Would a right wing version be much different? It’s a fine line between solidarity and ridicule.
Stephen Meany
2026-02-05 22:54:23 +0000 UTCi feel like the comment section has been a lot more insightful than the ep on this one. there was a hell of a lot to say
Oscar G
2026-02-03 17:12:25 +0000 UTCAs far as Oscar nominees go, Train Dreams is a quiet, (too) sad, and sometimes beautiful film. Worth a watch. For snubbed ones, I would say The Testament of Ann Lee, about the founder of the Shakers, is quite a unique movie from last year and worth checking out!
Graeme Pente
2026-02-03 03:27:45 +0000 UTCThis is probably the only place on the internet where I can get a Yes to this question: did anyone else read the moment in the elevator where Lockjaw licks his comb as an explicit reference by PTA to the scene in Fahrenheit 9/11 where Paul Wolfowitz does the exact same thing?
Casey
2026-02-02 15:21:18 +0000 UTCGreat episode. Just joining the choir of people pointing out that Bob is not in the witness protection programme.
Victor Holmberg
2026-02-02 10:45:18 +0000 UTCSorry to spam your comments to promote another podcast, but Nikhil Pal Singh had a discussion on Politics Theory Other just a few days ago.
Paul Brewer
2026-02-02 03:00:46 +0000 UTCSpeaking of Melania, I read in a review that the opening scene of the movie is her getting off an airplane in slow motion while “Gimme Shelter” plays. This felt like something that should be noted on a Michael and Us forum.
Brian
2026-02-01 23:07:24 +0000 UTCGreat episode, but key parts of the plot have been misremembered here. For example, Perfidia doesn’t go into witness protection with Bob; she goes into it alone, Bob and their child escaped and took on new identities after the bank blowout, where Perfidia was captured. Bob never sees Perfidia after she leaves one night to go on this French 75 mission at the bank. Instead, Lockjaw helps Perfidia get into witness protection by ratting out the other members. He assumes Perfidia will be his secret lover while she’s in witness protection, and there’s a hilarious scene of him showing up to her suburban home after receiving an award related to the takedown of the French 75 with flowers, only to discover she’s disappeared, leaving a note letting him know pretty clearly how little she feels for him. Perfidia essentially leaving him after he helped her get this witness protection deal animates a lot of Lockjaw’s actions across the rest of the film.
Coco C
2026-02-01 21:40:44 +0000 UTCWell said
Jacob
2026-02-01 18:35:23 +0000 UTCPolitically Paul Thomas Anderson is not a Marxist. Which is fine. I think he looks at the French 75 and says “Yeah I want to go to the camps and pull the people out.” But there’s no real working class politics here. Where are the revolutionary politics? How does freeing the immigrants lead to revolution? The battle of Algiers reference is telling. Using terrorism to get colonizers out of Algeria is a thing that made sense, it could not be copy and pasted in a small settler colonial state let alone the US. Where his sympathies really lie are with the middle class immigrants represented by Benecio Del Toro. He thinks the way forward is by communities coming together, which is true, but still that needs to be done as the working class. I would say that that actually is just PTA meeting the moment, that’s been the vibe for decades, but the Minneapolis strike and marches across the country clearly see the purpose of protest is to organize as workers. Which is incredible.
Jeremy Hawkins
2026-02-01 17:30:02 +0000 UTCI think you were being too hard on Bob. Yes, he’s a sillier character and he doesn’t have the same aggressive streak that Perfidia does, but I think it’s wrong to question his commitment to the cause or the skin he had in the game. If he was arrested in the raid at the beginning when he was acting as a distraction, do you think he would face significantly less jail time? Further, Bob’s skill that he contributed was bomb making. That’s extremely dangerous, and he put his life on the line every time he made one. The difference between Bob and the other revolutionaries is that he chose to raise a child. As a parent, I can tell you that you instantly lose time that you may have otherwise devoted to activism, and your ability to assume risk also goes away. I don’t know that I ever had the courage of someone like Alex Pretti, but I know that I cannot participate in the struggle at his level without the potential of making my toddler an orphan and my wife a widow.
Cameron F
2026-02-01 17:12:51 +0000 UTC
