[School of Movies 2026]

MA.I. continues, and here we're getting into relationships between humans and Artificial Intelligence with two stories about two lonely men who find an intense connection with a computer lady and have to live with the consequences.

Alex Garland's Ex Machina (2014) explores the cold province of a Tech billionaire genius who wants to cerate a robot woman so convincing that men cannot tell the difference. Spike Jonze's HER (2013) brings us to an alternate reality where everything seems to be going okay with the world, it's a cosy and warm, comfortable and intelligent place to be... and yet we're still isolated from one another, still frustrated and looking for someone, unable to let go of our past mistakes. Then a company launches Operating Systems that will help us with our daily organisation, but also happen to be personable and inquisitive. This might actually not end in disaster...

We conclude with a bone-chilling look at a real life lady who is obsessed with her real life A.I. chatbot. You will wish you lived in the Spike Jonze reality.

This weekend's After School Club: Short Circuit 1 & 2 and D.A.R.Y.L.

And Next Week's Main Event: The Electric State & Ron's Gone Wrong

[School of Movies 2026]

Our month of movies about A.I. continues, this time with something everybody loves. And WALL-E is in fact pulling double duty on this one, because we get a heartwarming story about robots who fall in love despite their differing classes and stations, and having to defy their employees in order to not only be happy but bring Earth back to life again...

AND we get an unexpected sledgehammer of a glimpse into the future from 2008. It was as though Andrew Stanton and Pixar saw how easily Social Media would take hold of us as a species, and cater to our every dopamine whim in order to keep our attention, as we sacrificed everything about ourselves for the sake of convenience, including but not limited to complacency over ecological disaster. This movie is a masterpiece, and has become chillingly, shockingly more relevent with every year.

This Week's After School Club: Weird Science

Next Week's Main Event: Ex-Machina & HER

[School of Movies 2026]

This is the beginning of a month-long project on films exploring humanity's relationship with Artificial Intelligence. We will take you from early estimations that veer between cautionary tales and deluded fantasies about what computers could do in the 80s through to robotics and the potential for a soul inside of a machine, and onward to the effect of Social Media and algorythimic learning upon unprepared 21st Century phone-owners. Some of the films are terrible, some are stupid, some are intriguing and a few are brilliant!

Welcome to MA.I.

We begin with cold war paranoia and the pitfalls of handing over total control of our nuclear arsenals to unstable mechanical systems with WarGames from 1983 and Colossus: The Forbin Project from 1970.

After that, a film that presents the world's first digital actor with S1M0NE, although as you'll find out, this isn't simply the recent Hollywood anxiety over artificial people being given work over real ones, this nightmare is so much worse!

Next Week: WALL-E

[School of Movies 2026]

This is a commissioned episode for Toby Skeels-Jungius and Chris Finik. It also happens to be our second show in a row about a bunch of stunningly animated ninja teens who are taught their skills by Jackie Chan, deal with both High School and abiding Daddy issues and wind up having to defend a metropolitan city from a Kaiju attack, thus proving their worth in the process, to the people, to their immediate family, and to themselves.

Mutant Mayhem is in fact the TENTH Ninja Turtles movie, and it's up there with the very best of what has come before. On this show we recruit Willow who finally gets to talk about their favourite brothers, as we look back on creative choices of previous incarnations and what this one does to set itself apart. And while you could superficially say it has Spider-Verse animation, we hope that how we articulate the distinction gives you folks a clearer idea of what I'm terming ''Asymmetrical, Impressionist Graffiti'.

Next week we begin a month-long project focusing on movies with the theme of Artificial Intelligence.

[School of Movies 2026]

Because literally nobody demanded it, here is our Main Event show on the third of the Warner Animation Lego quartet, making it the final one we have not spoken of up to now.

The Ninjago line began in 2011 as part of Lego's new approach at creating multimedia sub-franchises with purposefully limited lifespans. The plan was to put out a simply animated and fun kid's show which drew from Power Rangers and TMNT and tied in with a series of lavish playsets centring around this nonspecifically Asian mystical tech mythology. The plan was to close out within two years and move on to a new line called Chima about battling animal people. What they didn't expect was a passionate fanbase that pleaded with Lego to extend the show and toy line beyond Season 2.

Ninjago is still wildly popular today, but in between then and now this movie emerged, scrapping all the established continuity in order to tell a tale accessable to all... about another Lego kid with a deadbeat Business Dad. However, while it's the least of the four there is still much to like about this visually-stunning and fast-paced adventure.

[School of Movies 2026]

Grindhouse is a deliberate evocation of grotty late night movies at the most questionable and sticky of back-alley theatres in the 1980s. The kind of places you go if you wish to purchase a human kidney. Robert and his frequent colaborator Quentin Tarantino remember these dives fondly and wanted to bring us that feeling with an audacious double-bill of two authentic-feeling movies, Planet Terror and Death Proof, accompanied by trailers for films that did not exist (at least at the time, three of them were made for real afterwards).

How did this bold experiment go for them? Here you can find out from a variety of angles, including a journey back to one of the first podcast episodes I ever recorded, as well as the direct response to the first time Sharon and I ever got to see the double-bill as intended and finally a culmination discussion regarding a very decisive re-edit of both films by me.

Here is a turning point in the career of Robert Rodriguez, and here is where our Director Season will close out (though we are continuing with discussions on Alita: Battle Angel, Machete and Spy Kids 4 on the patreon After School Club bonus podcast feed for everyone who throws in five bucks or more a month).

[School of Movies 2026]

Robert Rodriguez reaches his masterpiece. This film is truly magnificent as an adaptation of cinema to the aesthetics and hallmarks of this particular pitch black graphic novel series. It seems like every element combined in swift, smooth and effortlessly striking fashion as this sleazy, stark crime opera anthology drew on every skill Robert had learned over the 90s and somehow focused all of his haphazard digital work into one infinitely sharp point. The flourishes of colour and thundering automobiles hypnotising us like deer in the darkness of a snowy woodland road.

It was also blessed with an astonishing cast; Mickey Rourke making a comeback that would lead him to The Wrestler (2008), Bruce Willis in one of his last great performances, Clive Owen at his snarling hungriest, Rosario Dawson setting the screen on fire, Benicio Del Toro as a powder-keg of entitled misogyny, Michael Clarke Duncan delivering a captivating Terminator-Bear hybrid, Rutger Hauer, Powers Booth and Nick Stahl as the most detestable richly-connected psychopath villains imaginable, and even little Elijah Wood chilling our blood by playing a sprightly cannibal who neither talks nor blinks.

Bringing in Frank Miller himself and crediting him as co-director while humbly taking the mantle of the man who ‘Shoots and Cuts’, Robert was able to make this feel extraordinary in a way its imitators, including Zack Snyder's 300 (2006) and Watchmen (2009), Frank Miller's own The Spirit (2008) and even Sin City 2: A Dame to Kill For (2014) could not possibly match.

And folks supporting us for five bucks on our Patreon bonus feed can, this coming weekend hear all about how that second film imploded.

[School of Movies 2026]

The Robert Rodriguez series continues. After Desperado and then From Dusk till Dawn, Robert stayed in the Horror milieu and was shunted onto the Scream bandwagon by his regrettable Dimension Films keepers, the Weinsteins.

Written by Kevin Williamson (who wrote Scream and recently directed the seventh in that undying franchise) this one brought a predatory serial killer vibe back to the high school, but with an alien infiltration plot from an earlier script.

It's amazing that this one shaped up to be as likable and memorable as it did, and we put that down to Rodriguez and his enthusiastic direction, and the truly stellar cast of talented young people, including newcomer Josh Hartnett (who had only just finished Scream-aping Halloween H20, also from Dimension Films, also with a very familiar Marco Beltrami Score) Clea DuVall (who co-starred in lesbian cult favourite 'But I'm a Cheerleader' the next year), a pre-X-Men Famke Jansen, a pre-Furious Jordana Brewster, the always-fantastic Chris McDonald and Bebe Neuwirth, a T-1000-evoking Robert Patrick, a pre-Daily Show Jon Stewart and a pre-Fellowship Elija Wood.

It's The Breakfast Club meets Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and it had all the cool kids shouting "F*ck you, t*tbags!" along with various other colourful turns of phrase in its dialogue.