This week on Tech Film Noir, we're watching Brainstorm (1983), the Christopher Walken sci-fi oddity where scientists invent a machine that can record your entire sensory experience, and humanity immediately asks: “Cool. Can the military use it?”

Join Lianne Potter and Jeff Watkins as they strap themselves into one of the most ridiculous pieces of 1980s headgear ever committed to film and attempt to work out what the hell Brainstorm is actually trying to do. Is it virtual reality? Mind control? Psychological warfare? An afterlife simulator? A very elaborate marriage counselling device? Yes.

Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood star alongside Louise Fletcher in Douglas Trumbull's wildly ambitious sci-fi film, where a headset that starts out recording sight, sound, taste and touch somehow also starts recording memories and emotions because apparently we're just making the rules up as we go along.

Along the way, we get into 1980s VR, sensory recording, military technology, hacking, virtual reality, mind manipulation and the surprisingly accurate prediction of how humans immediately find increasingly questionable things to do with new technology. We also admire the glorious lab equipment, Christopher Walken's increasingly Walken-y performance, some spectacular practical effects, the world's most unnecessary aspect-ratio changes, and a headset that goes from massive medical contraption to something suspiciously like modern bone-conduction headphones.

Plus: why does everyone in this film type like they're trying to win a piano competition? Why does the technology make no sense? Why is Christopher Walken apparently the world's first VR relationship hacker? And why does every new piece of technology immediately become somebody else's terrible idea?

When movies guess the future, we check their work.

This week on Tech Film Noir, we're watching Weird Science (1985), John Hughes's hormone-fueled Frankenstein story that asked the ultimate 80s question: can a half-megabyte of RAM generate the perfect woman?

Join Lianne Potter, Simon Painter, and Jeff Watkins as they revisit a cinematic fever dream where two desperate teenagers bypass actual coding in favor of a acoustic coupler and a ceremonial bra on the head.

Anthony Michael Hall and Ilan Mitchell-Smith star as Gary and Wyatt, two nerds who hook up a Memotech MTX500 to a government mainframe and accidentally invent an AI girlfriend. Kelly LeBrock stars as Lisa, a magical digital genie who operates entirely on teenage logic, while the film hilariously sidesteps real tech to ask if feeding magazine clippings into a scanner can actually spawn human life (but to be fair, it isn’t much different to the frontier AI companies scanning books!).

Along the way, we break down the elite 80s hardware on display: from Casio CA-90 calculator watches to massive 8-inch floppy disks. We also dig into the slightly terrifying modern reality of AI companion forums, the charm of primitive wireframe 3D graphics, and the timeless tech-support troubleshooting method of just smashing a CRT monitor with a baseball bat.

When movies guess the future, we check their work.

Big shout out to the This Aged Great Podcast and the Starring the Computer website

In this episode of Tech Film Noir, we're watching Strange Days (1995), Kathryn Bigelow's cyberpunk thriller, written by James Cameron, that imagined VR headsets, wearable recording technology and immersive first-person experiences decades before Meta Glasses became a reality.

Join Lianne Potter, Simon Painter and Jeff Watkins as they revisit one of the 90s' most ambitious science fiction films, exploring how Strange Days predicted wearable cameras, bodycam footage as "the only truth", memory streaming and our growing obsession with experiencing life through someone else's eyes.

Ralph Fiennes stars as Lenny Nero, an ex-cop turned black-market dealer of recorded memories, using the SQUID headset to sell other people's experiences. Think Meta Ray-Bans with a very illegal firmware update. Angela Bassett is, unsurprisingly, the coolest person in every room, while the film asks whether technology designed to bring us closer to reality actually leaves us more disconnected than ever.

Along the way we dive into Y2K paranoia, one of the best sci-fi soundtracks of the 90s, cyberpunk world-building, questionable predictions that thankfully never happened, and the ones that absolutely did. Nearly 30 years after its release, Strange Days feels less like forgotten science fiction and more like an instruction manual for the age of VR, wearable AI and smart glasses.

When movies guess the future, we check their work.

Join Lianne Potter, Simon Painter, and Jeff Watkins as they explore how The Running Man predicted many of today's biggest debates, from algorithm-driven entertainment and manufactured public opinion to surveillance, misinformation, and the commercialisation of violence. Inspired by Stephen King's novel, the film asks what happens when truth becomes secondary to ratings and audiences stop questioning the stories they're being sold.

Expect gladiatorial game shows, propaganda masquerading as entertainment, AI-worthy media manipulation, corporate dystopias, delightfully excessive one-liners, and a discussion about why one of the greatest 1980s action films may also be one of its most surprisingly prescient..

When movies guess the future, we check their work.