Redshirt Cinema Club

Most people would probably have a break between making two blockbusting superhero movies, especially when they're as brilliant and ambitious as Batman Begins (2005) and The Dark Knight (2008). Not Christopher Nolan. Instead he teamed up with Christian Bale and knocked out The Prestige (2006), a cerebral character drama following two feuding magicians and their shared obsession with outdoing the ot...

Hello and welcome to Redshirt Cinema Club, a podcast about - finally - BATMAN movies. Well it is for today anyway, as we tackle Christopher Nolan’s 2005 comic book blockbuster Batman Begins, the film that arguably made both him and lead-actor Christian Bale household names and kickstarted a superhero trilogy still regarded by many as the greatest ever. How does it hold up 21 years later? It’s time...

Today we continue our journey through the movies of Christopher Nolan with 2002's Insomnia, the comparatively little-known film he made between Memento (cult favourite, liking it makes you sound clever) and Batman Begins (the first chapter of everyone's favourite superhero trilogy). The cast is stacked with A-list talent - Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank will get your movie noticed - an...

It's finally happened. We're giving the world not the podcast it deserves but the one it needs right now. And what the world needs is a movie podcast where three early-middle-aged straight, white guys talk about Christopher Nolan films. First up is Memento, Nolan's critically-acclaimed mainstream debut from 2000 that - despite its raw, indie feel - carries itself with the artistic swagger of a sur...

Welcome back to Redshirt Cinema Club! We’re done with videogame adaptations for now, but before we move onto the next big thing it’s time to read your excellent and hilarious emails in an episode we’re calling Super Mailbag Bros. We didn’t come up with that, Shani Fox did on our Patreon chat. Well done, Shani. You’re better than us. Let us know what you think of this episode by emailing us at reds...

This week on Redshirt Cinema Club it’s the turn of 2002’s Resident Evil, an adaptation of the survival horror videogame that spawned a series of actually quite successful films despite never really being that good. Kind of like Fast and the Furious but with zombies instead of cars. Did the first movie convince US, however? Is the Licker scary? And just who is Milla Jovovich supposed to be? We’ll a...

Today we continue our videogame adaptation season by tackling 2001’s Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, an early-noughties action flick starring megastar Angelina Jolie in the lead role, alongside pre-Bond Daniel Craig, a very young and very handsome Iain Glen and also Chris Barrie from Red Dwarf. Can it be the first videogame movie we’ve watched that isn’t terrible? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy f...

This week it's time for Pokémon: The First Movie. Rob is a lifelong is a lifelong Pokéfan while Nath and Dave are bemused onlookers ready to receive a heartwarming introduction to the world of collecting, training, and trying your best. Which is a shame because what they actually get is an existential nightmare dressed as a children's adventure. What does it mean to be alive? What is the purpose o...

For you, the day our episode on Street Fighter graced your village was the most important day in your life. But for us? It was Monday. Welcome back to our continuing series on video game movies, where this week we have reached the garish, often nonsensical, somehow still wonderfully entertaining Street Fighter from 1994. Several pillars of the game have been turned upside down - Guile is the main...

Kicking off our season on videogame adaptation we've got the notoriously awful Super Mario Bros. movie from 1993. Yes, the one that doesn't look anything like the Mario games and instead feels like if Blade Runner had dinosaurs and was directed by an idiot (or two idiots as it turns out). It does star Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper though, and despite the critical and commercial failure is still a...

This week we’re delving into our mailbag to mark the end of our series on 80s fantasy movies (you can tell because people only “delve” in fantasy settings) and to share your nostalgia, nit-picks, and at least one bit of trivia - about David Bowie in Labyrinth - that blew our tiny goblin minds. If you've been listening along to our journey through this decade's unique haul of fantasy films - Time B...

This week - we’re falling through holes in the universe and landing in Time Bandits, Terry Gilliam’s visually cacophonous 1981 adventure about a small boy careening through time with a band of thieves pursued by God and evil itself. There’s… a lot going on. It's possible that Time Bandits features the best backstory to a heist ever conceived (a band of God's minor manufacturers are sent to the rep...

A curious phenomenon emerges this week as we watch 1984's The Neverending Story. It's a favourite from Dave's childhood which Nath and Rob were convinced they'd never seen. The evidence in fact points to them both having watched the film previously and entirely forgotten what happens , which is unfortunately also true of this latest rewatch (something to do with a sad horse and a flying dog, the d...

This week we’re losing ourselves again in the delightful maze of 80s fantasy, with Jim Henson’s extraordinary Labyrinth (which, like our very own Rob, turns 40 this year...) Think of it less like a museum of childhood traumas, and more like a fun adventure with cool puppets and a brilliant - nay, magical - dance number. Now if we only figure out how to get inside… Let us know what you think of thi...

We're back! Sort of. After a week's hiatus we're crawling out from the darkness of our plague cave with this impromptu mailbag episode - which we've decided is a good thing as there were LOTS of wonderful emails to get through. Thanks for your continuing correspondence - please keep the messages coming. Thanks for bearing with us while we've been ill - normal service will be resumed next week once...

A new season begins, and we transition from our favourite genre (sci-fi) into our other favourite genre (fantasy) quicker than turning the corner in Waterstones' basement. Moving from Star Wars into 1988's Willow felt like the most natural step - it's directed by Ron Howard (of Solo fame), stars Warwick Davies (Wicket the ewok) and has a story dreamed up by George Lucas himself. There are other pa...

...of course it did. We've completed Star Wars (shut up , Ewok movies) and that can only mean one thing - an episode dedicated to listener thoughts about the series, the discussions we've had about it, and tangents that have their own root system of subtangents. Also ALSO the three of us give our personal rankings of all 11 Star Wars movies watched on the pod. Are there some surprises in there? Ro...

We conclude our Star Wars season with 2019's The Rise of Skywalker, J.J. Abrams' second stab at the franchise having kicked off the sequel trilogy with The Force Awakens 4 years prior. Where the latter was an exercise in replaying familiar hits, Episode IX was all about course correction after the split fan reaction to The Last Jedi. Kylo Ren has his mask back, force ghost Luke likes his light sab...

The Last Jedi is almost certainly the most divisive Star Wars movie ever made. A brave attempt by writer/director Rian Johnson to subvert audience expectations and take the franchise in a new direction, it's a film that impressed critics with its brave narrative choices but alienated huge sections of the fan base at the same time. The three of us watched this together at the cinema - Rob enjoyed i...

"This will begin to make things right." As first lines go, this is powerful stuff. An acknowledgement that what came before wasn't up to scratch. A promise that what you're about to see will bring back the old magic. But does The Force Awakens deliver where it counts? J. J. Abrams is the man with the seemingly impossible task, fresh from reviving (and then killing?) the Star Trek movie franchise,...

The second episode of our mid-season Star Wars break sees Dave finally get his wish of making Rob watch The Green Knight - a dark fantasy retelling of a 14th-century chivalric romance directed by David Lowery and starring Dev Patel. This is unlike any Arthurian legend you've seen before - a twisted, unsettling exploration of honour and the slow, inevitable, irresistible power of nature. It feature...

In a change to our scheduled programming, this week Rob has forced Dave to watch Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, the straight-to-DVD movie sequel to one of the greatest videogames of all time. When it released in 2005 this was an explosion of cutting-edge CG, an all-action burst of fan service fed to an audience ravenous for more Final Fantasy VII. More Cloud, more Sephiroth, more cool fights...

We've reached the end of the prequel trilogy with 2005's Revenge of the Sith, a relentless 2.5-hour explosion of lightsabre duels, Palatine one-liners and, well, actual explosions. A film many consider the best of a bad bunch, has the 21 years since its release quietened our misgivings or does the hate still flow through us? We also discuss the very important issues of whether or not The Force wor...

So this week we're watching Attack of the Clones. Can we be honest? It feels like we're beset on all sides by inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. And - as Mace Windows might have said in a previous life - we're trying, listeners, we're trying real hard to be the shepherd. Or at least not to go full dark side toxic fandom and spend two hours howling at the moon (wait... that's......

It's 2026 already? TRY SPINNING OUT ABOUT THE PASSING OF TIME, THAT'S A GOOD TRICK Join us as we mark this new phase in our enduring existential terror with a rewatch of a film only babies and idiots like - Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Actually that's not the tone of the podcast at all. Here at Redshirt Cinema Club we have always tried to be a positive place for fans of all persuasions to enjoy...