School of Movies

[School of Movies 2026] Following on from the sunny and heartfelt success of James Gunn's 2025 Superman we have the scrappy follow-up by Craig Gillespie, detailing the lifestyle of Kal-El's cousin. Gillespie most likely got the job after two filmic accomplishments in spotlighting grubby, depressed punk girls who nobody likes except the audience; I, Tonya and Cruella. Sharon and I went all out on t...

[School of Movies 2026] After the 2022 failure ($226m on a $200m budget) of Lightyear to succesfully spin-off from the main Toy Story franchise (and we did a show about that at the time), they went back to the billion-dollar well that is the direct link to so many warm feelings across multiple generations. And here they finally tackle the issue of tech, tablets (and the strangely absent phones and...

[School of Movies 2026] Back in 2011, early in my podcasting career I recorded three shows with Daniel Floyd on what seemed at the time to be a now-completed very rare example of a Perfect Trilogy. Even legendary grump Mark Kermode remarked on how neither Star Wars nor The Godfather could pull that off. And to a degree that Trilogy became enshrined in the eyes of many millennials who grew up along...

[Digital Gonzo 2011] The third and final of this short series of archival re-releases, this time dealing with what we thought at the time was the last ever Toy Story film. An ending that moved the world to tears and became not only the highest earning Pixar film at the time, but the first animated film to break a billion. It also repositioned who the toys were and who Andy was. Now, suddenly grown...

[Digital Gonzo 2011] Another archival show from my early days, but one that is good enough to be re-released without re-editing. Toy Story 2 was originally begun as a straight-to-VHS sequel, and then-CEO of Disney Michael Eisner was fine with it being done in cheap, 2D animation, similar to Aladdin II: The Return of Jafar, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II and of course the unforgettable (and tastefu...

[Digital Gonzo 2011] This is an archival re-release from my early days of solo podcasting with weekly guests. It is a rare example from that era that doesn't need a revisit or re-edit. I'm proud of how much Dan and I brought to the table, though I am even more disappointed in retrospect of how much adulation I heap upon John Lasseter. His mantra of 'Quality is the best business plan" has always be...

[School of Movies 2026] This is a fun one. Statistically speaking if you're under the age of 45 you didn't go and see this summer blockbuster funded by Amazon. When you think about it, this probably should have been made in the late 2000s, just after Michael Bay's immensely successful Transformers, and notably around the time they started planning the movie anyway. Instead it has taken another twe...

[School of Movies 2026] The first Star Wars movie released in cinemas after seven long years since The Rise of Skywalker. It's a crowd-pleaser, a simple, space western from the director of Cowboys & Aliens, Zathura and Iron Man 1 & 2. And not a lot of people showed up for it, which feels like a damn shame, since just the experience of being sat there with the Ludwig Göransson score blastin...

[School of Everything Else 2026] Kicking off our Summer Blockbuster Season, before we get to the first theatrically released Star Wars movie in seven years we need to bring you folks up to speed on where The Mandalorian & Grogu have been since Season One. This is two back-to-back episodes previously on After School Club talking about The Mandalorian Season Two and The Book of Boba Fett (which...

[School of Movies 2026] As we perform a shutdown on MA.I. with a rousing singalong of 'Daisy Bell', we get to one of the least-seen-yet-best of the whole bunch. 2025s Companion seems to have had a hard time really hooking audiences in. "What, it's about a killer robot or something, but she looks like a cute girl." No, that's M.3.G.A.N. and that little brat poisoned the well for this absolute beaut...

[School of Movies 2026] The main event Electric State episode was recorded at the start of the year with Willow, a powder-keg, ready to go thermonuclear. We decided to include it in MA.I. as it is absolutely thematically relevent. What we have here is an adaptation of a haunting 2018 art book by Simon Stålenhag depicting an alternate 1997 where mankind has slowly descended into an advertising-plas...

[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 me...

[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 unexpect...

[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 algo...

[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, t...

[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 whic...

[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...

[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 som...

[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...

[School of Movies 2024] NOTE: This episode was originally released two years prior to the Robert Rodriguez director season, in 2024's Cloon June. This was George's first significant lead part after over a decade of sheepish appearances in shonky Z-List horror and then two years of his breakout role in E.R. as eminently desirable paediatrician Doctor Ross. This is a firestorm of a counterpoint to t...

[School of Movies 2026] Here we begin a Director Season on the films of Robert Rodriguez. This first show is kind of a roller coaster as we get to know his style, what makes Robert tick, and we chart his progress from absolute indie obscurity, making a film for almost nothing and garnering recognition on the festival circuit, charting that up through his awkward TV movie pitstop, until he hit actu...

[School of Movies 2026] A surprisingly personal and tender show, dealing with some difficult subject matter comes out of this criminally forgotten 1989 Ron Howard family comedy drama. It was a staple of my childhood and looking back, it seems like I took on board a great deal of the life lessons experienced by the amazing ensemble cast of the Buckman Megafamily, which include Steve Martin, Mary St...

[School of Everything Else 2026] This is the best thing Marvel have ever made out of X-Men. That is not hyperbole. Stack up every comic, every animated series, every video game and every movie, and only a handful even come close to this level of both crafted quality and ferocious realisation of evolved central themes. The original X-Men '92 show ran all the way up to September 1997 with the 76th e...

[School of Everything Else 2026] This is a commissioned episode for Chris Finik, and Alejandra Vargas (both of whom guest on this show) as well as Sarah Montgomery and Self. The remnants of the shattered team at Telltale, seminal adventure game developers of the 2000s and 2010s return as AdHoc Studio with one of the very best of its type. The premise is simple enough, almost rote by today's standa...

[School of Movies 2026] Finally, after twenty years of half-assed attempts (thirty if you count the Roger Corman production never intended to see the light of day) to bring Marvel's First Family to the big screen, they actually nailed it... mostly. First Steps delivers not just the Silver Age superheroes, but the era itself, in a gorgeous, memorable, hopeful vision of the Kennedy-Era 1960s (one wh...