School of Movies

[School of Movies 2026]

This trio of double-bills are arranged across three distinct stages of Rocky's life. As a thirty-year-old Boy he was fighting to prove he could go the distance. Now, as the Man of the hour he has ascended way beyond all of us mere mortals to World Champion Superhero for two helpings of 1980s American excess that are quite differently flavoured from their humble 70s roots.

In III he meets Hulk Hogan and Mr T, loses his beloved mentor and has to find that role anew in his former opponent Apollo Creed. But then in IV the Cold War comes calling and while Creed battles in vain to prove America is better than The Soviet Union, it ultimately falls to Rocky to finish the fight and end historical global conflict by boxing really well.

For IV however, after Creed II was released and during Lockdown Stallone went back to new transfers sourced from the original negatives to reconstruct it as a more serious and focused effort that would fit better with the new movies as well as the older ones, giving Sharon and I a lot to talk about regarding how her original favourite changed, both for better and worse.

Still to come, the consequences of getting hit in the head over and over again, and a surprise favourite for the original six.

This week's After School Club: Shakespeare in Love (With an Upstart Crow)

Next week: Rocky V + Rocky Balboa

[School of Movies 2026]

Welcome to a saga of films spanning fifty years and being more about male vulnerability and the struggle for self-esteem than they actually are about boxing. They skirt the line between super-marketable, modestly-budgeted mass-appeal and heartfelt and very personal artistic expression.

We have long-promised the Rocky series, and finally we are able to cover them in a trio of double-bills spanning three stages of life for the lovable, tragicomic pugilist. We have also recorded on the two remaining Creed sequels, and those will be released as a final show (for now) next year.

Here we begin in Philadelphia, 1976 with a young, broke, unknown Silvester Stallone writing a piece about his struggle to gain work and recognition, utilising the analogy of a sports movie. Then after three years of uncertainty, can he, and Rocky prove that they weren't just one-hit wonders?

This week's After School Club: Shakespeare in Love (With Anonymous)

Next week: Rocky III + Rocky IV

[School of Movies 2026]

This was a commissioned show for Sarah Montgomery, though it is a film we have promised to cover for years and needed the right time. Turns out sandwiching it between Shakespeare and the Rocky Saga is appropriately ideal.

It was released the same year as The Empire Strikes Back and watching any one minute of it will convey to newcomers why this campy space opera could not possibly compete for the attention of an audience craving Star Wars. However, it still did well enough, especially in the UK where the many fans of Queen celebrated this, the first ever sci-fi blockbuster film underscored with rock music.

It has subsequently gained a cult following and a revival of interest when forgotten star Sam J. Jones turned up as a parody of himself in Seth McFarlane's two Ted films. His life story is in fact just as compelling as the tale of a simple quarterback opposing the cruel emperor of the universe; Ming (the Merciless)!

This week's After School Club: Hamnet

Next week: Rocky & Rocky II

[School of Movies 2026]

The final week of Shakestember brings us to a modern teen high school adaptation that far surpasses the dodgy original by an as-yet-unseasoned William, blushingly groping for a satirical take on misogyny in the sixteenth century and landing by accident upon dystopian horror with Taming of the Shrew.

10 Things was the debut of Heath Ledger, and is intensely fondly remembered, being the sweetly dry retreat for those who mourned his passing just nine short years later. It is also the most prominent early onscreen role for Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and David Krumholtz. This one was a favourite for us from the first word, but we found out things we never knew whilst exploring these hallowed hallways.

Our Shakespeare season may be ended here, but the Patreon bonus feed for the next few weeks will play host to a series of discussions on movies that explored the real life man, some heartbreaking, some hilarious and one utterly despicable!

Coming soon, we unexpectedly find ourselves training up to tackle the Rocky movies after years of putting them off. This next month will be our long-awaited, long-promised Rocktober!

This week's After School Club: Cutting Class on 10 Things

Next week: Flash Gordon (1980)

[School of Movies 2026]

For the third week of Shakestember, we move away from tragedy to comedy... except we don't really. By and large, scholars agree that the tragedies are actually funnier than the comedies, in principle, because the man writing them needed some real winning moments to help you invest emotionally, rather than heaping on doom and gloom (King Lear does that and we aren't fans). In other words, if he gives you a taste of the sweet, taking it away as bitterness descends feels more of a contrast, and sweeps you up in a more powerful feeling of loss.

Much Ado takes the beguiling form of a sexy, Tuscany holiday of a comedy, but Kenneth Branagh -in directing and starring- very overtly brings it down as we reach the halfway point, and some really serious and upsetting decisions are made. Some of the most memorable and cherished of his characters are in the memorable mix here, and Billy Shakes appears to be pronouncedly building upon and evolving his earlier works. This 1993 production is one of our favourites, so thank you to Matthew A. Seibert for commissioning it and effectively bringing this whole month-long project into being.

This week's After School Club: A Special Project

Next week: 10 Things I Hate About You

[School of Movies 2026]

For the second week of Shakestember, now having talked about a dozen cinematic adaptations we look at his most widely-recognised gateway movie for teenagers. Thirty years old this year, Baz Luhrman's hyperkinetic modern reimagining for the MTV generation garnered sniffy responses from the critics, but this 1996 film has stood the test of time and remains memorable and most of all useful, long after the more critically lauded and financially successful Shakespeare in Love (1998) bagged its awards.

This is the one that contemporary teachers can wheel out in order to get schoolkids even remotely interested in this four-centuries-old body of work, and because of its hypnotic production design, costuming and music, it has not dated anywhere near as much as some of the stuffier, respected theatrical productions.

I loved this film immediately, having studied the play at school just a year or so before, and memorised every scene. Going back to it is like a blast of clear, fresh water washing over you, leaving you trembling.

This week's After School Club: The Dark Tower (Part II)

Next week: Much Ado About Nothing

[School of Movies 2026]

Possibly the greatest playwright the world will ever see, creator of countless clever words and idioms, '"Heart of gold", "Wild goose chase", "Good riddance!" all gifts to the English language. He was also a man whose private life was shrouded in mystery, and for the average person our familiarity with him begins and ends in the one or two plays we are forced to study at school, along with The Lion King and an awareness of crackpot theories surrounding all of these plays being written by someone else (suspects include another playwright with a completely different and humourless style, a tyrannical lord who kicked a pregnant lady in the stomach and a man who died ten years before Billy Shakes stopped producing plays, so it was good of him to leave such a ready supply).

Here for you folks now, kicking off Shakestember, we discuss with Willow, a dozen film adaptations, many of which you will definitely want to seek out.

1. Romeo + Juliet (1996)

2. Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

3. Hamlet (1996)

4. The Tempest (2010)

5. The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

6. Othello (1995)

7. The Merchant of Venice (2004)

8. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999)

9. Richard III (1995)

10. Twelfth Night (1996)

11. King Lear (2008)

12. Titus (1999)

This week's After School Club: The Dark Tower (Part I)

Next week: Romeo + Juliet

[School of Movies 2026]

Back in 2021, after a surprising 24-year absence of Mortal Kombat live action movie adaptations while several really great cinematic story modes played out on the past four entries of the video game series, a movie finally emerged.

It wasn't very good. But since we were all on lockdown and starved for entertainment many of us chomped it down like Baraka at a buffet.

Then, five whole years later a sequel emerged that actually delivered on the basic, underachieving proof-of-concept that was pitched to us in that excuse for a first movie. Entertaining, grisly, a bit too self-conscious and at times historically inaccurate, this made for a fun time at the cinema and now we actually look forward to more.

This week's After School Club: Spy Kids 4

Next week: William Shakespeare on Film

[School of Everything Else 2026]

This is one of the most significant shows we have ever recorded and took an immense amount of research, preparation and editing. It has been a very long time coming, as the landscape of how we watch, play, read and listen to things changed.

In the wake of Sony's announcement that they are ending production on physical discs for the PlayStation, coupled with the culling of hundreds of movies, TV shows and documentaries that customers purchased legally and now no longer have access to, a huge amount of people are waking up to the alarming, impermanent realities of the streaming-only future we have all been pushed into.

In the immortal words of The Doors, 'The time to hesitate is through.' This discussion is about gaining perspective on how we got here and then restarting or indeed jumpstarting your collections of physical media.

If I leave one single episode of this podcast behind it is this one.

1. Movies & TV (0h 5m)

2. Video Games (1h 4m)

3. Music (2h 0m)

4. Books & Comics (2h 28m)

Guests:

James Batchelor of Bond and Beyond  @James_Batchelor

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

Paul Shotton @PlexShaw

This week's After School Club: Cutting Class after-show chat

Next week: Mortal Kombat I & II

[School of Movies 2026]

After an extruciatingly long five years away from this version of Peter Parker we rejoin his sad, thrilling saga. This is in fact his seventh appearance in the MCU, and it is one of the best of that entire series, rocketing to a billion dollars in less than a week, and signifying just how many people love this particular Spider-Man.

What we have here are the devastating long-term consequences of trying to undo the cruel outing of his secret identity by the spiteful dickweed Mysterio. This young superhero has let his Peter Parker identity die and is now full-time Spider-Man, making Brand New Day a powerful meditation on loneliness, something a hell of a lot of us are feeling right now.

Alex's Audiodrama podcast: The New Century Multiverse

James' Book: Wandless on Amazon

Guests:

James Batchelor of Bond and Beyond  @James_Batchelor

A.J. Wilden @wcwit.bsky.social of Wits-Writing 

Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst

This week's After School Club: Blue Beetle

Next week: Own Your Stuff: The vital importance of collecting physical media