School of Movies

[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

[School of Movies 2026]

Dan Trachtenberg, director of 10 Cloverfield Lane has quietly, modestly, and with surety of purpose revolutionised the Predator franchise. Back when Disney bought Fox there were many folks cheering about the X-Men being in the MCU from now on (and Marvel have taken their sweet time with that) whilst still others rightly pointed out that the monopoly and dominion over such an immense market share of IPs that were never theirs and don't fit with the Mickey Mouse mentality was going to be ruinous. At least in the case of Predator, the reverse is true.

For three decades, Fox presided over poorly-received Predator sequels, spinoffs, and aborted revivals. Meanwhile the Disney buyout has (through the appointment of Trachtenberg as project leader) resulted in the three freshest takes, cunningly bringing forward some of the most potent elements and letting go of aping of the 80s classic. Prey, and Killer of Killers sought a new demographic of younger people aware of the name and keen to see something relevant to them. But this one actually has something to say about being raised in harsh, cruel, dehumanising cultures, and it does so with passion and humour that won over Willow. This thing is special, and reaches out with exhilarating empathy to guys who have been told they can't ever be sensitive or feel anything other than anger and the desire to dominate the competition.

It is, in effect, Redditor: Badlands.

This week's After School Club: Predator: Killer of Killers

Next week: Spider-Man: Brand New Day

[School of Movies 2026]

I did not expect to be proudest of this third show on the Pirates Trilogy. While the first was spent delving into the rich details of the many factors that made it a classic as well as an instant success (the two are not always the same thing) and the second was spent finding where the good movie was, hidden between the hindrances of pacing and focus issues.

But this third one was revalatory. At World's End always frustrated me deeply, by amplifying all of the problems of the previous two, delivering convolution and dropped threads at the point when things need to be at their most emotionally clear, and drowning the climax in a maelstrom of crowd-pleasing VFX.

But through this episode and talking with Sharon, Maya and Brendan I was able to actually find the meaning in this ending that the filmmakers either through lack of preparation or lack of courage to deliver a tragedy with the most expensive film ever (hey, it worked out for Titanic) told a story about the passing of an age without an ending. There is no end to a world where there's always more booty to be had.

Alex's Audiodrama: Panther Soul on Bandcamp

Maya's Book: Realm of Kings on Amazon

Guests:

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Souris @Mayasantandrea

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Make Me Watch It

This week's After School Club: The Lone Ranger

Next week: Predator Badlands

[School of Movies 2026]

The original trio of Gore Verbinski Pirates films have become sacred cows to millennial movie commentators on YouTube, spoken of in hushed tones alongside the likes of The Prequel Trilogy and Shrek. Back when I was in my twenties, I absolutely loved that first one and had a great time at the second, it was only the third (one of the first films we reviewed in the early days of Digital Cowboys) that threw me for a loop.

What we've done here, following our effusive 2025 show on Curse of the Black Pearl is reconvene with Maya and Brendan, and in some cases go back for only a second viewing of that second movie, to watch with contemporary eyes that have seen a thousand VFX extravaganzas in the two decades since.

This was a mammoth undertaking for the filmmakers, and in this week's show and next week's we zero in on where the film's strengths are still seaworthy, and where they sink like a stone.

Alex's Audiodrama: Panther Soul on Bandcamp

Maya's Book: Realm of Kings on Amazon

Guests:

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Souris @Mayasantandrea

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Make Me Watch It

This week's After School Club: Cutthroat Island

Next week: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

[School of Movies 2025]

NOTE: This episode was originally released in 2025, a year before we covered the sequels in 2026.

An extremely long-awaited show on a game-changer of a blockbuster movie.

The first Pirates film, released in 2003 before Lord of the Rings had completed brought the world many things: A fantabulous extravaganza of practical effects, combined with a surprisingly light smattering of digital VFX that would be leaned into a lot harder later down the line, The notion that the swashbuckler could still do big business (the hidden caveat was that Johnny Depp being strange absolutely must be present) Keira Knightley as a leading lady, Gore Verbinski as a major director, the supposition that audiences would flock to cinematic adaptations of Disney park rides (they won't, just this one. See above regarding Johnny Depp) and Geoffrey Rush as an all-time iconic big-screen presence embodying the most consistently enjoyable pirate of all time.

But there's more going on, beneath the frothing surface, a fantastically witty, urbane and efficient script by Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, one of the greatest scores ever composed (in a shockingly short amount of time) and Orlando Bloom's character actually being quite good, especially when held against Jack Davenport's Lawful Neutral Commodore James Norrington.

This was a commission for Lincoln Alpern and features clips from the best audiodrama I've ever composed; Panther Soul, and the first chapter of the brand new Dracula adaptation Castle of the Moon.

Guests:

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Souris @Mayasantandrea

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Make Me Watch It

[School of Everything Else 2026]

This is a commissioned show for AJ. We recorded it several months ago, but banked it until the long-awaited release of Christopher Nolan's Odyssey. It is an independent, serialised concept musical, released across nine digital EPs from December 2022 through to December 2024 by Jorge Rivera-Herrans (who also plays Odysseus, amongst others).

And this took a certain portion of the Internet by storm, garnering fan projects to animate each of the songs, all of which you can find assembled here in one 2h 22m work of collaborative passion made on one iota the budget of Nolan's IMAX titan.

Willow showed this to us on Christmas day and the music and handling of the many characters really stuck with us. This is the most excited I've been about a musical since Hamilton and the original Moana.

Statistically, almost none of you have heard this, so we specifically crafted this show to introduce what Jorge and company achieved here and hopefully get a bunch of new people with these catchy-ass songs bouncing round their heads. This is DreamWorks' Prince of Egypt and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas to Ridley Scott's Exodus: Gods & Kings and his Robin Hood.

This week's After School Club: Ulysses 31

Next week: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

[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 this, reading the source book, 'Woman of Tomorrow' by Tom King & Bilquis Evely, which itself draws structural and thematic inspiration from specifically the Coen Brothers adaptation of True Grit by Charles Portis. What we are able to do is outline clearly where the film differs from the book and where the book differs from both film and original book to create this turducken of revenge.

This episode is totally worth listening to, even if you haven't seen this box office bomb that everyone we talk to seems to like and everyone we don't know personally seems to despise.

This week's After School Club: Aquaman 2: The Lost City

Next week: EPIC: The Musical

[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 even video games) and their role in drawing modern children's attention away from their traditional toys. This felt like it was a long time coming and (especially after covering WALL-E for MA.I.) I had built up in my head a hard-hitting critique of not only losing our kids to glowing screens, but losing ourselves.

And from the glowing critical acclaim this has received across the board (92% freshness and 95% audience score) I appear to be wildly out of step with contemporary critics and cinemagoers. I have... some things to say.

This week's After School Club: Toy Story Shorts

Next week: Supergirl (2026)

[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 alongside Andy.

Many years have gone by, and what was always a temptation was breaking that world back open and making more movies at the potential cost of outraging Disney fans (something that seems easier each year, despite making billions from mediocre remakes and sequels). The artists and creators at Pixar maintained that this would only go ahead if there was a phenomenally good hook for the story, and in 2019 they presented us with this.

This is the first time Sharon gets to talk about Toy Story, as she wasn't the host back then. This one wound up being her favourite of the first four!

This week's After School Club: Blacksad

Next Week: Toy Story 5