Author: James Ruzicka

Join us in the Eighteenth Century this episode as we compare the new Ridley Scott feature Napoleon with its 1975 forefather, Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon. It’s an explosion of candlelight and costume design, huge battles and intimate character moments. But it does make us wonder: why is the French Language no longer the Lingua Franca […]

Persepolis, Watchmen, Ghost World, American Splendor, Akira, Gemma Bovary… can you see the pattern yet? After watching David Fincher’s The Killer last week, we look at films that have been adapted from graphic novels. Which ones work, and which ones don’t? And what’s the common factor that makes a good adaptation? Plus, we talk about […]

Two films, two assassins, and two hundred thousand bullets this episode, as we watch the new David Fincher film The Killer and compare it to John Woo’s 1989 breakout Hong Kong action spectacular The Killer. There’s no denying the technical craft on display here, but while there’s a lot of bloodshed is there perhaps a […]

It’s not just a feeling in your bladder, it’s actually true. Films really are getting longer. After struggling with the length of Killers of the Flower Moon last week, we analyse a few statistics about how film length has changed in the last forty years. Is it to do with length of a VHS tape? […]

We take two dark journeys into the American West in this episode as we watch the new Martin Scorsese picture Killers of the Flower Moon, and compare it to Sergio Leone’s 1969 classic Once Upon a Time in the West. It’s an epic total of six hours of gunshots, dirt, crime, money, corruption and revenge, […]

After watching Sliding Doors and Past Lives the other week, you find us writing our own romcom at the Popcorn Counter this episode. We ask ourselves: how many tropes can we squeeze into one pitch? The answer seems to be all of them, as we fold mismatched undercover cops, crazy best friends, a high stakes […]

Watching Blackberry last week made us wonder how many hours of cinema are watched on a tiny, pocket-sized smartphone screen these days. Now that many of us have a fifty five inch OLED at home, are the days of cinema numbered? What will become of the experience of watching a movie in a big, dark […]

We get down to business at the Two Reel Cinema Club this episode, as we watch the very entertaining new Canadian comedy-drama Blackberry, which explores the multi-billion-dollar early days of the smartphone, and compare it to Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007 masterpiece There Will Be Blood. They’re two stories about big money, separated by a century, […]

Money is all we can think about at the popcorn counter this week, after watching two films about money last week. What are our top five financial films of all time? And can we answer five trivia questions about the insanity of film financing? What film made the most money, who got the biggest payday […]

We’re losing money hand over fist in this week’s episode. Or maybe making money? Or buying… um… options? We have no idea what we’re doing to be honest, but neither do many of the protagonists in this week’s films. Dumb Money, from the director of Cruella, is the first film we’ve ever seen that’s based […]