Author: James Ruzicka

Welcome to the ‘urban planning’ section of the podcast, as we meet at the popcorn counter this week and talk about why the inner city gets such a bad rep in cinema. Who is London’s most famous inner city resident? What does ‘NF’ stand for in the world of Shane Meadow’s ‘This is England’? And […]

We return to school again this episode, spending a semester with new Argentine Netflix feature The Substitute, before graduating to a course with 2008 Palme d’Or-winning French drama La Classe. Both films examine the challenges of inner city schooling, but while The Substitute makes teaching look like a Sicario spin off, La Classe is more […]

Listen to us get completely out of our depth in tonight’s episode, discussing our encounters with LGBTQ cinema over the years, and its role in advancing social change. Which is our favourite date movie? Who is the Countess von Bismark? Where does Al Pacino fit in? And what happens when you write the words ‘there […]

(Let’s start with a content warning, as this episode’s films contain scenes of extreme violence, self harm and suicide.) If you’re happy to continue, join us as we watch two films about the many forms of love this time: new Belgian drama Close and 1999’s classic Boys Don’t Cry. They form a great double bill, […]

Join us as we hide in a little bubble of nostalgia at the popcorn counter this week. Before AI and chatbots, before Netflix and YouTube, before dvd, there was VHS. We explain why we think those chunky cassettes might possibly have been the most important thing to happen to cinema ever, both for film viewers […]

You can’t move for blog posts and YouTube videos about ChatGPT at the moment, but what is it going to mean for working writers? Will AI help us, giving every writer a patient editor and a sympathetic sounding board to ease them through the painful development process? Or will it steal all the jobs and […]

We’ve seen the future in this episode’s films, and frankly it doesn’t look like a place we’d want to visit. Netflix’s new Hong Kong Chinese sci-fi action movie Warriors of Future paints a bleak picture of the rest of the 21st century, with killer plants, killer robots, killer air pollution and killer civil engineers to […]

Back in the 80s, when we were naive enough to think that the song ‘White Lines’ was a road safety anthem, cocaine was a big thing in movies – and not a small thing in the movie industry. Join us in a cramped toilet cubicle for a few snorts of our favourite cocaine films, including […]

We take a hike in the wilderness for this week’s episode, and find ourselves shimmying up a tree at speed in the hope of avoiding the worst of Cocaine Bear, the not-so-impressive new comedy horror from the Lord and Miller stable. Then once we’re in a position of safety we take our time with Werner […]

We get stuck in a phone booth on the way to the popcorn counter this episode. (Do they still even exist?) Mobile telephony has ruined a lot of plots since about 1999, and smart phones have spoiled even more since 2007, but on the other hand there have been some great telephone scenes in cinema. […]