Two Reel Cinema Club

Okay. That’s it. I might just have to give up watching films from the 1980s. It’s a shame, but they’re just too damn weird.

I’d never seen 1987’s Adventures in Babysitting before this week. It’s the directing debut of Chris Columbus, and it’s true that the basic shape of the film is good. Elizabeth Shue is Chris, a seventeen year old baby sitter looking after an eight year old, until she gets a call from her best friend pleading to be picked up from the bus station in downtown Chicago. So the eight year old has to come along for the ride, and so do her 15 year old brother and his buddy. But then they burst a tyre on the way, and a cascade of bad luck sees them kidnapped by criminals, escaping and being pursued across the city. All good family fun. And to be fair, there were quite a few moments when I laughed out loud…

… but. Oooh but. The uncomplicated family fun stops pretty early in the film, pushed off screen by a long parade of weird sexual stuff and straightforward racism. Ah.

Playboy is all over this film, so omnipresent that it must surely have been a paid-for product placement. One of the boys has a copy of the magazine with him, and points out that the centrefold model looks like Chris; then the criminal masterminds have written notes on their car theft conspiracy all over another copy of the magazine, which one of the boys steals and hides in the eight year old’s backpack. They go to a frat house party, where one of the party goers has brought a copy of the magazine along (what?!) and tries to get Chris to autograph it; they go to a high class, fancy restaurant, which has a huge poster advertising Playboy right outside, making the doorman do a double take. It’s relentless. Who thought Playboy was an appropriate product placement for a family-ish comedy?! The 80s, that’s who.

The uncomfortable sex stuff doesn’t end there, either. What about the seventeen year old street walker played as a throwaway gag? Or the fifteen year old seducing an adult student at the frat party? Or Chris’ friend from the bus station being sexually assaulted in the car as she sleeps? Oh dear.

And you remember I mentioned the racism? Oof. People of colour in this film are there to be scary. That’s it. The kids get in a car to escape a shooting, only to find it’s being driven by a BLACK MAN!! Everyone screams. They run away from the bad guys, only to find themselves in a blues club where all the patrons are BLACK!! Oh my God!

Oh, and even people with disabilities are in the firing line, too, as the kindly tow-truck driver who picks them up has a hook shaped prosthetic hand that’s played for horror and/or laughs. That’s nice.

So I give up. I don’t remember the 80s being like this, but I think they were. We have proof. Might be better to back away now before anyone else gets hurt…

Avatar The Way of Water is dominating screens all over the world, closing in on two billion dollars at the box office as we record. But it’s not the first time James Cameron has been on a diving holiday – and we’re not talking about Titanic, either. 1989 sci-fi swimathon The Abyss was the superstar director’s first foray into the water (Piranha II doesn’t count), and although it flopped at the time, it has a great deal in common with his new, all conquering CGI epic. We submerge ourselves in the two films, and return to the surface with questions. Which film features 1960s dad? Which film relishes the darkness? And which of the two could really do with a few more jokes? Plus we play a new movie game and watch half of Glass Onion. Only half, mind you.

We’ve been doing this podcast for a whole year now, and we’ve seen some astonishing and remarkable movies. We’ve seen some dreadful clunkers, too. So join us for our inaugural award ceremony, celebrating the best of the best in six categories, while not forgetting the awful films, which get an award all of their own.

There’s a whole channel of Christmas movies now, a whole channel! Why? This episode at the popcorn counter we ask how come there seems to be such a wealth of Christmas movies, but not nearly so many Easter movies or Thanksgiving movies or Harvest Festival movies. And seeing as there is such a glut, we single out some of our favourites to give you a bit of a guide to the best of Yuletide watching.

It’s that time of year again, when Christmas movies come to our screens thick and fast. But do either of those adjectives describe the new Amazon original, UK-based, rom-com feature Your Christmas or Mine? And how does it compare to the eternal yuletide classic It’s a Wonderful Life? We examine both films in depth, including a look at the writing process and the challenges of creating a good ‘bottle episode’. Which film features Elon Musk in disguise? Which film has the Cliche Squad working overtime? And does the differing way these films discuss race and class suggest any social change in the last eighty years?

We’ve got it bad, got it bad, got it bad at the popcorn counter this episode. Teachers appear in so many films, but how often do they get it right? What does Matthew Broderick do to convince us he knows what real teaching is like? And has anyone in the US ever heard of Grange Hill?

Imagine asking Isaac Asimov or Arthur C Clarke sixty years ago what their most optimistic vision of humankind’s future might look like. Perhaps they would have suggested a utopia where robots and computers do all the menial jobs leaving humans to concentrate on pursuits like art and writing.

Cleverly we seem to be working on the exact opposite.

I’ve read plenty of stories this year about working conditions at Amazon and Tesla, and about clothes and phones made in sweatshops. Workers rights are eroded as capitalism continues to accrue power and a cost of living crisis gathers pace. People visit food banks in growing numbers while many worry about how they will pay to heat their homes.

Computers on the other hand have been having a great year. They’ve been learning to paint and experimenting with creative photography. They’ve been working on their novel, too, and enjoying driving lessons. Some have been doing a bit of shooting. And with all these new skills they’re looking forward to well paid jobs in the near future. So, good for them.

My obvious question – within the remit of the Two Reel Cinema Club – is: what does this mean for screenwriting?

So all around AI wag Guy Parsons has apparently ‘written’ a film treatment using ChatGPT. (I accidentally typed ‘Chat Git’ there the first time round. Should have left it.) Having just read the treatment, I can confirm that I’ve definitely heard real pitches for films far worse than this. In fact I’ve seen real, finished movies that are worse than this.

Critics of AI will tell you that ChatGPT cannot make anything original. It simply takes elements of what it’s been fed and spits them back out in a new configuration.

But then critics of commercial cinema will tell you the same thing.

Once the computers become competent at writing screenplays (it won’t be long) the question will no longer be, ‘Can it be done?’ And we seem already to be beyond the question, ‘Should it be done?’

Instead, the question will be, ‘Why do we make films at all?’

So … why do we make films? If the answer is only ‘to make money’, then we the screenwriters may be doomed. Soon computers will be able to write novel-seeming stories that are structurally satisfying, airtight and consistent, superficially surprising, and commercially viable. And … maybe that’s fine. Maybe that’s enough.

But if we can decide that the process is an important part of the output, that the act of film-making, of writing and creation has value beyond its efficiency at turning a profit, maybe we’ll still have a chance.

Who wants to take that bet, though?

We’re travelling through time this episode, back to the podcast we missed last summer, and back to school. Acclaimed Scottish 90s teenager doc My Old School has arrived on streaming platforms, meaning we can at last watch it and draw parallels with Ken Loach’s 1969 classic Kes. Two films about struggling youths, one doing everything he can to escape his oppressive life, the other doing everything he can to turn back the clock and live it all again. But how differently do the two films portray education? And which of the two contains the finest football scene in all of cinema?

Haven’t we been here before? We bump into screenwriter Inês Braga at the popcorn counter this episode, where we talk about that rarest of beasts, the sequel that’s not equal: second films that are better than the first film. Yes, they exist! We nominate some of our favourites, mention a few sequels that went totally off the rails, and invent a new word, before finally getting some insight into Inês’ current hit television show ‘Santiago’ and her thoughts about her own sequel.

It’s no secret we have a soft spot for Tom Cruise at the Two Reel Cinema Club. But somehow I’d never seen American Made (2017), Doug Liman’s drug-running-small-plane picture, until this week.

Imagine you really loved the final 45 minutes of Goodfellas, loved it so much you wanted to turn it into a whole feature film. And you also loved planes. Well that’s American Made. Tom Cruise is Barry Seal, a TWA pilot who becomes a smuggler bringing drugs to the US and guns to Nicaragua until he gets in over his head.

It’s entertaining, I cannot deny it, although the exuberant editing and 80s-video-footage-intercuts get a little wearing after a while. Great soundtrack, too.

But what makes the film stand out is that Tom Cruise plays the central character as an idiot. Barry the risk-taking pilot and all around action man is really very stupid. He’s aways making bad decisions, misreading the room and getting it wrong. He agrees to take off from the cartel’s way-too-short runway and ends up crashing into a tree, only making it airborne through dumb luck. He digs a hole to hide a huge bag of cash only to find he’s already buried a bag of cash in that same patch of ground. And the film revels in his idiocy, serving us shots of Tom’s uncomprehending face so close up that you can almost hear the sound of gears clicking into place, or failing to mesh and coming apart. He is a Beavis and Butthead grade of moron but with a pilot’s license, and it’s great fun to see the normally cool, resourceful and hyper-competent Cruise play a dunce.

But… now that I’ve watched Tom play against type, I’ve come to realise that a lot of Tom Cruise’s characters are idiots. I mean a LOT.

Maverick? Cocky and an excellent pilot, yes, but also an idiot. Just look at his face when Penny’s daughter catches him sneaking out of her mother’s bedroom in Top Gun: Maverick.

Risky Business? Kid starts a brothel in his parents’ house and loses control over the situation. What an idiot.

Magnolia? Tom plays Frank, the motivational speaker and pick up artist, and that guy’s clearly an idiot.

War of the Worlds? Tom can’t even make a sandwich properly. What does that make him?

If you’ve seen Tropic Thunder you’ll know that Cruise is a very skilful comic actor. But it’s a surprise to discover that he’s been doing comic roles for years and years and I never noticed. (Maybe that makes me the idiot in this case…)