[School of Movies 2026]

Our month of movies about A.I. continues, this time with something everybody loves. And WALL-E is in fact pulling double duty on this one, because we get a heartwarming story about robots who fall in love despite their differing classes and stations, and having to defy their employees in order to not only be happy but bring Earth back to life again...

AND we get an unexpected sledgehammer of a glimpse into the future from 2008. It was as though Andrew Stanton and Pixar saw how easily Social Media would take hold of us as a species, and cater to our every dopamine whim in order to keep our attention, as we sacrificed everything about ourselves for the sake of convenience, including but not limited to complacency over ecological disaster. This movie is a masterpiece, and has become chillingly, shockingly more relevent with every year.

This Week's After School Club: Weird Science

Next Week's Main Event: Ex-Machina & HER

[School of Movies 2026]

This is the beginning of a month-long project on films exploring humanity's relationship with Artificial Intelligence. We will take you from early estimations that veer between cautionary tales and deluded fantasies about what computers could do in the 80s through to robotics and the potential for a soul inside of a machine, and onward to the effect of Social Media and algorythimic learning upon unprepared 21st Century phone-owners. Some of the films are terrible, some are stupid, some are intriguing and a few are brilliant!

Welcome to MA.I.

We begin with cold war paranoia and the pitfalls of handing over total control of our nuclear arsenals to unstable mechanical systems with WarGames from 1983 and Colossus: The Forbin Project from 1970.

After that, a film that presents the world's first digital actor with S1M0NE, although as you'll find out, this isn't simply the recent Hollywood anxiety over artificial people being given work over real ones, this nightmare is so much worse!

Next Week: WALL-E

[School of Movies 2026]

This is a commissioned episode for Toby Skeels-Jungius and Chris Finik. It also happens to be our second show in a row about a bunch of stunningly animated ninja teens who are taught their skills by Jackie Chan, deal with both High School and abiding Daddy issues and wind up having to defend a metropolitan city from a Kaiju attack, thus proving their worth in the process, to the people, to their immediate family, and to themselves.

Mutant Mayhem is in fact the TENTH Ninja Turtles movie, and it's up there with the very best of what has come before. On this show we recruit Willow who finally gets to talk about their favourite brothers, as we look back on creative choices of previous incarnations and what this one does to set itself apart. And while you could superficially say it has Spider-Verse animation, we hope that how we articulate the distinction gives you folks a clearer idea of what I'm terming ''Asymmetrical, Impressionist Graffiti'.

Next week we begin a month-long project focusing on movies with the theme of Artificial Intelligence.