Two Reel Cinema Club

You’re welcome to join us at the Popcorn Counter this episode, but speak up because we’ve got our noise cancelling headphones on. (You know, the ones for dogs, remember?) We’ve been listening to a few rival pods while we wait for the popcorn machine to warm up, but which would we sincerely recommend? What are the podcasts that make it into our subscriptions, and when do we find time to listen to them? And do we ever think about any...

Is it term time already? It must be, because we’re heading back to school again, this time comparing the new, Oscar-nominated German drama The Teachers’ Lounge with 1967’s scholastic classic, To Sir With Love. There are so many elements in common here that you have to ask if someone’s been copying their homework: outsider teachers, rebellious pupils, racism in the classroom, and scarily self confident teenagers. But which film has ...

Please be seated, the Court of the Popcorn Counter is now in session. We’re hosting a constitutional controversy of our own this episode, as we accuse Legal Dramas of the crime of being a bit boring and fundamentally uncinematic. And in true legal tradition, we flipped a coin beforehand to decide which one of us was going to prosecute and which defend. (Like so many movie lawyers, you can tell we’re only in it for the money.) Which...

It’s double anatomy at the Two Reel Cinema Club this episode, as we catch up on the last of the Oscar nominees with Anatomy of a Fall, the French courtroom drama that ended up with the Best Screenplay Academy Award this year. It’s a bloody and nuanced multilingual piece with a couple of dynamite performances, but is it possible that not quite enough happens? We’re comparing it to the 1959 Otto Preminger picture Anatomy of a Murder,...

Join us at the Popcorn Counter this episode for some late-to-the-party Oscars chat. Which nominated film was hit with plagiarism claims? Which film was like getting struck by a steamroller? What exactly is Barbie ‘adapted’ from? When is sound crucial? What are short films actually for? And how much controversy can we generate over the pronunciation of the word ‘controversy’?

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Again? Seriously? Yes, welcome to our third podcast in a row to feature Nazis. These guys will just not go away. This episode we have watched the new Ava DuVernay docudrama Origin, and read the book it’s based on - Isabel Wilkerson’s non-fiction best seller Caste. We’re comparing it to what may be the first ever cinematic epic, 1915’s silent KKK movie Birth of a Nation. There’s a lot of highly emotional material here about the hist...

Join us at the Popcorn Counter this week as we ask: why are Nazis such commonly used villains in movies? Films and shows discussed include Hogan’s Heroes, Indiana Jones, Schindler’s List, Star Wars, Starship Troopers, Saving Private Ryan, The Producers, Das Schreckliche Mädchen, Germany Year Zero, and They Saved Hitler’s Brain. Give yourself a bonus mark if you can guess which of those films has the lowest Rotten Tomatoes rating…

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Oh, dear, what have we gotten ourselves into this episode? Join us for a look at some of the most evil people in history as we watch the new Oscar nominated Auschwitz movie The Zone of Interest and compare it to the Nazis' own 1935 propaganda epic, Triumph of the Will. Light hearted fun is in short supply this time round, but we still manage to challenge evil with ridicule as we ask who exactly paid for all those jackboots? Which f...

Sometimes at the Popcorn Counter we just go off on one. We have no idea how it happens, we try to plan these things out, but there it is. So join us this week for a high speed tour that takes in intermittent fasting, mind reading, Woody Allen, feral cats, raccoon families, French cinema’s tribute to the animal kingdom, the financial performance of canine movies and a lengthy guest appearance from Kiki the dog. Plus Mishima, Adaptat...

We enjoy a clever and ironical look at black cinema this episode as we watch the hilarious and heartfelt Oscar-nominated feature American Fiction, and then compare it to the 1961 Chicago drama A Raisin in the Sun. Plus we see the return of the Two Reel Book Club, as we’ve also read the book and the play that gave birth to each film. But how do the two films differ in their explorations of racism? Which film could have made life eve...

As George W Bush famously once asked, ‘Is our children learning?’ Join us in the specially commissioned TRCC Popcorn Counter Lecture Theatre as we celebrate our 100th episode. There we try to distill the lessons we’ve garnered from recording two years of podcasts into ten condensed nuggets of insight. Has all that viewing and talking about films made us any wiser, or just hoarser? Can we apply the intelligence of George Orwell to t...

After watching Dogtooth recently, we’re convinced that endings are hard. Or are they? Join us at the Popcorn Counter as we take a look at movie endings good and bad from the history of cinema, Including: John Sayles’ Limbo, Birdman, The Long Good Friday, North by Northwest, Planet of the Apes, Fight Club, Top Gun Maverick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Libertine. (…How do you like us now?)

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A new Hayao Miyazaki film from Studio Ghibli has appeared! The Boy and the Heron is the master animator’s first feature length work in more than ten years, and on this week’s episode we dive deep into its mysterious, dreamlike world and measure it up against what might be the studio’s greatest feature, 1988’s My Neighbour Totoro. It’s no great surprise to find a lot of common ground here, with both films examining magic, love, fear...

How many times has Frankenstein been made into a movie? More times than we remember, it turns out. There’s Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein 2, yes, yes, yes. But what about Robocop? The Fly? The Six Million Dollar Man? Even one of our own scripts was a Frankenstein story. What does Frankenstein have in common with socialism? And what connects Mary Shelley to Philip K Dick? Join us at th...

What happens when you put the brain of a baby in the body of an adult woman? You get Sexy Frankenstein, apparently. At least that’s the opinion of the new Yorgos Lanthimos picture Poor Things starring Emma Stone, which is out in the UK this week. We’re comparing it to Lanthimos’ 2009 feature, Dogtooth, which first brought him to international prominence. And it turns out there’s plenty of common ground between these two curious, vi...

Ines Braga hangs out at the Popcorn Counter with us this week, where she confesses that she really doesn’t like musicals. But there are a few notable exceptions, including last week’s masterpiece West Side Story. Is there a rule that distinguishes good movie musicals from bad ones? Why do The Lion King, Frozen and Moana succeed where others do not? Is it possible to go wrong when you have the Beatles catalogue to draw from? And how...

Tonight, tonight, we’re joined by screenwriter Ines Braga to sing a song of two musical pictures, the new Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, helmed by A Star is Born director Bradley Cooper, and Bernstein’s own 1961 masterpiece, West Side Story. They’re both very enjoyable, but which one has more to say about contemporary la la la la la l’America? Which one paints the most vivid picture of toxic masculinity? Which one can’t quite de...

It’s the show we’ve been anticipating for the last twelve months, the Two Reel Cinema Club Film of the Year Show. We’ve seen some masterpieces this year, we’ve seen some real clunkers, we’ve seen some incredible performances and we’ve seen some very eye catching hats. Who will win, who will get a dishonourable mention, and who will leave the ceremony emotional, drunk and bitter as their personal security staff roll them into the ba...

Happy Holidays from the Two Reel Cinema Club, as we watch one of the funniest, dourest and most heartfelt Christmas films we’ve seen in years, Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. We discover it perched under the mistletoe kissing a film forty years its senior, 1983’s English private school drama Another Country. These two films both examine privilege, wealth and class, while simultaneously exploring the depths of the human heart. But ...