School of Movies

[School of Movies 2026]

As we perform a shutdown on MA.I. with a rousing singalong of 'Daisy Bell', we get to one of the least-seen-yet-best of the whole bunch. 2025s Companion seems to have had a hard time really hooking audiences in. "What, it's about a killer robot or something, but she looks like a cute girl." No, that's M.3.G.A.N. and that little brat poisoned the well for this absolute beauty, TWICE with her TikTok dancing and nothing below the surface!

Companion is following in the eerily perfect footsteps of The Stepford Wives (the savagely satirical 1975 original, not the embarrassing Nicole Kidman remake). It's about autonomy and escape from exploitation. It's hilarious and inventive and touchingly sad, and frightening and exhilarating, visually striking, and Sophie Thatcher -especially following her turn in Heretic (2024)- is absolutely one to watch in modern-day thrillers.

We take you through the film scene by scene, knowing full well that very few of you will have seen it. So we suggest you listen along until you're desperate to watch it for yourself and find out how it ends.

[School of Movies 2026]

The main event Electric State episode was recorded at the start of the year with Willow, a powder-keg, ready to go thermonuclear. We decided to include it in MA.I. as it is absolutely thematically relevent. What we have here is an adaptation of a haunting 2018 art book by Simon Stålenhag depicting an alternate 1997 where mankind has slowly descended into an advertising-plastered corporate Matrix. A teenage girl and her robot companion travel America while she recounts their story in dreamlike prose, accompanied by unsettling imagery of people who have become trapped in Virtual reality while mechanical behemoths stalk the land.

The 2025 Netflix version is the most repugnant, empty $320m blockbuster bastardisation of elegant art we have ever seen, and it is all the worse coming from directors the Russo Brothers, Marcus & McFeely, the superstar writing team that made the MCU great, the legendary Alan Silvestri composing, even Jeffrey Ford, the editor of Captain America: The First Avenger, The Winter Soldier and Civil War and Iron Man 3, AND The Avengers, and Age of Ultron and Infinity War and Endgame. Basically almost everyone at the top of the production team is coming back for Doomsday and Secret Wars. What the hell happened?

Following that nightmare we have Ron's Gone Wrong, a much more compassionate little 2021 animated movie about another kid with another robot, but this one takes the opposite approach of highlighting how frighteningly easy it is to become trapped by 24/7 performative self-presentation on Social Media. Nowhere near enough people saw it, and we're hoping to get a few of you to change that. By that same token, absolutely everyone is advised to watch the criminally underseen gem that concludes MA.I. next week... Companion.

The Curious Archive video: The Breathtaking Horror of The Electric State

There is a much better adaptation of Stålenhag's art that we are currently watching; a streaming monoseries named Tales from the Loop (2020). It is quiet and unsettling and patient. 

This weekend's After School Club: Upgrade & I Am Mother

And Next Week's Main Event again: Companion

[School of Movies 2026]

MA.I. continues, and here we're getting into relationships between humans and Artificial Intelligence with two stories about two lonely men who find an intense connection with a computer lady and have to live with the consequences.

Alex Garland's Ex Machina (2014) explores the cold province of a Tech billionaire genius who wants to cerate a robot woman so convincing that men cannot tell the difference. Spike Jonze's HER (2013) brings us to an alternate reality where everything seems to be going okay with the world, it's a cosy and warm, comfortable and intelligent place to be... and yet we're still isolated from one another, still frustrated and looking for someone, unable to let go of our past mistakes. Then a company launches Operating Systems that will help us with our daily organisation, but also happen to be personable and inquisitive. This might actually not end in disaster...

We conclude with a bone-chilling look at a real life lady who is obsessed with her real life A.I. chatbot. You will wish you lived in the Spike Jonze reality.

This weekend's After School Club: Short Circuit 1 & 2 and D.A.R.Y.L.

And Next Week's Main Event: The Electric State & Ron's Gone Wrong

[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