School of Movies

[School of Movies 2021] Militarized slaves are sent to an island to clean up a violent mess with plausible deniability. An instant hit with both audiences and critics on release, this 2021 film is the realization of the John Ostrander-era of the Suicide Squad/Task Force X concept that actually first appeared as far back as 1959 (prior to Marvel's Silver Age of The Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and Th...

[School of Movies 2021] By far and away Warner's highest grossing superhero film of the DCEU so far*, this one had the global market sewn up with a dazzling, epic ocean-hopping fantasy quest. Dismissed as 'dumb' by the critics, Aquaman is nonetheless one of my very favourite superhero films, and on today's show we go into detail as to the thriving ecosystem that exists just under the surface.  The...

[School of Movies 2021] Our Summer season of DC spotlighting reaches Captain Marvel. This was a big change for the recent movies, eschewing the epic scale of gods among humans and focusing on a regular kid imbued with the power of the gods. Part 1980s coming of age movie, part found-family drama, part weirdly disturbing villain origin. And unlike most other superhero movies this one has an unusual...

[School of Movies 2021] One of our very favourite DC universe movies, added to the towering collection of three dozen shows we've covered in the past (and yes I do list all of them). Criminally underviewed and undervalued, and launched mere weeks before lockdown began in early 2020, this is a crazed cult crime caper for the ages. A collection of disparate, separate, embattled women all find that t...

[School of Everything Else 2021] A time-bending, space-bending, reality-bending miniseries about an unrepentant villain who did a colonialism on account of his upbringing in a society that was founded on precisely this principle. And an introduction to yet another Marvel leading lady who has been kidnapped, gaslit and abused for most of her existence and definitely deserves better.  Loki has been...

[School of Movies 2021] Two years have passed since we were last in the cinema watching a Marvel movie. It feels like an astonishing amount of time, and a lot of you folks will have watched on Disney+  This one has been a long time coming, kicking off Phase 4, despite the core concept of Natasha Romanoff's solo outing being ideally placed in Phase 1, prior to Avengers (perhaps instead of Iron Man...

[School of Movies 2021] A movie nobody has seen, but we want to tell you about. A movie that was barely released in the cinema, on VHS, DVD and now Blu Ray. A movie unavailable to legitimately stream anywhere. A movie about a pirate radio station speaking truth to power and making silenced voices heard.  This one came out in 1990, it's directed by Allan Moyle who was behind Times Square (1980) and...

[School of Movies 2021] This might be the worst superhero ever. Not the movie, I'm sure there are a bunch out there more poorly constructed. Some of the sets and costumes and Jerry Goldsmith's score are great. I'm talking about The Shadow himself, especially now, and especially to me personally. Welcome to a post--Burton-Batman world that might be the 1920s, 30s or 40s. A gangster-laden New York p...

[School of Movies 2021] Back in 2014 we began a journey through the many movies of the Planet of the Apes franchise. We began with the original quintet made in the late 60s through the 70s. Three of those are pretty great, two of them are meandering and lose the thread of what the simian analogy was getting at in the first place. After that we covered Tim Burton's mess of a blockbuster which ruine...

[Digital Drift 2014] Continuing the story of Caesar and his new tribe of intelligent, simian compatriots we rejoin earth ten years after the close of the last picture. It is a quiet, overgrown world of dilapidated buildings being reclaimed by nature, separated pockets of humanity scrabbling to survive and one group of apes living in peaceful seclusion in the redwoods close to San Francisco. We acc...

[Digital Drift 2014] Ten years after the Burton version surfaced, spluttered and sank, this came out of seemingly nowhere, surprising everyone. Set up as an alternate prequel to the premise of the original 1968 Planet of the Apes, Rise answered the question of “How could this actually happen?”. In marketing terms it serves as a reboot, beginning its own new series which then branched off from the...

[School of Movies 2021] NOTE: War for the Planet of the Apes will be released next week, along with the archived episodes on Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.  Four 12-year-old boys on a hot Labor Day weekend in 1959 walk from their small town of Castle Rock to find and report the body of a young man hit by a train. What follows is a touching drama about the betrayal of the adult world, and...

[School of Movies 2021] The second cinematic adaptation of the 1934 mystery by Agatha Christie. When this first emerged in 2017 there was a bit of a sniffy outcry from the press. Why does it even exist? Why re-adapt a book that already had a 1974 film by Sidney Lumet and was a key episode of the David Suchet serials? Since the long-running British TV show and the 40+ year-old movie exist, that sho...

A fresh collaboration that School of Movies is involved with.  This notification is also going out across The New Century Multiverse and Patreon.  Come on over and join us in the Discord chat.  https://www.firesidealliance.com/

[School of Movies 2021] This one was recorded a long while ago. It's pretty extreme and not for the squeamish. A serial killer thriller from the year 2000 with the customary sub-genre-ingrained fixation on stomach-churning detail.  Where it strays more into our wheelhouse is that the plot revolves around a social worker who dives into people's minds and wanders around looking for clues. This drove...

[School of Everything Else 2021] This show was recorded a long, long time ago, pre-pandemic, and has been in cryo-storage, waiting to be unleashed. It's all about the 1998 seminal classic, Metal Gear Solid by visionary, genius, dirty old gimmer and maddening eccentric Hideo Kojima. It was an absolute linchpin of my formative years in gaming, and to my mind has only been bettered in the rest of its...

[School of Movies 2021] Richard Curtis has only directed three films in his career. Usually he relegates himself to writing and producer roles, and you can always tell when you're watching one of his movies. Certain recurring character types and themes keep re-emerging. The first directed was Love Actually, the second The Boat That Rocked, but this third and reputedly final effort is genuinely a c...

[School of Everything Else 2021] This show was recorded back in 2020 not too long after the remake of the 1999 game was released, so there will be speculation regarding which direction Capcom will take the series, rather than a focus on Resident Evil VIII (which at the time of release was launched just days ago). This was to Resident Evil 3 (the sequel to one of my favourite games of the 1990s) in...

[School of Everything Else 2021] Marvel's second TV show directly tying in with the MCU. What are we calling this now? As I write these words cinema is in a chrysalis, having gone to hide in there the moment James Bond looked like he might get another mission. And yet Falcon as a TV show is legitimately "Cinematic" in its presentation. I mean the dictionary definition of the word.   But then, so i...

[School of Movies 2021] Disney tries its hand at a South-Asian fantasy, and what do you know, we really like it. Daniel Floyd returns as we talk about the first of the animated classics series which was not launched exclusively to theatres, but also Disney+ for a preview for of $30 / £20 Quite apart from everything else that makes this a difficult sell for people living on their own, or in househo...

[School of Movies 2021] The Disney series continues with two sequels.  In the first of these Ralph and Venelope travel to a version of the internet as reimagined by Disney. The little race driver then finds a newfound calling in the apocalyptic street combat of Slaughter Race, which sends Ralph into a spiral of separation anxiety.  And in the second, six years in the making, the follow-up to maybe...

[School of Movies 2021] The fourth, and potentially final outing in the Warner Bros. Monsterverse series. Following Godzilla II: King of the Monsters (2019) which is magnificent and to many the pinnacle of this quartet, Kong: Skull Island (2017) which is most definitely worth seeing to acquaint yourself with *this* version of the giant gorilla, and finally Godzilla (2014) which was the most popula...

[School of Movies 2021] An elegant, haunting Spanish-style ghost story of obsession and loss. This Gothic chiller materialised in 2001, from director Alejandro Amenabar (who also composed the score, which flits from comforting flute and harp to clangourous and menacing cacophony). This was a commissioned show from Nicole-Kidman-appreciator Colin L. Dysart, and he picked one of our favourite perfor...

[School of Movies 2021] After the moderate box office takings and middling-to-negative critical responses to Man of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice Warner Bros. became increasingly worried that they had placed the DC Expanded Universe in the hands of a director who appealed to an increasingly niche crowd who would not make them the billions of dollars they wanted. Seeking to just get...

[School of Movies 2021] The Commissions Season continues with a show sponsored by Maya Santandrea. Much like last year's Labyrinth show, this is also a story about a girl who travels inward on her fantasy adventures and winds up uncovering certain key things about herself. It is based on two of the L. Frank Baum OZ novels, from which The Wonderful Wizard of OZ was also adapted in 1939. There have...