School of Movies

[School of Movies 2019] On paper this is a film we should absolutely love, based on a book we should also absolutely love. Average boy discovers a secret, secluded old mansion populated by strange children with special powers, looked after by an eccentric and magical woman, played by a fine actress and directed by a man known for his quirky outsider tales and memorable imagery. From a multi-part c...

[School of Movies 2019] With Jordan Peele's second film, Us tearing up cinemas right now we figured the time was exactly right to explore his densely symbolic, thrilling debut Get Out. This is a movie that does not pull its punches. It's kind of amazing that it exists at all, considering the deeply uncomfortable system-damning subtext.  A young fellow named Chris journeys with his girlfriend to vi...

[School of Movies 2019] Maybe our most eagerly-awaited, long-time-coming Marvel's of all finally arrives. And to distinguish this show from a LOT of the lukewarm dude-filled discussion about this movie we have four brilliant ladies talking and smiling as much or as little as they like.  We begin with my own list of every male hero in sci-fi, fantasy and superhero movies since the late 70s and an a...

[School of Movies 2019] A long-planned show, following up on "Fan Response" in 2013 which can be found on the School of Everything Else Archive. Things were becoming problematic back then and now, six years later, matters are worse. This is a show all about examining where we each stand in our fandoms and dispelling the binary, black and white "You are either with us or against us" mentality which...

[School of Everything Else 2019] One of the most compulsive and mind-expanding TV shows in recent years, The Good Place is an unfolding exploration of philosophy and morality which takes the brightly coloured appealing form of comedy frozen yogurt.  If you've not seen it, the best summation is that a woman named Eleanor Shelstrop dies and is welcomed into heaven by a kindly angel-type named Michae...

[School of Movies 2019] We did not expect to be recording on this one so soon. To begin with after watching the movie I thought I could get everything I needed to say into a Quick Review, but Sharon needed to see it and then on the second viewing the layers just kept expanding and expanding outwards until my brain exploded. The first movie was going to be impossible to follow, and yet somehow this...

[School of Movies 2019] One of our favourite films of 2018 arrives in style for this vibrant celebration of an exotic culture. This is the biggest Asian-American cast since Joy Luck Club in 1993, and tells a very different story, about a regular young American woman finding out on an innocuous family trip that her boyfriend Nick is crazy rich.  Now this could have been disastrous viewing for us. B...

[School of Movies 2019] Five years after the original film lost money, the producers, director and stars were all back with a much higher budget for a Blade Runner-chasing dystopian tale of Connor MacLeod in the future and suddenly Ramirez. In a baffling move they backpedalled on the original premise making all Highlanders in fact (this works best when you say it in a booming B-movie announcer voi...

[School of Movies 2019] "Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and swords, eternally retold"... No wait,  "There can only be one!"  A good question would of course then be "Why was there more than one?" Because the answer certainly isn't "Money!" The original Highlander is a sci-fi fantasy that awkwardly mashes together slightly-too-serious delivery with crazy camp ostentatiousness a...

[School of Everything Else 2019] In an unusual turn we're bringing back the Sound of Gonzo format to examine the oeuvre of a comedy rap group. What started out as a series of scrappy Saturday Night Live sketches poking fun at self-serious hip-hop became a symphony of professionally produced music indistinguishable from the premier artists of the age, aside from the fact that the lyrics are all hil...

[School of Movies 2019] Now that we've talked about Good Will Hunting and ensured you guys know how much we love seeing Robin Williams at his best we can take a more critical look at a mixed bag of his work with not one but four films on the slate. 1. Bicentennial Man 2. One Hour Photo 3. License to Wed 4. Mrs Doubtfire One of them is really surprisingly good and has held up very well for us. One...

[School of Movies 2019] Back in late 1997 while Titanic was tearing up the box office around the time it came to pick the nominees for awards season, this small, personal drama was impressing small, personal audiences everywhere. It's kind of gut-churning to look at the way this was promoted, courting awards left right and centre, all to further Miramax and their manufactured prestige. One of the...

[School of Movies 2019] After eleven years of terrible Michael Bay Transformers movies, which America and then the rest of the world slowly checked out of, leaving the fifth (which actually isn't too bad) to perform below expectations Paramount and Hasbro reshuffled for an inexpensive prequel spin-off movie, which, due to its change in creative team and divorce from those earlier movies is way bet...

[School of Movies 2018] One of the best films of the year, and one of the best ways to end it. This one has already garnered itself something of a cult following with everyone who has seen it passionately declaring its qualities, but still not nearly enough people seeing it during a December absolutely packed to the gills with high quality blockbusters. As a major event in comic book movie history...

[School of Movies 2018] After the operatic Infinity War we come to an entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe that some people needed to see and some people really didn't.  Honest Trailers really nailed this one when they called it Marvel Season 3, Episode 8. That is what it feels like. And we begin the show with why I left the cinema muttering to myself. "Huh." Not with a question mark, that's a c...

[School of Movies 2018] An accompaniment to our Disney shows, and perhaps Walt's greatest film. Not his greatest achievement, that was surely the pioneering of a feature-length animated film in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Not his greatest achievement, that arguably is the founding of an entertainment business that today has significant influence the world over. But his greatest single film e...

[School of Everything Else 2018] This turned out to be one of my favourite games of all time, and as you'll hear it pushed so many of my positive buttons that exceptionally good games released immediately after I finished just don't measure up, for a variety of reasons. This was a commissioned show by Chris Finik. I wasn't going to do an episode about it because I was very aware it might become wo...

[School of Movies 2018] Seoul, Korea is under attack by a blundering kaiju that causes chaos whenever it turns up. Meanwhile in the fictional dirthole town of Mainhead, New England a recently single, unemployed writer named Gloria returns home from New York to the place of her childhood, bringing along her alcoholism and destructive antisocial behaviour. This is a quirky, blackly humorous little d...

[School of Movies 2018] Since the original Rocky in 1976 (which is still fantastic more than 40 years on) this saga has been Sylvester Stallone's baby. He directed four of the previous six movies, and wrote and starred in all of them. Then the director of a little-known indie picture called Fruitvale Station which screened at Sundance, comes along with his idea for a story that breathes new life i...

[School of Movies 2018] In an alternate future New York a thousand gang members from a hundred gangs convene to hear one man speak about ending their petty conflicts, and unifying against the police. His assassination is blamed on one hapless group, who head home to Coney Island with everyone else on their tail.  The world this puts forward became the basis of the side-scrolling brawler in video g...

[School of Movies 2018]  Our Commissions season for late 2018 begins with this haunted house in space from the director of Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Alien vs. Predator and Death Race; Paul W.S. Anderson. Event Horizon cost $60 million, and made $26m back. It has a freshness rating of 26% and yet  it is regarded as a quality, scary film. That's the kind of contradictions cult classics are made...

[School of Movies 2018] In 1992 Frances Ford Coppola, director of The Godfather Trilogy and Apocalypse Now tackled the first cinematic adaptation of the seminal 1897 Gothic Horror novel by Bram Stoker. It was a character that had been a screen icon for decades already and synonymous with charismatic monsters, but to date nobody had decided to follow the book closely. It has not yet been bettered....

[School of Movies 2018]   We begin with a movie so underappreciated and barely known that it's not even in the British canon of Disney movies, they just skip over it and mis-number the next one. Winnie the Pooh 2011 is a charming, harmless, fun and short little adventure, and it was their actual final 2D cel-animated animated classic. There's more to say about its obscurity and design than there i...

[School of Movies 2018]   I say this with no hyperbole, I think you may be listening to our best Disney show. It is epic in length and rich in scope, we go deep and the evolution of the Disney film takes a big leap, aesthetically, technically and emotionally.  Rather than simply deliver Rapunzel in the style of the 90s renaissance the creative team here very deliberately updated the approach to a...

[School of Movies 2018]   Now we're talking. While the last two movies were an upswing from the doldrums of Chicken Little this one was the first to confidently step out in a direction that was both established and classical and representative of Disney at its best AND also new and twisty, fondly critical of their past successes, progressive and modern. If you've somehow not seen it but have enjoy...