School of Movies

[School of Everything Else 2024] Our years-long journey through the DC Animated Universe comes to a close, and it is both melancholy as we say goodbye to Kevin Conroy and at the same time wildly enthusiastic for some of the very best episodes across all that we have watched. It is strange to think that we started this in 2020 when the DC movies at the cinema were on a high note: After years of the...

[School of Everything Else 2024] The DC Animated Universe marathon reaches its Avengers phase, as the established animated Batman and Superman from their own Animated Series' which had already crossed over, team up with Wally West's Flash (who had guested on Superman) John Stewart's Green Lantern (as opposed to the Kyle Raynor who guested on Superman) Diana Prince who should absolutely have gotten...

[School of Movies 2024] This is an idea for a new kind of show that I've been developing. It just so happens to coincide with a period where my voice has been wrecked from illness and I'm trying to limit talking for long stretches so that my vocal cords can heal up. I've been pulling together an archive of Director's Commentaries from the various discs that nobody seems to want any more. These rep...

[School of Everything Else 2024] The conclusion (for now) to this series of shows on the triumphant return of Star Trek. Season 2 slaloms between unsettling and dark episodes which would feel more at home in Discovery if they weren't so personal to the characters in this rich ensemble... and some of the most hilarious, touching, light-hearted yet heart-breaking downtime episodes which highlight th...

[School of Movies 2024] Is this the last true swashbuckler of the 20th Century? It's certainly the Zorro movie so great, and so wildly successful in all of its aims that there hasn't really been a landmark big screen appearance since then (that wasn't the leading man playing a cat). Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones in their prime, and Anthony Hopkins delivering my personal favourite perfo...

[School of Everything Else 2024] This is one of two commissioned podcasts on the first two seasons of the best Star Trek shows in decades. Refreshingly lacking in cynicism and tapping into the Kennedy-era energy of exploration and endeavour with a tight focus on character development, this one really is worth your time. We spend two and a half hours of spoilerific, textured discussion time really...

[School of Movies 2024] The late 2010s. It is a period of civil war. The vast Empire of Disney has released four of its five first Star Wars movies, to mixed reception. Critically and financially, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have done very well, as has Rogue One. However, the two episodes have divided the smaller portion of the global audience that amounts to the vocal fanbase, between tho...

[School of Everything Else 2024] This was originally going to be an After School Club episode, but a combination of the community discourse regarding the X-Men, and an extremely well-timed trailer drop for the '97 reboot, AND a horrendous cold that has ravaged Sharon and I, along with our timetable, we're making this a Main Event. If you're a little younger than us, you may well have been the exac...

[School of Everything Else 2024] The infamous animated series with a theme tune you can hear just by looking at stills of it, finally gets a well-deserved podcast. We actually recorded this several years back, to coincide with the launch of the new X-Men '97 animated show on D+, and we're finally seeing images from that now. Whether it's good or bad, THIS ONE is worth watching, at least some choic...

[School of Everything Else 2024] We initially started watching this 2017 Paramount TV series just for some back-story context on a pair of commissioned podcasts we have upcoming on the first two seasons of the sister show about the crew of the Enterprise; 'Strange New Worlds'. As it turns out, after a rocky start, Discovery is really excellent in its own right and we wolfed down the first four sea...

[School of Movies 2024] It's always a risk, setting a sci-fi dystopian movie only a few years from filming. You're going to make predictions about how the world might look and operate, with new technology or sociological and political upheaval within a time period so immediate that it's the difference between the launch of the Sony PlayStation and the PlayStation 2 But we are currently living in a...

[School of Movies 2024] After decades of very patchy sequels and spinoffs to the 1987 sci-fi classic, Predator, we finally get one that is not only worthy of, but in many ways surpasses its stealthy action-beefcake-slasher source. So far we've had Predator 2 (1990), Alien vs. Predator (2004), Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), Predators (2010) and The Predator (2018). But this one takes note of...

[School of Everything Else 2024] This is one we have been planning and looking forward to for a long, long, LONG time. One of the most significant indie video games of all time, and for our child, maybe their favourite forever (up against Minecraft and Stardew Valley). In a gaming marketplace overflowing with charming retro-styled games with a dark, absurd sense of humour veiling heart-breaking st...

[School of Everything Else 2024] Part 6 of 6 We come to it at last. The final episodes of one of the greatest animated shows ever gifted to TV. And we pulled out all the stops this time, because it's bittersweet to say goodbye again.  Originally I planned to get this whole season discussed in one sit-down session, considering how much ground we had covered back in Season 1 with two sessions. But i...

[School of Everything Else 2024] Part 4 of 6 Back in early 2020 (pre-pandemic even) just as Disney+ had launched, making this show super-accessible to everyone at last, we recorded three podcasts on the first season. Now we are finally back to talk about the second and final season and one of the most satisfying, bittersweet endings of any television series, and I am not being hyperbolic with that...

[School of Movies 2023] This is one of the hardest episodes we have ever had to record. I'm not dealing in hyperbole when I describe the shockwave that rippled through our house when we found out that without the slightest warning Chadwick Boseman passed away in the night. He represented, for want of a better term a great responsibility. And much of these few hours is spent talking about that impa...

[School of Movies 2023] One of only FOUR movies directed by the all-too-soon-departed anime darling Satoshi Kon (along with Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress and Paprika), this is by far and away his most heartfelt, funny, camp and soulful tale, and it is most definitely Christmassy in nature, considering it concerns three impoverished homeless people and their desperate attempts to protect and fer...

[School of Everything Else 2020] Part 3 of 6 The third of three shows on Season 1 of Gravity Falls. Season 2 will be covered in 2021. We round off the first batch of episodes with a showcase of villainy, as a crazed piglet who holds small-town America in his thrall seeks unlimited power for himself. And on the other side of the reality curtain, a chaotic yellow triangle man hatches his schemes. Th...

[School of Everything Else 2020] Part 2 of 6 The second of three shows on Season 1 of Gravity Falls. Season 2 will be covered in 2021. We return to one of the best animated series' to grace the TV screen. A rich, hilarious, fast-paced puzzle-box of twisty mysteries and subversive, genre-savvy capers. Tween twins Dipper and Mabel Pines are staying with their Grunkle Stan for the summer, at his comb...

[School of Everything Else 2020] Part 1 of 6 Throughout the year we will be releasing episodes covering one of our very favourite animated shows, now available worldwide on Disney+ which is why we waited until now. Most people haven't seen this, so you can watch along with us. We won't spoil any later episodes and the podcasts won't release all at once. Next week the Spielberg Season continues wit...

[School of Movies 2023] If you love Love Actually this show is for you. If you hate Love Actually this show is for you. If you consider Love Actually to be kind of a mixed bag and there's actors and/or scenarios in there that you really like and yet some of the characters behave in awful ways that the film doesn't judge as awful, but overall it seems to have its heart in the right place, this show...

[School of Everything Else 2023] The first global blockbuster hit in this long-running series from Squaresoft. As we noted before, the excellent Final Fantasies IV, V and VI were not released in Europe (neither were I, II or III) until long after this one, and it was utilising the power of the PlayStation, so this really was the introduction to what a modern-day cinematic RPG video game could be,...

[School of Movies 2023] Arguably director Hayao Miyazaki's finest hour, and by extension the peak of composer Joe Hisaishi and for Studio Ghibli in general. This one is almost too easy to either sing the praises of, or to dismiss because it was so popular. Disney distributed it in America, and it made $395 million, which might make it the most successful theatrical release for an anime movie. By c...

[School of Everything Else 2023] This is the good stuff. Look no further than the 2012-2013 one-season 3D animated show for the absolute best Green Lantern experience. Co-Created Giancarlo Volpe of Avatar and Bruce Timm, one of the key figures in the beloved and critically acclaimed classics of Batman: The Animated Series, along with the connected Superman, Batman Beyond, Justice League Unlimited,...

[Digital Gonzo 2013] This is a special, re-edited, re-release of a classic episode of Digital Gonzo. Back in 2013 we talked all about Green Lantern, under the impression that Warner Bros. & DC had big plans for superheroes over the next decade. And while they have genuinely given more heroes an airing, audiences seem to only be interested in The Bat and the Joker, (oh, and Aquaman, because he...