School of Movies

[School of Movies 2023] A strange period for Ghibli brings us to the end of our current run, still with the closing triumph of Spirited Away (2000) to cap this body of work off, as well as this year's The Boy and the Heron paving the way for a future tenth instalment. What we are looking at is the last film from Isao Takahata (who died only five years later) the visually resplendent as well as dis...

[School of Everything Else 2023] We all knew this would happen eventually. No Intellectual property that has been known to rake in a billion dollars for a single movie will ever be left alone to stand in glorious completion. Whomsoever holds the rights will use them. Some folks expected a (potentially very misguided) attempt at making the entire Silmarillion for television, or for Amazon to do wha...

[School of Movies 2023] An absolute landmark in terms of stop-motion animation within cinema. Conceived in the early 80s by Disney animator Tim Burton and manifesting first in an 11-minute poem after the style of both A Visit from St. Nicholas by Clement Clarke Moore and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas from Doctor Seuss. That was developed into this oddball story of a pale loner of an outsider (who...

[School of Movies 2023] For our Halloween Spooktacular episodes we begin with a compilation of three After School Club shows, covering the first three of the eight instalments in the Howling franchise. However, despite two of them being from the same director (Philippe Mora) and two of them involving the writer of the original book (Gary Brandner) I struggle to think of three films that feel less...

[School of Movies 2023] With the grandfather of the studio, Hayao Miyazaki retired and his son Goro not warmly welcomed by the fans, there was now an enormous question mark over the future of Ghibli that persists to this day. Luckily, there was still amazing talent to be found within their walls. Hiromasa Yonebayashi (better known as Maro) made his directorial debut with one of our faviourites, wh...

[School of Everything Else 2023] There are many reasons why this 1994 instalment in the long-running Square franchise winds up high on lists of the very best RPGs of all time. It is an ensemble piece with an immediately engrossing story and endearing, growing party of misfits, oddballs and freaks.  The concept of an oppressive, evil empire messing with powerful magic to secure its dominance isn't...

[School of Movies 2023] Having now won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Ghibli was facing the retirement of one of their absolute linchpins. Hayao Miyazaki wanted to go out with a bang, so adapted another favourite book of his. Howl was popular, but readers had things to say about changes that were made. After that, his son Goro Miyazaki tried his hand at being a director in the elder's absence....

[School of Movies 2023] This, folks, is arguably the greatest adaptation of one of Roald Dahl's books made to date. Taking everything that was great about the 1988 book (one of his last, only followed by Esio Trot, The Vicar of Nibbleswick and The Minpins) and one of the abiding favourites for many kids and previously-kids who aren't entirely sure if they have truly grown up yet. It's about a scho...

[School of Movies 2023] Many would call this period the crowning glory of Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki in particular. The maturity and refusal to pull his punches that came with the rich, dark and complex Princess Mononoke illustrated that when it came to humankind's strained, abusive relationship with Nature itself, that bloodshed was an inevitability, He followed this up with a personal favourite o...

[School of Everything Else 2023] The greatest brawler series in the history of video games. If you haven't yet had the pleasure of playing one of the four Streets of Rage, even if beat-'em-ups aren't your thing you owe it to yourself to investigate the sheer *craft* of these classics.  Beginning with the original in 1991 and refined to magnificence with the second in 1992. They need to be looked a...

[School of Movies 2023] This is one you almost certainly won't have heard of, but will be happy you found it through School of Movies. It's the tale of a young man named James who has grown up in a post-apocalyptic bunker, raised by his loving parents and wondering what's outside. One night a raid by the cops results in his "parents" being carted off to jail, as it turns out they kidnapped him as...

[School of Movies 2023] Impressive, silly or impressively silly? Those are just three of the possible responses to this 1997 theological legal thriller with overtones of several flavours of horror, including paranoia, demonic and financial.  It's the forked tale of a hotshot Florida lawyer named Kevin who has never lost a case, despite representing cartoonishly villainous defendants. He is recruit...

[School of Movies 2023] The Wachowskis are back! This time in producer capacity with their friend James McTeigue who wend on to direct The Raven, five episodes of Sense8 and (our personal favourite, the critically panned but hugely enjoyable, blood-spattered throwback) Ninja Assassin.  In an alternate history dystopian Britain, a young lady named Evey Hammond is rescued by a shadowy figure in a ma...

[School of Movies 2023] One of the most significant and influential anime movies of all time. Absolutely instrumental in inspiring a big chunk of The Matrix in terms of aesthetic and pondering, metaphysical philosophy. This began as a single-volume cyberpunk manga series written by Masamune Shirow between 1989-1991. That was adapted into the 1995 movie which is the focus of this episode. After tha...

[School of Everything Else 2023] This is quite an extraordinary case. A Netflix show released in two chunks of five episodes apiece, six months apart, back in 2021. 93% fresh with professional critics. And if you sit down and watch it, this is the best Masters of the Universe story ever told.  And EVERYBODY HATES IT!  Seriously, go check YouTube and get bombarded by the scorn and bile. Observe the...

[Digital Gonzo 2013] The 150th episode of Digital Gonzo. This was a one-off show inspired by the episode of Community 'Advanced Dungeons & Dragons'. It's a sit-down gaming session conducted over Skype with myself as Dungeon Master and my guests as a team of adventurers. For this one we were using the flexible, simple ruleset of Advanced Fighting Fantasy by Graham Bottley which itself stems fro...

[School of Movies 2023] The final main feed instalment of our Coen Brothers series goes out with a double-bang of exceptionally gripping Westerns. No Country for Old Men (2007, written by the recently departed Cormac McCarthy) is a tense game of cat and mouse. Josh Brolin discovers a drug deal gone very wrong and walks off with the money, and Javier Bardem plays the dead-eyed Terminator slowly but...

[School of Movies 2023] This was a whimsical period for Ghibli, they tried a few new things, and established one or two absolute mainstays.  1991: Only Yesterday (1m 50s) 1992: Porco Rosso (11m 50s) 1993: Ocean Waves (25m 10s) 1994: Pom Poko (41m 10s) 1995: Whisper of the Heart (59m 40s) There's a disarmingly frank and sympathetic story of a schoolgirl hitting adolescence wrapped in a Hallmark mov...

[School of Movies 2023] Lin Manuel Miranda's first big break into the off-Broadway musical scene. This 2021 movie adaptation, directed by Crazy Rich Asians-helmer Jon M. Chu is a squeaky-clean but heartfelt tale of the upper east side of Manhattan and its proud, passionate, talkative, motivated yet frustrated population of first, second and third-generation immigrants. It's a story of inheriting t...

[School of Movies 2023] We covered the first film in May 2019 just before the third hit theaters, and since then they have shaped up to be four of the finest action films ever made. They boast laser-focused attention to choreography, physical genius, artfully photographing long, unbroken takes with astonishing lighting and otherworldy music. All of it revolves around a firestorm of a performance f...

[School of Movies 2023] This one was a long time coming. There's a solid argument to be made that to set the tone for the planned DC Cinematic Universe all the way back in 2012, around the time Avengers was doing gangbusters by brazenly copying the Marvel formula by building up the characters the general public don't know yet *before* throwing Superman and Batman at us again. But since Green Lante...

[School of Everything Else 2023] The DC Animated Universe marathon watch, which began all the way back in 2020 as Lockdown started continues! And this is a show Sharon and I had never sat down to watch before, so it was almost entirely new to us.  I knew this was pitched as "What if Batman was Spider-Man?" but I did not know the circumstances of how that premise came about. Warner Bros. wanted an...

[School of Movies 2023] For many years we have been planning a show or a series of shows on the Disney live action + CG remakes. The plan was to start with the 2015 Cinderella (or even the 1994 Jason Scott Lee version of The Jungle Book, thence to 101 Dalmatians with Glenn Close) and we would watch every single one of them, and talk about the good and the bad.  But over time, having covered the de...

[School of Movies 2023] Another ton of fun for the summer as we go back to the most unkillable series of all time. You kill this thing and it will come right back, walking out of the explosion to cool music. If this franchise has any enemies they will be friends the next time we see them. Did I say friends? I meant FAMBLY! What we have here to start with is an edited, supercharged version of my fi...

[School of Movies 2023] This is the second and third instalments of the Shazam Trilogy, we covered the first back in 2021. Now The Rock will assure you that Black Adam is nothing to do with Shazam, but we have comics that say otherwise. We start with my 2022 first impressions of Black Adam having just returned from the cinema, originally put out as a Patreon Exclusive. Then we follow up with a bra...