The School of Movies Archive

[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 Movies 2016] We're back talking about Disney and we've jumped from their 21st animated classic all the way to the 55th. Dan was not available this time round but when we reach this movie in our list of films we're going through naturally anyway we can get his take on it for an epilogue.    This was a movie that kind of came out of nowhere and delighted pretty much everyone by having a l...

[School of Movies 2017] This one took a lot out of us.  The tenth X-Men-related movie, and just like the other two really great instalments in this series (First Class and Deadpool) most of its strengths are augmented by only having tenuous ties to what came before.  Both a sobering goodbye to two of our established heroes and the actors inhabiting the roles, and an introduction to a little acting...

[School of Movies 2017] A commissioned show from Joel Robinson, this is the first of the LAIKA studio movies.  Written by Neil Gaiman of Sandman fame, Coraline is the story of a girl dissatisfied with her boring parents and finding her way into a strange pocket universe, and a mirror of her new house, itself containing a woman who claims to be her "Other Mother". This film has, what I like to call...

[School of Movies 2017]   For our 200th movie episode we celebrate the occasion by taking on another immensely challenging film, not because it's a mixed bag that's hard to place, but because it's pretty much perfectly crafted, very personal to us, dauntingly important and critically acclaimed. So we had to somehow shed new light on a masterpiece. This is why we put things like this off. Paschal D...

[School of Movies 2017]   This was a commission from Chris Finik and turned out to be one of our most challenging shows. I was ill and having to energise myself on sugar, caffeine and enthusiasm while painkillers did their work, but more specifically we were dealing with a movie that is on the surface a silly mess, unlovable and mostly forgotten. We had to find the elements of quality in a mismana...

[School of Movies 2017] A little-seen animated film from 2014, produced by Guillermo del Toro, directed by Jorge Gutierrez, the man behind the award-winning show El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. This is a celebration of mexican culture, centred around the Day of the Dead, and the Lands of the Remembered and the Forgotten, as much about life as it is about death, and dealing with ancient g...

[School of Movies 2017] A commissioned show, but for a film we adore. The only reason it's taken us this long is that L.A. Confidential is as rich and complex and powerful as a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle's Buffalo Trace Bourbon, and frankly... it was intimidating.  It's a beautifully crafted film noir from 1997 which pretty much sets the bar for the genre from this point on, blending the best elem...

[School of Movies 2017] Truly a work of classic British animation, less know outside this island, but a tale of rabbit society in Rural England, just waiting to be discovered. OR A horribly misjudged, mercilessly brutal, relentless, casually sadistic massacre of rabbit-kind, made by aloof Brits who don't understand story structure from a source novel thrown together by a man who hates the idea of...

[School of Movies 2017] This one was an unexpected commission and pushed us well out of our comfort zone. It's an obscure little indie film about being isolated from civilisation, and it has a couple of particularly... provocative ways of illustrating that point. Many thanks to Dan Mayer for getting this episode made, because I can ASSURE you that without his backing it absolutely would never have...

[School of Movies 2017] This is a big one, a DC movie that we not only don't hate, but actively love. Wonder Woman is breaking all sorts of new ground and Gal Gadot looks set to be the next universally beloved big screen superhero, joining a fairly small group that includes Reeves as Superman, Maguire as Spider-Man, Downey Jnr. as Iron Man and Evans as Captain America. We spend two and a half hour...

[School of Movies 2017] Back with Marvel for one of their best movies yet. We kick off with why this hit me like a freight train, right in the soul, and then move on to an extensive and tasty discussion about these wonderful characters, old and new. This episode, like the movie, is very special.  Guests: Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse Brendan Agnew of Cinapse Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst  

[School of Movies 2017] A mystical return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe we love so very much. This one took us a while to get our heads around. On walking out of the cinema Sharon declared it as possibly her favourite of the MCU entries, which, if you know her, is saying something. Alex on the other hand had doubts about why it failed to make such a huge impact on him, and they took several mon...

[School of Movies 2017] This is our first Wes Anderson film and we explore what makes his worlds and characters distinctive. It was commissioned by Tylor Long and Harrison Brockwell.  You should definitely see the film first. Funny, quirky, rude, unpredictable, sweet, sad, clever and uplifting. It's magnificent. Do not miss this one. It's one of our most personal shows.

[School of Movies 2017] This is another commissioned show, and you have Jason Ronson to thank, because we wouldn't have done this movie for a long time, and when we did we would have spent half the time we did, delving beneath the surface. We felt, since we always like to give you guys value for money, that we would go all-out. And it's not a movie we love, in fact there are elements of it that dr...

[School of Movies 2017] In another commissioned show this week we cover the 2002 Chinese blockbuster from the director of The Great Wall. Loosely (and as we find out that means REALLY loosely) based on a real life assassination attempt on the first emperor of China, this is one of Jet Li's most prestigious appearances. Featuring a trio of assassins played by Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung, and the amaz...

[School of Movies 2017] This one is pretty special. You will laugh, you will facepalm, your jaw will hit the floor.  The Thief and the Cobbler, or Arabian Knight, or The Princess and the Cobbler, or Once, OR The Amazing Nasrudin is, to date, the animated movie with the longest production run in history. It was begun in 1964 and released (after a fashion) in 1993... and then again in 1995.  A cauti...

[School of Movies 2017] This episode would never have happened without a commission from Jamas Enright who effectively made me go back to a movie I had previously dismissed as an impenetrable mess.  Terry Gilliam's 1985 dystopia, intended as a satirical black mirror held up against the bureaucracy that had driven him crazy was a box office flop, and if you've seen it you'll understand why. If you...

[School of Movies 2017] Bob Moviebob Chipman and Brendan Agnew join us to delve into this deconstruction of the Batman mythos. While we do talk a lot about the movie, there's a great deal of pop culture analysis, examining the disparity between the colourful crime-fighter and the 'roided-up, armoured monster. I think that approach ended up kind of appropriate, since the film itself devotes much of...

[School of Movies 2018] Dan Floyd joins us once again as the Disney Project continues. The house of Mouse picked themselves up from the financial low for the 90s that was Hercules, and came back punching with this Chinese legend of a girl who steals her father's armour to take his place in the army. Still to this day one of the most beautiful and moving of their animated classics, Mulan had its de...

[School of Movies 2018] Now we reach the point where Disney seemed off their game, at least in comparison with the lightning strikes of Mermaid, Beauty, Aladdin and Lion King. The fact that I really like Hercules is neither here nor their, this was a snarky yet earnest take on Greek mythology framed around an action sports movie for boys.  It had one of the most real-feeling and grown up of Disney...

[School of Movies 2018] The year was 1996, just a few months ago Pixar had changed the face of cinema by introducing a whole new medium of 3D animated film, with Toy Story. Disney followed up their lukewarm reception of Pocahontas with another middling-in-appreciation Broadway musical. The art is beautiful, the scale epic, the songs memorable. The subject matter is a serious social commentary writ...

[School of Movies 2018] The Disney shows return, Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits joins us once again to continue our trek through the past of the animation giant. And we are in the middle of the 90s renaissance, their third period of creatively blossoming (Pre-War/Post-War/90s) and the first after the box office high point of The Lion King presented a bar almost impossible to reach. Even if it hadn'...

[School of Movies 2017] This episode will be the deepest single Disney show we will ever do. It weighs in at just under four hours long, so I'd recommend absorbing it in two sessions, unless you have a long drive or a flight. But if you love the film you'll feel like you've died and gone to never-ending Lion Heaven! Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits joins us again to examine this magnificent beast of...

[School of Movies 2017] This one was recorded immediately after the Beauty and the Beast show, so we are absolutely exhausted by the end. What you can't hear because I trimmed it out is all the times we lose our thread and forget the point we were making. The magic of audio editing. As it is, with musical breaks and comedy clips, this is another superbly detailed show where we praise the animation...