The School of Movies Archive

[School of Movies 2015] The first show under the new name is the third of the Disney animated classics. Over the next year we’re going to cover every single one of these. Some in fairly short order, others in extensive detail, and Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits is with us every step of the way. This one was a big risk for Disney. Snow White did insanely well, Pinocchio cost $2.2 million but only ma...

[Digital Drift 2015] The Disney shows continue with Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits returning to talk about this little, wooden boy.  If you love these shows support us on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/alexandershaw Guest: Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits

[Digital Drift 2015] Digital Drift Does Disney. This is the first of a series of podcasts covering the full history of Disney’s animated classics. Daniel Floyd of Extra Credits is with us every step of the way. It is without question that animated cinematic features throughout the 20th Century were defined by this company. Learn more about the studio, the animators and how the animation techniques...

[Digital Drift 2015] With the new Fant4stic movie emerging onto the big screen we take a look back on the 2005 version and its 2007 sequel. Were they really all that bad? More to the point, taking the unreleased 1994 Roger Corman version into account, are ALL Fantastic Four movies simply an exercise in keeping the license going rather than in making a superhero family movie that people will love?...

[Digital Drift 2015] Our Marvel shows continue with this tiny treasure of a movie. For the best experience combine this with our School of Movies YouTube episode on Ant-Man and the virtue of the small.  Guests: James Carter of Cane and Rinse Lorin Grieve of Year of Steam Mike Hearn of Walter the Wicked

[Digital Drift 2015] I did go to see it in the end. I stand by my initial warning. It’s not worth you seeing. But listen to this podcast and you can get the full plot. Having said all that… it’s not quite as bad as T3 and Salvation, in fact there were one or two bits I rather liked. It’s more reverent than the third movie and less boring than the fourth. The writers clearly seem to be able to unde...

[Digital Drift 2015] The Terminator series reboots again (kind of), delivering a dark, desaturated, dusty, miserable, angry, shouty future war of dirty humans vs Decepticons! Christian Bale stars as John Connor, bringing with him all the furious, savage, grumpy intensity he is capable of. Not satisfied with one gravely, shaven-headed Johnny Template this movie brings us two with Sam Worthington pl...

[Digital Drift 2015] I rarely get to hear Joshua Garrity get angry and he went in quite placid and apathetic. Fortunately we managed to rile him up until an exceptionally entertaining stream of vitriol escaped to join our twin surges of disgust for this horrendous affront to cinema? Think we’re being too harsh? That’s just because the neat ending made you forget the horrible journey. Let us remind...

[Digital Drift 2015] One of our favourite movies of all time gets its long overdue deep discussion. I noticed something in editing this. We skip over talking about the film itself. This was what troubled me into holding it back an additional week to record additional material and deliver you this extended edition. We treat matters as though you, like us have watched this movie a hundred times. You...

[Digital Drift 2015] Here it is folks. The first Terminator podcast in the run-up to Terminator Genisys. Jump forward 15 minutes if you’ve already seen the YouTube video “Everything Right With The Terminator”. If you haven’t, go see that first. We turn over every aspect as we establish just how central to the web of sci-fi influence throughout the 80s and beyond this movie is. Over the next few ep...

[Digital Drift 2015] We had planned to release The Lost World this week but Mad Max: Fury Road appeared out of nowhere and turned out to be rather special. So we broke suddenly, veered off the road, picked up a couple of passengers and thundered into an epic analysis review.  We begin with a 45 minute discussion of the original Mad Max trilogy, all of which contain elements that found their way in...

[Digital Drift 2015] Rather than our usual super-in-depth discussion Neil Taylor, James Perkins and I take Sharon (who hasn’t seen the movie) through the full theme park experience of Jurassic World, from the first step out of the front door to the recovery on the ride home.  Within the fiction of this story Jurassic Park has been operating for ten years as a paleolithic combination of Sea World a...

[Digital Drift 2015] For some reason people keep comparing The Lost World with its sequel, trying to weigh them up to decide which is worse. Like there can be some final conclusion that can be set in stone for all the internet to agree upon. Really it comes down to personal preference. They both suck, HARD! Both of them are so out of the league of the original it’s like a world heavyweight title f...

[Digital Drift 2015] The dinosaur escapades continue down a weird and tonally dissonant path as we venture into The Lost World.  We uncover the movie of the book that Michael Crichton was pressured into writing after the success of the first movie… the content of which was largely scrapped for what Sharon beautifully dubs in this episode “Benny Hill with dinosaurs.” We’ll return in a week for the...

[Digital Drift 2015] One of the greatest movies of all time gets the Digital Drift treatment in good time to get everyone fired up for the first new installment we’ve had in this series in 14 years (and quite possibly the only other good one).  Still as fresh and endlessly entertaining to us as it was back in 1993, this film is rarely out of our re-watching rotation, and as such i know it frame by...

[Digital Drift 2015] The Marvel Cinematic Universe reunites the whole team and then adds some more heroes and super-antagonists for good measure. Can such an immense collection of colourful personalities possibly be threaded cohesively into an even more elaborate juggling act that matches the original? Once again we go deep on the characters, outlining what this means for the history and how it fu...

[Digital Drift 2015] As we gear up for Avengers: Age of Ultron, we look back on the only film focusing on one of them that we haven’t yet reviewed. So let’s delve into Ang Lee’s Hulk, one of the first HUGE Marvel movies and one that strove to be oh-so-grown-up. If you love these shows support us on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/alexandershaw

[Digital Drift 2015] Returning to the welcoming bosom of Marvel, Sharon and I take a good hard look at the 2003 attempt at bringing The Man Without Fear to our screens. Fox rather unwisely competed with Spider-Man at the time, leading to a rather troubled production, hence the hastily cobbled-together millennial rubber bouncy jumping action and the vast disparity between the somewhat nonsensical t...

[Digital Drift 2015] We round out the series as it stands right now. The events of the film itself as the action thrill-ride it was originally intended take a back seat to what it ultimately became, with this poignant farewell to Paul Walker. Neil Taylor returns for what may have been the most challenging film to express our feelings about in words. If you love these shows support us on Patreon: ...

[Digital Drift 2015] We reach the point when everything really slots into place and the F&F series reaches its potential at long last. This is one of the most astonishing, enjoyable movies about cars and family that you will ever see.    Neil Taylor of GameBurst is back on the team again. We’ll roll on over again in a couple of weeks to cover the seventh movie and close this out for now, but this...

[Digital Drift 2015] We’re back as the F&F series cranks into gear and becomes what it was meant to; a series of heist movies with a colourful, lovable cast of recurring characters and amazing stunts. This was a case of all the pieces finally slotting into place. Enter The Rock as a powerhouse of a lawman named Hobbs, finally giving the films an antagonist worthy of Toretto. Re-enter Roman, Tej, H...

[Digital Drift 2015] Continuing our road trip through the F&F series, we get to the detour away from the main cast that was initially shunned by audiences but in retrospect is rather excellent as a stand-alone movie. We move on to the return to the main cast that was initially embraced by audiences but in retrospect is dour and uneventful. Find out what drifting REALLY means. If you love these sho...

[Digital Drift 2015] We’re joined by Neil Taylor of GameBurst to review two movies from one of his very favourite series. When we recorded this first show we hadn’t yet seen 5 or 6 (Sharon hadn’t seen 3 or 4 either) so it’s something of a discovery process for us. Find out over the course of the next few episodes if we’re just middling on the car porn, jiggling auto-floozies and machismo-masking-v...

[Digital Drift 2015] Here’s the second part of our analysis of the Twilight saga. There’s some really silly and occasionally genuinely troubling material in here, but also some surprisingly heartfelt moments that caught us offguard. If you love these shows support us on Patreon:  https://www.patreon.com/alexandershaw

[Digital Drift 2015] To coincide with the release of Fifty Shades of Grey, Sharon and I went back to the source material with a pair of shows we’ve been sitting on for a year! We had to put Pinocchio on hod for this one but he’ll be back in two weeks.  In this initial volume we review the first three installments of the Twilight Saga.  It’s my theory that these books and films are the Nickelback o...