The School of Movies Archive

[Digital Drift 2014] This is the first impressions review of The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies. Next year we will be covering all three movies with a deeper focus on production in our Extended Edition podcasts. If you’ve just joined us for Digital Drift you can of course hear the reviews of the Lord of the Rings and first two Hobbits on the Digital Gonzo section of the podcast feed.   It’s bee...

[Digital Gonzo 2013] Welcome back to the ninth part of the Middle-earth series of Gonzo podcasts. To any newcomers, the first episode was a prologue, focusing on the books and the animated films, the next six were two-part super in-depth reviews of the Lord of the Rings films, following that was a first impressions round-table of the then just recently viewed theatrical edition of The Hobbit: An U...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] For the first time in our series we cannot look at the film we are delving into in retrospect of the entire trilogy or with the deeper familiarity with its creation that the extended edition extras grant us. So this is a first impressions round-table with as much as possible on what we thought about the inaugural installment in the new Hobbit Trilogy.  For those who haven’t he...

[Digital Drift 2014] To kick off a discussion about “nanar”; that is movies that are so spectacularly bad that they wrap right the way round into great we bring you the podcast reviews of Troll and Troll 2. This also constitutes our Halloween Spooktacular and gives you all something fun to listen to while taking shelter from the GamerGate debate. Troll was a daft fantasy horror movie made in 1986....

[Digital Drift 2014] The Transformers road trip has lost all but one lone, solitary truck, powering on through a new leg of what may be a never-ending journey. Yes folks, I did end up going to see Transformers 4, and on this show, Sharon asks me all about my experience.  Is this a new lease of life for the series? A soft reboot, ditching the former human cast members in favour of all-new ones and...

[Digital Drift 2014] Our road trip with the autobots veers off the beaten track and onto a superhighway full of exploding guns and alien car invasion. In a series defined by its crapulence this may actually be its lowest point. Billed by some as a return to form on its release in 2011, which prompted the question from others; “What form?” and from still others “What form will our destructor take?”...

[Digital Drift 2014] Our road trip with the autobots continues. We hit a bumpy road as the writer’s strike of 2007 looms. Fortunately this movie proved that you apparently don’t even NEED writers and that a triple-A blockbuster action movie could be sloppily thrown together without discernible structure or coherence and still rake in more than its predecessor. Just cast your eyes over the image I’...

[Digital Drift 2014] Every now and again I’m reminded on Twitter or the forum that you guys love this show best when we review something we absolutely love. Our passion for it is palpable and in many cases infectious enough to get people who have yet to see the movie in question to finally take the plunge. This point usually comes up when I mention that we’re reviewing something awful. In this cas...

[Digital Drift 2014] This kicks off a surprisingly thorough series of podcasts focusing on the Transformers franchise. I actually said I could barely get one show out of this as there was no high point that I really connected with to balance the many lows. However these toys and the animated show and movie were a huge part of my childhood and that gave me more than enough to engage with. I’m sure...

[Digital Drift 2014] This is it. Alex’s 400th podcast. And what better way to celebrate a broadcasting career like this than with something lovingly crafted, and beloved by its small but enthusiastic fanbase? This summer everyone fell in love with Groot, voiced by Vin Diesel. Journey back fifteen years to a very similar performance in a lost film to be found and absolutely treasured. The Iron Gian...

[Digital Drift 2014] The second in our trilogy celebration of Alex’s 400th podcast.  This time we’re talking about another of the best films of 2014; The Lego Movie. Arguably the most potent cocktail of inventiveness and pure joy in an animated movie since the original Toy Story. Deceptively child-friendly, especially after a slew of sporadically funny Lego games, and prone to assumptions of being...

[Digital Drift 2014] This is the tenth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe podcasts. We talk at length about the transition from obscure Marvel comic to breakout success, how the characters differ across the mediums taking many detours into the depiction of female and black characters in comic book movies, the inspired soundtrack, the hilarious, often touching performances, the detail-filled worlds a...

[Digital Drift 2014] We conclude the Planet of the Apes series for now with the 2014 follow up to Rise, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Continuing the story of Caesar and his new tribe of intelligent, simian compatriots we rejoin earth ten years after the close of the last picture, a quiet, overgrown world of dilapidated buildings being reclaimed by nature, separated pockets of humanity scrabbling...

[Digital Drift 2014] Ten years after the Burton version surfaced, spluttered and sank this one came out of absolutely nowhere, surprising everyone. Set up as an alternate prequel to the premise of the original 1968 Planet of the Apes, this movie answered the question of “How could this actually happen?”. In marketing terms it serves as a reboot, beginning its own new series which has now branched...

[Digital Drift 2014] 2001: Planet of the Apes Some 28 years after the original quintet closed out, and after over a decade in development limbo being passed from writer to director like a hot potato, crossing the paths of some of the most significant of Hollywood players the reboot/remake/reimagining of the original 1968 Planet of the Apes was ultimately rushed to the screen with Tim Burton at the...

[Digital Drift 2014] 1971: Escape from the Planet of the Apes 1972: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes 1973: Battle for the Planet of the Apes The remaining three movies from the original series of five get the Drift treatment. Again we went in having never seen any of them and reviewed them immediately following our first watch. So our emotions are raw and reactions pretty strong.  Escape turned...

[Digital Drift 2014] 1968: Planet of the Apes 1970: Beneath the Planet of the Apes For newcomers to the series, all eight movies of which will be reviewed over the coming weeks here is a brief breakdown of events.  1. Universe A: The first five Planet of the Apes movies spanning the period between 1968 and 1973. Planet of the Apes / Beneath the Planet of the Apes / Escape from the Planet of the Ap...

[Digital Drift 2014] We round off our X-Men series with a discussion about Days of Future Past. Further proof that you can have a complex, sci-fi blockbuster which the audience doesn’t need to fully understand in order to become one of the highest grossing movies of the year.  If you haven’t yet seen my explanation of the multiple timelines in the X-Men movie chronology check it out on YouTube. “D...

[Digital Drift 2014] This one kind of came out of nowhere. Since Wolverine hasn’t been an enjoyable and compelling lead since 2003 with X-Men 2 it was a surprise for him to suddenly reclaim his onscreen presence a decade later after we’d had a new Spider-Man, two new Hulks and two new Supermen, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America the rise and fall of The Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider and the entire Dark...

[Digital Drift 2014] This time we dive deep into the best X-Men movie and actually one of the very best superhero and comic book movies of all time.  What started as a Magneto spin-off got combined with a reboot and turned into a flashback/prequel/period piece/James Bond homage/romantic drama/reboot for the series. With all those goals to accomplish it’s a wonder it turned out as well as it did. ...

[Digital Drift 2014] I never thought I’d find myself defending this film. In actuality we’re not, we’re just saying it’s not the worst X-Men movie and stating the few reasons why it’s not entirely awful. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a stinker nonetheless. Tedious action, lame mutants, barely characterized beyond their powers (again), CGI claws that never fail to distract, stupid script riven with plot...

[Digital Drift 2014] This is the worst.  The very worst onscreen incarnation of the X-Men, and not simply because it screwed up the Dark Phoenix saga in a way that will take many years to remedy.  It is in point of fact abundantly clear on investigation that meddling Fox executives combined with a creative team who seemingly didn’t care what occurred onscreen or what state they left the series in...

[Digital Drift 2014] This is one of the all-time fan-favourite X-Men films, following up on the promise of the slight original with far more detail, exciting action, grander scale and emotional wallop. We give it a ton of credit for its strong points which expand the world and further legitimizes the mutant conflict. However this movie also contains two of the most series-breaking scenarios at its...

[Digital Drift 2014] Looking back on the 2000 original it is both extremely important in legitimising the real life comic superhero movie for modern times and increasingly a relic of a bygone age when this sort of thing was considered a flaky risk and where low budgets, self-conscious cast members, dismal costumes, short running times and pedestrian action sequences were acceptable. That being sai...

[Digital Drift 2014] This is the one we’ve been rounding up to. All the stops are pulled out and we are in full meta mode this time round.  01.38: We begin with a review from Sharon and myself, zeroing in on what drove us crazy about the film’s structure and character development but closing out with what we really loved about it despite so much holding the movie back.  51.45: With Bob Chipman, AK...