The School of Movies Archive

[Digital Gonzo 2012] The Lord of the Rings begins in earnest. Starting with an epic retelling of Middle-earth history we set out to balance the attention to detail of major fandom with critical analysis, discussions on character development and notable aspects of the production. Setting out from the Shire, this episode will take you all the way to Rivendell meeting Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] Time to cover the 2005 movie that closed out the TV series. Take a journey with us on the final flight of Serenity, a superb, funny, clever, emotional and mostly ignored Sci-Fi cult classic, destined to travel on and find new audiences, decades and even centuries into our future. Stick around to the end for some goram hilarious outtakes and a wonderful version of the Firefly T...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] To celebrate Halloween I’m reviewing Monster House, one of the few movies ever put out by ImageMovers Digital. It uses an identical performance capture technique to the Uncharted series, Heavenly Sword, Enslaved and The Last of Us. This is a technique that usually freaks people out because of the Uncanny Valley, less so in games because we’re used to seeing CG modeling but in...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] This one serves as an introduction to Avatar since my estimate is that 97% of you, my listeners have never had the pleasure of this, maybe the finest animated TV series in the world, and I do not use those words lightly. The Legend of Aang is a story that starts out aimed at kids aged 6-11 but rapidly becomes something far more compelling to all age groups and walks of life. T...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] The epic conclusion to Christopher Nolan’s game-changing Dark Knight Trilogy. It’s definitely not as straightforward as film two in the series because many people hate this film already, and an equal amount adore every inch of it. It’s a tricky balancing act since so much of the most well-crafted and exceptional elements have already been discussed over three and a half hours...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] Part two of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. Following the powerful set-up of Batman Begins, the production team pulled out all the stops to deliver an epic crime thriller in the style of Michael Mann’s Heat. This is a story of a city in turmoil and a police force struggling to keep order, up against the ruthless mob. At the center are Batman and The Joker, forces of n...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] Finally we get to Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy. After eight years away from cinema screens, and multiple stalled attempts at relaunching the franchise, Warner Bros knocked the Bat out of the park with the best film so far and arguably the most compelling and mature adaptation of Bruce Wayne and his alter-ego. Many aspects are discussed and deconstructed including Ch...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] This week we’re looking at three of the best Animated Batman Movies. 1. Year One (2011): The retold origin by Frank Miller, published in comic form in 1987. This film focuses on Bruce first donning the cape and cowl at the same time that Jim Gordon arrives at Gotham City PD and encounters overwhelming corruption. This was the inspiration for Batman Begins and  Mask of the Phan...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] This is the fourth of the Batman shows. This time we’re taking a deep dive into the absolutely underrated box-office bomb, virtually unknown by the general public, but possibly best film about Batman until the Nolan films came along; Mask of the Phantasm. By extension this allows us to talk about the Animated Series which this sprang from unexpectedly for all. Kevin Conroy and...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] We’re back at the Bat! This week was going to be a pair of reviews of the 1995 film Batman Forever and the 1997 sequel; Batman & Robin, both directed by Joel Schumacher. What we found was that our problems with these films could not be separated and a great deal of the issues of the fourth Batman movie originated in the third, which usually gets off lightly as it is consid...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] This time we’re focusing on the popular, troubled, dark, flawed and twisted sequel to Burton’s 1989 smash hit. This was the only big-screen Catwoman until this year’s Dark Knight Rises and the only Penguin if you don’t count the 1966 Batman film or the frankly fuck-awful Catwoman (2004). It has Christopher Walken acting as himself, Michelle Pfeiffer in skin-tight vinyl, lickin...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] The 1989 film. This is the second of the Batman shows. This time we’re covering one of the most successful blockbusters of its day, a movie that redefined how Hollywood handled it’s big, fantastical character pieces. It followed on from Richard Donner’s Superman (1978) as the next significant step in comic-book movies, jump-starting a series that would dominate the 90’s in the...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] The 1966 film. This is the first of more than twenty of our shows reviewing the many many movies that have been made about The Batman, starting way back with Adam West and culminating with The Dark Knight Rises. On the chopping block we have an extremely divisive depiction. Some will find it irritating, shallow, pointless and boring, others consider it a masterclass of camp hu...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] 33 years after the original film, the director that started off the series returns to the same universe to start a new one. Ridley Scott’s PROMETHEUS is arguably the most anticipated prequel to be released since The Phantom Menace, but is that word even an apt description of this film, considering what happens and what doesn’t? You could make a case that it serves as a remake...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] Quadrilogy (nonsense noun) Definition; “The greed-motivated act of adding a superfluous and worthless sequel to a trilogy that has been finished. Origin; Alien Resurrection.” - Oxford English Dictionary. After Fincher’s effort ended Ellen Ripley’s story, the geniuses at Hollywood started plans for how a person could “get better” from being dead. Somebody mentioned cloning and...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] David Fincher’s directorial debut has been maligned by most and loved by few. It’s a flawed, filthy, foreboding and occasionally really effective story. The end result of thirty script rewrites and years of troubled development. We get our teeth into how studio meddling by Fox left this project multibuggered to the point where it almost ended up an Alan Smithee picture. Finche...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] (Note: This episode has been significantly improved with a 2021 Re-Edit that can be found on the main School of Movies feed) James Cameron took the helm and made this sequel into something that complimented and expanded upon the masterful original. With more of a Sci-Fi action feel, the director of Avatar, the only great Terminator films and Piranha II: The Spawning chose to f...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] In this first and arguably best outing, directed by Ridley Scott, we take a look at a haunted house story set in space. A B-Movie creature feature lent integrity from its serious tone, sparing and masterful handling of tension and significant influence on several genres. This was the film that made British-born Scott a key player in Hollywood, introduced the world to Sigourney...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] This is the sixth and final of the official MARVEL superhero movie reviews for now. In the future we will be returning to Marvel with reviews of the Spider-Man and X-Men film series’, and maybe a few of the others like Daredevil, 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Ang Lee’s Hulk. We will also be covering any subsequent movies from the Marvel cinematic universe including Iron Man...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] This show covers the not the first but certainly the finest cinematic outing for the star-spangled man with the shield.. This was another tough movie to make happen considering America’s relationship with war over the past decade. If they had gone too patriotic the rest of the world would have hated it, too down on America and the domestic box-office would suffer greatly. In t...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] This was a tough one for MARVEL. DC spent years developing the similarly magic-based superhero movie; Wonder Woman and ultimately stalled, ironically letting go the director of The Avengers. The rest of the established Marvels have their background in science, albeit fantastical science from the mind of dreamers. Thor has his basis in actual Norse mythology, given a space-age...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] The first film was a huge success, but with The Dark Knight, expectations were driven far higher, both in terms of box office and critical success. This led to a hell of a lot of people being incredibly disappointed with iron Man 2. In this show, we defend the most maligned of the five MARVEL’s  whilst clearly defining its lazier, sloppier moments. We highlight it’s strengths...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] This show covers the 2008 Requel (a portmanteau of both Sequel and Reboot) of The Incredible Hulk. This is a character who has been rendered onscreen many many times and unlike Iron Man, was not only fully formed in the minds of the public but had received a theatrical outing already. Marvel’s job with this film was to deliver something more fun than 2003’s HULK, directed by A...

[Digital Gonzo 2012] This first show covers Iron Man, arguably the best of the released movies so far. A critical and box-office high for Robert Downey Junior and director John Favreau and the beginning of a new renaissance of Marvel comic book adaptations. Guests: Nikki Taylor of TheKiddDogg Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst Paul Gibson of Gonzo Planet

[Digital Gonzo 2012] In watching this final part, it actually managed to gain the top spot as my favourite, just edging out Hallows Part 1, due to even more fantastic acting from all involved and some of the sharpest emotional peaks in the series. This is, however not a perfect film for many lovers of the book and we go in-depth on the various differences that make this a slightly different angle...