[School of Movies 2024] Fixed the title on this one, to both distinguish it from 2021s Godzilla vs. Kong, AND to give the rightful prominence to the Great Ape whose movie this most definitely is. Willow suggested the original title would be as misleading as "Loki x Thor: Ragnarok". This is my favourite of the new MonsterVerse films, by a narrow margin, considering Godzilla II: King of the Monsters is still absolutely magnificent. Just like that 2019 entry, it's also one of my favourite films of ...
Sep 27, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Ep. 500
[School of Movies 2024] The initial and glowingly positive reviews are coming in for Transformers One this week. It's the first entirely-animated Transformers movie since the infamous Optimus-Prime-slaughtering 'The Transformers: The Movie' in 1986, and I am happy and hopeful for the future in that regard. But what of the state of the live action films? The fifth and final Michael Bay-directed mess was The Last Knight in 2017, which did almost HALF the box office of the obscenely successful Age ...
Sep 20, 2024•2 hr 14 min•Ep. 499
[School of Movies 2024] One of the biggest films of the year, and the greatest success for the MCU... which weirdly seems to avoid going anywhere near Earth 616, instead acting as either a swansong for the X-Men series, begun in the year 2000, or possibly a phoenix-cry. It really depends on how Marvel handles the Mutants in the next few years. However, as a focused distillation of some of the greatest strengths of those 13 movies this one succeeds where so many others fail, not by being eye-roll...
Sep 13, 2024•2 hr 9 min•Ep. 498
[School of Movies 2024] This one is special on a level I am going to find challenging to articulate in a medium as clumsy as the written word. It is a show that has been promised for well over a decade, it took me four recording sessions and a protracted edit over the month of August. It is so densely and richly layered that I would put it in the same category as our shows on Guillermo del Toro and the Lord of the Rings (ironic, since that was the book the writer/director used to convince his mo...
Sep 06, 2024•3 hr 4 min•Ep. 497
[School of Everything Else 2024] This is a very special episode, and might be a lot of folk's favourite of the year. What is a “FELLAS…” scenario? It feels like most of us will have encountered them in the wild as we doomscroll our way through the doldrums of the Misinformation Age. Simply put, it’s when a man asks other men if it is in fact gay to do something in particular, OR it is when a man (and a very cis man at that) makes an empirical statement pronouncing something in particular that a ...
Aug 30, 2024•2 hr 56 min•Ep. 496
[School of Everything Else 2024] This was a commissioned show for Tylor and Chris Finik. It covers the first two seasons of this animated show which can be found on Netflix, Paramount+ and Nickelodeon. You can listen to the whole thing without fear of anything being made worse, and we keep a lot of secrets and surprises under wraps since statistically most of you won't have seen this. On first inspection it might seem like Star Trek for Babies or Star Trek: Rebels, however, spend some time with ...
Aug 23, 2024•2 hr 58 min•Ep. 495
[School of Movies 2024] What is a "hangout movie"? It's a film that concerns itself far less with telling one grand, overall story of one or two people's development or journey, and far more on literally spending time with the ensemble cast of characters. In this show I draw the comparison between the characters we see here and animals in a safari park, but I don' mean they are simply placed there for our amusement, and don't matter. What I mean here is that we are experiencing a world based on ...
Aug 16, 2024•2 hr 11 min•Ep. 494
[School of Movies 2024] This is a special show for Chris Finik. It would have been a relatively straightforward endeavour for Sharon and I to delve into this one. It's a story that feels familiar and contains many of our very favourite elements; A betrayed lady thriving on her own untapped resourcefulness with help from a chain of women begun long ago, a dragon with an AMAZING voice and a Royal Family squatting on an exploitative predatory system that all needs to be burned down. Plus, we love M...
Aug 09, 2024•2 hr 11 min•Ep. 493
[School of Everything Else 2024] This was a commissioned show for Self AKA Selfproclaimed. Ever since The Legend of Aang wrapped in 2008 there have been comics expanding upon what followed the defeat of Fire Lord Ozai. This, however, was a pair of books; 'The Rise of Kyoshi' and 'The Shadow of Kyoshi' detailing what occurred four centuries prior to the adventures of Team Aang. And the 2019-2020 release of these two novels, penned by F.C. Yee with consultancy from co-creator of Avatar Michael Dan...
Aug 02, 2024•2 hr 9 min•Ep. 492
[School of Everything Else 2024] This was a commissioned show for Dean R who just happens to sit at the ideal age to have discovered Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Vale on PlayStation 2 in 2001 as a kid. After it had a profound effect upon him, he went back to examine the original Klonoa: Door to Phantomile on PS1 from 1996. And while these puzzle-platformers with their poochified, Sonic-looking rabbit/cat thing might on first inspection hold nothing of particular interest I was glad to have been contracte...
Jul 26, 2024•2 hr 36 min•Ep. 491
[School of Movies 2024] This is a commissioned show for Chris Finik. And unlike the marketing for this straight-to-Hulu film our show is going to be a little more mysterious about the details, because it definitely was worth going in completely ignorant like we did. I even made some arresting artwork for this episode to better convey that this is not your regular thriller. If you have Disney+ that's your evening. It's a silent movie, and I say that as A Quiet Place: Day One is doing quite well i...
Jul 19, 2024•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 490
[School of Movies 2024] After many years of thinking about how to tackle these two absolute idiots, we found the best angle for us. Ostensibly this is about the 1996 movie, which still holds up today and makes for an appealing, surprisingly general-audience-friendly and brisk hour and 21-minute comedy. This is an achievement, considering their extremely sketchy first incarnation as a pair of cruelly observed Texas teenagers being horrible to frogs. What Sharon and I do here is fill out the absen...
Jul 12, 2024•2 hr 42 min•Ep. 489
[School of Movies 2024] Cloon June finally comes to a close with a magnificent romantic thriller, written by Elmore Leonard, the author of Get Shorty, 3:10 to Yuma and Rum Punch, which became Jackie Brown. This one hit at the tail end of the 90s, and became a significant landmark in the careers of George Clooney, director Steven Soderbergh and George's co-star, a relative newcomer named Jenifer Lopez. Deliberately stylised to evoke the crime thrillers of the 1970s, we do time with smooth-talking...
Jul 05, 2024•2 hr 26 min•Ep. 488
[School of Movies 2024] Initially we were going to cover this 2015 movie as the After School Club to close out Cloon June, but the more we delved into it, the more weighty and disturbingly messy it became. From the mind of visionary animated filmmaker Brad Bird (Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol) comes a movie based on a themed area of Disneyland from 1955 which envisioned a great big beautiful Tomorrow. Now, 60-70 years later, having arrived at a mild dystopia, how can we reconcile what our ...
Jun 28, 2024•2 hr 32 min•Ep. 487
[School of Movies 2024] Cloon June continues with the slickest and arguably best Las Vegas heist movie. This 2001 remake of the underachieving 1960 Rat Pack original is less about establishing characters with any kind of arc and more about setting up the perfect mousetrap with eleven skilled individuals we can have fun with. It's a big old magic trick, with the prestige reveal to us, the audience being the punch that makes it satisfying. We weren't going to cover the sequels on the main feed, bu...
Jun 21, 2024•2 hr 56 min•Ep. 486
[School of Movies 2024] Cloon June, the month dedicated to George Clooney movies continues apace with his first significant lead part after over a decade of appearances in shonky Z-List horror and then two years of his breakout role in E.R. as eminently desirable paediatrician Doctor Ross. This is a firestorm of a counterpoint to that gentle healer, fugitive thief Seth Gecko is a deeply angry man, though he is a charming picnic next to his monstrous brother. This episode is also an intersection ...
Jun 14, 2024•2 hr 59 min•Ep. 485
[School of Movies 2024] It's not often we handle romantic comedies, but this one has more going on beneath the surface. With particular emphasis placed on the back and forth script, fast-flowing, overlapping dialogue and highly quotable, this extremely 90s movie showcases one of the most appealing onscreen couples in cinema history; Batman & Catwoman. Two single parents, one an irresponsible fun-time Dad, the other juggling career and motherhood furiously, find themselves and their kids enta...
Jun 07, 2024•2 hr 52 min•Ep. 484
[School of Movies 2024] Another unexpected Commission that came out of nowhere. Big thank you to Dean R for requisitioning this. Far less well-known in Wes Craven's body of work than the slashers, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, The Hills Have Eyes, Last House on the Left, this one is going outside his comfort zone. Starting out like a romantic comedy, an aspect highlighted in the trailer, starring the stunning and wildly talented young actors Rachel McAdams (fresh from Mean Girls and The Not...
May 31, 2024•2 hr 47 min•Ep. 483
[School of Everything Else 2024] This was a show that was recommended to us a few times, but then wound up an unexpected commissioned episode. Compounding this, Willow has been a lover of this crazy, twisted, queer-friendly HELL for years, since the pilot surfaced on YouTube. They had already seen all eight episodes of Amazon's 2024 first season, and considering a now maturing and emotionally complex Gen Z is the target audience for this, we got Willow on as our special guest. For the majority o...
May 24, 2024•2 hr 55 min•Ep. 482
[School of Movies 2024] Statistically speaking, very few of you have seen this movie. Those who have either detest it with utmost derision or love it so much it makes them cry. Garnering a pathetic 11% on Rotten Tomatoes one would think this an unmitigated disaster, easily summed up as "Grown woman remembers imaginary friend, he returns and wrecks her life." But look at the run time on this one... two and a half hours. And you know us, if we've talked for that long about something so obscure tha...
May 17, 2024•3 hr 31 min•Ep. 481
[School of Movies 2024] With the new Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Maze-Runner helmer Wes Ball emerging this week, we went back to look at a Trilogy that emerged without any overarching grand plan, changing directors after the first instalment, with both men just trying to make the absolute best film they could with the opportunity they had. And they succeeded! This is one of the best low-key trios of films based on a long-existing franchise that nobody had any real expectations...
May 10, 2024•2 hr•Ep. 480
[School of Movies 2024] He's responsible for some of the most adored and industry-changing films of all time, and for some of the biggest cases of fan backlash ever recorded. It's maybe a little harder to remember now, after year upon year of Disney's Star Wars being declared the worst thing that has ever been put to screen, but a few years earlier, similar guys were saying similar things about the man that many fans wish had never sold to America's Mousy Spirit of Capitalism. What we have for y...
May 03, 2024•2 hr 2 min•Ep. 479
[School of Movies 2024] This week, I have put together a presentation utilising footage drawn painstakingly from many, many hours worth of commentaries and archival interviews on the Star Wars movies, all focusing on one man. I worked until the thumb and index finger and on my mouse hand no longer obeyed commands, in order to do justice to the astonishing amount of our experience of those movies is informed upon by the sounds he composed with. His decades of craftsmanship are as crucial to Star ...
Apr 26, 2024•2 hr 19 min•Ep. 478
[School of Everything Else 2024] When the Roman Empire looted the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, the amount of gold they found inside dropped the price of gold by 50% throughout the Empire. If something like that happened today, it would have caused the collapse of several First World countries overnight. But that amount of loot pales in comparison to the value of the One Piece; both the fictional mysterious pirate treasure that has everyone in this wonderful waterworld taking to the high seas,...
Apr 19, 2024•2 hr 5 min•Ep. 477
[School of Everything Else 2024] Our years-long journey through the DC Animated Universe comes to a close, and it is both melancholy as we say goodbye to Kevin Conroy and at the same time wildly enthusiastic for some of the very best episodes across all that we have watched. It is strange to think that we started this in 2020 when the DC movies at the cinema were on a high note: After years of the only success story being Batman, they had a billion-dollar hit with Aquaman, a cheerful adventure w...
Apr 12, 2024•2 hr 53 min•Ep. 476
[School of Everything Else 2024] The DC Animated Universe marathon reaches its Avengers phase, as the established animated Batman and Superman from their own Animated Series' which had already crossed over, team up with Wally West's Flash (who had guested on Superman) John Stewart's Green Lantern (as opposed to the Kyle Raynor who guested on Superman) Diana Prince who should absolutely have gotten her own Wonder Woman: The Animated Series, J'onn J'onzz the Martian Manhunter (not to be confused w...
Apr 05, 2024•2 hr 54 min•Ep. 475
[School of Movies 2024] This is an idea for a new kind of show that I've been developing. It just so happens to coincide with a period where my voice has been wrecked from illness and I'm trying to limit talking for long stretches so that my vocal cords can heal up. I've been pulling together an archive of Director's Commentaries from the various discs that nobody seems to want any more. These represent a window of just over a decade wherein we got to hear what was in the heads of the filmmakers...
Mar 29, 2024•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 474
[School of Everything Else 2024] The conclusion (for now) to this series of shows on the triumphant return of Star Trek. Season 2 slaloms between unsettling and dark episodes which would feel more at home in Discovery if they weren't so personal to the characters in this rich ensemble... and some of the most hilarious, touching, light-hearted yet heart-breaking downtime episodes which highlight the comedy strengths and the charisma of everyone in the crew. It's bumpy, but so worth the journey. K...
Mar 22, 2024•2 hr 22 min•Ep. 473
[School of Movies 2024] Is this the last true swashbuckler of the 20th Century? It's certainly the Zorro movie so great, and so wildly successful in all of its aims that there hasn't really been a landmark big screen appearance since then (that wasn't the leading man playing a cat). Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta Jones in their prime, and Anthony Hopkins delivering my personal favourite performance of his. Here, in this commissioned episode, we go through every department, exploring the mul...
Mar 15, 2024•2 hr 45 min•Ep. 472
[School of Everything Else 2024] This is one of two commissioned podcasts on the first two seasons of the best Star Trek shows in decades. Refreshingly lacking in cynicism and tapping into the Kennedy-era energy of exploration and endeavour with a tight focus on character development, this one really is worth your time. We spend two and a half hours of spoilerific, textured discussion time really delving into these first ten episodes. Kaoru's recommended episodes of the original 1966 series to w...
Mar 08, 2024•3 hr 41 min•Ep. 471
