School Of Movies

[School of Everything Else 2022] Lunatic eats strange fungus, throws reptile carcases and banana peel out of his car. Everyone cheers!  One of the most beloved of game series, the racing title that prides itself on accessibility (most of the time) and appeal to all ages, with a consistently high bar of quality (imagine if every Sonic game had that) and a lasting appeal that both piques nostalgia and makes us excited for the future. What began as a multiplayer sequel to vintage SNES launch title F-Zero became a flagship Nintendo showcase of their core Mario-related characters. We look at the development history and how the series has evolved over thirty years, the gambles that didn't pay off, the elements we now take for granted and the key aspects that make it work so well.  What's abundantly clear is that everyone has a different favourite and everyone has at least one example in the series that they just bounce off. We eschew discussion on the obscure arcade games, the remote control car for your mansion, a

[School of Movies 2022] We continue an unexpected year of diving into the back-catalogue of The Wachowskis. Speed Racer is on the way, and this right here is a dark little neo noir about stealing from murderous mobsters. It's all claustrophobic labyrinthine interiors, black and white, red and green with overtones of German expressionism. Bill Pope the same Director of Photography as the first three Matrix films, Don Davis who likewise handled scoring detail, and Zach Staenberg as editor *and* Joe Pantoliano playing a total dirtbag makes this in many ways feel more like The Matrix than the fourth movie.  Also this is a steamy lesbian romance and this is VERY not safe for work!  Guest: Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

[School of Movies 2022] This was unexpected... followed by yet more unexpectation. When I first saw the teaser trailer for the original film, all the way back in 2016 I thought the dancing pig picture would be inane and perpetually irritating, only to find out from trusted critics that there was way more below the surface. And they were right, I loved it immediately. Ever since then we've been promising to do a show. So, now we've finally got around to it, as the commission escorted to the front of the line this cheery, toe-tapping, occasionally melancholy film about the drive to perform. And we were surprised yet again with what we found. Not all of it fantastic when scrutinised.  And since the sequel launched in theatres the same week we recorded I followed up with a completely separate section starting at 1h 2m, detailing to Sharon how the sequel develops on the original. Even though everything we found wasn't peachy-keen we still recommend seeing both movies as they are rather lovely. 

[School of Movies 2022] Picture the scene; It's late 1994 and young teens who have thrown a thousand hadoukens in arcades and on home consoles throughout the early 90s finally get to go to the cinema and see their favourite characters battling in live action. The casting seems superficially solid. Jean-Claude Van Damme is at the peak of his career path, Raoul Julia was wildly entertaining in the Adams Family movies and The Locomotion... is a catchy tune performed by Australian soap star Kylie Minogue... and we don't recognise most of the others so they must be accomplished martial artists. Surely this one is an easy win.  In later years this movie became a celebrated campy classic, its often ludicrous lines quoted ad nauseum. Let's look at the experience of actually sitting down and watching it with a critical eye.  Guests Hollywoo Actress  Maya Santandrea @Mayasantandrea Jason "Chewie" Slate @TheManaPool

[School of Movies 2022] Your eyes do not deceive you, we are doing anime this week. Ironically the only other Main Event show we've done of this ilk is Kiki's Delivery Service, which emerged the year after this film and replaced it as the most expensive Japanese animated cinematically-released production of the era. You wouldn't think it, comparing that sweet tale about an enthusiastic girl who gets burnout in Stockholm to this cyberpunk epic. As striking today as it was in 1988, this is a film of vital importance that is stunning to witness. A harsh, thrilling journey through an alternate 2019 civilisation on the brink of explosion. Roving gangs of biker clowns make war in the streets as wrinkled old psychic children face down a furious, embittered and hellishly powerful teenage boy.  If you've never seen it, find the highest quality transfer, turn out the lights and switch off your phone. This is one for the ages. 

[School of Everything Else 2022] Bouncing back from What If? Marvel came out swinging with a street-level Christmas crime caper. This served the dual purposes of finally giving the least-loved Avenger some substantial spotlighting, and ghosts of his past to deal with, and introducing us to a brand new Hawkeye in the form of Kate Bishop. Hailee Steinfeld was offered the role the moment she walked into casting director Sara Halley Finn's office. Kevin Feige had seen her in Bumblebee, Spider-Verse, Dickinson (and hopefully Edge of Seventeen, which is splendid) and knew already that she had the charm and pep and serious acting chops to be a young Avenger. But is this six-episode miniseries the ideal place for her story, or did it get lost among the scrabble for screen time from some seriously charismatic appearances? Guests: Greg Downing of Through the Wind Door @MightyGregDoge

[School of Movies 2022] We come to it at last, maybe the final Matrix film directed by a Wachowski. Though this vein of property is worth too much money to the IP-owner to leave unmined. Representing a refinement and evolution of the philosophies laid down two decades ago. This film was launched a week after Spider-Man: No Way Home and just before Christmas Day, due to a prior arrangement with HBO. This dismal decision, coupled with Lana Wachowski's revised approach to both storytelling and action led to this film being both critically panned and rejected by audiences everywhere. Par for the course on Matrix sequels. However, some folks absolutely adored the tale that was being wound back on itself and then forward into the future. At the time of recording the only other show that we had in the can was the 2019 one on the original, so this represents a close-out of the series through the lens of diving back in to reassess, as we then proceeded to Reloaded, the Animatrix and Revolutions.  Next week: Hawkey

[School of Movies 2022] The least-loved, most-hated, and in consequence least-explored of the Matrix saga finally gets the School of Movies treatment. The 1999 original is turned on its head here, resulting in a film that almost seems the inverse of everything that got us fired up in the first place. But it was a necessary refocusing in order to expand outwards from Morpheus' dogmatic vision of "Us vs. Them".  Philosophically this lands in a healthier place, even if so much of what we see feels mismanaged, awkward, stalling for time and sometimes downright annoying. We go all-out here to clear away the debris of the original conclusion and lay bare the depth of thought beneath.  Next week we close out with what might well be the last Matrix movie. Certainly the last steered by a Wachowski.  Guests: Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch  Alexa Vargas @Plutoburns whose YouTube channel is here Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod and Vide

[School of Everything Else 2022] A very solid argument could be made for this being a movie, and thus being in the "Everything Else" category being erroneous. However, the focus of this episode is the trans-media endeavour that The Matrix series became.  It straddles four films, a PS2 game named Enter The Matrix, an MMORPG named The Matrix Online and this anthology of nine short animated films, and it is ALL official story canon. The only release which doesn't quite fit this is The Path of Neo, another PS2 game which fills in the blanks of Neo's journey towards fulfilling the prophecy of The One, and while most of it probably happened the end is a direct departure, or at least an abstraction of the narrative.  So that's what powers this discussion, and The Animatrix is absolutely worth watching now, though as you will hear it is not only surprisingly violent and grim at times, but the shorts vary in depth rather significantly. Next week we conclude the original Trilogy with the Matrix Revolutions Guests:

[School of Movies 2022] For this one we went all-out. It was an incredibly rich and dense discussion for the initial recording and I have added a ton of extra content, all to the sounds of the eclectic soundtrack and the rarely-heard extended score of Don Davis.  This is the first part of an evolution of the binary Us vs. Them dichotomy of The Matrix (1999) and was far less successful in ensnaring audiences with expanded perspective. What Film 2 sets up, Film 3 knocks down, and then decades later, Film 4 then ruminates on. So if you always thought the sequels were trash this may at least convey what they were trying to say. If you've always had a soft spot for them this will be a dream come true.  Next week we will be focusing on The Animatrix (2003) Guests: Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch  Alexa Vargas @Plutoburns whose YouTube channel is here Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod and Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPod

[School of Movies 2022] Highly appropriately we cap off the James Cameron season with both the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. We are starting 2022 with the original Avatar from 2009, and hopefully we will be finishing the year with Avatar 2. But with four more sequels planned out over the next decade it's very possible this man will spend the rest of his life on Pandora.  And that feels weirdly appropriate. He spent the first half of the 2000s under the sea, obsessively re-examining the wreck of Titanic. Then he began to craft this whole new world to escape to, and he's been there ever since.  But how does this first film stand up alone? Without the benefits of a mountain of hype and a huge 3D screen. How is it on just a big TV in a darkened living room? Jump on your Ikran and fly through the alien jungle with us. 

[School of Movies 2021] A lively and enthusiastic end of one trilogy and setup for a different flavour of future web-slinging, this thing drew gasps, cheers and applause, even from my British audience, and we don't cheer for anything except football. This is a really special and important Spider-Man movie. Beyond all hyperbole and landmark moments in comic-book style crossovers it is a story about the serious toll that being Spidey extracts from everyone under that signature mask. Guests: Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod Nathan Eastram @bertnerdtram These two also of Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast Austin Wilden @WC_WIT of Wits-Writing  Nama Chibitty of our Discord @NamaTheNerd 

[School of Movies 2021] This is the big one, folks. This is the movie I didn't realise how passionate I was about until we started engaging our analytical style to it. I've had Titanic in the back of my head as a film I really wanted to talk about for many many years, and I suspect i was waiting for The Abyss and True Lies to hit blu ray so we could do a James Cameron Season, or at least for Avatar 2 to finally emerge. In the end we just had to go ahead and hoist the anchor without them. As it turns out this massive, cinematic phenomenon is rather special. Despised by some, upon its release in 1997, it found the largest audience ever, and bewitched them. And it achieved this success not by being flashy and showy alone, but by giving us a story that many would want to return to again and again. That's one of the more powerful ways to get that top spot.  And I say this without hyperbole, in terms of shows I've put together with just Sharon and I at the mics, this might be the appropriately grandest. We pulle

[School of Movies 2021] Taking a break from Cameron Season to focus on a holiday movie hardly anybody has seen or knows about. This one from 1994, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer is one of the anti-Christmas set. One for people who see the entire family coming over as a bit of a nightmare, rather than the most wonderful time of the year. The focus is on Lloyd and Caroline Chasseur, a married couple on the rocks, at one another's throats the whole time and each sitting on a powder-keg of resentment. Things take a turn one Christmas Eve when Gus, an irascible cat burglar hiding from the cops takes them hostage, only to find them impossible to deal with. And then the whole family come round and Gus has to pretend to be their marriage counsellor, Dr Wong, it's a seasonal farce, but one with unexpected heart and grit. It might be hard-going if you don't like dragging everything out to be examined, but we crafted this show to cater to the majority who haven't ever seen this, so you'll get a full sense of the story

[School of Movies 2021] The Cameron season continues with yet another massive blockbuster for its time that is almost impossible to find in HD today. You can see why we held off this long, just waiting for Jim and the studios to get their act together and release these from the vaults.  (Un)luckily(?)  Disney have handed the IP over to a new director to make a Disney+ show. It almost certainly won't contain Arnold Schwarzenegger or Jamie Lee Curtis, and the world we're in right now is wildly different to the 1994 this emerged into. It was even a year before Pierce Brosnan's debut as James Bond. And I struggle to fathom why they would want to capitalise on a brand that has been purposefully buried for nearly 30 years, AND hand that project to McG of all people! But doing so will at least (probably?) bring the film we're covering today to the most accessible streaming platform, so we can all collectively suck air in through our mouths as the brazen, complacent mid-90s dick-waggling at terrorism plays out. H

[Digital Drift 2015] This was originally released in 2015 in a series covering the (then) five Terminator movies. But it seemed wildly appropriate to recover and spotlight the first two as the Cameron-directed pair stand tall as recognised classics while the rest imitate (though we maintain that Dark Fate from 2019 is a worthy completion of a Trilogy. Check out our April 2020 episode on that woefully overlooked conclusion). Unlike The Abyss everyone has seen T2. So we delve into the subtleties and lore, starting off with taking it to task over the time travel, but proceeding into this story as a parable for unilateral disarmament. Joshua Garrity joins us once again to explore this cybernetic opera, in which Los Angeles of the 1990s is as much a character as any of the vibrant figures onscreen. Many thanks to Daniel Floyd for a segment of his on the existentially powerful arcade game Missile Command. Guest: Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse

[School of Movies 2021] The first all-new show for the James Cameron season, and it's a doozy.  You may have heard stories about the troubled events of the shoot, and what the actors and crew were forced to go through by their hard taskmaster of a director. Or you may not have. Many people, especially in their 20s or below might never have seen or even *heard* of this 1989 film, sandwiched between Aliens and Terminator 2, since it would appear Cameron himself has been trying to keep it buried at the bottom of the sea for more than 32 years! There's little other explanation as to why it hasn't received an authorised remastering since the days of laserdisc (ask your grandfathers). So, journey down with us now, as Sharon and I strap on our specialised deep-diving gear and prepare to breathe-in the pink water. 

[School of Movies 2021] This one came out surprisingly contentious. What was originally, seemingly set to be Marvel powering back into Phase 4 with a new group of superbeings now that The Avengers are on garden leave, actually turned out to be quite a risky endeavour. It's a Space-Odyssey-scaled combination of metaphysical rumination, mature interpersonal relationships, deliberately diverse casting and a hot property award-winning Chinese, female director with a very personal pitch. It's also got epic fights, giant monster greeblies and laser eyes. And at least in terms of box office and critical praise it seems right now like this gamble hasn't worked. A lot of folks bounced right off Eternals. We ourselves were thrown by many elements, but ultimately warmed to it, and we suspect this one might grow in appreciation over time. Find out possible reasons why, right here.  Guests: Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

[Digital Gonzo 2012] NOTE: This episode has been significantly re-edited, and I would say improved for its 2021 overhaul. The original 2012 show can be found on the School of Movies Archive feed. James Cameron took the helm from Ridley Scott, 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 two best Terminator films and Piranha II: The Spawning chose to focus on humorous machismo, strong female characters, and a socio-political, anti-military, anti-corporate agenda… it would not be the last time. Once again we tried to be as serious as possible, once again we failed, hence the multitude of outtakes at the end which include at least one of us in the grip of hysterics. Guests: Leah Haydu of Cane and Rinse Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse Matt Ramsey of GamerDork James Perkins of Starburst Magazine 

[Digital Drift 2015] NOTE: The James Cameron season begins! And rather than making you go back and root through the School of Movies Archive podcast feed for the shows on some of his very best films, we are re-releasing The Terminator and Terminator 2 that we recorded for Digital Drift in 2015. Along with this I have done an extensive re-edit of our 2012 show on Aliens for Digital Gonzo. That will be out tomorrow. Coming up in the next few weeks, intermitting with our show on The Eternals and possibly Ghostbusters: Afterlife we have brand new episodes on The Abyss, True Lies, Titanic and Avatar.  Now to the film that brought the sci-fi movement in the 80s to a new plateau and made James Cameron a name in the industry. This dark tale of a soldier from a future war coming back to protect an unborn leader may have many elements which stem from a bunch of other works, but it tells itself in such dramatic, intense fashion that it feels special and unnerving, epic and yet intimate. This thing cost $6.4 million a