School of Movies

[School of Everything Else 2026]

This is the best thing Marvel have ever made out of X-Men. That is not hyperbole. Stack up every comic, every animated series, every video game and every movie, and only a handful even come close to this level of both crafted quality and ferocious realisation of evolved central themes.

The original X-Men '92 show ran all the way up to September 1997 with the 76th episode "Graduation Day". The show h...

[School of Everything Else 2026]

This is a commissioned episode for Chris Finik, and Alejandra Vargas (both of whom guest on this show) as well as Sarah Montgomery and Self.

The remnants of the shattered team at Telltale, seminal adventure game developers of the 2000s and 2010s return as AdHoc Studio with one of the very best of its type. The premise is simple enough, almost rote by today's standards; In a world of superpowered cri...

[School of Movies 2026]

Finally, after twenty years of half-assed attempts (thirty if you count the Roger Corman production never intended to see the light of day) to bring Marvel's First Family to the big screen, they actually nailed it... mostly.

First Steps delivers not just the Silver Age superheroes, but the era itself, in a gorgeous, memorable, hopeful vision of the Kennedy-Era 1960s (one where racism has been dealt with, and...

[School of Everything Else 2026]

It's not often we talk about audiodramas on here, the last one I recall that wasn't made by me was the phenomenal World War Z in 2011. THESE three were what I needed in order to care about Star Wars again. Scholar Ian Doescher published the first three (of what would expand to nine and beyond) in lovely hardback book form between 2013 and 2014 envisioning how The Star Wars Original Trilogy would hav...

[School of Movies 2026]

For this episode we were lucky enough to be able to bring in stand-up comedian and 18th Century history nut Jenny Zigrino. We gave Jenny free reign on the choice of movie to talk about and she went for her favourite; the story of the greatest composer who ever lived, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This masterpiece, directed by Milos Foreman and based on a 1979 stage play swept the Oscars in 1985 and if you've neve...

[School of Movies 2026]

The 1994 film that ate The Shawshank Redemption's lunch, dinner, supper, breakfast and second-breakfast at the Oscars. A deeply polarising melodrama recounting several decades of American Boomer history, showcasing cutting-edge face-mapping technology that looked unintentionally unsettling even then, and laying down confused messages along the way.

We attempt to read Gump fairly, consulting the direction the...

[School of Movies 2026]

One of the most passionately beloved movies of the 1990s, and indeed all of film history, it is peculiar that while you will meet people who haven't seen this film, you will never meet people who don't like it and gleefully tell you so. The fact that when Shawshank first emerged it was largely ignored or made fun of for having a convoluted name, and lost almost every award it was nominated for to Forrest Gum...

[School of Movies 2026]

Truman Burbank lives a charmed existance, residing on a little island town that is distinctly old fashioned and twee. In reality, Truman's every movement is being broadcast to the viewing planet, and has been since his infancy. But Truman is beginning to suspect something is up, and his unseen father figure Christoph (compellingly played by Ed Harris) is working hard to restore the show to its comforting rou...

[School of Movies 2026]

'The Lies of Casablanca'. That was going to be my original title for this episode. When I got to sit down and watch this impeccable film on the big screen, it struck me how often the main characters lie; to each other, to themselves, to us... and yet we as the audience are almost always in the advantagous position of being able to clearly discern each lie.

So, Sharon and I delved into a true classic, venerat...

[School of Movies 2026]

One of the greatest thrillers of the 20th Century, we recorded this show on the 30th Anniversary of Michael Mann's crime epic. This is most definitely NOT a film to watch in twenty-minute chunks on your phone at work! It is a masterfully crafted presentation of the tension between professionalism and emotion, punctuated with ferocious gunfire and transcendant, eliptical music.

It is a one-time head-to-head b...

[School of Movies 2025]

It has been ten years since Disney relaunched Star Wars in the cinema, delivering what felt like a special globally-unifying grand, historical event... that a bunch of Star wars fans complained felt too much like the 1977 original special globally-unifying grand, historical event.

J.J. Abrams has proved over the years that he is far better at restarting big, exciting new worlds off with a bang (as he did wit...

[School of Movies 2025]

Jim Carrey plays Ebeneezer Scrooge in this unsettling adaptation (sometimes intentionally so, sometimes not). Here, we get to talk about what was possible in this performance capture version that has been done nowhere else, making it strange and special and awkward and precious.

Continuing our season of going back to the start, we resurrected the Robert Zemekis incarnation of the perennial yuletide Dickens c...

[School of Movies 2025]

This is another revisit to one of the first films we ever covered, way back on Digital Gonzo at Christmas in 2010. The quintessential Holiday movie for those who want violence and swearing with their jingle bells. But if you go back and watch all five films (the final low-point didn't even exist when we covered this before) you will find some exceptional strengths in this one alone that all relate to precise...

[School of Movies 2025]

We return to the format of the first film, trapped in a specific, focused time period, lovingly recreated for modern audiences. The big obstacles to be overcome are both based on the ticking clock point-of-no-return, and are unexpectedly and deeply personal for our protagonist.

This one is Emmet's movie. While Marty still has to learn a harsh lesson about whether other people think he's chicken or not, he is...

[School of Movies 2025]

A sequel where the plot is hugely influenced by one of the original cast members playing hardball for a higher fee and getting left off the project should not be this great, and yet here we are. Likewise, the whole first act being set in the (then) faraway future of 2015 was almost entirely only there to fulfil promises from the end of the first film (even if Marty and Jennifer being in the timeline twice ac...

[School of Movies 2025]

Teenager from 1985 accidentally winds up in 1955 and meets his parents as teenagers, endangering his very existence. Bob Zemekis and Bob Gale made time travel immense and exhilarating, yet fun, intimate and personal, wisely choosing to focus (in a way that was rare at the time) on the everyboy hero's family relationships. And to illustrate quite how the alchemy of casting and crew was so key, they got severa...

[School of Movies 2025]

This is a commissioned episode for our hardworking Pez-loving Discord moderator Mike Hasko. It's a relic from 1993, a period just after the Cold War and not too long before the War on Terror, and the focus is on a middle-aged, white, American, divorced, straight, cis, male office-worker who one boiling hot Los Angeles morning decides that he has had enough.

The man known throughout most of the movie by his p...

[School of Movies 2025]

In an unprecedented show-type for us, what we have here began life as an After School Club commission by Tylor Long. Before it could be released it got upgraded to become a full Main Event show after this wonderful, darkly-funny, warm-hearted ghost story got included in our Discord Halloween watch-along.

The premise is familiarly bureaucratic, and simple enough for little kids to understand; In the afterlife...

[School of Movies 2025]

Several years ago, Sharon and I recorded an After School Club on this 1994 film, the botched production of which took the life of its young star Brandon Lee. We were scathing and derisory, having never much liked it (and the awful DVD transfer did it no favours) whilst expressing contempt for director Alex Proyas (I, Robot, Knowing, Gods of Egypt).

But this time (actually a year ago on its 30th anniversary) ...