The School of Movies Archive

Aug 16 2023 445

The School of Movies Archive Podcast artwork

This is the collected archive of in-depth movie podcasts produced and hosted by Alex Shaw since 2010, joined by Sharon Shaw in 2014. For brand new episodes subscribe to the School of Movies podcast as well. These are spread across three volumes: Digital Gonzo (2010-2014) Digital Drift (2014-2015) and School of Movies (2015-Present) Coming soon: The School of Everything Else Archive.

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Highlander

Aug 16 2023 100 mins

[School of Movies 2019] "Transcending history and the world, a tale of souls and swords, eternally retold"... No wait, "There can only be one!" A good question would of course then be "Why was there more than one?" Because the answer certainly isn't "Money!" The original Highlander is a sci-fi fantasy that awkwardly mashes together slightly-too-serious delivery with crazy camp oste

Zootopia

Jun 20 2019 115 mins

[School of Movies 2016] We're back talking about Disney and we've jumped from their 21st animated classic all the way to the 55th. Dan was not available this time round but when we reach this movie in our list of films we're going through naturally anyway we can get his take on it for an epilogue. This was a movie that kind of came out of nowhere and delighted pretty much everyone

Logan

Feb 08 2017 98 mins

[School of Movies 2017] This one took a lot out of us. The tenth X-Men-related movie, and just like the other two really great instalments in this series (First Class and Deadpool) most of its strengths are augmented by only having tenuous ties to what came before. Both a sobering goodbye to two of our established heroes and the actors inhabiting the roles, and an introduction to a

Coraline

Jan 31 2017 92 mins

[School of Movies 2017] A commissioned show from Joel Robinson, this is the first of the LAIKA studio movies. Written by Neil Gaiman of Sandman fame, Coraline is the story of a girl dissatisfied with her boring parents and finding her way into a strange pocket universe, and a mirror of her new house, itself containing a woman who claims to be her "Other Mother". This film has, what

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Jan 26 2017 76 mins

[School of Movies 2017] For our 200th movie episode we celebrate the occasion by taking on another immensely challenging film, not because it's a mixed bag that's hard to place, but because it's pretty much perfectly crafted, very personal to us, dauntingly important and critically acclaimed. So we had to somehow shed new light on a masterpiece. This is why we put things like this

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Jan 25 2017 90 mins

[School of Movies 2017] This was a commission from Chris Finik and turned out to be one of our most challenging shows. I was ill and having to energise myself on sugar, caffeine and enthusiasm while painkillers did their work, but more specifically we were dealing with a movie that is on the surface a silly mess, unlovable and mostly forgotten. We had to find the elements of qualit

Book of Life

Jan 24 2017 105 mins

[School of Movies 2017] A little-seen animated film from 2014, produced by Guillermo del Toro, directed by Jorge Gutierrez, the man behind the award-winning show El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera. This is a celebration of mexican culture, centred around the Day of the Dead, and the Lands of the Remembered and the Forgotten, as much about life as it is about death, and dealin

L.A. Confidential

Jan 22 2017 119 mins

[School of Movies 2017] A commissioned show, but for a film we adore. The only reason it's taken us this long is that L.A. Confidential is as rich and complex and powerful as a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle's Buffalo Trace Bourbon, and frankly... it was intimidating. It's a beautifully crafted film noir from 1997 which pretty much sets the bar for the genre from this point on, blendin

Watership Down

Jan 21 2017 84 mins

[School of Movies 2017] Truly a work of classic British animation, less know outside this island, but a tale of rabbit society in Rural England, just waiting to be discovered. OR A horribly misjudged, mercilessly brutal, relentless, casually sadistic massacre of rabbit-kind, made by aloof Brits who don't understand story structure from a source novel thrown together by a man who ha

Swiss Army Man

Jan 20 2017 106 mins

[School of Movies 2017] This one was an unexpected commission and pushed us well out of our comfort zone. It's an obscure little indie film about being isolated from civilisation, and it has a couple of particularly... provocative ways of illustrating that point. Many thanks to Dan Mayer for getting this episode made, because I can ASSURE you that without his backing it absolutely