The School of Movies Archive

By Alex ShawTV & Film

The School of Movies Archive episodes

January 14, 2016 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles + Out of the Shadows
[School of Movies 2016]
This show covers both the 2014 reboot of the Turtles (recorded a year ago and stored in our vault for this very week) AND the 2016 sequel, Out of the Shadows.

It's Sharon and I going back to a series that has had patches of good, flashes of great but never produced a truly brilliant film. It's also been plagued by some horrible decisions on the parts of the creators, hair-brained, patronizing, head-slappingly dismal attempts to cash in again on the four green brothers once ubiquitous Turtlemania.

So how do Michael Bay's Turtles stack up against both the previous movies and the Transformers series, which this is now intrinsically linked with?
1 hr 45 min
January 12, 2016 X-Men: Apocalypse
[School of Movies 2016]
Honestly, the pains I went through to get this to you. It turned into a really fun but shouty show with a lot of editorializing.

I strongly advise against going to see this film. Listen to the show at least before you decide. It DOES go into every detail of the plot, but frankly I don't think we could spoil it any more than Fox, Singer and Kinberg have already.

Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst who also saw the movie joined me with Sharon who hadn't.
Guest:

Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst
1 hr 54 min
January 11, 2016 Captain America: Civil War
[School of Movies 2016]
It's quickly jumped to the top of many a Marvel fans' favourites list. Combining the tone of Winter Soldier with the character lineup of Age of Ultron, this has been what people consider a worthy follow-up to the original 2012 Avengers Assemble.

It was an almost impossible task: To more than adequately adapt a Marvel comics crossover of dozens of books, built on forty years of continuity, featuring dozens of characters into two and a half hours, featuring just one dozen characters and built on only eight years.

Not only have they succeeded, they managed to focus and update the sprawling text version, striking all the major points, kept the tone balanced between serious social commentary, nail-biting tension and riotous fun, delivered arguably the best superhero battle of all time, two AMAZING new heroes that left us slavering for their solo films, and somehow neither Iron Man nor Captain America were left overshadowed, but in fact came to new peaks of their long arcs in entirely natural fashion.
Frankly, it's a masterpiece.
Guests:
Joshua Garrity of Cane and Rinse
Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst
2 hr 42 min
January 07, 2016 Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice
[School of Movies 2016]
We start off with my initial thoughts on coming back from the cinema. Then there’s a considerably more positive ten minute piece from Eric Jones. Then we get to the rotten meat of the whole bloody affair. Bob Chipman joins myself, Sharon Shaw and Jerome McIntosh to discuss the film in a more meta context, including what DC Warner’s options are, moving forward.
00.00.30: First Impressions
00.40.00: A More Positive Response
00.56.00: The Main Event
Guests:
Bob Chipman of Moviebob
Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst
Eric Jones of Waxing Cinematic
2 hr 47 min
January 06, 2016 Sucker Punch
[School of Movies 2016]
In the run-up to Batman V Superman, let's take a dive into the mind of director Zack Snyder. Let's look at how he sees the world, how he sees the human psyche and how he sees women.

Prepare for a furious battle of wills as Alex goes in guns blazing to take apart a film he never wants to talk about again, and Lorin Grieve defends the movie he loves. Sharon lies somewhere in the middle, but there's a hell of a lot about this that bothers her too.

Get some interpretations that the filmmakers definitely didn't consider, and learn how very vague their feelings are on what this story is actually about.

Is this a determined feminist text or something far more clumsy and unintentional? The evidence gets presented in and epic disassembling that hopefully will leave your minds clearer.

This happens to be our 150th dedicated movie show.
Guest:
Doctor Lorin Grieve from Year of Steam
2 hr 52 min
January 05, 2016 Ghost rider + Punisher + Elektra
[School of Movies 2016]
We finally come to the dregs of the Marvel cinematic outings. After this it's things like the Hasselhoff Nick Fury, the early Captain Americas and Swamp Thing which barely qualify as movies.

* Ghost Rider (2007): Nick Cage as eccentric fusion of Spawn and The Mask on a motorbike.
* Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011): Cage sleepwalks in pursuit of Antichrist. Filmed in a quarry.
* The Punisher (2004): Thomas Jane plays urban Machiavelli. Travolta never stops being furious.
* Punisher: War Zone (2008): Ray Stevenson is miserable. Many men are punished.
* Elektra: (2005) Jennifer Garner stares at lake Tahoe for 90 minutes. Also occasional ninjas.

If you disagree with any of these assessments and think we are being unfair and need to loudly set us straight our Twitter name is @NotSchoolofMovies

Either way it's a rip-roaring show as we shred these turkeys and prepare for the newest Punisher incarnation in the dark, urban, gritty, realistic, depressing Netflix shows.
1 hr 27 min
January 04, 2016 Deadpool
[School of Movies 2016]
An unexpected, unprepared impromptu podcast about the Deadpool movie, which defied all expectations.
The adventures of a heavy-for-hire who gets cancer, leaves his girlfriend in secret to get it cured and ends up as a target for weird medical experiments by a company that wants to make super mercenaries out of the homeless and the terminally ill. He is tortured until his body becomes naturally super and left with a face that looks like a bald, pickled hedgehog.
Unable to reconcile with his girlfriend, because of said face he spends a year tracking down the man who did this to him, dresses in an exotic red outfit and kills lots and lots of people along the way. Eventually they kidnap the girlfriend and he goes to a junk yard to get her back with some new friends he met on the road, one of whom is made of metal, the other of whom can make herself explode. Kills lots more people. I won't spoil the ending.
It's way better than it sounds.
Love the shows, kick us a few dollars: https://www.patreon.com/alexandershaw?ty=h
Guests:
Jason "Chewie" Slate of The Mana Pool
Ciaran Dachtler of The Overlords
Brendan Agnew of the D1 Podcast
Jesse Ferguson

2 hr 45 min
January 03, 2016 Flight of Dragons
[School of Movies 2016]
This is a TV special movie from 1982 made by Rankin Bass (Thundercats/The Hobbit/Rudolph). It is essentially a Dungeons & Dragons adventure and very twee and earnest so you're going to have to leave your cynicism at the door.
It's based on a book of speculative fiction by Peter Dickinson whereby he presents the theories on how dragons might actually have operated and flown. This is woven very loosely into some of the narrative of another book named The Dragon and the George, by Gordon R. Dickson.
This is a movie I grew up with and has been pretty much forgotten by history. It has received minimal home releases, virtually everyone involved in its undocumented production has passed away and now only its scant few fans keep its memory alive.
So in accordance, we brought in newcomers to the film Lorin Grieve (A Year of Steam) and Jerome McIntosh (GameBurst) and went ridiculously deep on it, covering every moment to bring you all along on the adventure.
We swear quite a bit though, as we have to assess this with adult eyes, so kids are going to have to wait for this one.
The good news if you're American is that you can rent this on Amazon instant video for $3 (or buy it for $10), the DVD is harder to come by, especially in the UK where you may even have to resort to VHS.
Guests:
Lorin Grieve of Year of Steam
Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst
2 hr 42 min
January 02, 2016 Kung Fu Panda
[School of Movies 2016]
This is one of the most special and important animated movies to me. It’s a classic example of being perfectly underestimated. Both the movie and it’s rotund protagonist are anticipated by most to be a goofy, shambolic collection of pratfalls, but both turn out to be so much more.
We discuss what may be the pinnacle of Dreamworks’ animated achievements to date, and to me, certainly rivals the best of Disney, pixar and Studio Ghibli.
Guest:
Jerome McIntosh of GameBurst
1 hr 37 min
January 01, 2016 Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
[School of Movies 2016]
This was recorded at the end of last year because we knew we had the Disney Robin hood show coming up and felt his mythos needed diving into some more. He is, after all, one of Britain's most abiding legends.
So we chose our favourite Robin Hood movie and ended up talking about how very silly it is instead. Contrived plot, hammy acting and historical inaccuracies out the wazoo, but damn it we love it even more now that it's gotten the School of Movies treatment.
And then Alan Rickman died.
One of the greatest actors of all time just up and died on us, leaving a bewildered world to pick over his many achievements, one of which was the pantomime villain of a Sheriff in this movie.
Guests:
Iain Hopwood of Year of Steam
Megan Hopwood of Tiger's Eye
2 hr 30 min