[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 personalised license plate as D-FENS (played with vigour by Michael Douglas in this memorable and divisive Joel Schumacher joint) steps out of the car he leaves stuck in traffic, walks across a city that is not designed for pedestrian travel, and clashes with everyone who gets in his way. The creative team are really trying to have their cake and eat it by making the protagonist also the antagonist and how much they succeed or fail is very much down to the perception of the viewer. Pull up a breakfast 'Whomelette' and an ice-cold, aggressively-priced can of Coca Cola and we shall guide you through this eventful day.

[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 ghosts must work to scare the living in order to be remembered. The results are what feels like the Taiwanese Beetlejuice, utilising the trappings of horror movies without ever actually being scary. It also seems to have a hell of a lot of things to say about the attention economy in a world where MrBeast is the highest aspirational figure for so many young people. What Dead Talents Society hints at is that there's so much more to existence than just being talked about by strangers. Released straight to streaming in 2024, this movie is ironically virtually unseen and unheard of, but you should absolutely listen to this show and track this film down. It's going right at the top of our films of the year list.

[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) with Willow in tow, in conjunction with watching the appalling remake, we finally took in the 1080p blu ray, and I subsequently brought it to my editing bench to see if I could file off the sharp, jagged corners that bothered us so much and shape it into something worthier of the last screen appearance of the son of Bruce Lee. And wouldn't you know it... now we LOVE The Crow.

[School of Movies 2025] "Adapting is like marrying a widow; You respect the memory of the husband, but at some point you gotta get it on." - Guillermo del Toro. In preparation for GDTs long-awaited take on Frankenstein we delved into some of the most significant onscreen versions of Mary Shelley's book. Taking our cues from the excellent piece by Overly Sarcastic Productions we recruit Gothic enthusiast Willow and together as a family talk you through the story, referencing different movies regarding how closely they cleave to the source novel, and how and why they choose to deviate. Many of the elements people take for granted, lightning, green skin, bolts in the neck, flat head, tendency to talk like a caveman all seem to stem from the 1931 James Whale film and its 1935 sequel starring Borris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester. Turns out that the monster, the creation or as he is sometimes called, "Adam" was, as-written a great deal more complex, something some films have expressed in the interim near-century, nearly all of the most significant we talk about, including the 1994 Kenneth Branagh version, the 2011 stage version with Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Lee Miller, the Hammer Horror versions with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, Frank Roddam's The Bride from 1985, Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, and a surprisingly great two-part TV miniseries from 2004. Accompanying, we have a Cutting Class episode releasing this weekend with a bunch of other adaptations we talked about here but were trimmed out for time and focus, and we will of course be back to talk about Del Toro's version very soon.

[School of Movies 2025] Topping lists for film of the year, this is the first Ryan Coogler-directed film that is his own. Not a comic book adaptation like the Black Panthers, not a legasequel like Creed and not a direct real life account like Fruitvale Station. This one puts Ryan on the map as a genuine visionary and master of his craft. Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1932. Twin brothers, Smoke & Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) after returning home with stolen money from gangster shenanigans in Chicago, spend the day setting up an illegal juke joint for the local black community. As the sun goes down and the place starts rocking they attract the attention of some covetous vampires. Rich, bloody, tragic and complex, with otherworldly music, this story will knock your socks off and haunt your dreams. Guest: Brendan Agnew from Cinapse @blcagnew.bsky.social‬ Next Week: Adapting Frankenstein

[School of Movies 2025] An absolutely blistering black revenge fantasy by a white guy at the top of his game. Aside from the name, some repurposed music and the presence of carnage, this has nothing to do with the 1966 Sergio Corbucci spaghetti western, Django. What it does present us with is a deep immersion in the ugliness and inhumanity of slavery in the pre-Civil-War American South from the perspective of a freed black man and an increasingly disturbed German gentleman as they hunt bounties together and ultimately quest to rescue Django's beloved Brunhilda from the hellfire of the Candyland plantation, presided over by the hideous Calvin Candy. The stage is set for some of the most tense standoffs and explosively violent culminations in cinema history. This film is a masterpiece, and has proved wildly influential on my own work. This episode kicks off a Tarantino Season that will be running throughout the next year. We will be covering the films intermittently and out of chronological release order (and we will be recording a brand new pair of episodes on Kill Bill). Next Week: Sinners!

[School of Everything Else 2025] This is a follow-up to our 2021 episode on the legendary 1998 original PS1 Metal Gear Solid. This time I have brought in Willow to explore the two major PS2 instalments. We begin with what feels like creator Hideo Kojima answering the impossible question as to how to improve upon his first masterpiece (which goes so far beyond the two MSX games as to leave them feeling like prototypes) by trolling the fanboys who wanted a power fantasy. In the most audacious bait-and-switch of all time, our grizzled hero Solid Snake is snatched away from our control, and instead we are slid into the skin-tight bodysuit of blonde-haired rookie, Raiden. What follows is metatextual in the extreme, frequently absurd, occasionally groan-inducing and at times frighteningly prescient. Then we go back in time to the mid-1960s with Snake Eater; an epic Cold War crawl through the Russian jungle. This entry in the series houses one of the most memorable and tragic antagonists in video gaming history, coupled with one of the most powerful conclusions. This one, with its overly complex camouflage, foraging and first-aid most definitely warranted its recent Delta remake. In my playthrough the mechanics effected the story in a way that even meta-minded Kojima could not have intended. (NOTE: These were originally released as barebones, raw footage After School Club episodes. This presentation involved an editorial overhaul with music and game clips finally in place.) Next Week: Django Unchained

[School of Movies 2025] A bold new direction for the transforming robotic life forms. Fully digitally animated, with no need of Shia Lebeouf or Marky Mark, specifically an animated film theatrically released for the first time since 1986, and for the first time neither Peter Cullen nor Frank Welker is lending their voice to proceedings, despite this being an origin story for both Optimus Prime and Megatron. Instead Chris Hemsworth and Brian Tyree Henry step up to lend unexpectedly Shakespearean weight to the dramatic dissolution of a friendship between these two eternal foes. It's a Transformers movie that's actually about something for a change, rather than just a McGuffin hunt, and Bumblebee won't SHUT UP! Guest: Dan Hoeppner  @MightyMegatron0  of Leftover Army Monsters

[School of Movies 2025] This one came out of nowhere after seven years of development and production at Sony Pictures Animation. Yet after all that, Sony execs had zero faith in its success, so they sold it (along with all sequel rights in perpetuity) to Netflix for the modest budget of $100 million and then a nominal $20m that they could call profit. Then it broke the goddamn internet! For many reasons that we will go into, this one hit just right with a huge audience, and is now the basis for decades worth of sequels and spinoffs and live action remakes. Netflix got more than they could ever have wanted. At the last minute on this commissioned show (many thanks to Chris Finik, Toby Skeels-Jungius, Tylor Long, Holly Dotson, Nama Chibitty and Tripas) we brought in our buddy Ryan who lives in Busan, Korea, and was able to give us a rich cultural perspective on many details that we as westerners completely missed. Huge thank you to Ryan for being so generous with his time. You can find his many adventures and projects here: www.ryanestrada.com Guest: Ryan Estrada Next Week: Transformers One

[School of Movies 2025] Time for a surprisingly good Marvel that meant a lot to a great deal of people... and still somehow underperformed. This thing was brewing for years, from as far back as the second Disney Plus show, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, back in Lockdown 2021. The original comic premise was simple enough; have a manipulative scumbag assemble a super-team of disguised villains in the absence of The Avengers. However, this team is only mildly superpowered, and are wildly unbalanced. They're all either prior living weapons or experiments gone badly wrong, most of them have been being used for shady corporate black-ops and all of them are a hot mess, emotionally speaking. Plus the scumbag decides the best thing to do is kill them all off, rather than get their own Avengers. What we end up with is a collection of disturbed individuals who have to work together as a team to deal with a very specific, exceptionally dark situation with one of their own. It is DC's first Suicide Squad movie from 2016 done far, far better. Let's peel back the surface and dive into the murk beneath. Next Week: K-Pop Demon Hunters

[School of Movies] This is three After School Club episodes, trimmed and re-edited into one bumper Main Event show. To begin with you have my initial impressions on what is hopefully the last Ant-Man movie, way back in February 2023, then two and a half years rush by in the blink of an eye and suddenly we're in a different kind of place for both Marvel and the world. Revisiting with Sharon, we delve into how this film was positioned and the bait & switch of the final execution. Then with Captain America 4, AKA The Incredible Hulk 2, we look at a fictional and freshly recast General Thunderbolt Ross who turns into a giant, red rage-monster and smashes up Washington, yet still manages to be not the worst President ever! These are two of the most egregious cases of the MCU aiming for the middle of the road and winding up making something few could love. Fortunately, their future looks brighter, with a couple of bold new entries for 2025. Next Week: Thunderbolts*

[School of Everything Else] For a long while we hoped this would be a project from the makers of WandaVision that would see hidden villain Agatha Harkness trying to make amends for her machinations during the Westview incident. By the end of the second episode she's unrepentant and off on a whole new adventure, romping down The Witches' Road with an uneasy new coven in tow. Like many of you, we drifted away and planned to come back once it was finished, but it wasn't until almost a year after that, when we finally sat down and saw the whole thing... and it's one of our unexpected favourite Marvels. Never would have guessed they would nail this one. That was quite a magic trick. Next Week: Quantumania & Brave New World

[School of Movies 2025] Here is a film we were very excitedly waiting for. We had already been waiting an age for the first Captain Marvel movie in 2019, a project that would have been put into effect had Ike Perlmutter not maintained for years that female-led superhero films wouldn't make money. The thing swept in just over a billion dollars and made a lot of boys on YouTube very cross. Four years and a pandemic later, two Disney Plus monoseries emerged over that time, the celebrated WandaVision, which featured the returning little girl Monica Rambeaux, now an adult and working for Nick Fury, and then there was the underseen Ms. Marvel, featuring the equally long-awaited first appearance of the endlessly charming Kamala Khan. Electing to bring together these three ladies in a spacefaring adventure was neat, however, as you'll hear from our extensive talk on the structure and narrative, nobody was well-served by the direction this took, least of all the excellent director of Candymen (2021), Nia DaCosta. Plus, I've forgotten the name of the villain! Next Week: Agatha All Along

[School of Movies 2025] This film began life before James Gunn was abruptly fired overnight, by Marvel. It languished for years through the triumph of Endgame, then the Pandemic, and Gunn's hiring by DC to direct their Suicide Squad sequel. The man who came back to pick up the script had been changed, and while Superman (2025) shows the sheer optimistic joy he's capable of imbuing his projects with, this farewell to the Guardians is a dark, furious requiem of betrayal, loss, bitter conflict and ultimately redemption. In choosing to make it all about Rocket Raccoon, the secret weapon of the MCU was taken out of the picture. He is attacked by newcomer Adam Warlock on Knowhere home turf, in a failed act of corporate reclamation. His killswitch is triggered, leaving him in a coma and it is up to the Guardians to investigate the Doctor Moreau-inspired High Evolutionary, and find out how to bring Rocket back. This leaves him absent for much of the present-day movie, stuck reliving his tragic past, and the earliest friends he made. These tragic events would twist his future actions into those of anger and neurotic rejection of even his closest companions. It is unlike any other MCU film, deeply personal and imbued with such vociferous anger that it actually becomes a mess, half hanging onto what was originally intended, half channelling the mixed, spiking emotions of going back to deal with your monster, saying goodbye to your dear friends and moving on to other and better things. The world is better for the confluence of events that led us to getting our new Superman and a brighter future of the DC Universe, but it was Gunn who took the damage, and this film exemplifies that. Next Week: The Marvels

[School of Everything Else] This one took a lot of consideration. We wanted to separate ourselves from the ragebait YouTubers who decided before it was even out that this was the worst TV show ever made. Even the thumbnail had to be put together in a way that conveys there are problems, but it's not because of BIG ANGRY WOMAN! (Seriously, what is it with basic dudes seeking attention and thumbnails of ladies mid-shout?) We liked a lot about this long-awaited debut of the onscreen adaptation of John Byrne's reimagined fourth-wall-breaking sassy jade giantess. And the casting for starters was excellent, as was Tatiana Maslany's firecracker chemistry with Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock. However, there are some deep-seated issues that go way beyond being so meta that you spend the climax of what would turn out to be your only season making multiple gags about how disappointing it is. It's a big old mixed bag, and we will be both ruthless and warm in our honesty. Ladies, gentlemen and all points in between of the jury, we present to you Exhibit S. Next Week: Guardians 3

[School of Movies 2025] A major milestone in British cinema, pairing up dramatic director Mike Newell with comedy mainstay Richard Curtis. This one is easy to handwave off as fluffy and light, but it is a favourite of one of our psychology-specialising friends Doctor Hunter Mulcare, who joined us for Love Actually and specifically requested that when we covered this film, we have him on as a guest. The principle is simple, based on Curtis' own experience of attending dozens of weddings for various friends and acquaintances in a very short space of time, being propositioned by a mysterious lady whom he turned down... the afterimage of that road not taken stuck in his head, forming the anxiety of Hugh Grant's lead character, Charlie. And when it comes to this chap and his gaggle of unmarried friends one thing is certain regarding funerals and weddings... we may not get one, but we'll definitely get the other. This film is frank, hilarious, often painful and an accurately acerbic portrait of the British people. Certainly it struck home enough to make its budget back fifty times over, back in 1995. It remains special and a favourite of our too. Next week: We begin Marvel Season Guest: Dr Hunter Mulcare @realhuntermmm  

[School of Movies 2025] This is a BIG one folks, the first major change in direction for silver screen DC comics adaptations since Nolan's Batman Begins in 2005 (though it has plenty of recent tonal forerunners to back it up, including Aquaman, Blue Beetle and the first Shazam! all of which we recommend seeing as well). This is what Warner Bros. were blushingly groping for in 2017 while trying to course-correct Zack Snyder's Justice League in the edit. But it isn't just a statement of intent for the future and a mission statement for potentially carving out a much more successful, crowd-pleasing cinematic universe, this is, first and foremost a GREAT superhero movie, bringing an even less-compromised version of Clark to the big screen than the classic Donner films. The red outerpants are back, bringing with them an unabashed joy at finally getting to be THIS version of itself, powered by phenomenally talented young stars and balancing humour with heart. The level of adulation and happiness we've seen exhibited over this one has been nourishing, and while there's plenty who have a bone to pick over decisions made within this flawed and messy movie I'd really like it to be the opposite of Snyder's take, and be a unifying rather than dividing force. So all are welcome, you don't have to agree with us, and maybe we can illuminate the qualities on show here in a way that helps some folks tentatively embrace Superman. Guests: From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @moonpanther22.bsky.social‬ and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300.bsky.social‬ Brendan Agnew from Cinapse @blcagnew.bsky.social‬ And you should follow us at @schoolofmovies.bsky.social‬

[School of Everything Else 2025] We return to the Forgotten Realms of Baldur's Gate III and do our best to remember what happened during our games. This time we get to talk about Shadowheart, a cleric who is deeply embroiled in an oppressive cult, in service to Dark Mommy (luckily, she just joined the club). On that note, we talk about character similarities as a strength and a weakness. We talk Karlach, a towering, flaming, somewhat terrifying Tiefling barbarian who spends most of her time on fire and is in fact sweet-natured, affable and excited to be doing quests with friends. We also discuss the limitations that rear their heads within a game where you can pretty much do anything. Then there's Wyll Ravengard, the Blade of Frontiers, who lost an eye and gained two horns, while in service of another Dark Mommy. And then there's the great big roly-poly bear, shapeshifting elf druid Halsin, who has proved... rather popular. We also talk about the most insidious villain in Act 1 of the game, as well as our smorgasbord of options when it comes to romancing. We will return with a third part in this series sometime soon, when at least I have finished the game (by which point, Will shall be on their third run!) and we will bring in some seasoned guests to talk about their further experiences. Once again, thank you to Sarah Montgomery, without whom these BG3 shows would not exist.

[School of Everything Else 2025] One of the most ambitious projects for our podcast to date, this commission required the purchase of a PlayStation 5 and presents myself, Sharon and our teenager Willow with a massive and exceptionally dense and rich 80-hour tabletop-style RPG to battle through... each on our own individual quests. To that end, this is the first of three shows covering the celebrated 2023 game by Larian Studios. The second is a session the three of us recorded the day after this one, covering more of our extensive notes and experiences, and the third is yet to be recorded at the time of release, but will entail bringing in many guests to talk about their personal adventures and the endgame. These initial two cover mostly the first act of three, as it makes sense to give us all a big chunky meal to chew over, but save dessert for last. It is relatively spoiler-free, as Sharon and I have no idea what's going to happen in the future and Willow, who has actually completed the game and raced up behind us in a second playthrough, is considerate enough to hold off on blabbing about big impending shifts in character arcs. To that end you can listen to these first two, having never played the game, and familiarise yourself with the often-daunting range of possibilities that this quite extraordinary game holds. Many thanks to backer Sarah Montgomery, without whom there is no way this trio of shows would have been made.

[School of Movies 2025] Maybe THE most American of children's properties from the 1980s, G.I. Joe began life as a big doll that boys could dress up for war, but as public sentiment turned against the conflict in Vietnam, Hasbro nudged their chunky action figure towards more of an adventure brand. Then in Reagan's 80s, Joe was relaunched as A Real American Hero, the first massively successful multimedia campaign designed to sell toys through cartoons and comics. But following that period of relative peacetime, Joe fared less well in the 90s, and most definitely struggled in the 2000s. In this show we discuss the cartoon and its characters, the 1987 animated film and the 2009 attempt to launch a live action movie franchise with The Rise of Cobra. Is it really as jingoistic and flag-waving as first impressions convey? Is it gross and macho or actually kind of sweet? We have further listening on this matter with two After School Clubs on the 2013 sequel, Retaliation (the one starring the Rock) and the solo Snake Eyes outing from 2021 starring Henry Golding (plus the best animated show so far, 2010's Renegades)