June 28, 2019
[School of Movies 2019]
We haven't covered Pixar for an astonishing eight years, since the Toy Story trilogy of early 2011, so rather than starting from A Bug's Life and continuing through their entire library in the style of our Disney series we're going to cherry-pick our favourites when we have something to really say about them.
In this case we begin anew with our top choice, the 2015 story of emotions embodied within the head of a tween girl. And to get the best angle we brought in a pair of psychologists
Guests:
Dr Hunter Mulcare @realhuntermmm
Amy Donaldson of @TwoShrinksPod
June 21, 2019
[School of Movies 2019]
Time to close the book on the Fox X-Men movies and the podcast series that Sharon and I started in 2014.
If you haven't seen the film (and statistically this is the case) we will talk you through it. We can't spoil anything. There's no surprises TO spoil. It might sound like we're furious and that we hate this thing, but our response is something more like intense disappointment spread over two decades, so that it becomes *expected* disappointment. It stems from a place of frustration that it was THESE people who got handed the keys to such a potentially fascinating city for so very long.
But we always like to look for the good in things and accordingly we root out the best aspects over the years and give credit where it's due.
![Godzilla: King of the Monsters]()
June 14, 2019
[School of Movies 2019]
A film that immediately filled the majority of critics with derision, disdain and disgust. Now we don't want to say the majority of critics are wrong, but if they're saying there's no character to this and nothing below the surface then we don't have much choice, do we?
Because what we have here is a joyful epic, a loopy sci-fi about the old Gods coming back to reclaim the Earth, leaving mankind running around their gargantuan feet just hoping the more benevolent ones win. But those Gods are representational, and that conflict means something.
For fans of kaiju movies this is the big-budget fun-fest they've always dreamed of. For us, we see a measure of depth and detail that is being overlooked by almost everyone (much like with Pacific Rim) and spotlighting that nuance is what this show was made for.
To help us out and put things in perspective we recruited a crew of Godzilla fans who adored this film.
Guests:
Bob Chipman @the_moviebob of The Escapist & Geek.com
Brendan Foley @TheTrueBrendanF of Cinapse
Dan Hoeppner @MightyMegatron0 of Leftover Army Monsters
And we are @SchoolOfMovies
![King Kong]()
June 7, 2019
[School of Movies 2019]
With Godzilla II: King of the Monsters releasing this week, since we've already done a Godzilla show, we decided to cover his opponent in next year's long-awaited rumble of the Titans; Godzilla vs. King Kong.
That meant going back and examining essentially four versions of the same story. A boat-full of humans journeys to Skull Island for spurious reasons, encounter monstrous creatures and are both threatened and occasionally saved by a giant gorilla worshipped by the natives as their protector.
Three of these movies drag his enormous simian ass back to New York City where he is put on show and then killed by their military. Only the most recent of these four broke this cycle (mainly so he can fight Godzilla). So we look into what is going on in each age of the retelling.
1. (0.30) King Kong 1933
2. (5.35) King Kong 1976
3. (12.00) King Kong Chat W/Sharon
4. (19.45) King Kong 2005
5. (31.30) Kong: Skull Island 2017
6. (1.04.45) The future of the Monsterverse
The first three pieces here are from my book of collected assay's "Movie A Day" and can be found on the Kindle store: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06ZXXQLQN/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i7
