School of Movies

300

[School of Movies 2019]

A new direction for School of Movies. We've listened to our harshest critics and paid attention to what they seem to want from us and the overwhelming weakest aspect of our show is apparently our tendency to come at movies from a personal perspective, which in turn leads to heavy politicising of films where politics aren't present and don't need to be discussed.

The result is we go off on tangents when we should be talking about the pure mechanics of a film. So the first movie we chose to exercise our new discipline of zero-political rhetoric is Zack Snyder's accurate historical document of ancient Sparta, and how these perfect male specimens fended off the might of the Persian Empire, 300.

Guest:

Lorin Grieve

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

[School of Movies 2019]

This was an unexpected one. We geared up for a Quick Review mere minutes after coming back from the cinema and then stuff just came flooding out. We send that recording to a few people to see if it was Main Event material and they pretty much demanded we get this out for everyone. So we added new sections and recorded a companion piece round-table session with two new guests (being released this week as a Cutting Class episode).

Quentin Tarantino's ninth film has made critics very happy (garnering massive positive buzz and 85% freshness) but also provoked a slew of think-pieces about some of the more crass decisions made in filming. 

What you've got here is what Sharon and I felt very strongly in the aftermath, before we'd read anything else. 

Sing Street

[School of Movies 2019]

The second commissioned show of our summer quickly grew from a film we liked a lot to one of our absolute favourites. This little-seen gem about teenage rebellion in Dublin, Ireland, 1985 is something we would love more people to know about.

Directed by John Carney, the man behind Once and Begin Again, this is semi-autobiographical and features a measure of authenticity and respect for young people that the very best films about growing up thrive on. It's also got some of the most accurate portrayal of the clothes and music at the time, giving both context for a deeper meaning that 80s punk pop usually doesn't get afforded.

Guests

Mackenzie Easton  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod  

Nathan Bertram @bertnerdtram of Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast 

Fate of the Furious + Hobbs & Shaw

[School of Movies 2019]

It feels like a lifetime since 2015.

Back then, during the tail end of the Obama administration we were enjoying the run-up to new Star Wars movies and Mad Max was about to blow everyone away with one of the greatest automobile stunt-fests of all time.

But also Sharon and I were getting back into the Fast & Furious films very late after drifting away for a while. We were able to appreciate films 5, 6 and then the real life tragedy of 7 with a sharp immediacy. 

Since that fairly amazing experience the series has diverged in some strange new directions and we pick up with 2017's eighth film and the first official spin-off in 2019. Once again Neil Taylor is our wingman, guiding us through the furious and testosterone-soaked road.

Neil Taylor of TheKidDogg @KidDogg  

Foodfight!

[School of Movies 2019]

One of the worst, most disgusting animated movies of all time. This obscure yet notorious exercise in soulless corporate shilling dressed up as punky rebellion is a collaborative work of supreme incompetence.

Begun in the early 2000s to surf in on the Pixar wave, but eventually released after Wreck-It Ralph in just a few cinemas, most people will thankfully never have heard of this. We are here to tell you the whole sorry story of what plays out like a nightmare before your reeling eyeballs. 

Guests

Brenden Agnew of Cinapse  @BLCAgnew  

Aaron LaCluyze of Monday Night Magic  @lacluyze 

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22 

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300