School of Movies

Grosse Pointe Blank

[School of Movies 2023]

One of our all-time favourites, so little-seen or talked about that it's debatable as to whether we are looking at a Cult Classic or not. And one of the reasons we've held off for so long on talking about this 1997 black comedy about a hitman attending his ten-year high school reunion is that we were waiting for it to be rediscovered.

And that hasn't happened, neither has it aged poorly, which is always a concern for comedies. But also we love it on such a level of personal resonance that it has always been a challenge to put into words exactly why. The script zigzags wittily through this green Detroit suburb, the offhand delivery with room for improvisation without ever becoming self-indulgent, the exceptional casting, in particular John and Joan Cusack and Minnie Driver at her zenith, the soundtrack that shows a genuine affinity with 80s music rather than simply playing the pop hits. Also very specifically this was released at a time when nostalgia for that decade was barely even a thing yet. 

And this is what Commissioned Shows can sometimes accomplish. they give us an imperative to account for ourselves, and a quest to convey to you all why this one is definitely worth your time. No more ducking and weaving, rather like a litter from your high school summoning you to a festival of pain! So, many thanks to 'Executive Producer' of this episode Greg Downing. 

There Will Be Blood

[School of Movies 2023]

A commissioned show by Parker. This is our first Paul Thomas Anderson main event show, and it is a grimy, sticky dive into the black heart of the vampiric nature rewarded by pursuing The American Dream to the exclusion of everyone else's success.

Daniel Plainview starts out as a grim, silent nobody scratching for silver in California's dirt. He discovers oil down there and rises in power and influence, buying up land cheaply with the full intention of tearing the resources out from under its inhabitants. Daniel appears wildly successful, only to find himself butting heads with other businessmen who provoke his paranoia, an opportunistic imposter and a zealous charlatan of a local pastor obsessed with keeping everyone else's attention on him.

Through it all his mostly silent adopted son, H.W. remains the tiny speck of purity in an infernal subterranean ocean of oil and blood. 

The Sea Beast

[School of Movies 2023]

A Netflix-distributed animated film about bounty-hunting pirate whalers hunting giant ocean kaiju. A plucky girl trying desperately to live up to the great death of her parents whose ship was borne down to the briny depths. A hardworking himbo on the cusp of questioning exactly why all this loss of life seems to be so necessary to keep civilisation afloat. A desperate sea captain on the verge of retirement watching his work of years come undone and blaming it all on one massive red beastie. 

Easy comparisons with How to Train Your Dragon have been made, but you have to get under the harpoon-fletched scaly hide of this leviathan to find that it goes to places Dreamworks and Disney won't. 

This is a Commissioned show for Chris Finik, and it was an absolute pleasure to discover this one on his suggestion.

The Coen Brothers: Part 1

[School of Movies 2023]

This is the start of a Director series that will run throughout the year, focusing on the complete works of Joel and Ethan Coen. Now in their mid-to-late-60s these two have been making quirky, dark films about stolen money and mysterious strangers for forty years. 

We begin with their first five stories of philandering spouses, struggling artists, uncomfortable criminals, screwball kidnapping and absurd industry.

1984: Blood Simple

1987: Raising Arizona

1990: Miller's Crossing

1991: Barton Fink

1994: The Hudsucker Proxy

And we will be back in a month or so, to visit Fargo, Minnesota as they hit their heyday.

It’s a Wonderful Life

[School of Movies 2022]

Perhaps the oldest film we have covered as a Main Event show to date, as well as one of the most significant from that era. Frank Capra's seminal Holiday classic is often dismissed as syrupy fluff by those who haven't yet seen it, or misremembered as light comedy by those who caught it in fragments over the years without sitting down to really take in what it's saying.

It's neither of those things, and the greatest tragedy is how searingly relevant this 1946 post-war exercise in picking up the pieces of a nation still is. Sharon and I have been earmarking it for the SOM treatment for many years, but always putting it off as too heavy or too daunting, and also too beloved to cover in any way that wasn't 200% satisfying for all. 

Luckily Chris Finik came along with a shred choice of Commissioned show, and now you all get to listen to what it sounds like when we pull out all the stops.

The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe

[School of Movies 2022]

We've been planning Narnia shows for many years. This was a very special book series to me as a child, informing on my worldview and writing. It was also the first long-form live action fantasy series I watched on television, as the BBC production which ran from November 1988 to December 1991 adapted four books over three 6-episode seasons. I always wondered why they stopped at The Silver Chair. Later I began to understand the kind of scope and budgets and potentially thorny territory that the remaining three stories would entail. The quaint, very British project was already more ambitious than anyone would have expected. 

After that were many long years of waiting for a cinematic incarnation (not counting the insanely cheap and rushed 1979 animated version). The achievement and success of New Line's Lord of the Rings films at the same time as Warner's Harry Potter imbued Disney with a desire to seek out its own epic fantasy series to bring in all the dollars. 

While compared unfavourably with Weta's perfectly magnificent Rings Trilogy it is frankly amazing that the director of the first two Shrek films was able to achieve something in this 2005 film which both surpassed my experience of reading the book, and even my loftily-soaring imagination of what the events could look, sound and feel like. We will be covering the duet of films that followed in 2008 and 2010 and lingering cancellation of the seven-part series next year. 

Guest:

Nama Chibitty @namathenerd

Riddick

[School of Movies 2022]

Nine years after his Chronicles, Richard B. Riddick is sat upon his iron throne, the crown hanging heavy, too many pie suppers since he was at his physical peak and too many wenches left in wordless ecstasy, sloughing around his greasy bedsheets. 

This is the story of how he gets easily tricked, shot in the back, left for dead on a barren planet filled with beasties designed exclusively to kill you, and soon after making a four-legged friend, he becomes beset by not one, but two separate groups of rotten mercenaries. 

Possibly the yellowest film you will ever witness, Riddick (2013) is what happens when one attempts to return to one's roots after an age of hubris. Does it succeed?  

Next Week: Superman - The Animated Series.

The Chronicles of Riddick

[School of Movies 2022]

After knocking it out of the park on the first try with Pitch Black, David Twohy and Vin Diesel limbered back up four years later with a complete change of pace, scale and even sci-fi sub-genre. If you look at Pitch Black as The Hobbit, then where they took the series next was their Lord of the Rings.

However, there is a world of difference between what went into the expansion and historical goings-on of Professor Tolkein and the Conan-the-Barbarian-in-space that Riddick metamorphosed into. Suddenly, rather than a dangerous prisoner he became the chosen one of a massacred world, destined to avenge his people against a rampaging horde of death-worshipping necromongers! 

The results of these changes were frequently frustrating and marginally absurd!

Pitch Black

[School of Movies 2022]

This one is really rather special and arguably the longest time coming of any of our shows. Pitch Black, released in February 2000 in the USA didn't make it to the UK until November of that year. There's even some confusion in this episode because I wasn't sure if Sharon and I were actually together as a couple when we saw it (turns out we were, just). But significantly, this was our first movie where we left the cinema together on fire with analysis that we were twanging back and forth like verbal badminton.

It's a tight, focused, visceral, planet-survival thriller, drawing from many inspirations but managing to combine them in a way that keeps it continuously gripping, even after all these years.

This is the first of a dedicated three-week series of episodes revolving around the transmedia franchise that sprang from this standalone movie; a handful of very savvy decisions mixed with a bucket of bad ones. 

The chronological order goes...

1. Escape from Butcher Bay (Patreon Exclusive Episode)

2. Assault on Dark Athena (In a double-bill with Butcher Bay)

3. Pitch Black (Main Event)

4. Dark Fury (Patreon with the video games)

5. The Chronicles of Riddick (Main Event)

6. Riddick (Patreon)

See you in a few days for a delve into Vin Diesel's career and the Peter-Chung-animated 30-minute short, followed by the sprawling, pretentious Conan-the-Barbarian-in-Space of "The Chronicles of Riddick" next week. 

The Company of Wolves

[School of Movies 2022]

This is an obscure coming-of age fable from the director of Interview With the Vampire and The Crying Game. It was made on a very low budget in 1984 in Shepperton Studios, England, but it has some of the best werewolf fiction within its toothy confines. 

The framing device is a young girl who has gone to bed with tummy cramps. In her restless dreams she ties together various cautionary tails about Red Riding Hood, the boy who cried wolf, visitations from the Devil himself, wedding-day curses and strange men with one eyebrow and shocking yellow irises. The teller of many of these stories is the great Angela Lansbury, who at the time of release for this show, only just closed the last page of her own book. 

And the whole thing is an allegorical anthology about the girl's growing, changing body, her sense of identity and burning curiosity.

Stay tuned to the end for news about a brand new Gothic Anthology book we've helped to create.