School of Movies

Obi Wan Kenobi

[School of Everything Else 2022]

There are two things about Star Wars that seem endemic, inextricable from the process of engaging with the multitude of stories that have emerged over the many years since 1977.

One is that we always seem to return to Tatooine. It ties in with the fact that Star Wars plays on nostalgia. Even as early as 1983's Return of the Jedi they were bringing us back to that sand planet only actually named out loud at the tail end of The Empire Strikes Back. That movie also continued the long procession of Death Stars. But if we accept that these touchstones will mean that many people's first Star Wars will feature Tatooine, we can accept that this nostalgia and going back to that feeling when you were a kid, and could get excited about all sorts of things, that's the source of its power. George's movie was itself based on his own nostalgia for spacefaring adventure, cowboys and samurai. 

The other element that one must accept if one is to be at peace with Star Wars is that as that multitude of stories emerge over the years of our lives we are going to encounter not just one but a cluster over a period of time that disappoint us and make us feel like this saga has lost its way and isn't for us any more. But inevitably if that love was there to begin with, something will come along and surprise us in a good way. 

And for us that was Obi Wan. 

Guests:

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Austin Wilden @WC_WIT of Wits-Writing

The Lost Boys & Lost Men of Taika Waititi

[School of Movies 2022]

This is an exploration on the more personal, less studio-based films of Thor Ragnaraok and Love & Thunder director Taika Waititi. Most of you won't have seen all of them, and that is okay, you should listen to this episode in its entirety anyway. The show will give you more details to look for when you get to watching them.

03m: Eagle vs. Shark (2007)

25m: Boy (2010)

41m: Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

59m: Jojo Rabbit (2019)

All of them have many factors in common, but the unifying factors are parents not being around, and lonely boys going through a transformative journey.  There is dark, offhand humour, spectacular immaturity, sudden unexpected pain and loss, and resolutions that are as soothingly healthy as they are oddball. Altogether, Waititi is one of the most riveting directors of our time, and it brings us a lot of joy to study his repeating themes along with you. 

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

[School of Movies 2022]

This one hit us mere hours after the finale of Moon Knight. It has been six years since the first Doctor Strange hit in late 2016. To the point where the dangling threads of that film are ignored, because Stephen has made four more appearances since then, and been instrumental in deliberately instigating The Snap.

But even that is mostly pushed to the side as this film becomes the follow-up to the first Disney+ Marvel TV show, WandaVision. And the handling of that factor by dream director for many; Evil Dead and Spider-Man-helmer Sam Raimi has caused this to become one of the most polarising of MCU movies. 

We needed several months to think hard about it, and this is what we really wanted to say. Many thanks to our brilliant guests for lending perspective and also putting into understandable words how time and dimensional travel seems to work within Marvel's Earth 616 (movies and TV not comics). 

Guests:

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Jesse Ferguson @TheDapperDM

from the Recorded Tomorrow Podcast

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom & Dominion

[School of Movies 2022]

Two films about dinosaurs as a metaphor for our own existential fear of extinction.

We've held back on talking about the second film, released in 2018 because I was waiting on the onscreen consequences of the big decision at the end. While some folks considered Fallen Kingdom to be the worst in the franchise (I even saw a video declaring it the worst movie ever made - clearly somebody who has never seen Swamp Shark) we actually quite like it.

Don't get us wrong, it's dumb as a sack of hammers, but there are qualities that win it points with us that the other sequels don't have, not least of which is the director of the Orphanage, one of the finest ghost stories ever put to film, Juan Antonio Bayona.

After that I tell Sharon all about the third movie (we keep all spoilers for that section). One could say Jurassic Park needed no sequels, but when has NEED ever factored in when the prospect of a billion dollars was on the table?

Vampire’s Kiss

[School of Movies 2020]

After the sexy teen rebels of The Lost Boys we delve into the cutthroat underworld of New York big business and the predatory nature of its ambitious executives, hollow inside and devoid of a soul, trying to fill that emptiness with delusions that their success excuses them from the people they hurt to achieve their power.

Listen, when you bring in Nicholas Cage and tell him to just go nuts with a role you're paying for spectacle not subtlety. This began as a Quick Review but quickly became one of the funniest shows we've recorded, centring around one of the weirdest performances we've witnessed. 

FACE/OFF

[School of Movies 2022]

The third in the Rage Cage trinity, released less than a month after Con Air, this movie saw our boy Nick set against John Travolta, who was at the time flying high on the success of Pulp Fiction a few years previously. 

The premise of "Good guy wears bad guy's face" is completely nuts for a start, but what it allows us to see onscreen is two extremely intense actors performing as both a wackadoo international terrorist-for-hire and the broken, obsessed FBI agent hellbent on revenge. Science and physics are utterly abandoned in favour of comic book logic, but the proceedings remained nonetheless a slick bullet ballet just oozing with star-power as the two leads try to out-weird each other. 

Action maestro John Woo had only just begun to direct films for a western audience (following Hard Target and Broken Arrow) but this might be the most fondly remembered.

Guests

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Souris @Mayasantandrea

Jason "Chewie" Slate @TheManaPool

Con Air

[School of Movies 2022]

The Rage Cage Season continues, as Nicholas transforms himself into a statuesque Army Ranger from Alabama with a mullet (as We Hate Movies would say) to beat the band! It's had to imagine from every movie he was in before and since but here he's a combination of the peace-making soft  tones of Jesus and the spin-kicks of Chuck Norris. 

Handed a severe sentence after defending himself and his pregnant wife from literally the worst man in the world, Cameron Poe is sent home after eight years in jail. Unfortunately he is put on a plane with superstar celebrity convicts renowned for their violent crimes. And when they inevitably take control of the plane, leaving Cameron in a sticky position he is faced with a choice; get off when prompted and get back to his family or stay and try to do something good. The resultant film is riot of explosions, glossy action cinematography and highly memorable, equally quotable dialogue.

For this episode we brought in the Franchise Killer podcast (from our shows on Super Mario Bros and Shazam!) Check out their show.

https://franchisekillerpod.podbean.com/

Guests:

From the Franchise Killer Podcast: @FK_Podcast

David Schmitzer

Irena Schmitzer

Rhys Paine

The Rock

[School of Movies 2022]

This is the start of our Rage Cage Season, celebrating the span of twelve months between Summer 1996 and Summer 1997 when Nicholas Cage was somehow the hottest action star of the age. He's quite appealingly low-key in this one, relative to the next two; Con Air and FACE/OFF.

This is Michael Bay's best film. That's not hyperbole, it really is, in terms of how well-executed each set-piece is, how the momentum holds you without wearing you down, memorable performances, sympathetic characters and how the drama and human interaction functions surprisingly well. 

I also consider it Sean Connery's swansong. Not his last film, but his last great film, as well as a backdoor Old Man Bond farewell. In fact, while you're listening to this episode you'll hear how the text of this film actively supports this being quite literally the same guy we saw in Dr. No, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, all the way up to Diamonds are Forever. 

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300

The Mandalorian (Season 1)

[School of Everything Else 2022]

A long-awaited visit to the first of Disney's new Star Wars TV shows. Weirdly we haven't had that many requests to talk Mando, but with Obi Wan launching this week and in the wake of the turbulent response to The Book of Boba we decided to journey back to the first and delve into what it did extremely well. 

We divided the eight episodes into three movies, loosely paralleling Sergei Leone's Dollars Trilogy with A Fistful of Beskar, For a Few Credits More and my personal favourite... The Good, The Bad and The Ugnaught. With us are two people who had literally never seen an episode of Mando before signing up for guest duty, so we get their fresh perspective without spoiling what comes later. 

Next week we begin the 'Rage Cage Season' as we explore the very brief period in the late 90s when Nicholas Cage was the hottest new high octane action star around! Three shows over three weeks as he gets madder and madder, The Rock, Con Air and FACE/OFF. 

I have spoken.

Guests

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

From Sequentially Yours  Kaoru Negisa  @Moonpanther22

and Debbie Morse  @bastet8300

Taylor Nova of GameBurst @TaylorNova6

Moon Knight

[School of Everything Else 2022]

A risky venture on Marvel's part. More than one might imagine. This is a character who is mostly known in the comics as a street-level supernatural vigilante (somewhere between Batman and Blade) and from a meme where that nerd Dracula owes him money.

But more than that, in this TV miniseries, he's a Jewish superantihero played by a Guatemalan, directed by an Egyptian, and penned by the writer of the cursed 2015 Fantastic Four reboot that everyone forgot. And it deals chiefly over everything else, even the mythology... with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

And when you get to the end, after all the theatrics and horror, after all the mummies and costumes and screaming and creepy cults, the abiding memory is a pair of distinct and sympathetic performances from Oscar Isaac. The Moon Knight is almost incidental! 

Join us now as we talk the ups and downs of this strange journey.

Indiegogo for "The Bludgeoning": https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-bludgeoning-working-title#/

Guests

Chris Finik @finmonster09 who assembles New Century's TV Tropes Pages and who writes fanfic (including a Dark Tower / Tiger's Eye crossover)

Nick Jaragosky: SOM Discord regular and occasional guest on the Commanderin' MTG podcast