School of Movies

Street Fighter

[School of Movies 2022]

Picture the scene; It's late 1994 and young teens who have thrown a thousand hadoukens in arcades and on home consoles throughout the early 90s finally get to go to the cinema and see their favourite characters battling in live action.

The casting seems superficially solid. Jean-Claude Van Damme is at the peak of his career path, Raoul Julia was wildly entertaining in the Adams Family movies and The Locomotion... is a catchy tune performed by Australian soap star Kylie Minogue... and we don't recognise most of the others so they must be accomplished martial artists. Surely this one is an easy win. 

In later years this movie became a celebrated campy classic, its often ludicrous lines quoted ad nauseum. Let's look at the experience of actually sitting down and watching it with a critical eye. 

Guests

Hollywoo Actress  Maya Santandrea @Mayasantandrea

Jason "Chewie" Slate @TheManaPool

Akira

[School of Movies 2022]

Your eyes do not deceive you, we are doing anime this week. Ironically the only other Main Event show we've done of this ilk is Kiki's Delivery Service, which emerged the year after this film and replaced it as the most expensive Japanese animated cinematically-released production of the era. You wouldn't think it, comparing that sweet tale about an enthusiastic girl who gets burnout in Stockholm to this cyberpunk epic.

As striking today as it was in 1988, this is a film of vital importance that is stunning to witness. A harsh, thrilling journey through an alternate 2019 civilisation on the brink of explosion. Roving gangs of biker clowns make war in the streets as wrinkled old psychic children face down a furious, embittered and hellishly powerful teenage boy. 

If you've never seen it, find the highest quality transfer, turn out the lights and switch off your phone. This is one for the ages. 

Hawkeye

[School of Everything Else 2022]

Bouncing back from What If? Marvel came out swinging with a street-level Christmas crime caper. This served the dual purposes of finally giving the least-loved Avenger some substantial spotlighting, and ghosts of his past to deal with, and introducing us to a brand new Hawkeye in the form of Kate Bishop.

Hailee Steinfeld was offered the role the moment she walked into casting director Sara Halley Finn's office. Kevin Feige had seen her in Bumblebee, Spider-Verse, Dickinson (and hopefully Edge of Seventeen, which is splendid) and knew already that she had the charm and pep and serious acting chops to be a young Avenger.

But is this six-episode miniseries the ideal place for her story, or did it get lost among the scrabble for screen time from some seriously charismatic appearances?

Guests:

Greg Downing of Through the Wind Door @MightyGregDoge

The Matrix Resurrections

[School of Movies 2022]

We come to it at last, maybe the final Matrix film directed by a Wachowski. Though this vein of property is worth too much money to the IP-owner to leave unmined.

Representing a refinement and evolution of the philosophies laid down two decades ago. This film was launched a week after Spider-Man: No Way Home and just before Christmas Day, due to a prior arrangement with HBO. This dismal decision, coupled with Lana Wachowski's revised approach to both storytelling and action led to this film being both critically panned and rejected by audiences everywhere. Par for the course on Matrix sequels.

However, some folks absolutely adored the tale that was being wound back on itself and then forward into the future. At the time of recording the only other show that we had in the can was the 2019 one on the original, so this represents a close-out of the series through the lens of diving back in to reassess, as we then proceeded to Reloaded, the Animatrix and Revolutions. 

Next week: Hawkeye

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Alexa Vargas @Plutoburns whose YouTube channel is here

The Matrix Revolutions

[School of Movies 2022]

The least-loved, most-hated, and in consequence least-explored of the Matrix saga finally gets the School of Movies treatment. The 1999 original is turned on its head here, resulting in a film that almost seems the inverse of everything that got us fired up in the first place. But it was a necessary refocusing in order to expand outwards from Morpheus' dogmatic vision of "Us vs. Them". 

Philosophically this lands in a healthier place, even if so much of what we see feels mismanaged, awkward, stalling for time and sometimes downright annoying. We go all-out here to clear away the debris of the original conclusion and lay bare the depth of thought beneath. 

Next week we close out with what might well be the last Matrix movie. Certainly the last steered by a Wachowski. 

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Alexa Vargas @Plutoburns whose YouTube channel is here

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod and Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast

The Animatrix

[School of Everything Else 2022]

A very solid argument could be made for this being a movie, and thus being in the "Everything Else" category being erroneous. However, the focus of this episode is the trans-media endeavour that The Matrix series became. 

It straddles four films, a PS2 game named Enter The Matrix, an MMORPG named The Matrix Online and this anthology of nine short animated films, and it is ALL official story canon. The only release which doesn't quite fit this is The Path of Neo, another PS2 game which fills in the blanks of Neo's journey towards fulfilling the prophecy of The One, and while most of it probably happened the end is a direct departure, or at least an abstraction of the narrative. 

So that's what powers this discussion, and The Animatrix is absolutely worth watching now, though as you will hear it is not only surprisingly violent and grim at times, but the shorts vary in depth rather significantly.

Next week we conclude the original Trilogy with the Matrix Revolutions

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Alexa Vargas @Plutoburns whose YouTube channel is here

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod and Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast

The Matrix Reloaded

[School of Movies 2022]

For this one we went all-out. It was an incredibly rich and dense discussion for the initial recording and I have added a ton of extra content, all to the sounds of the eclectic soundtrack and the rarely-heard extended score of Don Davis. 

This is the first part of an evolution of the binary Us vs. Them dichotomy of The Matrix (1999) and was far less successful in ensnaring audiences with expanded perspective. What Film 2 sets up, Film 3 knocks down, and then decades later, Film 4 then ruminates on.

So if you always thought the sequels were trash this may at least convey what they were trying to say. If you've always had a soft spot for them this will be a dream come true. 

Next week we will be focusing on The Animatrix (2003)

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Victoria Luna B. Grieve:  @VixenVVitch 

Alexa Vargas @Plutoburns whose YouTube channel is here

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod and Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast

The Matrix

[School of Movies 2019]

NOTE: This is a re-release of the 2019 episode. It is one of our best shows and constitutes vital groundwork before we cover the three sequels over the next few weeks. 

This one has been a phenomenally long time coming. Not only is it a dense and complex movie that's impossible to fully summarise even in our lengthier shows, not only does it mean a huge amount to millions of people, not only is it intrinsically linked with disappointing sequels (whom some claim don't even exist) but it's probably the one movie that got my brain moving the most at the tender age of 19. And as we'll discuss in upcoming weeks, there's complexities in those follow-ups that are key to better understanding the overall symbolism at play here.

That and Fight Club. And like the antics of Tyler Durdan, there are aspects of this film that have not so much 'dated' as they have taken on a horrible new significance over the past twenty years, via misinterpretation. So this is a show that would have been very different in 1999, in 2004, in 2009 or even in 2014. And I'm willing to bet that in five year's time we'll feel differently again, such is the way the 'Real World' moves.

So buckle your seat belt Dorothy, 'cos Kansas is going bye-bye.

Avatar

[School of Movies 2022]

Highly appropriately we cap off the James Cameron season with both the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. We are starting 2022 with the original Avatar from 2009, and hopefully we will be finishing the year with Avatar 2. But with four more sequels planned out over the next decade it's very possible this man will spend the rest of his life on Pandora. 

And that feels weirdly appropriate. He spent the first half of the 2000s under the sea, obsessively re-examining the wreck of Titanic. Then he began to craft this whole new world to escape to, and he's been there ever since. 

But how does this first film stand up alone? Without the benefits of a mountain of hype and a huge 3D screen. How is it on just a big TV in a darkened living room? Jump on your Ikran and fly through the alien jungle with us. 

Spider-Man: No Way Home

[School of Movies 2021]

A lively and enthusiastic end of one trilogy and setup for a different flavour of future web-slinging, this thing drew gasps, cheers and applause, even from my British audience, and we don't cheer for anything except football.

This is a really special and important Spider-Man movie. Beyond all hyperbole and landmark moments in comic-book style crossovers it is a story about the serious toll that being Spidey extracts from everyone under that signature mask.

Guests:

Brenden Agnew @BLCAgnew of Cinapse

Mackenzie Eastram  @KenziePhoenix of Rainbow Connection @MuppetsPod

Nathan Eastram @bertnerdtram These two also of Video Game: The Movie: The Podcast  @VGTMPodcast

Austin Wilden @WC_WIT of Wits-Writing 

Nama Chibitty of our Discord @NamaTheNerd