School of Movies

[School of Movies 2024] A story ripped straight from the pages of Golden Age comic books, as dastardly gangsters and Nazis on the rise seek out a secret rocket pack that has fallen into the hands of a well-meaning, square-jawed chap who accidentally becomes something of a superhero. Starring a moustache-twirling Timothy Dalton, a luminous Jennifer Connelly, along with Billy Campbell, Alan Arkin and Paul Sorvino, this is a favourite of many of our listeners and was commissioned by Sarah Montgomery. We kick off a Christmas season of commissions, and considering how stressful November was for everyone, we have decided to set the tone for 2025 by seeking out pure joy. They will be movies we will love talking about enthusiastically, and focusing on to bring you folks a measure of weekly happiness in a dark time. The ones we have chosen for this December all seem to have that joy in common, as well as an old fashioned sensibility. We have A Christmas Story coming up next week, then Ultraman Rising, then at New Year's we have The Mask, and to see in January it's Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl!

[School of Movies 2024] This is an exceptionally long-awaited episode for us. One of the very first films discussed on our very first episode, way back in April 2007, mentioned repeatedly in the intervening 17 years, and promised over and over. Now we finally reach it, one of the most special and meaningful films to us. It was directed by Danny Boyle after 28 Days later but before Slumdog Millionaire. It very overtly draws inspiration from Aliens and 2001, it stars Cillian Murphy, Chris Evans, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, Hiroyuki Sanada Cliff Curtis, Benedict Wong and Mark Strong. It was written by Alex Garland, scored by John Murphy and Underworld, it made one twentieth the box office of Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. ...and it is quite literally BRILLIANT.

[School of Movies 2023] [This was originally released in the summer of 2023. We have subsequently seen every inch of Oppenheimer... we stand by what is said here.] I think this will be the only piece I create about Oppenheimer (2023). You definitely do not have to have seen it and I won't be saying anything that could be considered a plot spoiler. This is dark, upsetting, heavy and much shorter than our usual Main Event shows. It was intended to be an After School Club, but in the inception it grew and expanded in gravity, density and ferocity, and while there is an aspect that feels self-destructive, I consider it important enough to release to the whole world. Let history decide.

[School of Movies 2024] Nolan-Vember comes to a close as we handle possibly his most emotionally-driven film. Drawing heavily from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Contact (two films we've already covered) Nolan presented the most populist blockbuster version of the speculative possibilities of what happens when a human being goes tear-assing into a black hole. This is very much our wheelhouse when it comes to the philosophical quandary of Stay or Go, regarding an increasingly uninhabitable planet Earth. So, the conclusions reached in this grand, cosmic, time-dilating cathedral of a smash-hit matter a great deal. And there are definitely elements we love about this one... but in consequence of Nolan's handling and points of focus there are also things that drive us crazier than HAL 9000 speed-dating GLaDOS. Fortunately, there is a film that forms a perfect sparring partner with this one; Danny Boyle's Sunshine (2007). One twentieth as successful with general audiences, but it handles very similar techno-philosophical and theological concepts in a way that hits devastatingly hard with us... and that long-awaited show is coming next week. I chose to close out this month on the astonishing music of Hans Zimmer, live from Prague with a full orchestra, celebrating his scores for Nolan in this, in Inception and in the Dark Knight Trilogy.