School of Movies Alex & Sharon Shaw

[School of Movies 2024]
It's not often we handle romantic comedies, but this one has more going on beneath the surface. With particular emphasis placed on the back and forth script, fast-flowing, overlapping dialogue and highly quotable, this extremely 90s movie showcases one of the most appealing onscreen couples in cinema history; Batman & Catwoman.
Two single parents, one an irresponsible fun-time Dad, the other juggling career and motherhood furiously, find themselves and their kids entangled during a rainy, chaotic Manhattan workday that threatens to drive them all insane..
It also kicks off "Cloon-June", four weeks of George Clooney's early forays into acting on film. Coming up we have From Dusk Till Dawn, Out of Sight and a mystery fourth movie. He's always been one of my favourite actors, he had a lot to prove at this stage in his career, and it ties in with Pride month as he was kind of the celebrity in the 90s that most guys would shruggingly admit to maybe crushing on.

[School of Movies 2024]
Another unexpected Commission that came out of nowhere. Big thank you to Dean R for requisitioning this. Far less well-known in Wes Craven's body of work than the slashers, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream, The Hills Have Eyes, Last House on the Left, this one is going outside his comfort zone.
Starting out like a romantic comedy, an aspect highlighted in the trailer, starring the stunning and wildly talented young actors Rachel McAdams (fresh from Mean Girls and The Notebook) and Cillian Murphy (recently of 28 Days Later, and about to play Jonathan Crane in Batman Begins) this movie turns a corner at the beginning of Act 2 and becomes a taut, tense, claustrophobic, dialogue-based Hitchcokian thriller.
As it happens, this is Sharon's favourite of ALL of Craven's body of work, and you will find out why in this extremely enthusiastic episode.

[School of Everything Else 2024]
This was a show that was recommended to us a few times, but then wound up an unexpected commissioned episode. Compounding this, Willow has been a lover of this crazy, twisted, queer-friendly HELL for years, since the pilot surfaced on YouTube. They had already seen all eight episodes of Amazon's 2024 first season, and considering a now maturing and emotionally complex Gen Z is the target audience for this, we got Willow on as our special guest.
For the majority of you that haven't delved into Hazbin Hotel (or its brother-series Helluva Boss), it is an animated musical about the ongoing conflict between Heaven and Hell, with the titular hotel being set up by the wildly optimistic Disney-Princess daughter of Lucifer; Charlie Morningstar. Charlie believes the denizens of damnation have it in them to be redeemed and ascend to Paradise, and the hotel is the site of their rehab. Unfortunately the officials of both afterlives are various degrees of incredulous about this plan.
We talk about the whole thing, but I don't consider this as spoiling the experience for newcomers. It can only help you enjoy the show all the more if you listen to this first, and the toe-tapping, frequently genuinely excellent songs will live in your head from now on. If you like The Good Place Good Omens, The Owl House or even Hades, you will find plenty of similar philosophical musing and humour in here.

[School of Movies 2024]
Statistically speaking, very few of you have seen this movie. Those who have either detest it with utmost derision or love it so much it makes them cry. Garnering a pathetic 11% on Rotten Tomatoes one would think this an unmitigated disaster, easily summed up as "Grown woman remembers imaginary friend, he returns and wrecks her life."
But look at the run time on this one... two and a half hours. And you know us, if we've talked for that long about something so obscure that literally nobody has ever asked us to cover on the show then it means there's something special below the surface which 89% of professional film critics in 1991 either didn't see or meant nothing to them.
So, for everyone who hasn't seen this movie, come along with us, and find out the extent of what was overlooked.

[School of Movies 2024]
With the new Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, directed by Maze-Runner helmer Wes Ball emerging this week, we went back to look at a Trilogy that emerged without any overarching grand plan, changing directors after the first instalment, with both men just trying to make the absolute best film they could with the opportunity they had.
And they succeeded! This is one of the best low-key trios of films based on a long-existing franchise that nobody had any real expectations of, and that were easy to overlook in the decade when superheroes ruled the big screen.
You will find out here what the creators' aims were, and the challenges of crafting films like these where the stars won't be in the picture until Weta Digital paint them in, and yet so much of those characters are right there in the human performances. If you ever doubted that Andy Serkis deserved a Best Actor nomination, regardless of digital makeup, this may convince you.

[School of Movies 2024]
He's responsible for some of the most adored and industry-changing films of all time, and for some of the biggest cases of fan backlash ever recorded. It's maybe a little harder to remember now, after year upon year of Disney's Star Wars being declared the worst thing that has ever been put to screen, but a few years earlier, similar guys were saying similar things about the man that many fans wish had never sold to America's Mousy Spirit of Capitalism.
What we have for you here is a focused collection of monologues drawn from commentaries across all six of the movies he was directly in charge of, bringing you from Star Wars in 1977 all the way to Revenge of the Sith in 2005. The cumulative effect of listening to George say one thing and then seem to contradict himself down the line, regarding what was planned and when gives way to the portrait of a frustrated storyteller hoping to be understood.
These moments are interspersed with monologues from his production teams, including Empire Strikes Back director, his mentor Irvin Kirshner, Empire and Jedi writer Lawrence Kasdan, FX master craftsman Dennis Muren, animation director Rob Coleman, producer Rick McCallum, concept artist Ralph McQuarrie and the irreplaceable Carrie Fisher.