Shot/Reverse Shot

It's Matt's Birthday! In keeping with a recently established tradition, that means that this episode is a grab bag of topics decided by the birthday boy, including what films Matt and Ed loved as kids which they are wary of now, the odd experience of watching a film for the first time that has been referenced so much in pop culture that you know every detail about it, and whether or not Star Wars: The Force Awakens has any chance of being good.

It's artist profile time again, and this week Matt and Ed discuss the cinematic work of Madonna. In addition to getting to grips with the (few) highs and (plentiful) lows of her work in cinema, they also try to contextualise her acting and directing in terms of her broader work as a musician and a performer, imagine a version of Swept Away starring Jason Statham, and accidentally create Middle Earth's greatest rapper.

There's a new Bond film out and, despite planning to, neither Matt or Ed were actually able to see it in time for this episode on Spies and espionage in cinema. Regardless of a lack of Spectre discussion, they still have plenty to talk about since 2015 has seen the release of a surprisingly large number of spy movies, ranging from the moodiness of Bond to the goofiness of Spy. They delve into the sociological and psychological underpinnings of spy movies, wonder why there are so few examples of realistic spy movies in a contemporary setting, and talk about Archer a lot.

It's a veritable Werewolf Bar Mitzvah this week as Matt and Ed tackle things both spooky and scary. After discussing some not especially frightening news (unless you find the prospect of an all-female Ocean's Eleven unduly threatening, in which case get over it), they talk about Charlie Lyne's new documentary Fear Itself (which is available exclusively on the BBC iPlayer), before engaging in a more general natter about terrifying moments in otherwise benign movies, their favourite horror films, and why foreign language horror films are sometimes more evocatively scary than English language ones. There's also some nonsense in there about Komodo dragons.