Shot/Reverse Shot

On February 9th, 2011, one of the greatest TV shows of all time left the field for the last time. To mark the five-year anniversary of its passing, Matt and Ed pay tribute to Friday Night Lights by discussing what was unique about it, its influence, and its place in the pantheon of great television shows. They draw heavily on this oral history of the show from the dearly departed Grantland, which is well worth reading, particularly when it comes to the details of the show's production.

In honour of this year's big game, this episode is all about Sports movies, from earnest documentaries to rousing crowdpleasers, with a sprinkling of talk about how insane it is that Joseph Fiennes has been cast to play Michael Jackson. 

To mark the end of the Sundance film festival for another year, Matt and Ed discuss some of the big news coming out of Park City, what films from the festival have piqued their interest, and what Sundance's place in the culture is now compared to its heyday in the mid-to-late '90s. They also establish the many ways in which Kevin Smith is exactly the same as a cartoon dog.

A.K.A. "Shittiest Week Ever" Minisode.

Happy New Year! As is customary, a new season of Shot/Reverse Shot starts by looking at the release schedule and considering what cinematic delights the year ahead has in store. Matt and Ed run down the blockbusters, independent curios and outright oddities that will be hitting screens in 2016, and make the first reference to So Solid Crew that anyone anywhere has made in at least 10 years.

Another year has come and gone, and now we need to try and make sense of it. Fortunately, Matt and Ed are up to the task, and in this bumper round-up of the year they talk about some of the big film and TV stories, pitch some ideas for Episode VIII to Rian Johnson (#QuiJohnCandy), before finishing with a countdown of the Shot/Reverse Shot Top 10 Films of 2015. 

Seeing that Matt and Ed spent the better part of a year talking about how much they were looking forward to a new Star Wars movie, it would be downright silly for them not to talk about the film now that it's actually out in the world.

Annoying real-life things like families and that prevented Matt and Ed from being able to record a full episode this week. Instead, they decided to talk before the release of The Force Awakens about what they hope to see (and not to see) in one of the most anticipated films of all time, their favourite (and least favourite) Christmas movies, and how shit turkey is. Think of it as a stocking stuffer ahead of next week's bumper end of year spectacular!

Inspired by Spectre and its insistence on squandering the scenery-destroying talents of Christoph Waltz, Matt and Ed are talking about Wasted Potential this week. They discuss artists who don't fulfill their potential due to the actions of others (Orson Welles), because of their own choices (Marlon Brando), or just because they stopped trying (Robert De Niro, Al Pacino etc.). They also wonder if Jesse Eisenberg's awful-looking performance as Lex Luthor in Batman v Superman is secretly brilliant, share their #hottake on the recently announced BIFA winners, and accidentally create a mashup of Night of the Hunter and Shadow of the Colossus.

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.