Unspooled

For moviegoers who desire a recap of some of the greatest movies of all time, there's Unspooled. Hosts Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson have a passion for cinema. Both hosted other film podcasts before this. Scheer is one of the hosts of How Did This Get Made? There, he discusses movies that are so bad it is great fun to watch them. In The Canon, Nicholson debated whether movies deserve the title "the greatest of all time." But with this joint venture, the pair wanted no debate. They wanted every film they watched to be one of the best.

Scheer and Nicholson consider themselves active moviegoers. But when they looked at the AFI 2007 list, they realized that they had yet to see many of the greatest films ever. The way that they know a lot of these works is through memes, slogans, or references. For example, Scheer knows that Citizen Kane is the one with the sled. But what is the rest of the plot? Nicholson recalls that in Taxi Driver, Robert De Niro looks in the mirror and talks tough. But there's a whole movie around that, which didn't stick to her memory. With the help of the Unspooled podcast, the hosts want to not only watch those pieces of art from start to finish. They want to fill gaps in their knowledge of cinema.

Most episodes of Unspooled are a recap of one movie from the list. The hosts talk about their watching experience. Then, they discuss whether the film survived the test of time. If it does hold up in the modern age, they want to understand what made it timeless. They also want to examine how those great works influenced filmmaking today. For instance, the podcast explains how Star Wars took its inspiration straight from The Wizard of Oz.

The conversations on Unspooled are not only between Scheer and Nicholson. In each episode, they invite guests who have an intimate relationship with each of these films. Those include choreographers, cinematographers, and other creatives. Together they explore the secret to the film's greatness and also their faults.