Fast movie talk with critical bite.
Unspooled pairs fast, warm movie talk with enough critical backbone to make familiar films feel newly arguable. Episodes move from Total Recall and The Truman Show to Oscars arguments, guest confessions, and recent zeitgeist releases without getting precious.
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Unspooled is built for movie talk that refuses to sit still. The show starts with a film, but the film rarely stays boxed in. A Total Recall episode can begin with Paul Scheer remembering a childhood novelization and quickly turn toward Philip K. Dick, Paul Verhoeven, Mars, and the strange comedy of mistaking a movie tie-in for the source text. That is the rhythm. A premise gets tested, then the conversation follows whatever evidence seems alive: a scene, an actor, a half-remembered viewing, a production story, a list placement, or a personal irritation. The show has structure, though it does not sound stiff. It tracks movies from the AFI Top 100, the Letterboxd Top 250 Films with the Most Fans, the IMDb Top 250, and the New York Times 1000 Essential Films, while also making room for curiosity and new-release emergency episodes. The result is a film canon with loose elbows. The Truman Show becomes a way to talk about hidden-camera television, control rooms, and present-day camera anxiety. Arrival becomes a confession about being emotionally tricked by the same movie more than once. Team America: World Police opens the door to puppet work, cat jokes, and the odd demands of making absurd material physically function. The show also has room for more direct criticism. In the 2026 Oscars special, praise for bold adaptation sits beside complaints about bloat, lag, ambition, and visual excess. In the Sinners discussion, performance, history, storytelling economy, and improvised music all become part of the same argument. The Reel Confessions format adds a looser guest energy, using Chris Ryan’s movie habits and screening stories to talk about how streaming changed casual discovery. Unspooled is casual, but it is not careless. It gives movies credit for feeling good, looking beautiful, or hitting a nostalgic nerve, then asks what those feelings are doing. It is especially good for listeners who like film criticism that has jokes in the bloodstream and opinions with edges.
Made for: For film fans who like canon projects, new-release arguments, Oscars debates, and conversational criticism that treats personal memory as part of the evidence.
What sets it apart: Unspooled stands out by combining list-driven film coverage with quick, lived-in back-and-forth. It can be analytical, nostalgic, skeptical, and funny inside the same stretch without losing the movie at the center.
Each week actor & comedian Paul Scheer (Black Monday, The League) and film critic Amy Nicholson (LA Times Chief Film Critic ) watch and discuss the best movies out there. From the classics to new releases and every indie film in-between. Along the way, they’ll dissect iconic scenes, spotlight their favorite characters, and decide if these movies still stand the test of time.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Unspooled makes movie judgment transparent by pairing scene-level attention with candid arguments about what films mean and why they work.
Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson turn each film into a lively argument about how craft and cultural context shape what appears on screen. Unspooled moves from scene-level choices to larger questions without losing the pleasure of two people testing opinions in real time.
Harold's sports-car problems go on trial, and your beloved movies could be next.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A focused Sinners discussion about performance, improvisation, and pain carried into music.
Sinners comes into focus here through performance. The conversation moves from a character's plainspoken way of seeing the world to Michael B. Jordan's controlled storytelling and the force of Lindo's work.
Chris Ryan turns hotel movies, Yakuza devotion, and Slapshot into a warm case for accidental taste.
Chris Ryan's Real Confessions treats movie taste as something shaped as much by setting as by preference. Hotel television becomes its own kind of recommendation engine, where boredom, chance, and whatever happens to be on can make room for Harry Potter, Dark Night Rises, or A…
Oscar talk turns pointed as Hedda gets passed over and Frankenstein starts to drag.
Unspooled uses its 2026 Oscars discussion to weigh the Academy's picks against the films Amy Nicholson thinks were left behind. Nicholson, film critic for the Los Angeles Times, is most pointed about Hedda receiving no nominations, making the case for Nia DaCosta's Tessa…
A warm, thoughtful pass at why Harold's staged deaths complicate Maude's lesson.
Harold and Maude gets the Unspooled treatment as a beloved 1971 classic, with the hosts returning to the film they frame as central to Bud Cort.
A lively summer movie roundup on Marvel's rebound, fan service, and the season's stranger questions.
Unspooled's summer movie roundup eases back into the multiplex through the uneasy success of Deadpool & Wolverine. Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson tie the movie's self-mocking Marvel apology to multiverse exhaustion, fan service, and the comic-book habit of letting stories reboot…
A blunt puppet satire leads to sharper questions about American power, expertise, and the world's place around the USA.
Unspooled treats Team America: World Police as a blunt, purposefully broad satire of American ideas about global power. Paul Scheer and Amy focus on how the movie keeps placing the USA at the center of the world, turning other places into distances from home, landmarks,…
Mike Muncer and a different guest dissect two horror films per episode, by subgenre.
Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson debate the state of the summer movie season, questioning if it's dead or revived.
Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson dissect the 2004 puppet action satire Team America: World Police.
Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson introduce their podcast Unspooled, discussing the movie Brick and their backgrounds.
Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson discuss the 1995 film Waterworld as part of a series on summer blockbuster flops.
Paul Shear introduces a discussion about John Wick: Chapter 4 on the podcast Unspooled, setting up a conversation with guests about why it's considered the best in the series.
Paul Scheer introduces the podcast Unspooled and kicks off summer movie season by discussing the cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer.
Molly Lambert discusses her inability to pretend to like movies or directors to impress others in a confessional-style interview.
Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson discuss the 1990 film Total Recall on their podcast Unspooled.
Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson introduce their podcast Unspooled and discuss the movie The Truman Show, with Paul sharing his experience directing hidden camera prank shows.
Paul Scheer and Amy introduce the podcast Unspooled and discuss the movie Team America: World Police, sharing a personal anecdote about working with a puppet cat.
Paul Scheer and co-host discuss the 2016 film Arrival, its plot, and their personal reactions to it.
The hosts of Unspooled discuss the new movie Project Hail Mary, praising it as wholesome, Spielberg-esque science fiction that satisfies like comfort food.
Unspooled centers Ryan Coogler's Sinners, a 1932 Mississippi horror period musical built around Miles Caton, Michael B.
Chris Ryan says the price of giving up Michael Mann’s "Heat" is not $10,000 but "5.2 million."
Amy Nicholson and her Unspooled cohost assess the 2026 Oscars, beginning with overlooked films including Tessa Thompson's Hedda, Eddington, and Eva Victor's Sorry, Baby.
Unspooled examines Hal Ashby’s 1971 film Harold and Maude, starring Bud Cort as a depressed 20-year-old drawn to death and Ruth Gordon as an 80-year-old woman who embraces life.