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Super in-depth analysis of movies (and occasionally TV, and video games). Hosted by veteran podcasters Alex & Sharon Shaw with different guests for round-table chats every week.
Episodes
Friday Dec 26, 2025
Friday Dec 26, 2025
[School of Movies 2025]
It has been ten years since Disney relaunched Star Wars in the cinema, delivering what felt like a special globally-unifying grand, historical event... that a bunch of Star wars fans complained felt too much like the 1977 original special globally-unifying grand, historical event.
J.J. Abrams has proved over the years that he is far better at restarting big, exciting new worlds off with a bang (as he did with Mission Impossible and Star Trek before this) rather than somehow closing them out with anything approaching that same level of satisfaction (as with Lost and The Rise of Skywalker).
But after all these years with all the Star Wars movies and TV and books and comics and video games that have played out since then, is The Force Awakens STILL my unlikely favourite of the whole series that has been with me since my life began in 1980?
Yes.
Put simply, this film transcends its own oversimplifications to become a joyful celebration of Star Wars, retreading many previous paths with a heartfelt energy the world badly needs again. And in this revisit show, Sharon and I talk about what has changed since we first recorded nearly four hours on it at the end of 2015 along with multiple guests at the opening of the gates to new adventure. That show can be found here, and since we also revisited the third film in the Sequel Trilogy back in 2024 after a serious re-edit allowed me to make peace, that leaves The Last Jedi for some point in the near future.
Monday Dec 21, 2015
Monday Dec 21, 2015
[School of Movies 2015]
Part 1: A film so important and so passionately adored by us that we needed two shows and two groups of guests to fully cover, welcome to part 1 of our Force Awakens show. With us for this first outing in which we discuss Rey, Finn, Ren, Han, Huxx, Snoke and the hugely positive side of this effectively being a retelling of the events of A New Hope.
Part 2: The second installment in our epic Force Awakens show brings in three new voices and a Star Destroyer-full of speculation. We move onto the characters we have not yet covered, as well as talking details and theorizing wildly about later movies in this series as well as talking about how the landscape of Star Wars in cinema has now changed forever.