I love podcasts! Like everyone else, I do a lot of driving and other mindless chores. I always try to fill up these times with insightful podcasts to learn something new or be entertained. Podcasts are also a great medium to get movie ideas for your next movie marathon. But what are the best movie podcasts out there?
Best Movie Podcast for Movie Marathon Ideas
The American Film Institute’s Top 100 movies list has been one of my favorite sources of movie marathon ideas for a long time. Now there’s a podcast for that!
The podcast is called Unspooled. The premise is that Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson watch a movie from the AFI 100 top movies list, and put together a podcast to discuss that movie.
You can tell Paul and Amy are media professionals. Both of them have credentials on MTV, FX, and other TV and written media. The podcast itself sounds professionally produced.
Each episode has the standard discussion of the movie and what they thought about it. But it is not just talking – they also include audio clips from the movie or related media. It is also not just them – they include interviews with high-quality guests with something relevant to say about the movie. Throw in some discussion of the historical context the movie was made in too, and that is a lot of content. This is easily my favorite movie marathon ideas podcast.
The Unspooled podcast website is herehere. To listen on your mobile device, go wherever fine podcasts are hosted (like iTunes)
Best Movie Podcast To Learn About Many Movies
My favorite professionally produced movie podcast is Maltin on Movies. The host, Leonard Maltin, has lively conversations about movies with his co-host (Baron Vaughn and Jessie Maltin) without rambling on.
Over its lifetime, the podcast has changed format a bit: early on, it picked a theme (e.g. sequels, holiday movies, musicals, etc.) and discussed a great movie, a terrible movie, and a sleeper movie in that theme. This format is really helpful for discovering good and/or unknown new movies – and it keeps your attention with the dissection of the terrible ones! Lately, it has focused more on long-form interviews with invited guests.
The podcast is published on a regular weekly schedule, and has been running since November of 2014. It looks like it has some staying power!
Best Movie Lover Podcast
My favorite podcast from regular guys who just love movies is 101 Films You Should Have Seen. The hosts, Ian and Lewis, are two guys from the UK, and their mission is:
In a nutshell, ’101 Films…’ is a podcast dedicated to the films you probably should have seen, but for some reason never quite got round to watching… plus a few obscure ones that you’ve probably never heard of but should watch anyway.
Their show format is just right for me. Their chats about the movies are entertaining, but they don’t ramble on (each episodes is about a half hour each). Their movie selection is quite good, including many movies I wasn’t even aware existed – let alone good enough to watch!
My only criticism of this podcast is they don’t publish new episodes often enough. Get to it guys!
Other Movie Podcasts
I last surveyed the movie podcast scene in late 2013. You can see the other podcasts I found in that article. I don’t listen to any of them for various reasons (no new episodes, episodes go way too long, etc.), so you are on your own with those!
