Best film podcasts in 2026

Film criticism on the internet has gotten weird. Letterboxd took over the short-take format, YouTube ate the video-essay slot, and the long, considered conversation about a single movie has quietly migrated to podcasts. The good news is that the medium suits film talk — there's time to actually argue about a film instead of stopping at a one-line take.

Here are the film podcasts we'd recommend in 2026, picked across taste levels from "I want to laugh about a bad movie" to "I want a film historian to explain why this matters."

TL;DR

• For rewatching cult classics: The Rewatchables, Blank Check.
• For new releases and box office talk: The Big Picture, Filmspotting.
• For film history and forgotten Hollywood: You Must Remember This, Unspooled.
• For deep critical analysis: Film Comment Podcast.
• For UK perspectives and industry chatter: The Empire Film Podcast.

The Rewatchables

• Best for: nostalgic group chats about classic films you've already seen.
• Standout features: Bill Simmons leads a rotating cast of Ringer staff and guests through one beloved movie per episode, breaking down "Most Rewatchable Scenes," "Apex Mountain" lists, and casting trivia. The format is loose, opinionated, and built for people who like to argue about whether something is actually a top-five performance.
• Considerations: very American sports-podcast cadence. If that style irritates you, you'll bounce off the format faster than you'll get into the films.

Blank Check with Griffin & David

• Best for: filmographies of directors who got a "blank check" after a hit.
• Standout features: Griffin Newman and David Sims work through a director's complete filmography one movie per week, with deep research and a lot of jokes. Their fan community ("the Blankies") is one of the most devoted podcast audiences in the medium.
• Considerations: episodes regularly run two to three hours. Best digested at 1.5× or while doing something else.

The Big Picture

• Best for: keeping up with new releases, awards-season talk, and industry trends.
• Standout features: Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins co-host with strong critical instincts and a genuine love for both art-house and blockbuster filmmaking. Coverage spans new releases, awards prediction, and director interviews.
• Considerations: another Ringer property, so the podcast cinematic universe overlaps heavily with The Rewatchables. If you want different voices, look further down the list.

You Must Remember This

• Best for: deeply researched audio documentaries about Hollywood's first century.
• Standout features: Karina Longworth narrates multi-episode arcs about the people and patterns of old Hollywood — the studios, the scandals, the forgotten careers. Production quality and writing are unmatched in the format.
• Considerations: this is a documentary podcast, not a discussion show. Episodes are tightly scripted, which is the whole point but won't suit every mood.

Unspooled

• Best for: working through canonical "best of all time" film lists with a friendly co-host pairing.
• Standout features: actor Paul Scheer and film critic Amy Nicholson watch through famous lists (AFI top 100, Sight & Sound, etc.) and decide whether each film actually holds up in 2026. The dynamic between an enthusiast and a critic gives the show a useful tension.
• Considerations: the canon-list format means you'll occasionally sit through them debating a movie you have no interest in. Skipping around the back catalogue works fine.

Filmspotting

• Best for: weekly new-release reviews and themed top-five lists.
• Standout features: Adam Kempenaar has hosted since 2005, which is older than most podcasts. The format is reliable and well-engineered: review of the week's big release, a "Top 5" segment with a rotating co-host, and listener emails that genuinely shape the show.
• Considerations: the long history means there's a vast back catalogue, and the modern episodes assume a baseline familiarity with how the show works.

Film Comment Podcast

• Best for: serious critical conversation about cinema, including international and arthouse work.
• Standout features: editors Devika Girish and Clinton Krute host weekly conversations with critics and filmmakers, often anchored to a specific festival, retrospective, or new release. Coverage skews toward the kinds of films a megaplex won't be running.
• Considerations: less interested in the box-office, awards-circuit conversation than the other shows on this list. If you want pop-culture coverage, this isn't it.

The Empire Film Podcast

• Best for: British perspectives on cinema, industry chatter, and director interviews.
• Standout features: hosted by the team behind Empire Magazine, the show mixes new-release reviews with interviews and longer industry discussions. Strong on UK and European releases that the American shows don't always cover.
• Considerations: the London-centric framing won't land equally for every listener. Treat it as a useful counterweight to American-dominated film coverage rather than a primary source.

How we chose

We weighted three things: editorial quality (a film podcast that can't actually talk usefully about film fails the brief), longevity (the medium rewards hosts who've been doing this long enough to have an actual perspective), and audience devotion (a small but obsessed listenership often signals a higher craft level than a big algorithm-fed one).

If you're starting cold, we'd begin with The Big Picture for new releases, The Rewatchables for nostalgia, and You Must Remember This for craft and history. Those three together cover most of the surface area without overwhelming you with hours of listening per week. For more on getting through a growing podcast queue, our tips for managing your podcast queue help.

If you want broader pop-culture recommendations beyond film specifically, our best storytelling podcasts list covers narrative and documentary shows in adjacent territory.

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