By Matt Neglia 

For Episode 149, Michael Schwartz, DeAnn Knighton, Casey Lee Clark & myself are joined for the first time ever by two of Next Best Picture's newest contributors: Bianca Garner & Lauren LaMagna. Together, we all recap our Top 10 films of 2019 so far as we enter into the second  half of the year. We also go over the polls and discuss the trailers for "Queen & Slim" and "The Good Liar."

Thank you so much for listening. You can subscribe to the Next Best Picture Podcast on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, GooglePlay, Tunein, PlayerFM, Acast & Castbox or you can listen down below. Please take a moment to review us on Apple Podcasts here. And if you're feeling generous and you enjoy what you hear and want more, please help to support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month and you'll receive some exclusive podcast content.

By Matt Neglia 

For this week's main podcast review, Nicole Ackman, Josh Parham, Danilo Castro and myself discuss the latest film from director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Richard Curtis titled "Yesterday." Starring newcomer Himesh Patel, Lily James, Ed Sheeran, Kate McKinnon and packed with surprises, the film is a love letter to life, love and the music of The Beatles. Does this crowd pleasing film live up to the hype? We give our wide range of opinions in this week's review which you can listen to down below. 

Thank you so much for listening. You can subscribe to the Next Best Picture Podcast on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, GooglePlay, Tunein, PlayerFM, Acast & Castbox or you can listen down below. Please take a moment to review us on Apple Podcasts here. And if you're feeling generous and you enjoy what you hear and want more, please help to support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month and you'll receive some exclusive podcast content.

By Casey Lee Clark 

​​As the first half of 2019 is winding down, there appears to be plenty of discussion on what some of the best films and performances of the year have been so far; what performances make people’s personal line-ups, what has actual Oscar chances, etc. While some have described this as a weak year so far, I have noticed an overwhelming amount of acclaimed lead female performances, and by extension great female-led films. More often than not and across all genres, 2019 has churned out a plethora of fantastic and critically lauded films with strong female lead performances.

By Matt Neglia 

For this year's Oscar off-season, we are taking a look back on the 2015 film year which was right before Next Best Picture launched. We asked the NBP Film Community to vote on 5 films nominated for Best Picture and 5 films nominated for Oscars other than Best Picture from that year to be reviewed on the podcast, exclusively for our Patreon subscribers. We already reviewed "Brooklyn," "Sicario," "Ex Machina," "Room," "Spotlight," and now, we are reviewing the Best Animated Feature winner of 2015: "Inside Out."

One of Pixar's most brilliant, creative and thoughtful ideas for a movie, if not ever, "Inside Out" stunned critics and audiences in 2015 with its imaginative production design, meta concept, excellent voice acting and more! How has it held up in the year's since its release and how does it stack up against other Pixar movies which have come out before and after? We go into all of this and more as our trip through 2015 continues. Joining me for this 2015 retrospective review I have Josh Parham, Daniel Bayer, Casey Lee Clark, Tom O'Brien and Patreon supporter Ryan Fecskovics.
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This is a preview of the podcast, the full version of which is only available to those who subscribe to us on Patreon. For the small price of $1 a month, you can receive this review along with other exclusive podcast content, so be sure to subscribe here.
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Thank you so much for listening. You can subscribe to the Next Best Picture Podcast on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, GooglePlay, Tunein, PlayerFM, Acast & Castbox or you can listen down below. Please take a moment to review us on Apple Podcasts here. ​​

​By Danilo Castro 

​When it comes to popular culture, there’s the Beatles and then there’s everyone else. To merely call them influential would be to downplay the ways in which they’ve shaped our current world. Their innovative approach to songwriting and recording changed the way we listen to music, while their dry wit and willingness to challenge social norms ushered in the era of the postmodern celebrity.

It doesn’t stop there. In between their droll press conferences and chart-topping singles, the Beatles also found time to innovate on film. They starred in five releases between 1964 and 1970, and with each, they managed to break down cinematic barriers, create entire subgenres, and co-opt techniques that would later become industry standard. Danny Boyle’s new film “Yesterday” shows us a world where the Beatles’ music never existed; but as the group’s resume proves, a world without their film work would be just as bleak. ​

By Matt Neglia 

Our second podcast review for this week is the remake/reboot of the 1988 horror film "Child's Play" starring everyone's favorite killer doll: Chucky (this time voiced by the legendary Mark Hamill). With a cast that includes Aubrey Plaza and Brian Tyree Henry and an updated plot premise to fit a 2019 landscape, what did the Next Best Picture team ultimately think? Tune in below to hear thoughts from ​Josh Parham, Dan Bayer, myself and our special guest: now writing for Jumpcut Online & Awards Circuit, the returning Jessica Peña.

Thank you so much for listening. You can subscribe to the Next Best Picture Podcast on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, GooglePlay, Tunein, PlayerFM, Acast & Castbox or you can listen down below. Please take a moment to review us on Apple Podcasts here. And if you're feeling generous and you enjoy what you hear and want more, please help to support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month and you'll receive some exclusive podcast content.

By Dan Bayer 
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There was a moment, back in the mid-90s, where it seemed like gay cinema was going places. After years of LGBTQ stories being relegated to independent and foreign films that only played art houses, there seemed to be a turning point. In 1995, “To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar” was the number one film in the country for two weeks, earning the equivalent of $61 million in today’s dollars. Then the very next year, Mike Nichols’ “The Birdcage” was the number one film in the country for three weeks, eventually earning the equivalent of $202.5 million in today’s dollars. And then the very next year, the Kevin Kline-starrer “In & Out” also opened at the top of the box office charts and earned the equivalent of $101.9 million in today’s dollars. Just to put those numbers in further context, “The Birdcage” would have been last year’s 15th highest-grossing film, placing above hits like “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” “A Quiet Place,” “Halloween” and “Mary Poppins Returns.” “In & Out” would have been the 32nd highest grossing film of last year, and “To Wong Foo…” would have been the 47th highest. The point being: These films made money.

By Daniel Howat

We’re pretty much halfway through 2019, and we’ve seen plenty of great films so far. In four out of the last five years, we saw a major Oscar contender release in the first half of the year. Have we seen any Best Picture nominees yet? Let’s dive into the potential contenders of 2019 so far.

​By Cody Dericks 

​We all know that Netflix is not the place to go if you're looking for older movies. They seem to have an aversion to any film from before 1985. So imagine my surprise when I saw that just a few weeks ago they added "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" to their rotation! Mike Nichols's masterpiece was made all the way back in 1966, so I never expected to see it on a streaming platform that seems to be more interested in functioning as a "Friends" re-run machine than as a way to expand peoples' film knowledge (and I say this as a fan of "Friends"). While it's available for however long it is on Netflix, I thought this might be a good time to do a little overview of this film's importance and impact on the film industry.

By Matt Neglia 

For Episode 148, Michael Schwartz, DeAnn Knighton, Cody Dericks, Casey Lee Clark, Tom O'Brien & myself talk about the Oscar contenders from the first half of 2019, the trailer for "The Peanut Butter Falcon," the polls, recent film news and more!

Thank you so much for listening. You can subscribe to the Next Best Picture Podcast on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, GooglePlay, Tunein, PlayerFM, Acast & Castbox or you can listen down below. Please take a moment to review us on Apple Podcasts here. And if you're feeling generous and you enjoy what you hear and want more, please help to support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month and you'll receive some exclusive podcast content.

By Matt Neglia 

Our main podcast review for this week is the sequel we didn't ask for and we thought we didn't need but now that it is here, we all realize just how wrong we all were and how we should once again, trust that Pixar knows what they are doing. "Toy Story 4" took a big risk in potentially tarnishing a universally beloved trilogy of films but Pixar has delivered once again, bringing about our favorite characters, introducing new ones and telling a story that needed to be told, closing out the story of Woody and the gang of toys once and for all(?). Tune in below as DeAnn Knighton, Josh Parham, and myself give you our full review plus a bonus spoiler section towards the end.

Thank you so much for listening. You can subscribe to the Next Best Picture Podcast on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, GooglePlay, Tunein, PlayerFM, Acast & Castbox or you can listen down below. Please take a moment to review us on Apple Podcasts here. And if you're feeling generous and you enjoy what you hear and want more, please help to support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month and you'll receive some exclusive podcast content.

By Tom O'Brien 

The biggest story in the past few weeks among Hollywood industry watchers has been the soft summer returns at the box office (though that's about to change with another Disney release this weekend), a complaint that seems to come up in some form year after year. What is different about this summer, however, is that the major disappointments so far have been with sequels to previous hits, usually the most reliable tentpoles on which a studio can rely. Week after week this summer, sequels to such box office winners as "Godzilla," "X-Men," "The Secret Life of Pets" and just last week, "Men in Black" and "Shaft," each of which opened at least 50% lower than their predecessors. The only spectacular exception is "John Wick: Chapter 3 -- Parabellum" which has already grossed more than the previous "John Wick" films combined.

Yet, underneath the headlines of "sequelitis" lies an equally disturbing box office story, one that may have far more disturbing ramifications as to what kind of films get green-lit in the future. Comedies made for adults, a summertime staple often used as successful counter-programming for grown-ups who have little interest in seeing a prehistoric monster stomp around Boston, are suffering the same box-office fate as the blockbuster sequels: far fewer people are going to see them.

By Matt Neglia 

Jessie Buckley is a 29 year old actress from Ireland who made her on-screen debut in Michael Pearce's film "Beast" in 2017. She was last seen by most viewers in HBO's "Chernobyl" in a supporting role but now with "Wild Rose," she gets the chance to show everyone the range of her talent playing an ex-convict who is struggling to balance raising her two children and pursuing her dreams as a country music star. Jessie was kind enough to chat with Next Best Picture about her promising career thus far, what it was like working on "Wild Rose," her upcoming projects and more! Take a listen down below.

Thank you so much for listening. You can subscribe to the Next Best Picture Podcast on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, GooglePlay, Tunein, PlayerFM, Acast & Castbox or you can listen down below. Please take a moment to review us on Apple Podcasts here. And if you're feeling generous and you enjoy what you hear and want more, please help to support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month and you'll receive some exclusive podcast content.

By Michael Schwartz 

We've taken a look at Best Comedy Series and Best Limited Series. Now, it's time to take a look at the shows which will be competing this year at the Emmys for a nomination in Best Drama Series.

Before "Game of Thrones" even returned to HBO to air its final season, the blockbuster series already had another Emmy win for Drama Series locked down and ready to go....or it seemed. While the final season was met with a divisive reaction, we still think it holds the top place at the moment based on the hype alone. However, with its momentum fading and the uncertainty surrounding whether the complaints from the fandom reached the ears of the Academy, we are starting to wonder if there is another show out there that can beat the HBO goliath.

​Let’s dive into the eight non-"Game of Thrones" series that will be competing for a nomination slot.​

By Matt Neglia 

Our second podcast review for this week is the A24 critically acclaimed drama "The Last Black Man In San Francisco" which won two awards at this year's Sundance Film Festival for Best Directing and a Special Jury Prize for Creative Collaboration. Starring newcomer Jimmie Fails, along with Jonathan Majors, Danny Glover, Rob Morgan and more, the film introduces us to a new and distinct voice from filmmaker Joe Talbot. But what did the Next Best Picture team ultimately think? Tune in below as Josh Parham, Cody Dericks and myself break it all down for you.

Thank you so much for listening. You can subscribe to the Next Best Picture Podcast on SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Spotify,Stitcher, GooglePlay, Tunein, PlayerFM, Acast & Castbox or you can listen down below. Please take a moment to review us on Apple Podcasts here. And if you're feeling generous and you enjoy what you hear and want more, please help to support us on Patreon for as little as $1 a month and you'll receive some exclusive podcast content.