This Had Oscar Buzz

Joe and Chris

300 episodes listed below

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Prestige cinema, after the Oscar hopes died.

The gist

This Had Oscar Buzz treats failed Oscar hopefuls as lively case files. Joe Reed and Chris Feil move from Contagion to Amsterdam, The Company, and other would-be contenders with sharp film memory, awards context, and quick comic side trips.

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About This Had Oscar Buzz

This Had Oscar Buzz is an awards postmortem for films that arrived with prestige signals and left with stranger reputations. It is built for the afterlife of Oscar expectation. Joe Reed and Chris Feil take one movie at a time and ask how the package looked before release: the filmmaker, the cast, the subject matter, the release strategy, the presumed acting push, the sense that a nomination path existed on paper. Then they look at what actually happened. The result is part film criticism, part awards history, and part comedy of industry manners. The show is especially good at noticing how much meaning gathers around a movie before many people have even seen it. A Soderbergh discussion can move from Contagion to The Good German, Ocean's 13, Che, and the difference between pleasing the crowd and keeping a filmmaker's thornier instincts intact. An Amsterdam conversation can turn on David O. Russell, Robert De Niro, Jennifer Lawrence, face reconstruction jokes, and the exhausting density of an ensemble prestige object. The Company opens a path into ballet, terminology, and the difficulty of joking around a specific film's texture. Used People becomes an occasion to talk about Marsha Gay Harden dressing up as Marilyn Monroe and Barbara Streisand's Oscar look. The energy is quick. The frame is precise. The hosts bring enough awards memory to make release patterns and category assumptions feel legible, but the show rarely gets solemn about the business it studies. Its best moments come from that balance: close attention to the machinery of respectability, interrupted by a joke that only works because the film references are so specific. It also has a game-night streak. Closing segments can shift into IMDb-style guessing, running scores, and actor filmographies, turning cinephile recall into a recurring sport. The appeal is not just hearing why a movie missed Oscar. It is hearing how the dream of Oscar shaped the movie's public life before the miss became the story.

Made for: For film fans who track Oscar hopes, actor careers, release strategies, and the strange reputations of almost-prestige movies. It suits listeners who enjoy knowledgeable criticism with rapid comic banter.

What sets it apart: The show focuses on the specific category of films that looked awards-bound before reality intervened. Its mix of Oscar memory, release context, actor trivia, and end-segment games gives failed prestige its own lively archive.

In their own words

Every week on This Had Oscar Buzz, film and entertainment writers Joe Reid and Chris Feil are going to be talking about a different movie that once upon a time had big-time Academy Award aspirations, and for one reason or another, it all went wrong.

As heard by us

Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026

Chris Feil and Joe Reed turn failed Oscar prospects into lively, specific arguments about performance, reception and the machinery surrounding a movie.

This Had Oscar Buzz treats an Oscar miss as the start of the conversation, then follows the movie into acting choices, contemporary reception and the awards field around it.

Read our full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

An Oscar autopsy where Joe Reed and Chris Feil make you mourn the nomination that never came.

Press play if you want

to hear acting choices weighed against the strange physics of Academy recognition
film criticism that pivots from Salma Hayek's restraint to a perfectly timed Brendan Fraser comparison

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Oscar expectationsfailed prestige moviesrelease strategyactor filmographiesdirector reputationsIMDb-style guessing gamesawards historycomic film banter

Talks about

TV & Film Film Reviews

Best episodes of This Had Oscar Buzz

Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.

386 – ContagionApr 6, 2026

A squirmy, funny autopsy of a movie whose Oscar hopes died.

This episode treats Contagion as a comic autopsy of a film whose Oscar hopes never really stood a chance, and it has plenty of fun with the bat, pig, banana, and handwashing chain logic.

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Find your next episode

About This Had Oscar Buzz

In their own words

As heard by us

Why you'd press play

Talks about

Best episodes of This Had Oscar Buzz

Podcasts like This Had Oscar Buzz

Episodes

387 – Ain’t Them Bodies Saints

386 – Contagion

385 – Billy Bathgate

384 – Jarhead

383 – Joker: Folie à Deux

382 – Get Low

381 – Happy Endings

380 – The Company

379 – Amsterdam

378 – Being Flynn

377 – The Iron Claw (w/ Roxana Hadadi!)

Class of 2025

376 – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

375 – My Own Private Idaho

374 – Booksmart

373 – Uncut Gems (w/ Chris Rosen!)

372 – The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (w/ Natalie Walker!)

371 – The Founder

370 – Looper

369 – i’m thinking of ending things

368 – The Devil All the Time (with Katey Rich!)

367 – Mumford

366 – Foe

365 – Hanging Up

364 – Bones and All

363 – Super 8

362 – Used People

361 – Ocean’s Eleven

360 – The Boxer

359 – The Last Thing He Wanted

THOB does TIFF-ty

358 – The Light Between Oceans

357 – The Deep End of the Ocean

356 – The Fountain

355 – Punch-Drunk Love (with Katie Walsh!)

354 – Best in Show

353 – Mamma Mia! (w/ Jorge Molina!)

352 – Freaky Friday

351 – The War of the Roses

350 – The History Boys

349 – The Deep End (with Bobby Finger!)

348 – BPM

347 – Take This Waltz

346 – Madame Sousatzka (w/ Taylor Cole!)

345 – Great Expectations

344 – Things We Lost in the Fire

343 – White Noise (Festival Fever!)

342 – Strictly Ballroom (Festival Fever!)

341 – Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead (Festival Fever!)

340 – Titane (Festival Fever!)

339 – 99 Homes

338 – The Death of Stalin

337 – To the Wonder

336 – Certain Women (with Shirley Li!)

335 – Jersey Boys (with Tyler Coates!)

334 – The French Dispatch

333 – King of the Hill

332 – Snowpiercer (with Bilge Ebiri!)

331 – Saltburn (with Louis Peitzman!)

330 – In Good Company (with Emily St. James!)

329 – The Devil’s Own (with Dan Mecca and Conor O’Donnell!)

328 – Hope Springs

BONUS – Sundance ’25

327 – On the Road

Class of 2024

326 – The Dressmaker

325 – We Don’t Live Here Anymore

324 – Devil in a Blue Dress (with Mitchell Beaupre!)

323 – Rust and Bone

322 – Love Actually

321 – Ben Is Back