The Rolling Tape
The Rolling Tape podcast is a TRT production covering weekly film reviews, industry updates, and awards season news.
Interview with 'Black Zombie' (2026) Director, Maya Annik Bedward
Zombies are an iconic feature of horror that have existed for almost a century, the earliest representation appearing in White Zombie (1932). However, how much do we really know about the roots of the zombie, where did they come from, and what does it tell us about our culture and our understanding of this trope?
In Black Zombie, writer and director Maya Annik Bedward explores these questions about the zombie, specifically its origin and reality, in relation to Haitian vodou culture. In an interview with The Rolling Tape, she discusses her experience...
The Awards Tape: TIFF Preview 2026
With Telluride wrapping up and Venice getting ready to deliver the Golden Lion, we are now previewing the Toronto International Film Festival. We have five team members who will be in attendance at the 51st edition of TIFF and today we discuss an in-depth look at the TIFF lineup and detail our schedules and priorities for what we want to see and do while in Toronto starting September 10. The lineup features 293 official selection titles, with Opening Night programmed with Siân Heder's Being Heumann.
Listen on Patreon for an extended pre-episode conversation where the team b...
EP 205: Onslaught (2026) & A24 Rotten Tomatoes Mini-Game
Just mere hours after A24 premiered their major festival venture in Primetime at the Venice International Film Festival, and a surprise screening of You Can See Everything at Telluride, we review their current theatrical release Onslaught. It’s not our first Adam Wingard joint, following up our April 2024 review of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Wingard has escaped the Monsterverse (for now) to return to his action slasher roots.
Onslaught is directed by Adam Wingard and written by Wingard and Simon Barrett. When a rogue sq...
Read Receipts: A Big Screen Book Club Presents 'The Dog Stars' from Peter Heller (2012) to Ridley Scott (2026)
There were dogs. There were stars. There were dog stars. We read them. We watched them. And it’s time for our receipts. So welcome back to Read Receipts: A Big Screen Book Club from The Rolling Tape where each month we read a book and watch its onscreen adaptation. This month we read The Dog Stars by Peter Heller and watched the new film The Dog Stars from Ridley Scott. We’ll get into the differences between the two, what worked, what didn’t, and how we feel about this as an...
The Awards Tape: 78th Primetime Emmy Awards (2026) Final Predictions
The 78th Emmy Awards are just a couple of weeks away, with the main ceremony airing Monday, September 14, and the Creative Arts Emmys taking place September 5 and 6. Half of The Rolling Tape team will be traveling around the globe between Venice and the Toronto International Film Festival, so we wanted to get one episode out the door before we depart discussing our predictions for what will win at this year's Primetime Emmys.
The last time we talked about the Emmys, we were reacting to the nominations, where shows like Widow's Bay, <...
EP 204: The Dog Stars (2026) & Coyote vs. Acme (2026)
Double feature day, The Rolling Tape’s 4-year anniversary, celebrating Dolly Parton, Peter Cullen, and Tim Curry (science fiction double feature anyone?). A lot on the table for this week’s episode as we look back on 4 years and 637 episodes of the podcast. We review two films in theaters, The Dog Stars and Coyote vs. Acme.
The Dog Stars is directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith, based on the 2012 novel by Peter Heller. The film stars Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, and Guy Pearce, and follo...
Ladies Night & Women in Film Spotlight: Kelly Reichardt
In our second Women in Film Spotlight for Ladies Night, we delve into the career of Kelly Reichardt spotlighting two of her films: First Cow and The Mastermind. Both films reflect her unique storytelling style of slow cinema that challenges conventional narratives while exploring profound themes related to the human experience. First Cow transports us to the early 19th century, where a cook and a Chinese immigrant form an unlikely partnership to steal milk from a prized cow while The Mastermind introduces us to a failed architect who, despite having a...
The Awards Tape: 2027 Oscar Contenders Draft Final Rosters
See our live Fantasy results here on our website.
We're taking a bit of a pause from our ongoing Oscar predictions to revisit the Oscar Contenders Fantasy Draft we started back in April. A group of us drafted films we believed would be major awards contenders, and we accumulate points based on each film's performance at the box office, critics' and audience reception, and the potential precursors and Oscar nominations they'll earn later in the season.
We each started with eight films during our initial draft on April 1. We followed that up with an episode...
EP 203: Speed Run Reviews of Maddie’s Secret, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Tony, and It Ends & Venice, TIFF, and NYFF Previews
Instead of stepping inside the Insidious franchise this weekend with Insidious: Out of the Further, we’re switching it up here today because summer is winding down, and also we make the rules here. Rather than our typical review of one movie, we are reviewing four that have stood out to our team over the past couple of months that we have not talked about in-depth on prior review episodes, including Maddie’s Secret, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Tony, and It Ends.
Interview with 'It Ends' (2026) Director, Alex Ullom
It’s been six years since the idea for It Ends entered writer-director Alex Ullom’s brain. The “hangout horror” film played the festival circuit, where it generated considerable buzz (you can read our team’s review from last year’s Chicago Critics Fest here). It then went on to be one of the first films available on the Letterboxd Video Store. Neon subsequently scooped the film for theatrical release which brings us here. Ullom has dubbed It Ends as “hangout horror,” blending suffocating horror with the heart of a summer coming-of-age story. He joins Adam Patla to discuss the making of th...
The Awards Tape: Ten Years of La La Land & The Legacy of the 2017 Oscars
Is it another day of sun? Or is there someone in the crowd on this lovely night, as a city of stars shines bright for those who dare to dream? If that gives you any indication, we're talking about the Oscar-winning musical La La Land, starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling.
It's a bittersweet romantic tale about two creative artists in Los Angeles who pursue their dreams while falling in love. With the film celebrating its 10th anniversary this week, we're taking a look back at the movie that captured Hollywood's imagination.
...
The Rolling Remote: House of the Dragon (S3), Season MVP's & The Future of Westeros
Today, we're heading back to Westeros. After more than two years away, House of the Dragon is finally back for its long-awaited third season.
And it's time for the Dance of the Dragons, the war we've been waiting for and the conflict fans have been asking to see fully erupt. The season opens with the absolutely insane Battle of the Gullet and only gets more chaotic from there. We get major character deaths, some major new players to talk through, dragons literally everywhere, and, of course, Rhaenyra Targaryen finally taking the Iron Throne and dealing...
EP 202: The End of Oak Street (2026) & Blind Ranking Dinosaur Movies
Before we officially get into the buzz of the fall festival circuit, it’s good to take a step back in time and reflect on bygone eras of planetary history. Today in fact, we’re embracing that by going 200 million years in reverse to the age of dinosaurs with David Robert Mitchell and The End of Oak Street.
The End of Oak Street is written and directed by David Robert Mitchell as his third feature film after It Follows and Under the Silver Lake. It stars Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGre...
In the Queue: August 2026 Recommendations & & Watchlist Shuffles for Rom-Coms
Welcome back to In The Queue, a new show in The Rolling Tape network of podcasts that answers the question “What should I watch this weekend?” Every month, we line up what’s in theaters, what’s headlining our watchlists, and what we recommend adding to yours.
We kicked off this series all the way back in March and then went on summer vacation for 6 months, who's to blame us? But at long last we are back to report on our findings from the watchlist shuffle and discuss what we've seen recently at home and in theate...
The Awards Tape: Pre-Fall Festival Oscar Predictions 2026-27
In just a few weeks, Venice, Telluride, New York, and Toronto will kick off a new cycle of anticipated awards contenders, with premieres and early reactions that will reshape our already exhaustive Oscar predictions. This is where some of our assumptions about certain films will go to die, or be validated. Who's to say?
Even though films like Digger, The Social Reckoning, and Dune: Part Three will premiere later in the fall and winter, movies like Wild Horse Nine, Ink, The Debut<...
EP 201: One Night Only (2026) & Ranking Rom-Com Movie Couples
You know what's more romantic than living under an authoritarian government where you can only have sex for one night of the year? Finding your true love for life. Time to nut up for Will Gluck's One Night Only, starring Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner.
Written by Travis Braun and based on his Black List script. The film follows two hapless romantics, Monica Barbaro's Allie, a hopeful romantic looking for something more, and Callum Turner's Owen, a recently dumped hopeless romantic.
They happen to be two aimless singles navigating the one night of t...
*FANTASIA 2026* Interview with 'A Safe Distance' (2026) Director, Gloria Mercer, Bethany Brown, and Tandia Mercedes
While it didn’t debut at Fantasia Fest (that honor belongs to SXSW this year), A Safe Distance also played at the Montreal-based festival. An eighty-five-minute thriller, A Safe Distance follows Alex (Bethany Brown) as she goes camping with her long-time partner in the forest of Canada. Shortly into their stay, Joey (Chris McNally) pops the question to Alex. She says no. And, well, things don’t go as expected after that.
The Rolling Tape's Ethan Simmie was joined by Director Gloria Mercer and cast members Tandia Mercedes and Bethany Brown to discuss making a film that “is about...
The Awards Tape: The Invite (2026) Awards Assessment, A24 Campaign Priorities & Fringe Best Picture Nominations Ranking
It's the opening weekend of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, but I don't think we can conclusively say it'll be part of this upcoming awards conversation—outside of a potential Best Visual Effects nomination. So instead of focusing on that amid the hundreds of millions of dollars being made by The Odyssey and Spider-Man, there's a much smaller film quietly holding its own at the box office, The Invite, directed by and co-starring Olivia Wilde, alongside Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penélope Cruz.
<...EP 200: Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026), SDCC Marvel News, Avengers: Doomsday Heat Check & MCU Trivia
It’s episode 200 of our weekly Monday show, and what better way to celebrate than with the 38th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and the fourth film in the MCU Spider-Man film series. It's also National Spider-Man Day which is celebrated annually on August 1st. The date marks the anniversary of the character's first comic book appearance in Amazing Fantasy #15, published in August 1962 by Marvel Comics creators Stan Lee and Steve Ditko.
The film is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, and written by Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers. Tom Holland stars as...
Ladies Night: Women in Sports!
We celebrate the 20th anniversary of She’s The Man by breaking down the film and “women in sports” movies. We also give some of our favorite recs from the genre and look at the progression of sports films over the past two decades.
She’s The Man, loosely based on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, stars Amanda Bynes as Viola Hastings, a high school soccer player who disguises herself as her twin brother, Sebastian, to play on the boys' soccer team at a rival boarding school, after her own school cuts the girls' team. The film...
*FANTASIA 2026* Interview with 'Sunspark' (2026) Director, Danny Bourque
In a barren post-apocalyptic world with no humans, a barter system of sunflowers for scrap parts, and robots, Zap is very lonely. In his scavenging one day, he finds the broken body of another robot. His curiosity gets the better of him, and he takes this robot home, in hopes of reviving it. As we follow Zap on his journey, the theme of Sunspark remains ever clear: how far are you willing to go to help a complete stranger?
It’s a theme that director Danny Bourque discusses as he joins The Rolling Tape to talk about th...
The Awards Tape: 83rd Venice International Film Festival (2026) Lineup Announcement
The lineup for the 83rd Venice International Film Festival was announced on Thursday, July 23, coming on the heels of the first wave of announcements from the Toronto International Film Festival. That means we're officially entering fall festival season, the multi-week stretch in late August and September where many of the biggest contenders for the 99th Academy Awards will make their world premieres and begin their awards campaigns.
Acclaimed actress and filmmaker Maggie Gyllenhaal will serve as Jury President for this year's Main Competition. Joining her on the jury are composer Daniel Blumberg, filmmaker Kaouther Ben...
The Rolling Remote: Channel Surfing for TV & Recommendations for Widow's Bay, Hacks & Beginner Anime
We're going channel surfing for round 2!
If you missed our last Channel Surfing episode, instead of spending an hour diving deep into a single series, we bounce around the television landscape and talk about the shows we haven't had a chance to cover on the main show, along with the hidden gems we think deserve a little more attention.
Hopefully, we'll give all of you (and ourselves) a few new additions to your watchlists. If you missed the first one, this is just a chance for us to hang out and talk about TV, which i...
EP 199: The Invite (2026), I Want Your Sex (2026), The Career of Olivia Wilde & Guess the Letterboxd Review Game
Christopher Nolan please exit stage left, this episode is for the freaks.
It's time to get wild, Olivia Wilde that is! With her third directorial feature, The Invite, in theaters as of last week, and an upcoming leading role in Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex set to go into wide release next week, we discuss her career building up to this moment.
In her directorial effort, The Invite, Joe and Angela's marriage is on thin ice. When they invite their enigmatic upstairs neighbors for a dinner party, the...
Interview with 'Heartstopper Forever' (2026) Editor, Todd Downing
Heartstopper Forever is a new Netflix film that concludes the three-season TV series Heartstopper, which was adapted from Alice Oseman's graphic novels. Set in the UK, the story follows a gay high school romance and the friendships that surround it. We're joined by Todd Downing, editor of the film, to discuss bringing the beloved coming-of-age romance to its emotional conclusion.
Todd shares what it was like collaborating closely with creator Alice Oseman to preserve the characters fans have grown to love, how transitioning from a three-season series to a feature film created new o...
Read Receipts: The Odyssey From Homer To Christopher Nolan (2026)
We read it. We watched it. It’s time for the receipts. For this month’s Read Receipts, we are going on an Odyssey. Or should we say a Pod-yssey? Welcome back to your favorite podcast for readers and watchers alike. If you’re new here, this is Read Receipts: A Big Screen Book Club from The Rolling Tape.
Every month, we read a book, watch its onscreen adaptation, then share our receipts. I am your Read Receipts host Kasey Dunifer. And this month we read none other than The Odyssey, the ep...
RETRO//RANKED: Christopher Nolan (13): The Odyssey, Reflections on Seasons 1-7 & Season 8 Announcement
Ten years on this fucking podcast. Let's go home! Today, our destiny comes to a close. We add The Odyssey to our collaborative rankings that we've been building for weeks. Call it the Trojan horse of RETRO//RANKED, but where will it end up?
RETRO//RANKED is a Rolling Tape network series ranking the individual entries of beloved franchises and filmographies, timed to major new releases. For season 7, we're diving into the complete filmography of Christopher Nolan, building episode by episode, two films at a time, toward the release of his...
The Awards Tape: The Odyssey Awards Assessment
Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is quite possibly the most anticipated film of the year. It marks Nolan's first feature since Oppenheimer, which won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, along with Actor, Supporting Actor, Film Editing, Cinematography, and Original Score. The film grossed more than $970 million worldwide, and in the wake of that success, Nolan was essentially handed a $250 million blank check to bring to life the passion project he's been developing for more than two decades: an old-school Hollywood epic adapting one of the most celebrated and enduring works of literature in human...
EP 198: The Odyssey (2026) & Nolan Filmography Guessing Game
Call it our (p)odyssey weekend here at The Rolling Tape as we’ll have not one, not two, not three, but FOUR podcasts across our network of shows discussing Christopher Nolan’s 13th feature film in various capacities.
The Odyssey is, of course, written and directed by Christopher Nolan. We have taken the long journey home to our closest IMAX theaters to see the film. An adaptation of Homer's ancient Greek epic poem, Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, and it chronicles his long and perilous journey home after...
Summer 2026 Box Office Draft Check-In
The Summer 2026 Box Office Draft returns. This is our check-in episode. We kicked off the second annual edition of our Summer Box Office Draft back in May around Memorial Day, taking a deep dive into the entire summer release schedule. Each of us made our predictions for the top 10 highest-grossing films of the summer and estimated how much each would earn at the box office.
Today, we're checking in to see how those predictions are holding up. We take a look at the current top 10 based on the films that have already been released, discuss how the...
RETRO//RANKED: Christopher Nolan (11-12): Tenet & Oppenheimer
THE LAST PRE-ODYSSEY EPISODE IS HERE.
Don’t try to understand the ranking you hear on this podcast today. Feel it.
RETRO//RANKED is a Rolling Tape network series ranking the individual entries of beloved franchises and filmographies, timed to major new releases. For season 7, we're diving into the complete filmography of Christopher Nolan, building episode by episode, two films at a time, toward the release of his latest film, The Odyssey.
Tenet is the eleventh movie from Christopher Nolan. He served as both writer an...
The Rolling Remote: Love Island USA Season 8 Finale & Final Four Couples
We're bringing you somewhere we've never been before: the world of reality television. Here on The Rolling Remote, we've covered just about every kind of show imaginable from medical dramas, science fiction, fantasy to vampires, medieval knights, and post-high school drug mules to Mexico, but somehow we've never ventured into the corner of television that can completely take over pop culture like almost nothing else.
Today, we're diving into the recently finished Love Island USA Season 8, hosted by Ariana Madix and streaming on Peacock. The series follows a group of Islanders living together...
The Awards Tape: 78th Primetime Emmy Awards (2026) Nominations Recap
The 78th Primetime Emmy Award nominations were announced on Wednesday, July 8, with major acting and series categories revealed by Jeff Hiller and Emmy winner Liza Colón-Zayas. Hiller earned an Emmy nomination last year for Somebody Somewhere, while Colón-Zayas won Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for The Bear.
Among the biggest takeaways, The Pitt led all programs with 25 nominations for its second season. Hacks followed closely with a record-breaking 24 nominations, setting a new high for a comedy series by surpassing the 23 nominations earned by The Studio and the second season of The Bear last yea...
EP 197: Evil Dead Burn (2026) & 'Evil Dead' Franchise Retrospective
This week we are locating the Kandarian Dagger...
Evil Dead Burn is the third standalone entry, after Evil Dead (2013) and Evil Dead Rise (2023), and the the sixth installment in the "Evil Dead" franchise as a whole. It was originally slated to be released wide in theaters on July 24, but was moved up two weeks to July 10.
The film is directed and co-written by Sébastien Vaniček, and produced by Rob Tapert and series creator Sam Raimi. It stars Souheila Yacoub as a young woman who seeks solace with her in-laws following the de...
Interview with 'Night Nurse' (2026) Director, Georgia Bernstein
Night Nurse, the feature directorial debut of writer-director Georgia Bernstein, premiered earlier this year in the NEXT section of the Sundance Film Festival, and it arrives in theaters July 10 as, in Bernstein's own words, "an erotic thriller which takes place in a retirement community."
In joining The Rolling Tape for a conversation on the film, Bernstein describes how the film originated from the experience of her own grandmother nearly being scammed over the phone. We also discuss how she and her team developed the ambiguous suburban setting, the casting choices for the primary characters of...
RETRO//RANKED: Christopher Nolan (9-10): Interstellar & Dunkirk
First off, we want to apologize in advance to Matt Damon. We were going to include him on this episode as a surprise guest, but went through the run of show and he decided he had to spend time with Ben Affleck instead.
RETRO//RANKED is a Rolling Tape network series ranking the individual entries of beloved franchises and filmographies, timed to major new releases. For season 7, we're diving into the complete filmography of Christopher Nolan, building episode by episode, two films at a time, toward the release of his latest film, The Odyssey<...
Interview with 'Leviticus' (2026) Costume Designer Zohie Castellano
Leviticus, directed by Adrian Chiarella, is an Australian queer horror film that has resonated with audiences through its blend of horror, coming-of-age drama, and tender romance. While much of the conversation has centered on its emotional story and breakout performances, the film's visual language is equally vital to its impact.
In this exclusive interview, Leviticus costume designer Zohie Castellano discusses crafting the film’s haunting Australian gothic aesthetic and using costume to reflect the emotional journeys of Stacy Clausen’s Ryan and Joe Bird’s Naim. Castellano breaks down the symbolism behind the film’s colour palette, recurring...
The Awards Tape: 78th Primetime Emmy Awards (2026) Final Nomination Predictions
What better way to celebrate 250 years of American history than by talking about the upcoming Emmy nominations? That's right. As of time of this recording, we were just four days away from the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards nominations set to be announced Wednesday, July 8, 2026, at 11:30 A.M. EST, where we'll celebrate the best television has to offer from June 1, 2025, through May 31, 2026.
We have new shows, returning favorites, and series finales to discuss, so it's a packed episode as we deliver our final Emmy nomination predictions for the Drama Series, Comedy Series, and Limited Series categories, along with...
EP 196: Minions & Monsters, Best of 2026 First Half & Most Anticipated of Second Half
We are here to tell you where the minions were between 1939 and 1945...
Minions & Monsters is directed by Pierre Coffin and written by Coffin and Brian Lynch. Produced by Illumination, it is the third installment in the Minions prequel series and the seventh installment overall in the Despicable Me franchise. Taking place in 1927, 41 years before the events of Minions (2015), the film follows the Minions as they aim to make a monster movie of their own in Old Hollywood. The film stars director Pierre Coffin as the Minions, alongside Trey Parker, Allison Janney, Christoph Waltz, Jesse Eisenberg...
Pride Mini-Series: Leviticus & Gender-Based Media
To conclude our Pride Series for 2026, we start off with a speed review of LEVITICUS, by Adrian Chiarella, an Australian horror-romance that follows two teenage boys who must escape a violent entity after their religious community discovers their sexuality.
We also discuss Gender-Based media, exploring and recommending films that are not based on sexuality, a main topic often included in conversation on Queer Cinema.
Resources:
Pride Watchlist
POC & International Queer Cinema
On this episode:
Sara Ciplickas
Red Broadwell
Jake Fittipaldi
Bobbi M...