The Rolling Tape

RETRO//RECAP is the spin-off of RETRO//RANKED where we hit pause on the rankings and rewind the tape to catch you up on everything that’s happened in a franchise or filmography before the next entry hits theaters.  Previously, we’ve recapped the Scream Franchise and The Devil Wears Prada , and this time we’re recapping Pixar’s most successful franchise that dates back to 1995 and includes four pri...

Christian Sprenger has spent eighteen years in television, but his collaboration with director Hiro Murai is in a category of its own. Together they have built a creative language across more than fifty episodes of television, from Atlanta to Mr. and Mrs. Smith , and now to Widow's Bay , the Apple TV+ comedy horror series created by Katie Dippold that has become one of the most talked-about s...

If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? That is one of many questions we approach today while discussing Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day which has been theatrically released by Universal as of June 11. We’ve been in eager anticipation of the film which is directed by Spielberg and written by David Koepp since April of 2024 when ne...

Following the North American premiere of Just Look Up at the Tribeca Festival, Jeremy Strong moderated a panel discussion with journalist and author David Wallace-Wells (“The Uninhabitable Earth”), psychologist and Climate Emergency Fund Board Chair Margaret Klein Salamon , Climate Defiance Founder Michael Greenberg, and Climate Defiance activist Cheyenne. What followed was a conversation about th...

Happy Pride! We are back with year two of our Pride Mini-series, celebrating Queer artists in Film and Media. After tracking the progression of Queer Cinema last year, the team is back to discuss various topics and give you new recommendations in this four-part series. This week, the team discusses ‘Queer Bending,’ inspired by Hedda (2025), and what it means to tell a known story from a Queer pers...

In his debut feature documentary, Director Eddie Sánchez paints a vulnerable portrait of his family and their experience as immigrants in the U.S. Mexicanamerican introduces us to his parents, Lalo and Beby Sánchez who, like many immigrants and refugees, came to the U.S. in hope of opportunity and a better future. Sánchez joins The Rolling Tape to discuss his experience creating this independent d...

We tried to get Guy Pearce on the phone to see if he’d like to appear on today’s episode. He said he was game, but when we called back to give him a rundown of everything, he acted like he had no memory of our conversation and no idea who I was. Very unprofessional. RETRO//RANKED is a Rolling Tape network series ranking the individual entries of beloved franchises and filmographies, timed to major...

Consider this a first for The Awards Tape as we decided to backtrack and provide an update on a little movie you may have heard of called Obsession . Yes, the $750,000 micro-budgeted horror film has taken over the box office as after three weeks in wide release, it's accumulated over $170 million worldwide, becoming the first film from Focus Features to cross $100 million in the North America...

Meet Famous Eddie Plein – the biggest fashion icon you never heard of. Eddie was the visionary behind grillz, the culture-changing dental jewelry that came to dominate the zeitgeist — celebrities, rappers, athletes, models, anyone who is anybody wears grillz. In his feature documentary, Mouth Full of Golds , Lyle Lindgren showcases the rise and fall of Famous Eddie’s Gold Teeth and the players sur...

Sara Ciplickas sits down with Michelle Visage , Executive Producer and Judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race . The two discussed season eighteen, her role in front of and behind the camera, and the progression of Queer television.  RuPaul’s Drag Race is a reality competition show hosted by world-famous drag performer and eight-time Emmy award-winning host, RuPaul . Contestants compete in design, comedy, dan...

Today we are officially closing the book on one of the biggest, most talked about, and complicated television shows of the last decade, HBO's Euphoria . Over the last few months, we've gone all the way back to Season One, revisited Season Two, and finally caught up with the third and final season of the series. Created by Sam Levinson and starring Zendaya, Hunter Schafer, Sydney Sweeney,...

By the power of Grayskull, I unite fans of sword and sorcery, 1980s nostalgia, and homoerotic relationships between hero and villain because today we are discussing Masters of the Universe based on the media franchise by Mattel and the second live-action film adaptation after the 1987 film.  A new live-action film was announced in 2009 by Sony Pictures Entertainment. Following multiple writer, dir...

We're launching a brand new episode format: a recurring spotlight series dedicated to celebrating singular women in film, their work, their lives, their legacies, and what they mean to us. There's no more fitting way to kick things off than with Agnès Varda , whose birthday was recently on May 30th. Happy birthday, Agnès! Belgian-born French filmmaker Agnès Varda is widely known as the G...

It's only June but Awards season here at The Awards Tape just got a whole lot more complicated. This week we analyze the aftermath of the Cannes Film Festival lineup to break down the early Oscar frontrunners and discuss which titles generated the buzz to possibly translate to Academy recognition.  Then we turn to the bad news: a handful of titles we drafted earlier this season have officiall...

We are finally talking about the cult classic show, AMC's Interview With The Vampire . The AMC series first premiered in 2022 and is based on the beloved novels by Ann Rice. Over two seasons, it becomes one of the most acclaimed genre shows on television.  Thanks to standout performances from Jacob Anderson, Sam Reid, and Asad Zaman, and an incredible supporting cast with the Vampire Lestat r...

If you're not careful and noclip out of reality in the wrong areas, you'll end up in this podcast, but fret not we don’t have moist carpet, mono-yellow walls or endless fluorescent lights. What we do have is a review of Kane Parsons’ breakout horror hit with A24, Backrooms , and a watchalong of the original video that inspired the film in 2022.  Backrooms is directed by Kane Parsons in h...

Founded in 2013 by Sarah Mueller , cinéSPEAK has built a reputation in Philadelphia through public screenings, artist support, and accessible film events across the city. That mission returns to Clark Park this summer with the organization’s annual festival, Under The Stars .  Running every Friday from May 29 through June 19 in West Philly, the free festival combines live music and outdoor screeni...

It is time for our May READ RECEIPTS , a big screen book club from The Rolling Tape led by Kasey Dunifer ! Every month, we read a book that’s been adapted for the screen, then we share our receipts.  So if you like movies, or books, or movies AND books, you’re in the right place — and welcome to the club!  Today we are talking about something a bit different. Instead of a film adaptation, it is a...

The 79th Cannes Film Festival has come to an end, the Competition awards have been handed out, people have stood and clapped to their heart's content, and some of the most exciting films have debuted on the international scene. It was a first for The Rolling Tape to be live on the ground at the Palais as our Co-Editor-in-Chief Danny Jarabek and our amazing contributor Nandita Joshi trekked to...

The regional spring festivals around the country in late April and early May are a great check-in on a bucket of titles ranging from second screenings of Sundance and SXSW premieres from earlier in the year to undistributed titles from the previous year’s fall festival cycle. The Rolling Tape was in attendance and today we’re road tripping from Philadelphia to Chicago to Seattle to discuss our exp...

Low-class urban bitches it’s time to boost because after its premiere at SXSW on March 12, 2026, NEON has theatrically released Boots Riley’s I Love Boosters on May 22. We’ll review the San Francisco-adjacent anticapitalist satire before shifting gears through some post-production magic over to a LIVE COMMENTARY of the Cannes closing award ceremony that saw Fjord take home the Palme d'Or.  I...

For her first feature film, Le Triangle d’or , presented in the Special Screenings section at Cannes 2026, Hélène Rosselet-Ruiz joins Nandita Joshi live from the festival to discuss her work on the film. Going back to her last short,  Mambo Queens , Rosselet-Ruiz's often interrogates the intersection of femininity and class struggle, which present themselves as major themes of her first featu...

As the Cannes Film Festival rages on toward the end with premieres and social reactions flooding our feeds, The Awards Tape is shifting gears for a week to a new area of focus for the show, the Emmys. At the time of this recording, there are two weeks left in the window eligibility for the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards for 2026. The nominations will be announced on July 8th, with the ceremony taking...

After her first two features, Relic and Apartment 7A , Natalie Erika James has cemented herself as a regular name to watch within the horror space. James is an Australian filmmaker, and Saccharine is not only her third feature film but also her second to have its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. James often centers her filmmaking in horror around the dread and atmosphere of environments rat...

Mariana Fabian joins director Jeremy Seifert for the Mountainfilm Festival premiere of Paper Town , a film that follows a paper mill that defined Canton, North Carolina, announcing its sudden closure. Filmed in real time, its is a raw look at a town blindsided by corporate silence and suspicious profit. As shock turns to anger, the people of Canton must navigate the wreckage of an industry that sh...