The Rolling Tape

The holiday season is one of the best times of the year to celebrate cinema and all of the movies that utilize Christmas as setting or subject to their stories. To celebrate this magical season, we discuss the winner of the Best Christmas Movie bracket, It’s a Wonderful Life directed by Frank Capra in 1946. Considered one of the most recognizable foundations to the “Christmas movie” we discuss why...

In Darren Aronofsky’s first film since 2017, he returns with The Whale , an adaptation of a play by Samuel D. Hunter of the same name. Starring Brendan Fraser as a reclusive English teacher suffering from grief and obesity, the film also features Hong Chau, Sadie Sink, and Samantha Morton. The Whale opened at Venice International Film Festival and is currently in theaters, so we discuss our review...

Ever since the advent of color in the 1930's before it became mainstream in filmmaking in the 50's and 60's, filmmakers have found creative ways to utilize color as a tool in storytelling. Often utilized as a storytelling device to tell something more about the story that cannot be conveyed by the performances alone, color can be used to translate emotions, imbue symbolism, and have...

Damien Chazelle has returned with his first film since 2018 in the form of a grand epic about the transition in early Hollywood to “talkies.” Starring Margot Robbie, Diego Calva, Brad Pitt, and Jean Smart, the film is among the last to release in 2022 with a December 23, 2022 wide release date. We are joined by guest Sean Place to review Babylon and the efforts of Chazelle and his collaborators an...

Guillermo del Toro returns to the big screen to bring us the latest iteration of the classic tale of Pinocchio, this time in stop-motion form. Now in theaters and on Netflix, del Toro brings a new visionary approach to a story that has been adapted multiple times, yet manages to bring new life through the precision handicraft he brings to the stop-motion approach. We also discuss news surrounding...

Genre is a term that sets a framework of expectations for an audience based on themes, aesthetic qualities, and narrative characteristics that help to categorize a film’s visual language and storytelling approach. Throughout the development of genre over the years, filmmakers have utilized techniques to subvert genre expectations by bending narratives between multiple generic frameworks. In this e...

Rian Johnson and Detective Blanc are back and bigger than ever in Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, the follow up to the 2019 whodunnit mystery, Knives Out. Now in a limited one-week theater run before going to Netflix December 23, we are joined by guest Chase Hutchinson to discuss in a Thanksgiving Bonus Episode the twists and turns of the newest edition to the Benoit Blanc cinematic universe. T...

Since its world premiere at TIFF where it won the People’s Choice Award, Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical “love letter to cinema,” The Fabelmans , has been the presumed Best Picture favorite as it details the legacy of Spielberg himself through his coming of age through a love for making movies. With its wide release in theater, we review the film and assess its awards season potential. We also...

Violence has been depicted on screen since movies were first made, and the contexts within which it has been portrayed have changed over the course of history. In this double feature, we discuss the ethics of violence in cinema and the moral justifications (or lack thereof) that can be associated with these depictions, specifically often within the war genre of films. The two films that compose th...

Martin McDonagh returns to direct the dynamic pairing of Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson by returning to the UK with The Banshees of Inisherin, his newest film set in Ireland. McDonagh and the film are major awards contenders this year, so we review the film from its simple concept to larger thematic metaphors about the meaning of life. From there, we cover awards season updates on AFI Festival...

Many of our greatest films have derived from adaptations of books and other source materials begging the inevitable question of whether the book was better than the movie. This is often relative to the faithfulness of the screenplay to its source, but there are many other films that thrive on its ability to differentiate themselves from their original material and use the medium of film to capture...

Todd Field is back in the directorial chair after 16 years with his new film, TÁR, starring Cate Blanchett as the first-ever female music director of a major German orchestra. With Lydia Tár at the center of this monumental effort, we review the themes of cancel culture and separating the art from the artist presented in the film as well as its Oscar potential. In the news, we discuss the recent a...

Psycho (1960) directed by Alfred Hitchcock is often regarded as one of the most important contributions to the genre of horror filmmaking in the history of cinema. With widespread impact on how horror movies have been made over the past 60+ years in addition to an indelible mark on pop culture, Psycho continues to be regarded as a yardstick against which all other horror films are measured. As the...

Horror films have historically acted as artistic expressions and reflections of internal fears within the society of the time it was made. In essence, they show us what we fear the most as a product of the society and culture we live in, and act as the medium for illuminating these fears. In this History of Horror double feature discussion, we will analyze two films, The Thing (1982) and Train to...

Park Chan-wook is one of South Korea’s most prolific filmmaking auteurs, and he is back with his first film in six years with Decision to Leave starring Park Hae-il and Tang Wei at the center of a romantic crime thriller. The director is best known for his use of graphic violence depicted primarily within the thriller genre, but we examine how this film stands out from his previous work and builds...

The “Obsessed Artist” is a character we have seen portrayed throughout the history of cinema. The character strives to perfect their craft by any means necessary, often leading to their own mental, psychological, and physical self-destruction. The story can be both aspirational and dangerous, as the obsession for perfection comes with consequences. Black Swan and Whiplash embody the “Obsessed Arti...

With the wrap of the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, the People’s Choice award results are one of the first key festival precursors that launch us into awards season. We discuss the impact of this announcement along with other Oscar updates including Universal’s decision to campaign Michelle Williams for Best Lead Actress along with announcements for international feature submissions. We...

Animation is a medium that can sometimes be overlooked for its cinematic value in comparison to live-action films, but it is actually an art form that presents creative opportunities for unique stories to be told. In this episode, we discuss two films that utilize animation in unique ways to enhance the filmmaker’s vision. The first is Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) and the second is Marc...

As the fall festival season hits full gear, we revisit Venice to break down their award winners while also looking at first reactions from the films that premiered at TIFF and Telluride before looking ahead at NYFF to close out the major festival season. With eyes now on many major contenders, we lay out some of our first major Oscar predictions and how festival news has shifted the awards season...

For our first double feature review, we are looking at low-budget filmmaking through the lens of two films, the first chosen by The Rolling Tape team, Barry Jenkins’ 2016 Best Picture-winning film, Moonlight , and the second selected by our listeners, The Last Black Man in San Francisco. Both films are early directorial entries that tell intimate, personal stories under a $2 million budget. We dis...

From the “Mad Genius of George Miller,” this week we take a look at the recent release, Three Thousand Years of Longing starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. Along with covering this new release, we discuss industry news from the past couple of weeks including the opening of the Venice International Film Festival, the headlines surrounding Don’t Worry Darling and the controversy with Shia Lebeouf...

On the first episode of The Rolling Tape podcast, we introduce the team and review the 2022 film from the Daniels and distributed by A24, Everything Everywhere All At Once. The visionary film took the theater landscape by storm earlier this year, surprising everyone with its box office success that led to becoming A24’s highest-grossing film to date. In this episode, we discuss everything from the...