Contending at the Water Cooler

Fresh from recent film festivals, we enter the ring with our  I Play Rocky review and look at its place in the 2027 Oscar race. Peter Farrelly’s  I Play Rocky sailed through a handful of high profile film festivals on some early good favor. The film tells the story of Sylvester Stallone’s legendary journey writing and, famously, starring in Rocky . Dubbing it a massive crowd pleaser, m...

Joey and Megan see everything about You Can See Everything , the hot new documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. Have you caught up with A24’s game-changing documentary You Can See Everything?  The Nathan Fielder/Lance Oppenheim exploration of truth and truth-telling is the epitome of a water cooler moment, and it’s the film that everyone is talking about. Megan is a Fielder devotee, but J...

Joey and Clarence are joined by Mark Johnson to recap the first few days of the 2026 Middleburg Film Festival. Joey, Clarence, and Mark gather in the luxurious Salamander Resort room of Variety’s Clayton Davis to record a podcast quickie about the first few days of the 2026 Middleburg Film Festival. On the podcast, we discuss our and audience reactions to  The Debut ,  Club Kid ,  La Bola Ne...

This week, we’re breaking down the 2027 Best Actor race which could include  Digger ‘s Tom Cruise and will not include anyone from  The Social Reckoning. It’s truly two wildly different conversations on this week’s Contending at the Water Cooler podcast. First up, Joey and Megan have endured Aaron Sorkin’s  The Social Reckoning . So, the results aren’t good desp...

On this week’s Water Cooler podcast, Joey and Megan take nuanced, thoughtful, opposing stances in their Digger review. Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Tom Cruise teamed up to deliver the most polarizing film of the year,  Digger . Is it a climate change satire? Is it a satire of climate change satires? Twitter / X will tell you with thousands of hot takes, but here, Joey and Megan offer (SHOCK) th...

Yes, we do see how this looks–and we think it’s good! With Lance Oppenheim’s Primetime lighting up the box office for A24 this weekend, it was obvious that Megan and Joey were eager to dive into their thoughts of the film. How did the film live up to expectations? Is there room in the Best Actor for Robert Pattinson’s driven performance as Chris Hansen? Could it be possible...

With Joey, Megan, and Frank all back from the first rounds of film festivals, we take stock of the 2027 Oscar race and see how the landscape has changed. The recent Telluride, Venice, and Toronto film festivals gave us our deepest view yet into the 2027 Oscar race. Many contenders emerged and faced shifting winds as they screened for varied audiences. Joey, Megan, and Frank attended the major thre...

The whole Contending team gets together to review and recap the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards. And with that, another Emmy season comes to a close. Last night, Apple broke last year’s The Studio record for wins with Widow’s Bay completely steamrolling over Hacks in all the acting categories (except for Jean Smart, of course). Many predicted The Pitt to dominate, but it only went home with...

Jalal and Clarence consider the 2026 Creative Arts Emmys winners and how that might forecast next week’s Primetime Emmys. Joey and Megan are taking a much deserved rest after their brilliant Telluride experience . This week, Clarence and Jalal leverage the recent 2026 Creative Arts Emmy Awards to see if their initial thoughts on the Primetime Emmys have changed. Can  Pluribus  upset  The Pit...

It’s time for the 10th Annual Fantasy Oscar Pool, another one of our favorite podcasts of the year, as we head into film festival season! For long time listeners of our podcast, this is the one where we really earn the Explicit rating (thanks largely to Joey). It’s the 10th edition of our Fantasy Oscar Pool! Before Megan and Joey head to the mountains of Telluride, Colorado, we make ou...

The 2026 Telluride Film Festival runs September 4-7 at Telluride, Colorado. In this podcast, Megan McLachlan, Joey Moser, and special guest Mark Johnson discuss what they’re expecting out of the film schedule lineup. The 2026 Telluride Film Festival is right around the corner, meaning we’re gearing up for another awards season. This year looks like a doozy, with past Oscar winners like...

With the Television Academy voting underway, we reveal the 2026 Cooler Award nominations and our Emmy wish list! The 2026 Emmy voting window is finally here. So, with the Television Academy weighing in on their favorite television series, Joey, Megan, and Clarence offer their Emmy wish list recommendations. What do we think that the Television Academy should most definitely consider? What personal...

We review three new series including  The Shards ,  Furious , and a new season of Emmy-winning comedy Ted Lasso . This week, Joey, Megan, and Clarence take a break from the 2026 Emmys to look at three new series. Ryan Murphy returns to directing in the pilot of FX’s  The Shards . Based on the novel and co-written by Bret Easton Ellis,  The Shards stars Igby Rigney as a fictionalized version...

In a very special episode of the Contending at the Water Cooler podcast, Megan McLachlan is joined by freelance writer Joshua Axelrod to discuss all five 2026 Outstanding TV Movie Emmy contenders. Notably, the Outstanding TV Movie category is completely unpredictable, with past winners including Rebel Ridge , Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, and Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers. There is no one type...

The Contending co-founders Megan McLachlan and Joey Moser are joined by special guests freelance writer Fawnia Soo Hoo and costume dresser Eoin Daly to discuss the four Emmy costume categories. Is 2026 the year of Middle-Aged Malaise? It appears to be in the Emmys 2026 Contemporary Limited Series/TV Movie Costume category. Series like DTF St. Louis, Black Rabbit, and Remarkably Bright Creatures  t...

We review Christopher Nolan’s take on the original epic: Homer’s The Odyssey. Does it withstand all of the hype? Homer’s The Odyssey is one of the great tales to be handed down within humanity. Oddly, or perhaps due to its epic scale, there haven’t been as many takes on the epic poem as you’d imagine. Many films […] The post ‘The Odyssey:’ Is Nolan’s Epic a Homer Run? appeared first on The Contend...

It’s one of our favorite podcast episodes of the year: our break down / geek out over Emmy’s Title Design nominees. Last week, the Television Academy unveiled their 2026 Emmy nominations. So now, we finally get to geek out at length over our favorite Emmy category: Title Design. Back in the fall of 2025, HBO […] The post Emmys 2026: Geeking Out Over Title Design, Our Fav Category! appeared first o...

Team Contending gathers around the Water Cooler to spill the tea on the Emmy nominations 2026 edition, led by HBO Max’s The Pitt . Today, the Television Academy unveiled their Emmy nominations 2026 . HBO Max’s The Pitt led all series by nearly doubling its take from last year with 25 nominations. The medical series overcame some relatively quiet naysayers to get in across the board inc...

Twas a few days before Emmy nominations… Megan and Joey sit down and parse through our recently posted Emmy nomination predictions (Clarence is still traveling back from attending Taylor and Travis’ MSG nuptials, duh…) since some readers need to hear our thoughts while they run on the treadmill or take their pup for a stroll. There’s a lot of talk about The Pitt, Hacks, The...

AppleTV’s  Widow’s Bay developed seemingly overnight into an online viral sensation. Will the Television Academy be equally bewitched? AppleTV began screening episodes of its latest series  Widow’s Bay several months before its late April premiere date. That’s always a good sign. Critics reacted in kind: the series achieved a 98% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a 78/100 on Me...

It’s a hot (and spoiler-filled) one at the Water Cooler this week: Megan, Joey, and Clarence face off on Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day.  Steven Spielberg remains one of history’s greatest and most influential directors. Audiences tend to pay attention when he tackles the question of whether or not we’re alone. In the grand scheme of “alone.” Aliens, we&#8217...

David Phillips meets with  Industry’s Marisa Abela to discuss the series’ development and her personal growth as an actor . HBO’s Industry started out as a sharply written, crisply shot, and boldly performed cult show that may not have had a huge audience, but those who tuned in were ardent followers. While the show seemed destined to maintain its cult following, viewership took...

Joey and Megan finally weigh in with their  Obsession  reaction and dip their toes into  Margot’s Got Money Troubles. There’s no doubt about it: everyone is talking about Curry Barker’s Obsession . The $750,000 film has made boatloads of cash since it debuted last week, and horror on a budget has had quite the run these last few weeks. Megan and Joey dissect who is the film&#8217...

The Emmy 2026 documentary landscape includes two buzzy Netflix documentaries: the touching Marty, Life is Short and the viral The Crash . The 2026 Emmy documentary landscape includes the typically wide array of potential contenders. Netflix added to the pile with two buzzy titles that recently debuted.  Marty, Life is Short lovingly explores the career and personal life of Martin Short, one of our...

Memorial Day marks the beginning of Summer 2026. We offer up the 15 entertainment milestones we’re hottest for this year. Summer 2026 is here. It’s hot out, and movies are already burning up the box office. But there’s more to summer than just good movies. This week at the Water Cooler, Clarence, Joey, and Megan each list the five events, films, music releases, television shows,...