The Rolling Tape

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 theaters.
As always, to keep our own watchlists in check, we end with a recommendation game where we randomly select a movie from each other’s Letterboxd watchlists to watch before the next episode. This month we filtered by romance and comedy to celebrate the one night a year when it's legal for singles to have sex. Listen next month to hear our reports.
Films mentioned:
Letterboxd List
On this episode:
Danny Jarabek
Des Mack
Cameron Ritter
Red Broadwell
Support the show
Subscribe for Early Access and Video:
The Rolling Tape Patreon
Listen Here:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
All Listening Platforms
Have questions? Email info@therollingtape.com
Podcast Website Link
Website & Publications: www.therollingtape.com
Social Platforms on Linktree
Credits:
Theme music: Eugene Rocco Utley & Karl Vincent
Artwork: Danny Jarabek
Editor: Danny Jarabek
Assistant Producer: Evan Miller

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, Behemoth, and Elsinore will be shown to audiences for the first time over the next several weeks. And yet, all of that may feel somewhat moot, because every other film is being overshadowed by the Trojan horse that is Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.
The big-budget epic has already passed $1 billion at the global box office, including more than $400 million domestically. It boasts a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, an 88 on Metacritic, and a 4.4 average on Letterboxd. Perhaps we're just spinning our wheels here, and Nolan is once again going to sweep the industry awards—we just don't want to admit it to ourselves. Whatever happens, we still have more than 70 slots to fill across 18 categories, and today we're going to focus on half of them.
We're giving you our pre-Fall Festival Oscar predictions for Best Picture, Best Director, all four acting categories, and both screenplay categories. We'll also touch on some of the below-the-line technical categories as an extra treat.
This is our last chance to truly theorize, fantasize, and project our hopes onto some of these films before we've actually seen them. Once the fall festival season begins, we'll have reactions, reviews, and new information that could completely change the race.
Our guest:
Dean Coburn
On this episode:
Paul Rai
Owen Wilczek
Jacob Diedenhofer
Adam Patla
Claire May Lewis
Support the show
Subscribe for Early Access and Video:
The Rolling Tape Patreon
Listen Here:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
All Listening Platforms
Have questions? Email info@therollingtape.com
Podcast Website Link
Website & Publications: www.therollingtape.com
Social Platforms on Linktree
Credits:
Theme music: Eugene Rocco Utley & Karl Vincent
Artwork: Danny Jarabek
Editor: Danny Jarabek
Assistant Producer: Evan Miller

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 the year when premarital sex is legal in their society. As the night stretches on, what begins as a quest for a hookup turns into a series of awkward encounters, side quests, and run-ins with a society built around enforcing the government's strict rules on sex. Allie and Owen eventually realize that what they really want is each other, and that maybe they don't need to take advantage of the twelve-hour window at all. They can wait until the next morning, or, if necessary, the other 364 days of the year.
Love and fascism are in the air, and to help me celebrate our new puritanical reality, we're going to take a look at One Night Only and some of the greatest romantic-comedy couples in cinema history. We review the latest dystopian romantic comedy and rank some of cinema's best romantic-comedy couples. 
Our pre-episode Patreon exclusive conversation features:
Wonka 2 Delayed
Primetime Trailer
X-Men Casting Announcements
On this episode:
Paul Rai
Des Mack
Nadia Arain
Risa Bolash
Support the show
Subscribe for Early Access and Video:
The Rolling Tape Patreon
Listen Here:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
All Listening Platforms
Have questions? Email info@therollingtape.com
Podcast Website Link
Website & Publications: www.therollingtape.com
Social Platforms on Linktree
Credits:
Theme music: Eugene Rocco Utley & Karl Vincent
Artwork: Danny Jarabek
Editor: Danny Jarabek
Assistant Producer: Evan Miller

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 contemporary relationships, toxic masculinity,” and being in a relationship “where it feels like you are not being true to yourself”.
A Safe Distance has currently has distribution secured for the US and Canada but does not have an official release date.
Follow the film online:
A Safe Distance
Follow our interview host online:
Ethan Simmie
Support the show
Subscribe for Early Access and Video:
The Rolling Tape Patreon
Listen Here:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
All Listening Platforms
Have questions? Email info@therollingtape.com
Podcast Website Link
Website & Publications: www.therollingtape.com
Social Platforms on Linktree
Credits:
Theme music: Eugene Rocco Utley & Karl Vincent
Artwork: Danny Jarabek
Editor: Danny Jarabek
Assistant Producer: Evan Miller

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.
A24 acquired the film of the Sundance Film Festival for more than $12 million, and it has quietly become one of the studio's biggest success stories of the year. It's now approaching $40 million worldwide, including roughly $20 million domestically and nearly $16 million internationally. Critically, the film has been a standout as well, earning a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, an 82 on Metacritic, and a 4.0 average on Letterboxd.
Its performance is starting to resemble another Sundance acquisition from A24: Past Lives, which went on to earn Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay nominations at the 96th Academy Awards.
So, today we discuss The Invite's Oscar chances, as well as A24's broader awards strategy this year. With a slate that includes Club Kid, Primetime, and The Debut, could the studio once again land multiple Best Picture nominees once again?
We also discuss films like The Invite and Past Lives more broadly—movies that live on the fringe of the Best Picture race and ultimately sneak into the lineup thanks to widespread passion and strong overall support from Academy voters. We rank 17 of our favorite (or not so favorite) fringe Best Picture nominees that fit that mold.
On this episode:
Paul Rai
Danny Jarabek
Support the show
Subscribe for Early Access and Video:
The Rolling Tape Patreon
Listen Here:
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
All Listening Platforms
Have questions? Email info@therollingtape.com
Podcast Website Link
Website & Publications: www.therollingtape.com
Social Platforms on Linktree
Credits:
Theme music: Eugene Rocco Utley & Karl Vincent
Artwork: Danny Jarabek
Editor: Danny Jarabek
Assistant Producer: Evan Miller