The Film Stage

You always hear about whistleblowers––those who smuggle documentation for the benefit of the public out of corporations trying to make or save a buck at the expense of human lives––but what about those who decide the risk is too great? They’ve procured the papers. Got out of the building. And now find themselves victims of […]

The post TIFF Review: Relay Sets Riz Ahmed in a Kinetic Thriller first appeared on The Film Stage.

Missionary work has always fascinated me. Not when it’s performed abroad as a means of indoctrinating people who might otherwise be unaware. I mean here, in America, where anyone fascinated with religion could simply walk up to a church, synagogue, or mosque and ask to learn. Yes, there’s a degree of marketing at play and […]

The post TIFF Review: Heretic is a Chamber Piece of Subversions Exploring the Concept of God first appeared on The Film Stage.

Asif Kapadia––the biographical documentary wiz behind contemporary classics like Senna and Amy––opens his semi-fictional film 2073 in a flurry of doc footage. Wildfires, floods, and other such natural disasters set the tone while disturbing clips of cops bashing skulls and riot police brutalizing innocent people cement it for the next 85 minutes. Then comes the […]

The post Venice Review: Asif Kapadia’s 2073 Is a Mishandled, Dimwitted Look at the Foreboding Future first appeared on The Film Stage.

Arguably the most surprising Golden Bear winner in ages was Mati Diop’s Dahomey, a documentary-of-sorts concerning royal treasures taken from the century-gone Kingdom of Dahomey and returned to the present-day Republic of Benin. Should that suggest a dry lesson in art history, the film was noted ofr its decision to employ voiceover giving life to […]

The post U.S. Trailer for Mati Diop’s Golden Bear-Winning Dahomey Gives Voice to Art first appeared on The Film Stage.

After some behind-the-scenes battles, Ali Abbasi’s Donald Trump biopic The Apprentice will indeed see the light of day before this year’s election. Premiering at Cannes Film Festival, the film stars Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, alongside Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, and Martin Donovan. Now set for an October 11 release from Briarcliff Entertainment, the first […]

The post Sebastian Stan is Donald Trump in the First Trailer for The Apprentice first appeared on The Film Stage.

With the 62nd New York Film Festival just a few weeks away, one of my favorite moments between the movies is connecting with the dedicated, passionate, cinema-loving audience that attends every year. There is no better place to do that than our returning Cinephile Game Nights, and this year, they will be bigger and better […]

The post Cinephile Game Night Returns to 62nd New York Film Festival first appeared on The Film Stage.

Christopher Andrews’ Bring Them Down is an endurance test with no payoff. Opening with a jarring car crash on a windy road in rural Ireland, the film soon adds scenes of gruesome animal cruelty, an ear literally being blown off someone’s head, and then further sequences of gruesome animal cruelty. Such onscreen acts can be […]

The post TIFF Review: Barry Keoghan Can’t Save the Thoroughly Unpleasant Bring Them Down first appeared on The Film Stage.

The true pits of ’90s nostalgia are maybe here, as we’re in the year 2024 arriving at an attempt to hype an English Patient reunion. Yes, that’ll be music to the ears of people who loved a Miramax heyday including that notoriously lugubrious Best Picture winner. Certainly there’s nothing wrong with seeing Ralph Fiennes and […]

The post TIFF Review: The Return Marks a Languid Reunion for Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche first appeared on The Film Stage.

“Something big is about to change,” is surely one ominous beginning for a debut fiction feature, but director Neo Sora knows how to calibrate the fine balance between anticipation and inevitability. A story set in the near future, Happyend makes Tokyo a vast playground to high-school seniors gathered around childhood pals Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) and […]

The post Venice Review: Neo Sora’s Happyend Poignantly Explores our Responses to an Impending Future first appeared on The Film Stage.

It’s been long enough since Sparks announced their Annette follow-up X Crucior that you’re forgiven for thinking it might’ve been shelved. I talked to them about it, briefly, in 2021, and a little over a year passed before Focus Features announced they’d acquired the project. Making today a major occurence: after a tease on the […]

The post John Woo Will Direct Sparks’ Musical X Crucior first appeared on The Film Stage.