The Film Stage

“Can satire save the Republic?”— May 2017 cover story of The Atlantic featuring Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump “Mad TV would have done a Barron Trump School Shooter skit the week after Columbine. Donald would show up in a diaper having sex with Ivanka.”— REDACTED podcaster Saturday Night Live means many things to many people. […]

The post TIFF Review: Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night Has One Yearning for Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 first appeared on The Film Stage.

The level of enjoyment audience members will have with Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship is tied directly to their tolerance for the humor of Tim Robinson. The star of the meme-inspiring Netflix series I Think You Should Leave has cultivated a devoted following by creating situations of embarrassment and characters who veer wildly from absurdist rage to […]

The post TIFF Review: Tim Robinson Masters Cringe In the Hysterically Funny Friendship first appeared on The Film Stage.

When Kasper (Gustav Dyekjær Giese) learns his brother-in-law wants him to speak with a Moroccan friend, he knows what that conversation will entail. It probably wasn’t long ago that he’d jump at the chance, but he’s since found other means with which to make his wife and daughter proud. As long as there’s a shot […]

The post TIFF Review: The Quiet Ones Orchestrates a Thrilling Heist first appeared on The Film Stage.

Souleymane’s Story delivers a political fable with all the grit and urgency of a thriller. It follows a Guinean food-delivery driver (Abou Sangare, brilliant in his first screen role) who rides his bike through Paris’ busy streets with alarming haste. En route from client to client, he recites a script he plans to perform the […]

The post TIFF Review: Souleymane’s Story Tells a Dardenne-Esque Political Fable with a Thriller’s Urgency first appeared on The Film Stage.

Being a pet owner, depending on your personality, comes with a fair level of anxiety. For example: after leaving my apartment to go see the film I’m writing about, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I hadn’t shut my bathroom door. If so, my two beautiful senior cats could potentially get inside and consume […]

The post TIFF Review: Flow Suggests Classic Disney By Way of Emmanuel Lubezki first appeared on The Film Stage.

One of the Sundance breakouts this year was Greg Jardin’s directorial debut It’s What’s Inside. Starring Brittany O’Grady, James Morosini, Gavin Leatherwood, Nina Bloomgarden, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Reina Hardesty, Devon Terrell, and David Thompson, it follows a group of friends who gather for a pre-wedding party that descends into an existential nightmare when an estranged friend […]

The post First Trailer for Greg Jardin’s Sundance Hit It’s What’s Inside first appeared on The Film Stage.

When I started my blindfold series Amnesiascope I knew there’d come time to show a Maggie Cheung film. Probably this doesn’t require much explanation: movie star, master thespian, action heroine, and melodrama titan, Cheung is perhaps the world’s greatest actor (working or otherwise) who’s nevertheless known for a relatively small collection––nine or ten titles, largely […]

The post Amnesiascope Presents a Rarely Screened Maggie Cheung Film on Tuesday, September 17 first appeared on The Film Stage.

The “old world” is a wasteland. People still live there, but not for very long. Those in the “new world” live hundreds of years thanks to a drug that slows aging. It’s groundbreaking technology that comes at a price: the combination of scarce real estate on which to live safely and figurative immortality means less […]

The post TIFF Review: Alicia Vikander Steals the Show in the Sci-Fi Drama The Assessment first appeared on The Film Stage.

The twisty political thriller Conclave wastes little time getting right into it: the Pope is dead, and after a three-week time jump, the world’s most powerful cardinals gather in Vatican City, their mission to elect a new leader from among their ranks. Our window into this closed world is Cardinal Lawrence, portrayed in characteristically sturdy […]

The post TIFF Review: Conclave is an Engaging Political Thriller Undone by Ridiculous Third Act Twists first appeared on 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.