The Film Stage

I haven’t read Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo, but a glance via Google informs me it was a very important novel: a magical-realist text that influenced Latin American writers like Gabriel García Márquez and Julio Cortázar. Now, I can’t get too presumptuous here, but further reading about the text, with words like “ghosts,” “memories,” and […]

The post TIFF Review: Pedro Páramo Marks a Lifeless Directorial Debut for Rodrigo Prieto first appeared on The Film Stage.

They always knew a full-scale invasion of Ukraine could happen, but they held onto hope it wouldn’t. How else could they enjoy a vacation abroad in the Canary Islands? This trip is supposed to be about fun. And connection. Roma (Roman Lutskyi) and Nastya (Anastasiya Karpenko) have recently got married and the relationship between her […]

The post TIFF Review: Under the Volcano Gives Form to the Purgatory of Survival in Times of Horror first appeared on The Film Stage.

Is there a point to a metaphor if a filmmaker does all the unpacking for you? That was my main takeaway from Nightbitch, Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s novel, where Heller and lead star Amy Adams take on the ugly side of motherhood through a slight twist on the werewolf story. In this case […]

The post TIFF Review: Marielle Heller’s Nightbitch Could Use More Bite first appeared on The Film Stage.

On paper, there are few filmmakers who seem less-suited to the rigors of a project like Eden than Ron Howard. This is the grim story, after all, of real-life individuals in the late 1920s who were so troubled by the state of humankind that an escape to the Galápagos Islands seemed like the only sensible […]

The post TIFF Review: Ron Howard’s Eden Is an Ambitious Disappointment first appeared on The Film Stage.

It’s been some time since we’ve had such a ridiculously attractive lineup of buzzworthy young actors as the quartet starring in Daniel Minahan’s On Swift Horses. Daisy Edgar-Jones, the tremendously talented star of Twisters and Normal People, is Muriel, a young woman in 1950s Kansas. Her soon-to-be husband, Lee, is played by Will Poulter, who […]

The post TIFF Review: On Swift Horses Is an Endearing Melodrama With an Alluring Ensemble first appeared on The Film Stage.

It’s difficult to keep sending back 12-year-old Claressa Shields (Jazmin Headley) when she’s got more fight in her than any of the boys he’s training, but that’s what Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry) knows. Girls don’t box. So, he tells her she can stay and do some drills—he’s not going to kick her out. Jason […]

The post TIFF Review: The Fire Inside Is an Inspiring Sports Movie Coming at the Right Moment first appeared on The Film Stage.

While we ponder how exactly the fiasco surrounding Todd Haynes’ would-be next film is going down in the household of Joaquin Phoenix and Carol star Rooney Mara, the latter actor’s latest role is now opening next month. Alonso Ruizpalacios’ La Cocina, starring Mara and Raúl Briones, premiered at Berlinale earlier this year, followed by Tribeca, and will screen at the […]

The post Rooney Mara is Under Pressure in First Trailer for Alonso Ruizpalacios’ La Cocina first appeared on The Film Stage.

It’s all about perspective. Six great months living the rest of your life to the fullest or twelve miserable ones trying to survive? Sacrificing present happiness by thinking too far into the future or thinking that way so you don’t end up wasting today? Neither Almut (Florence Pugh) nor Tobias (Andrew Garfield) are exempt from […]

The post TIFF Review: We Live in Time is a Moving Look at the Ebb and Flow of a Relationship first appeared on The Film Stage.

The cinematic arm of the Slum Dwellers International and affiliates’ campaign to expose injustice wrought upon waterfront communities in Nigeria’s largest city of Lagos, the Agbajowo Collective––a group of young artists who have themselves endured the forced evictions committed over the past five-plus decades––has made good on an idea that began in 2018. The Legend […]

The post TIFF Review: The Legend of the Vagabond Queen of Lagos Captures a David vs. Goliath Fight first appeared on The Film Stage.

In just over a decade, Mike Flanagan went from promising indie director to one of the best American genre filmmakers working today. Starting with Absentia and Oculus, he soon worked his way up to studio fare (Doctor Sleep) before spending the past several years making Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House and The Fall of […]

The post TIFF Review: Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck is a Childish Take on Universal Experience first appeared on The Film Stage.