The Film Stage

It’s fall 1983 in the Pacific Northwest, a historical hotbed for white poverty and white-power mobilization. Flannels flow like wine, backcountry bowl cut-adjacent male fringes mark burgeoning leadership, and there isn’t a shiny new car for 100 miles in any direction. On both sides of the law we find ourselves in the company of brawny […]

The post Venice Review: Justin Kurzel’s Crime Thriller The Order Is Aswim with Cliché But Nails Emotional Beats first appeared on The Film Stage.

Welcome to a new episode of The Film Stage Show! Brian Roan and Robyn Bahr are joined by Jen Johans to discuss Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1, now on Max. Enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor. All new Patreon supporters […]

The post The Film Stage Show Ep. 547 – Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 (with Jen Johans) first appeared on The Film Stage.

In life and in cinema, Pedro Almodóvar likes to talk about death. When people aren’t losing their faculties in his films––like going blind (Folle… folle… fólleme Tim!), falling into comas (Talk to Her), or falling apart altogether (The Skin I Live In)––they dwell on the afterlife (a son’s in All About My Mother, his own […]

The post Venice Review: Pedro Almodóvar’s The Room Next Door Faces Death with a Light, Succinct Touch first appeared on The Film Stage.

The Motorcycle Diaries director Walter Salles developed I’m Still Here for seven years before it premiered as part of Venice’s Main Competition this year. That brings us closer to the time when a book of the same name was first published in Brazil: I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui), the 2015 memoir of Marcelo Rubens […]

The post Venice Review: Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here Shows a Blissful Family Fractured Under Brazilian Dictatorship first appeared on The Film Stage.

With the Toronto International Film Festival starting, there’s plenty to look forward to on the feature front. There’s also much room for discovery among Short Cuts, TIFF’s dedicated program of short films. Spread across seven groups and one feature pairing, this year’s Short Cuts comprises 48 shorts from 23 countries, the most titles in the […]

The post 11 Must-See Short Films at TIFF 2024 first appeared on The Film Stage.

A hurricane is coming and Atlantic Beach, Florida is directly in its path. The tourists have already left. Most residents remain. Why? Because this is hurricane country. None of this is new. Maybe the storm will hit. Maybe it won’t. Is that chance worth the time and effort of skipping town? Or is the excitement […]

The post Venice Review: No Sleep Till Takes an Existential Look Inside Florida’s Hurricane Season first appeared on The Film Stage.

It’s been nine years since Jon Watts made a feature film that wasn’t about Spider-Man––long enough that for the past three years his MCU entries have outnumbered all others. The once-indie director of Clown and Cop Car was poached for the franchise after cranking out those two features in back-to-back years, his directorial voice put […]

The post Venice Review: Wolfs Makes Little of a Reunion for George Clooney and Brad Pitt first appeared on The Film Stage.

When The Childhood of a Leader premiered at the 2015 Venice Film Festival, you had to wonder where Brady Corbet could possibly go next. There was just something wonderfully distasteful about it all: a 27-year-old American speculating on Europe’s darkest days with such brazen energy. Corbet went one better with Vox Lux‘s festival debut in […]

The post Venice Review: Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is an Ecstatic Reminder of What Cinema Does Best first appeared on The Film Stage.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is having quite the year. Chime, a mid-length chiller, was a standout at the Berlinale. A French-language remake of his own Serpent’s Path will have its European premiere at San Sebastian. And now we have Cloud: a cold thriller with a dark, satirical edge that shows the master filmmaker at his leanest and […]

The post Venice Review: Cloud Finds Kiyoshi Kurosawa in Unstoppable Shape first appeared on The Film Stage.

Nicolas Winding Refn’s produced so much material these last ten years––Copenhagen Cowboy‘s five hours are slim compared with Too Old to Die Young, which I suspect is still playing somewhere––that it’s easy to forget he hasn’t made a strictly defined film since 2016’s The Neon Demon. As one who considers all the above mentioned (especially […]

The post Nicolas Winding Refn to Shoot New Feature In Japan first appeared on The Film Stage.