The Film Stage

After his trio of “Man in a Room” films, Paul Schrader has switched gears with the poignant drama Oh, Canada. Reteaming with his American Gigolo star Richard Gere, the film follows a famed Canadian documentary filmmaker who gives a final interview to one of his former students to tell the whole truth about his life. […]

The post Oh, Canada Trailer: Richard Gere Reflects on His Life in Paul Schrader’s Poignant Drama first appeared on The Film Stage.

Not many people have mourned 3D cinema’s second waning. Yet, every now and then, the old parlor trick threatens to capture the imagination. I can think of two films in the last few years that have done such: the first cost around $400M, made about six times that at the box office, and took place […]

The post Riga Review: Dreamy Stereoscopic 3D Folk Tale Twittering Soul is One of a Kind first appeared on The Film Stage.

With just three features to his name, Tyler Taormina has cemented himself as one of the most perceptive chroniclers of small-town America. His 2019 debut, Ham on Rye, tracked a gaggle of high school seniors as they geared up for prom night and life away from home. Shot by Taormina’s regular cinematographer, Carson Lund, the […]

The post “Life Is Worth Celebrating”: Tyler Taormina on Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point first appeared on The Film Stage.

It’s a shame Toxic wasn’t around for the recent excretions of body-horror discourse. Saulė Bliuvaitė’s debut feature, winner of the Golden Leopard at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, does at least as much to turn the stomach with its tablet of tapeworm eggs than either of The Substance or A Different Man‘s Faustian cures. The […]

The post Riga Review: Saulė Bliuvaitė’s Locarno-Winning Toxic Will Worm Its Way Inside You first appeared on The Film Stage.

In All We Imagine as Light, a nurse in a Mumbai hospital is confronted by the emptiness in her life when she helps a friend move to a seaside village. Set near an upscale Himalayan prep school, Girls Will Be Girls focuses on a mother who toys with her teenage daughter’s boyfriend.  These strikingly dissimilar […]

The post Kani Kusruti on All We Imagine as Light, Girls Will Be Girls, and Indian Moviegoing Culture first appeared on The Film Stage.

After crafting the best film of 2023 (and 2024, depending on your release calendar) with The Beast, Bertrand Bonello is prepping his next feature. While he was tight-lipped on details, he tells Variety, “It’s a little early to talk about it. It’s going to be very different. It’s going to be completely different. The writing […]

The post Bertand Bonello, Takashi Miike, Nikyatu Jusu, and More Plan Next Features first appeared on The Film Stage.

Tim Fehlbaum’s September 5 stars John Magaro, Peter Sarsgaard, Leonie Benesch, and Ben Chaplin as ABC sports journalists unexpectedly put in the position of narrativizing the hostage crisis of the 1972 Munich Olympics. It’s an effective thriller––one couldn’t accuse it of being boring––but takes what feels like the safest possible approach to its fraught subject […]

The post AFI Fest Review: September 5 is a Competent But Bloodless Thriller  first appeared on The Film Stage.

We could tie ourselves in knots, draw party lines, and make blood oaths declaring cinema’s greatest-evers: directors, actors, screenwriters, even studios or entire national output. I have rarely heard a conversation for greatest-ever producer, so allow me to propose that this title belongs––so clearly it’s unprecedented among such conversation––to Paulo Branco. He deserves consideration for […]

The post “Less Money, More Liberty”: Paulo Branco on a Cinematic Life with David Cronenberg, Manoel De Oliveira, and Raúl Ruiz first appeared on The Film Stage.

A decade after his staggering documentaries The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer has now returned, but this time with a narrative feature. The End, which stars Tilda Swinton, George MacKay, Michael Shannon, Moses Ingram, Bronagh Gallagher, Tim McInnerny, and Lennie James has a logline unlike another this year: a human […]

The post The End Trailer: Tilda Swinton, Michael Shannon, and George MacKay Ring in the Apocalypse first appeared on The Film Stage.

Vermiglio is set in the eponymous alpine village during the waning days of WWII. Maura Delpero’s film, gorgeously shot by Leviathan cinematographer Mikhail Krichman, is a slow-moving fable that unfolds as a novelistic series of pastoral tableaus. The short chapters evoke Balzacian poetic realism and recall the sensual textures of last year’s The Taste of […]

The post AFI Review: Vermiglio Paints a Lyrical Portrait of Desires Constrained by Catholicism first appeared on The Film Stage.