The Film Stage

One of the key figures in Hong Kong cinema, Tsui Hark is a writer, actor, producer, and groundbreaking director. Born in Vietnam, he attended college in the US before working in Hong Kong television. Hark directed his first features in...

The queer coming-of-age experience is one of great vulnerability: a young person must grapple with the realization they’re becoming different from both past selves and those around them. Robin Campillo’s Enzo, which opened the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at Cannes, understands...

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2024 Filmfest Hamburg coverage. Love opens in theaters on May 16. It takes confidence to name your film––simply and so very unspecifically––Love. Michael Haneke could get away with it for...

Nearly 92, more controversial than ever, and coming off perhaps the least-liked film of his career, Roman Polanski has not entirely been expected to direct again. Yet he, still among our greatest filmmakers, doesn’t seem content to let The Palace‘s...

German writer-director Mascha Schilinski’s sophomore feature Sound of Falling is the first competition title to screen at Cannes this year. If it’s anything to go by, we might be headed for a vintage edition of the festival. Set around a...

“I’m going to miss being disreputable,” Ving Rhames’ Luther Stickell grumbles to Tom Cruise’s now-iconic superspy after their first of many impossible missions. It’s 1996 and these brazen upstarts sip beer outside a pub, preparing to part ways forever. “Well,...

When I spoke to Alan Rudolph a couple months ago, he confirmed that Criterion had sought to release his (incredible, essential) Remember My Name but were held up by music rights––a situation so complicated that a lawyer hired by the...

Ever since Turn on the Bright Lights debuted in the summer of 2002, Interpol frontman Paul Banks has been the epicenter of cool. Trying his hand at a variety of musical projects––from solo albums to instrumental experimentations to, even, collaborations...

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2024 NYFF coverage. The Damned opens in theaters on May 16. Robert Minervini’s The Damned begins with two wolves tearing into a elk carcass, ripping off its fur and chewing its intestines....

Frequent festival-goers learn to not expect much from opening films. Truth is, quality is but one of many factors that lead to the selection for this symbolic slot. In order to avoid offending sensibilities and setting a controversial tone for...