The Film Stage

Lee Chang-dong on the Power of Anger and Empathizing with Pain
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This month, Metrograph is running “Novel Encounters: The Films of Lee Chang-dong,” a retrospective of the filmmaker’s career to date. The program includes four films in new 4K restorations from Film Movement: Green Fish, Peppermint Candy, Oasis, and Poetry.  Lee’s...
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Posterized April 2024: Sasquatch Sunset, The People’s Joker, Terrestrial Verses & More
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I can’t say it was difficult finding nine posters to talk about this month––most new April releases were given the bad Photoshop treatment. Some, like Cash Out, scream DTV. Some, like Arcadian, try their best to at least make the...
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New to Streaming: Jean Eustache, The Zone of Interest, How to Have Sex, Snack Shack, Girls State & More
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Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here. Astrakan (David Depesseville) Astrakhan fur is unique: dark, beautiful, and stripped exclusively from newborn...
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The B-Side – In Conversation with Larry Fessenden
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Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we talk to an independent film...
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Interior Life: Quebecois Maverick Robert Morin on Nightmares, Humor, and Neorealism
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“We are so excited to have you here and are blown away this is even happening,” I signed off on a hasty call to Coop Vidéo de Montréal, setting up an interview with Robert Morin, a French-Canadian director who had...
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Obsess You Like a Ghost: Bertrand Bonello on His Years-Long Path Towards The Beast
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Every time I’ve seen The Beast there comes some point where I think Bertrand Bonello is the world’s greatest under-60 filmmaker. Not quite a new stance for me (declaring Saint Laurent the best movie of the 2010s was a lonely...
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Keeping the Mystery: Alice Rohrwacher on La Chimera, Mythology, and Morality
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In Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera, the Italian writer-director’s fourth narrative feature film, the past melds with the present. Art is something to be dug up, to be discovered, regardless of its origins. A circus troupe does the digging, led by...
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The People’s Joker Director Vera Drew on the Trans Awakening of Batman Forever and the Way Superhero Movies Could Survive
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After a year-and-a-half of copyright drama, The People’s Joker is finally here. The daring mixture of both tones and form will be sure to impress anyone, even those without a lick of investment in the DC subject matter it is...
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Janet Planet Trailer Unveils Annie Baker’s Superb Debut
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The nearly year-long span from discovering Janet Planet‘s existence to seeing a single frame was fraught with worry. What if the extraordinarily talented Annie Baker fumbled her transition into filmmaking? Nothing catastrophic, surely––no sane person’s faulting Michael Jordan for his...
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Watch: Jonathan Glazer Directs Scarlett Johansson In Shakespeare-Heavy Prada Ad
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Though likely shot before he gave literally the one Academy Awards speech worth anything on this godforsaken earth, we can submit his new Prada ad starring Scarlett Johansson as evidence that Jonathan Glazer––whatever that weird, genocide-denying Google Doc literally anyone...
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