The Film Stage

Complementing recent work with the Roxy Cinema and BAM, I’ve begun a monthly screening series at the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research. It’s called Amnesiascope and somewhat unique: a “blindfold” program wherein I pick the (rare, out-of-print) film and you...

Safe to assume the ongoing atrocities in Gaza will engender cinema, fiction and documentary alike, further into the future than we can imagine. Decades of aggression have yielded, in just this last year, the TIFF selection Alam and Berlinale winner...

Following up his noir melodrama Decision to Leave, Park Chan-wook ventured into the world of American television with the forthcoming Max series The Sympathizer, adapting Viet Thanh Nguyen’s acclaimed novel and teaming with Robert Downey Jr. With the limited series...

An expectation of finality has followed Ken Loach’s The Old Oak since its premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. “When you’re doing it, you’re doing it, you just have to get a move on and get on with it,”...

When none of us are generous enough to just buy an album (or join his notoriously unwieldy streaming service) there’s been a surge of reinterest as Neil Young makes his dizzyingly dense catalog freshly available on Spotify. Likely coinciding with...

If the only April release was my top pick of the month it would be one of the finest lineups of the years, but thankfully there’s more to recommend. Featuring films about cinephilic obsession, subversive superhero tales, and what is...

It’s a genuine miracle that The People’s Joker has managed to make it to screens unscathed, especially considering the legal battles which dogged the 2023 TIFF premiere could easily have left it trapped in the vault forever. Many of the...

It’s been the better part of five years since Ang Lee’s last feature, Gemini Man, which you might not realize because even––especially––its biggest champions will tell you it’s best-watched in theaters, a tough deal owing to the director’s use of...

Ryûsuke Hamaguchi, Christopher Nolan, Spike Lee, Chantal Akerman, Theo Angelopoulos, Lynne Ramsay, Tsai Ming-liang, Michael Haneke, Lee Chang-dong, Terence Davies, Shōhei Imamura, Bi Gan, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Jia Zhangke, Wong Kar-wai, Yorgos Lanthimos, Denis Villleneuve, Céline Sciamma, Guillermo del Toro, Kelly...

With just ten days to go until the Cannes Film Festival lineup is unveiled, one title heavily tipped to premiere is David Cronenberg’s The Shrouds, starring Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, and Sandrine Holt. While U.S. distribution has yet...