The Film Stage

It’s near-impossible to make a revenge narrative that doesn’t serve as a commentary on clichéd gender roles. Male-centered vengeance stories, even at their most knowingly ludicrous, typically focus on wounded men aiming to reassert the dominance stripped of them; female-centered...

April’s an uncommonly strong auteurist month for the Criterion Channel, who will highlight a number of directors––many of whom aren’t often grouped together. Just after we screened House of Tolerance at the Roxy Cinema, Criterion are showing it and Nocturama...

While each year brings a few films here and there to make one long for Hollywood’s return to an era of producing quality mid-budget movies not strictly for a four-quadrant demographic, it seemed the last gasp of such a time...

After dabbling in TV for much of the last decade, Gremlins and The Howling director Joe Dante is set to return to feature filmmaking with his first project since 2014’s Burying the Ex. Dante, who kicked off his career in...

You need to tread a fine line when paying homage to 1980s action movies. Wink too much at the audience and it’ll either feel like you’re striving for cult status or telling the audience they shouldn’t take your film so...

“It hurts to turn the radio on Stamina’s gone My spirit is weak Because every time I start to move on Keep hearing that song I’m brought to my knees” -“Now or Never Now” by Metric Although not selected for...

While bound to spark hundreds of think pieces, Alex Garland’s stirring Civil War will undoubtedly go down, too, as one of the most provocative films of the year. It’s also an early contender for one of the best, offering a...

And I still can see blue velvet through my tears… in 4K! Surely Criterion will add an audio track in their upgrade of David Lynch’s beyond-seminal film, arriving this June in an otherwise-identical edition to 2019’s release. At least two...

Roxy CinemaOur 35mm presentation of Bertrand Bonello’s House of Tolerance screens on Saturday and Sunday; Jessica Hausner’s Hotel plays on Friday, as does a Frank Tashlin / Jerry Lewis double-bill of Hollywood or Bust and The Geisha Boy; The Bridges...

An action rom-com with all the elements for something iconic, David Leitch’s The Fall Guy features truly remarkable stunt work and charismatic performances by Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, yet buckles under the weight of its plot. Adapted from a...