The Film Stage

At the beginning of my review of The Village Detective: A Song Cycle, I wrote: “It is hard to overstate how important Bill Morrison’s work is to the language and history of cinema.” That was nearly four years ago, and...

2025 is in full swing and a majority of America is probably looking for a means of escape from the literal and figurative flames engulfing their nation. A new entry in the “Zachary Levi only gets kids movies now” canon...

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. All We Imagine as Light (Payal Kapadia) Following up her enigmatic, beautiful debut A...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. Japan SocietyA six-film Nobuhiko Obayashi retrospective, featuring imported 35mm and 16mm prints, begins (watch our exclusive trailer debut). Anthology Film ArchivesWillem Dafoe: Wild at Heart features films by Ferrara, Lynch,...

Though once head-spinningly prolific, Tsui Hark hasn’t directed a solo feature since 2018’s Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings, the time between then and now seeing one short in the Septet omnibus and two co-helmed entries in China’s über-popular Battle...

In Videoheaven, Blockbuster––to take after Thom Andersen––plays itself. Now deep in a pop-cultural-scholarship phase inaugurated by his last feature Pavements, Alex Ross Perry has made a generous, absorbing three-hour essay film-cum-documentary on nothing else but video-rental stores, those fabled and...

After Bait and Enys Men proved to be a pair of the most tactile, distinctive films of the last few years, director Mark Jenkin is expanding scope for his latest. The Cornish director finished production in secret this past summer on his time-travel mystery...

It’s always thrilling when a horror film explores the power and possibility of sound. Much modern horror is too quiet, missing the opportunity to create an immersive soundscape that fully transports viewers into its world. Writer-director Bryn Chainey’s debut feature...

Kim A. Snyder’s The Librarians is a comprehensive documentary that maps well-funded, right-wing political groups’ nationwide mission to ban books and those standing up to this movement in the name of anti-censorship. And though there are expected touches throughout (onscreen...

Dabbling in narrative filmmaking in-between his many documentaries, it was recently announced Werner Herzog was in production on his first animated feature, The Twilight World, based on his 2021 novel of the same name. Now we have another narrative project to...