The Film Stage

Depending on who you ask, the cultural domination of the Walt Disney Company can be a wonderful thing or an inescapable nightmare. From Marvel to Pixar, 20th Century Studios to Lucasfilm, and theme parks from Orlando to Tokyo with cruise...

Amongst the debut features populating Berlinale’s new section called Perspectives, none presented so admirably fresh take on fiction and political histories as Two Times João Liberada. The Portuguese hidden gem is directed by Paula Tomás Marques, who has made a...

Canadian International Pictures, sister company to the great Arbelos Films, takes upon itself the noble mission of restoring and releasing lesser-seen films from up north. Their next project is a film I’d frankly never heard of, but upon watching a...

The first time I came across the name John C. Lilly I was––rather fittingly, for reasons that will become clearer in a minute––not exactly sober. Late in the night or early in the morning, back from a housewarming party, my...

Quite a long time in the works, with Errol Morris attached to direct as early as 2013, the thriller Holland (formerly known as Holland, Michigan) finally embarked on production in the spring of 2023 with Mimi Cave (Fresh) at the...

It’s mid-July and I’m sitting in my living room, wondering what Ben Burtt, a man responsible for some of the most beloved cultural artifacts of the 20th century, will think of the decor. He appears on my screen calling from...

The last time Hong Sangsoo failed to feature in a Berlinale program, Childish Gambino’s “This is America” was in the charts and Green Book was on its way to beating Roma at the Oscars. (2019 notwithstanding, you have to go...

Consider the logline: a 34-year-old, pre-diabetic, 250-pound, extremely anxious loner finds respite as a cleaning simp for dominatrices eager to belittle him as he tidies up their homes. Now think of the word simp: in Internet patois, a term denoting...

The most significant change introduced by new Berlinale director Tricia Tuttle is the cancellation of the Encounters sidebar which hosted many arthouse gems supposedly too experimental for the main competition. In its stead, Perspectives––a competitive section dedicated to first films––was...

The Blue Trail, the lively new film from Gabriel Mascaro, takes its name from the secretions of a mythical snail. Azure and oozing, the substance, when dropped on the iris, is rumored to grant a vision of things to come....