The Film Stage

There is an unbridled honesty to André Is an Idiot that is admirable, even if all of it doesn’t really work. It’s a simple, stark subject for a documentary: accomplished advertising creative André Ricciardi neglected to get a colonoscopy at...

Twinless starts like a prototypical Sundance movie––grim and serious, plus unexpected levity. That’s the general formula for a festival that might as well have manufactured the term “dramedy.” In this case there’s an offscreen car accident and quick cut to a...

Early in Michael Shanks’ directorial debut Together, Millie (Alison Brie) warns her boyfriend Tim (Dave Franco) that if they don’t “split up” now, it’s only going to be harder later. She didn’t know how right she was about that. After...

With Sundance wrapped up, much of February’s attention toward the world of cinema will be on Berlinale. This month certainly isn’t stacked for new releases, but there’s a handful of gems and highlights worth having on your radar. 11. Bring...

Celebrating and condensing centuries of Black history that would take more than a few lifetimes for any scholar to thoroughly ascertain in totality, Kahlil Joseph’s BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions eschews dryly academy ethnographic study to deliver a kaleidoscopic, vigorous, engrossing...

Sensitive and nuanced, Katarina Zhu’s directorial debut Bunnylovr is a compelling character study that never quite makes sense of the messy life of personal assistant by day / cam girl by night Becca (Zhu). Perhaps that is the point, although...

After his long-awaited return with Crimes of the Future, David Cronenberg returned last year to the festival circuit with The Shrouds, a darkly funny conspiracy thriller led by Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, and newly minted Oscar nominee Guy Pearce. Picked...

Many films, from the classic melodrama Mildred Pierce to last year’s playful dramedy Nightbitch, have tried to depict the unique struggles of motherhood with a focus on the special intimacy of child-rearing. Mothers have long borne the brunt and most...

You can feel the warm breeze filtering through Love, Brooklyn, a gentle, dream-like summer movie that often teeters on the edge of reality. Rachael Abigail Holder’s debut feature, written by Paul Zimmerman, doesn’t necessarily drift in and out of abstract fantasy,...

Filmmaker David Osit gives viewers a lot to wrestle with in Predators, his documentary about the reality show To Catch a Predator, which captured the zeitgeist of the early 2000s. In the show, host Chris Hansen confronted adult men who...