The Film Stage

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2026 SXSW coverage. The film opens in theaters on May 29. A film squarely in the wheelhouse of co-writer and director John Carney, Power Ballad plays the hits with a...

The 79th edition of the Cannes Film Festival has now concluded, with Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord taking home the Palme d’Or (see all jury winners here). While our coverage will continue with a few more reviews this week––then far beyond, as...

For some, the premiere of Valeska Grisebach’s new film was the kind of thing to be discussed in hushed tones. Here was the long-awaited return to Cannes, nine full years since Western, a singular film that, by now, is within...

Lord Murashige Araki (Masahiro Motoki) doesn’t like killing. A samurai presiding over Arioka Castle in 16th-century Japan, he’s a walking contradiction—a warrior bound by a merciless code of conduct he has no trouble forsaking, much to the dismay of his...

As the 79th edition of Cannes comes to a close, president Park Chan-wook and his jury of Demi Moore, Ruth Negga, Laura Wandel, Chloé Zhao, Diego Céspedes, Isaach De Bankolé, Paul Laverty, and Stellan Skarsgård have unveiled the winners. Leading...

Radu Jude has been rolling through features since his international breakout Aferim! in 2015, and his taste is nearly impossible to pin down. The films range from a three-hour documentary on the first massacre of Jews in Romania during WWII...

Cinema has taken viewers to the trenches of World War I so often that audiences might as well have formed sensory memories of a throat-clenching terror, the screams drowned by a sudden explosion and ears ringing. It’s all artificial, of...

When it comes to storytelling, if the 19th and 20th centuries were defined by grandiose literature, the 21st century is all about cinema. We read less and watch more; consequently, films have become a substitute for sweeping stories that weave...

Marine Atlan’s La Gradiva—winner of the Cannes Critics’ Week Grand Prize—begins from a familiar cinematic premise: a school trip abroad for a busload of restless teenagers temporarily freed from the surveillance of home. Yet the film steadily slips from the...

From A Star is Born to Vox Lux to Inside Llewyn Davis, cinema abounds with stories of jaded musicians who either burned too bright or never quite reached the heights they hoped. In the new film Low Expectations, a bittersweet...