The Film Stage

TIFF Review: David Gordon Green’s Nutcrackers is a Frustratingly Contrived Affair
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David Gordon Green’s career is one of the most unpredictable in Hollywood. Since his masterful and celebrated debut George Washington, he’s not been shy about planting a flag in a wide variety of films––dramedies, gritty thrillers, franchise horror reboots, political...
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TIFF Review: Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night Has One Yearning for Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60
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“Can satire save the Republic?”— May 2017 cover story of The Atlantic featuring Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump “Mad TV would have done a Barron Trump School Shooter skit the week after Columbine. Donald would show up in a diaper...
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TIFF Review: Tim Robinson Masters Cringe In the Hysterically Funny Friendship
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The level of enjoyment audience members will have with Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship is tied directly to their tolerance for the humor of Tim Robinson. The star of the meme-inspiring Netflix series I Think You Should Leave has cultivated a devoted...
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TIFF Review: The Quiet Ones Orchestrates a Thrilling Heist
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When Kasper (Gustav Dyekjær Giese) learns his brother-in-law wants him to speak with a Moroccan friend, he knows what that conversation will entail. It probably wasn’t long ago that he’d jump at the chance, but he’s since found other means...
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TIFF Review: Flow Suggests Classic Disney By Way of Emmanuel Lubezki
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Being a pet owner, depending on your personality, comes with a fair level of anxiety. For example: after leaving my apartment to go see the film I’m writing about, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I hadn’t shut my...
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TIFF Review: Souleymane’s Story Tells a Dardenne-Esque Political Fable with a Thriller’s Urgency
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Souleymane’s Story delivers a political fable with all the grit and urgency of a thriller. It follows a Guinean food-delivery driver (Abou Sangare, brilliant in his first screen role) who rides his bike through Paris’ busy streets with alarming haste....
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First Trailer for Greg Jardin’s Sundance Hit It’s What’s Inside
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One of the Sundance breakouts this year was Greg Jardin’s directorial debut It’s What’s Inside. Starring Brittany O’Grady, James Morosini, Gavin Leatherwood, Nina Bloomgarden, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Reina Hardesty, Devon Terrell, and David Thompson, it follows a group of friends who...
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Amnesiascope Presents a Rarely Screened Maggie Cheung Film on Tuesday, September 17
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When I started my blindfold series Amnesiascope I knew there’d come time to show a Maggie Cheung film. Probably this doesn’t require much explanation: movie star, master thespian, action heroine, and melodrama titan, Cheung is perhaps the world’s greatest actor...
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TIFF Review: Alicia Vikander Steals the Show in the Sci-Fi Drama The Assessment
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The “old world” is a wasteland. People still live there, but not for very long. Those in the “new world” live hundreds of years thanks to a drug that slows aging. It’s groundbreaking technology that comes at a price: the...
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TIFF Review: Conclave is an Engaging Political Thriller Undone by Ridiculous Third Act Twists
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The twisty political thriller Conclave wastes little time getting right into it: the Pope is dead, and after a three-week time jump, the world’s most powerful cardinals gather in Vatican City, their mission to elect a new leader from among...
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