The Film Stage

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about filmmakers! Not the films that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today, as a sort of B-Side to our...

Harmony Korine scholars no doubt mourn The Trap, a revenge thriller he once called his “most ambitious project” and which would’ve starred Benicio Del Toro, Robert Pattinson, Al Pacino, Idris Elba, and James Franco. He clearly hasn’t forgotten: nearly a...

It’s rare for a festival like the Berlinale to allow a genre film in its main competition, and this year it was Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s third feature, The Devil’s Bath, that stood out. The period horror film is...

Despite being seen exclusively on the festival circuit, Víctor Erice’s first feature in 30 years, Close Your Eyes, ended up at #20 on our best-of-2023 list. One imagines it’ll land higher when we take stock of 2024: it’s finally getting...

Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Megan Park’s coming-of-age comedy My Old Ass has a bit of a light sci-fi twist. On her 18th birthday, Elliott (Maisy Stella) is visited by an older, 39-year-old version of herself...

Premiering earlier this year at Sundance Film Festival, Sebastian marks the sophomore feature from writer/director Mikko Mäkelä (whose debut was the 2017 gay romance A Moment in the Reeds). Following a burgeoning young journalist who turns to sex work to...

For a movie so deeply focused on sound, there’s a bit of an arrhythmia to A Quiet Place: Day One. Michael Sarnoski directs his own screenplay, dabbling within this improbable sci-fi franchise to suit his interests. Despite the Pig director’s...

While thankfully the January 6 insurrection wasn’t successful in the intended coup of the United States government, the threats posed play out to another, far more disastrous conclusion with the new documentary War Game. Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber’s Sundance...

It was just yesterday we learned Robert Zemeckis was taking another ambitious formal gamble in his career with Here. His adaptation of Richard McGuire’s comic, which spans a single space from 500,957,406,073 BCE to the year 22,175 CE, was shot...

If knives weren’t already being sharpened for Ti West prior to MaXXXine––the third installment in his X series of exploitation throwbacks––they likely will be at the ready once discerning horror fans experience it. On the surface, this is West returning...