The Film Stage

The first thing you learn about Tinto Brass’ Caligula is that it’s shocking, disgusting, immoral. If you learn anything else it’s the specific description of the acts committed onscreen. Keep going and soon enough someone dismisses the film––less as shocking,...

It’s of course essential that the actor-auteur relationship has some bedrock of trust, and the last descriptor one could apply to Julianne Nicholson is “amateur.” Still, carrying the first feature by a playwright (brilliant or otherwise) is no small task,...

We were just remarking a few weeks ago how it’s the summer of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, with the largest-ever U.S. retrospective of the British masters now underway and the Martin Scorsese-narrated documentary  The post Luca Guadagnino Says Queer...

Nathan Silver’s Between the Temples is among the most formally adventurous films ever made about a late-in-life Bat Mitzvah––scripted with more narrative and structural surprise than its basic bedrock would ever suggest, shot (by Sean Price Williams) and edited (courtesy...

The best Christmas present of the year, after his biggest project yet with The Northman, Robert Eggers jumped quickly into his long-developing passion project: a new take on F. W. Murnau’s 1922 German Expressionist masterpiece Nosferatu, itself inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. With...

Jesse Rudoy’s acclaimed documentary Dusty & Stones follows a continent-crossing journey story told through country music. The documentary, picked up by First Run Features for a summer theatrical released, intimately chronicles the remarkable ride of cousins Gazi “Dusty” Simelane and...

It’s nearly five years since we learned David Fincher and Robert Towne would partner on a Chinatown series concerning the early days of Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes. (One made, naturally, for Netflix.) The time since (Mank, The Killer) pointed towards...

Woe betide Sofia Coppola skeptics, but a 58-second liquor ad suggests nice paycheck before manicured artistic intent. Still it’s nice seeing the director reunite with the star of her best film (Somewhere‘s very own Elle Fanning) for a quick, floral...

Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play. Not A Movie. A Play is in fact a documentary self-portrait, at times providing a behind-the-scenes look at the workshopping of Harris’ provocative and acclaimed Tony-nominated play. Harris, with a filmography that includes co-writing Zola,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. Film at Lincoln CenterA Catherine Breillat retrospective begins, featuring many restorations; Before Sunset screens outdoors on Friday. Museum of Modern ArtA career-spanning Powell and Pressburger retrospective begins. Roxy CinemaFellox Roxy...