The Film Stage

A love story unlike any this year, Alex Huston Fischer & Eleanor Wilson’s Wicker tells a fable in which a woman (Olivia Colman) commissions a wicker husband (Alexander Skarsgård) to be made by the local basketmaker (Peter Dinklage). Also starring...

One of the breakouts of the Sundance Film Festival this year, where it picked up the U.S. Dramatic Directing award, Josef Kubota Wladyka’s stylish and moving Ha-chan, Shake Your Booty! is coming this fall. Ahead of a September 25 release,...

More than reclaiming the zombie motif from the knee-jerk response that Night of the Living Dead inhibited, Maya Annik Bedward’s Black Zombie is a reclamation of Vodou from the colonial fear-mongering that used it to demonize Black people the world...

Let’s risk hyperbole and suggest that 2026’s buzziest documentary about an avant-garde filmmaker is Barbara Forever. Brydie O’Connor’s study of Barbara Hammer received the Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award upon its premiere at Sundance, just thereafter earned Berlinale’s Teddy Award for...

To the public, Anthony Bourdain was a carefully constructed persona: the fine-dining chef who waxed poetic about the joys of “regular” food and traveled to far-flung locales that made him want to throttle Henry Kissinger on shows like Parts Unknown....

Marking his first feature in 14 years (and first original in 17), Tony Gilroy’s Behemoth! has been confirmed to world premiere as the Centerpiece selection of the 64th New York Film Festival, screening at the Alice Tully Hall on Friday,...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.  Today we discuss the great Michael Mann! Our B-Sides are The...

A friend recently quipped that Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day was “Mysterious Skin for straight people.” Joking aside, it’s an apt comparison beyond the whole alien-trauma thing: both Spielberg and queer punk iconoclast Gregg Araki share a fascination for characters driven...

Premiering as part of Venice’s Giornate degli Autori (aka Venice Days), which takes place September 2 through 12, Federico Francioni and Samuele Sestieri’s Si sveglia e sbadiglia, il gatto; poi l’amore (aka The Cat Wakes Up And Yawns; Then Love) follows...

One of the highlights of this year’s Venice Film Festival lineup was the return of Werner Herzog, whose latest feature Bucking Fastard will world premiere in competition. Starring Kate Mara, Rooney Mara, Orlando Bloom, and Domhnall Gleeson, the first clip...