The Film Stage

Two things can be true at once. The old debate over whether Hong Sangsoo’s cinema is overly earnest or self-aware was always a bit reductive––when the most light-hearted of the director’s films transcend, it is usually a result of both....

Like a chimera of any intelligent person’s least-favorite storytelling models, we are (in the sense of a diagnosis) finally seeing the cinematic universe intersect with musical biopics. And where to start but the very biggest? Today brings the rather momentous...

After dividing audiences with Men, Alex Garland is back with what looks to be his most ambitious directorial outing yet. Civil War, which follows a divided, near-future America and a race to the White House, stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura,...

The films of Canadian director Kazik Radwanski are freedom in its purest form, or the purest this particular medium can contain. Being the opposite of prescriptive, they sculpt themselves according to interpersonal dynamics that can otherwise be invisible, and by...

It’s a good time to be a Sofia Coppola fan. Alongside last fall’s release of one of her finest films, Priscilla, we got an expansive book detailing her career. Now we have two new updates related to other peaks of...

Playing his signature brand of rural French absurdity in stark counterpoint to the grandiose strains of a space opera, Bruno Dumont returns with The Empire: his Barbarella bourguignon, his dijionnaise Dune. The Empire is the story of two warring factions:...

Tucked deep into Don DeLillo’s Underworld is an exchange between the novel’s protagonist, Nick Shay, and one of his teachers, a Jesuit priest. It concerns language. The priest, to make a point about the boy’s abysmally poor vocabulary, taunts him...

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly a decade since the last film from Gore Verbinski, 2016’s A Cure for Wellness, but after being attached to a handful of projects, the director is finally looking to return. Sam Rockwell, Haley...

Update: As we predicted, Emma Stone will reunite with Yorgo Lanthimos for the film in a supporting role, Variety reports. Following up Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos already has another film in the can with The post Yorgos Lanthimos Sets Next...

The memes won’t let you forget, but 2019 was half a decade ago. That was also the year Olivier Assayas’ Wasp Network––an odd return to the realm of his TV series Carlos, and subsequently picked up by Narcos-era Netflix––premiered at...