The Film Stage

Despite July being a five-Friday month, I had fewer titles to choose from than June—the big-name releases hope to monopolize screens post-Independence Day. The Minions ride solo this weekend (save for Angel Studios) and Spider-Man slings his web in virtual...

While he had quite a deal of fun in I Love Boosters earlier this summer, Will Poulter’s next performance is one of his most impressively dramatic. Adam Meeks’ feature debut Union County, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year and...

After highlighting the best films from the first half of this year, it’s time to venture into the second leg of 2026 with July’s lineup. Topped by a sure-fire selection for my year-end list, there’s also a samurai yarn by...

For as great a place as Japanese cinema holds in cinephilia, its modern iteration is hardly paid justice in stateside distribution or exhibition. I’ve been pleased watching the screeners for 2026’s iteration of Japan Cuts (which we’ll be covering in...

The opening titles of The Best Summer give us the only context we need: following the shoot of Billy Madison in 1995, director Tamra Davis took a camcorder and joined then-husband (and Beastie Boy) Mike D as the band toured...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.  Today we discuss America’s Sweetheart: Julia Roberts! Our B-Sides include: I...

A full decade since The Neon Demon—with mega-length streaming projects Too Old to Die Young and Copenhagen Cowboy perhaps comprising a separate, wholly worthwhile career—Nicolas Winding Refn returned to feature filmmaking with Her Private Hell. Neon will give the feature a theatrical run just two...

One of the highest-grossing films in South Korean history upon its 2001 release, Kwak Jae-yong’s rom-com reinvention My Sassy Girl has now been restored in 4K from its original negative for its 25th anniversary. Set for a North American premiere...

My favorite discovery back at the 2024 New York Film Festival was Yashaddai Owens’ Jimmy, a jazzy, French New Wave-esque portrait imagining James Baldwin’s (Benny O. Arthur) arrival in Paris in November 1948. With a plethora of biographical dramas seemingly...

Alex Cox has made (reportedly) his final film: a Western adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s classic novel Dead Souls. The book follows a drifter in Tsarist Russia who travels from town to town collecting the names of serfs who’ve died since...