The Film Stage

Three decades on from Brian De Palma’s gleefully unhinged psychological thriller Raising Cain, John Lithgow has once again found a cinematic role to showcase his panache for exuding deranged evil. New Zealand director James Ashcroft’s The Rule of Jenny Pen,...

Wherever you call home, it’s hard to be invested in cinephile culture without a mind towards its health. It was hardly some casual choice when Sean Baker took time during an Oscar-acceptance speech to plea for greater attendance––with each year...

After decades of celebrated performances in Italian cinema and television, Paola Cortellesi made her directorial debut with There’s Still Tomorrow, a 1940s-set post-war drama that she also co-wrote and leads. Following the matriarch of a working-class family navigating a toxic...

After getting her start in collaborations with Derek Jarman, Sally Potter, and Joanna Hogg––and before she would breakthrough in films by Danny Boyle, Cameron Crowe, Spike Jonze, Jim Jarmusch, and more––Tilda Swinton made her U.S. debut with an erotic drama...

One of the pleasures of the Museum of Modern Art’s Luis Buñuel retrospective last year was my first-time viewing of Él, a wonderfully entertaining tale of obsession and a clear influence on Alfred Hitchcock for Vertigo. Janus Films will now...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. Anthology Film ArchivesA Volker Spengler retrospective brings three films by Fassbinder; films by Ozu and Pudovkin play in Essential Cinema. Museum of the Moving ImageSnubbed Forever continues with films by Bogdanovich and...

Of all the directors who made the jump from music videos to feature-directing during MTV’s ’90s peak, Michel Gondry is the sole name whose work hasn’t been able to fully escape from the shadow of early pop promos. His hyper-stylized...

Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we usually talk about movie stars and not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones they made in between. Today, however, we talk about Oscar...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here. La Cocina (Alonso Ruizpalacios) Egos are charred and tempers seared in La Cocina, a kitchen...

One of our most-anticipated films to premiere at TIFF last fall, The Assessment marked the directorial debut of Fleur Fortuné, who had previously helmed music videos for M83, The Avalanches, Lykke Li, Travis Scott, and more. The sci-fi drama, starring...