The Film Stage

Venice Review: Jerry Lewis’ The Day the Clown Cried Emerges in From Darkness to Light
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“What if woody [sic] Allen had brain injury,” remarks the comic Adam Friedland in his rather direct Letterboxd review of Jerry Lewis’ The Ladies Man. Continuing a theme, Will Sloan also hails The Nutty Professor as a “profoundly strange object...
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Venice Review: Kevin Costner Is Going Strong With Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 2
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How blessed are we to have a whole six hours of Kevin Costner’s mythopoetic Horizon already make their way to (some) audiences, especially when this project has been on his wish list since 1988? I often try to demystify festival...
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TIFF Review: Joseph Kahn’s Ick is a Riotous, Satirical Take on the Creature Feature
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The world is ending and nobody cares in Ick, Joseph Kahn’s latest genre offering after 2017’s Bodied and 2011’s Detention. Despite only making four features in 20 years, Kahn is ubiquitous in pop culture from his background in directing music...
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TIFF Review: David Gordon Green’s Nutcrackers is a Frustratingly Contrived Affair
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David Gordon Green’s career is one of the most unpredictable in Hollywood. Since his masterful and celebrated debut George Washington, he’s not been shy about planting a flag in a wide variety of films––dramedies, gritty thrillers, franchise horror reboots, political...
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TIFF Review: Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night Has One Yearning for Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60
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“Can satire save the Republic?”— May 2017 cover story of The Atlantic featuring Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump “Mad TV would have done a Barron Trump School Shooter skit the week after Columbine. Donald would show up in a diaper...
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TIFF Review: Tim Robinson Masters Cringe In the Hysterically Funny Friendship
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The level of enjoyment audience members will have with Andrew DeYoung’s Friendship is tied directly to their tolerance for the humor of Tim Robinson. The star of the meme-inspiring Netflix series I Think You Should Leave has cultivated a devoted...
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TIFF Review: The Quiet Ones Orchestrates a Thrilling Heist
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When Kasper (Gustav Dyekjær Giese) learns his brother-in-law wants him to speak with a Moroccan friend, he knows what that conversation will entail. It probably wasn’t long ago that he’d jump at the chance, but he’s since found other means...
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TIFF Review: Souleymane’s Story Tells a Dardenne-Esque Political Fable with a Thriller’s Urgency
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Souleymane’s Story delivers a political fable with all the grit and urgency of a thriller. It follows a Guinean food-delivery driver (Abou Sangare, brilliant in his first screen role) who rides his bike through Paris’ busy streets with alarming haste....
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TIFF Review: Flow Suggests Classic Disney By Way of Emmanuel Lubezki
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Being a pet owner, depending on your personality, comes with a fair level of anxiety. For example: after leaving my apartment to go see the film I’m writing about, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I hadn’t shut my...
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First Trailer for Greg Jardin’s Sundance Hit It’s What’s Inside
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One of the Sundance breakouts this year was Greg Jardin’s directorial debut It’s What’s Inside. Starring Brittany O’Grady, James Morosini, Gavin Leatherwood, Nina Bloomgarden, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Reina Hardesty, Devon Terrell, and David Thompson, it follows a group of friends who...
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