The Film Stage

Rebuilding Review: A Somber Reflection on the Importance of Hope
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Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2025 Sundance coverage. Rebuilding opens in theaters on November 14. We can all feel lonely. Even if we’re constantly surrounded by people, we can find ourselves detached or isolated––lost in...
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Sirat Review: Oliver Laxe’s Desert Trance Is a Grand, Adventurous Achievement
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Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2025 Cannes coverage. Sirat has a one-week qualifying run in NY/LA starting November 14 and opens in 2026. For the French-Spanish filmmaker Oliver Laxe, a competition berth in Cannes has...
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Jay Kelly Review: Noah Baumbach Makes His Fellini Film
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Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2025 Telluride coverage. Jay Kelly opens in theaters on November 14 and arrives on Netflix on December 5. Let’s start here: Billy Crudup is one of our truly great actors....
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Left-Handed Girl Review: A Striking Drama Told Through a Child’s Eyes
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Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2025 BFI London coverage. Left-Handed Girl opens in theaters on November 14 and arrives on Netflix on November 28. The neon-lit alleyways of Taipei’s night markets have never looked quite...
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“Images Are Dead”: Oliver Laxe on Sirāt and Spirituality
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As music thumps across the desert landscape of Morocco’s Atlas Mountains and ravers give themselves over to the endless bass, whispers of World War III echo in the margins. In Sirāt, Oliver Laxe’s fourth feature, pinning down exactly what the...
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Mamoru Oshii’s Radical, Ethereal Angel’s Egg is an Anime Like No Other
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In order to best explain Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg––a stoic, ethereal vision quest of a film notorious among anime and cult enthusiasts for resisting explanation, and one which more readily invites comparisons to Cocteau, Tarkovsky, and Jodorowsky than other anime––it...
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Gore Verbinski Returns with First Trailer for Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
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After last directing a feature with 2016’s A Cure for Wellness, Gore Verbinski finally returned to the director’s chair nearly a decade later with Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. While originally set for a late January release, it’ll now...
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The Running Man Review: Edgar Wright’s First Pure Action Vehicle is a Partial Victory
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Edgar Wright has mostly stayed in the pocket of action cinema since Hot Fuzz paid loving homage to the bombastic genre in 2007. But because subsequent projects like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Baby Driver maintained the same comic...
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Timothée Chalamet Aims for Greatness in New Trailer for Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme
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One of the most electric viewing experiences of the year was seeing Josh Safdie unveil his long-awaited return to directing, Marty Supreme, as the secret screening of the 63rd New York Film Festival. Featuring Timothée Chalamet’s title character going through...
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“Not Everybody Has to Be Likable”: Stellan Skarsgård on Sentimental Value and Suffering
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On my last night at the Morelia International Film Festival, dinner took place at Lu, a restaurant specializing in Michoacán cuisine. Over rollos de jicama and tostada San Pancho, conversation ranged from TCM’s Eddie Muller on Dorothy B. Hughes, director...
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