The Film Stage

Dream Team Trailer: Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn Concoct a Soft-Core Fever Dream
||
Following their singular take on the Western genre with Two Plains and a Fancy, filmmakers Lev Kalman & Whitney Horn returned to the festival circuit earlier this year with Dream Team, an absurdist homage to ’90s basic-cable TV thrillers. Starring...
continue reading
Exclusive Trailer for Dreaming Dogs Examines a Human-Canine Relationship in the Shadows of Moscow
||
Following up their fascinating 2019 feature Space Dogs, which explored street dogs in Russia while telling a larger story about the first living being to be sent to space, Laika the canine, directors Elsa Kremser and Levin Peter are back...
continue reading
Recommended New Books on Filmmaking: Brian De Palma, Agnès Varda, Wes Craven, and Movies for Kids
||
It seems appropriate to read about some of our greatest filmmakers during the fall. (Festival season! Prestige pics! Megalopolis mania!) Plus, a guide to cinema for kiddos from A24, a look at one of Schwarzenegger’s most fun flicks, and lots...
continue reading
“I Want It to Feel as Real as a Documentary”: Sean Baker on Anora, Editing Breaks, and Old-School Camera Tricks
||
Sean Baker has been making films for nearly 25 years. With Anora, his Palme d’Or winner following the journey of a stripper from Brooklyn, he’s ascended further into popular culture. Baker isn’t a mainstream filmmaker, though, instead thriving in the...
continue reading
November on the Criterion Channel Includes Catherine Breillat, Ida Lupino, Med Hondo, David Bowie & More
||
With Janus possessing the much-needed restorations, Catherine Breillat is getting her biggest-ever spotlight in November’s Criterion Channel series spanning 1976’s A Real Young Girl to 2004’s Anatomy of Hell––just one of numerous retrospectives arriving next month. They’re also spotlighting Ida...
continue reading
Carry-On Trailer: Jaume Collet-Serra Finally Returns to the B-Movie
||
After getting sucked into the Dwayne Johnson abyss of tentpole filmmaking, Jaume Collet-Serra is getting back to what he knows best: thrillingly calibrated B-movies. Next spring will see the theatrical release of his Danielle Deadwyler-led horror thriller The Woman in...
continue reading
Kiyoshi Kurosawa on His Major Year of Cloud, Chime, and Serpent’s Path
||
Every year is a good year to admire Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose filmography runs far and deep enough to essentially guarantee you’ve yet to discover something wondrous. 2024 is of particular note, though: it’s brought Cloud, a thrilling detour into action...
continue reading
Elaine May’s Crackpot, Starring Dakota Johnson and Sebastian Stan, Needs an Insurance Director to Move Ahead
||
After many years of radio silence on Elaine May’s Crackpot, a comedy starring Dakota Johnson that was planned to be the 92-year-old filmmaker’s fifth and final directorial feature, we finally got an update earlier this year. During the Madame Web...
continue reading
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl Trailer: Aardman Animations Returns This Winter
||
While Aardman creations Wallace and Gromit have seen their universe expanded with Shaun the Sheep films and even videogames, they haven’t been prominent in a proper feature film since 2005’s The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. That is now about to...
continue reading
NYFF Review: Apocalypse in the Tropics is an Exposé of Brazil’s Politically Active Religious Right
||
Five years, the closest presidential election in Brazilian history, and one insurrection after her last examination of Brazil’s tumultuous socio-political sphere, Petra Costa––the brilliant documentarian behind Elena and The Edge of Democracy––hones in on Jair Bolsonaro, the radical evangelical right...
continue reading