The Film Stage

“Leave the light on. It’s easier for me to dream.” The opening shot of Việt and Nam, writer-director Trương Minh Quý’s sophomore film, is a feat of cinematic restraint. Nearly imperceivable white specs of dust begin to appear, few and...

After screening his latest film Caught by the Tides at the Busan International Film Festival, director Jia Zhang-ke met with the press, accompanied by his wife Zhao Tao. A frequent visitor to the BIFF, Jia started by saying he is...

Nickel Boys, RaMell Ross’ narrative feature debut, is the story of a stubborn world, resisting change. Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys, it’s an experimental rendition shooting mainly through POV. We meet our protagonist not by looking at him,...

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. Museum of Modern ArtAs the career-spanning Johnnie To retrospective continues, a Samuel L. Jackson series includes Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Jungle Fever on 35mm. BAMA Duras-Akerman double bill plays Sunday. Film...

Independent filmmaking duo Scott McGehee and David Siegel’s The Friend, their newest in a 30-year collaboration, is a dog movie. Or, more aptly, it’s a film about a dog and Iris (Naomi Watts), a woman who hates dogs. Iris inherits...

Beyond Joker: Folie à Deux (October 4) and Smile 2 (October 18), this month is light on studio power. The indies are surely champing at the bit to fill the gap with a slew of festival darlings getting their limited...

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. Babes (Pamela Adlon) Transitioning the naturalistic comic sensibilities that made Better Things a success, Pamela Adlon’s...

Premiering at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, It’s What’s Inside seemed to come a bit out of nowhere. Despite its prime positioning in the Midnight section during the first weekend of the fest, the high-concept thriller features no big...

When J. Hoberman placed game 6 of the 1986 World Series on his Village Voice year-end list, we had one of the first, most convincing attempts to enshrine live sports as cinema. And while a game can carry the compressed...

In what is almost surely the year’s biggest casting news, Daniel Day-Lewis has ended retirement for his own progeny. Focus Features have announced Anemone, which his son Ronan Day-Lewis, in a feature debut, is directing from a script that’s co-written...