The Film Stage

“I Want It to Feel as Real as a Documentary”: Sean Baker on Anora, Editing Breaks, and Old-School Camera Tricks
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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...
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November on the Criterion Channel Includes Catherine Breillat, Ida Lupino, Med Hondo, David Bowie & More
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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...
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Carry-On Trailer: Jaume Collet-Serra Finally Returns to the B-Movie
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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...
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Kiyoshi Kurosawa on His Major Year of Cloud, Chime, and Serpent’s Path
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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...
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Elaine May’s Crackpot, Starring Dakota Johnson and Sebastian Stan, Needs an Insurance Director to Move Ahead
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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...
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Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl Trailer: Aardman Animations Returns This Winter
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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...
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NYFF Review: Apocalypse in the Tropics is an Exposé of Brazil’s Politically Active Religious Right
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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...
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The Criterion Collection’s January Lineup Includes The Mother and the Whore, Akira Kurosawa, and Anthony Mann on 4K
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It’s October, which means Criterion’s already thinking about 2025. Their new year auspiciously starts with a 4K UHD release of Jean Eustache’s magnum opus The Mother and the Whore, featuring a new interview with Françoise Lebrun and a new conversation...
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The Best 2024 Fall Film Festival Premieres
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While there’s a few more fall film festivals popping up in the next month, the major ones are behind us, which means we have a strong sense of the films to have on your radar in the coming months and...
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BFI London Review: The Brothers Quay Find Stunning Textures In Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
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Timothy and Stephen Quay have developed an entirely unique style in the world of stop-motion animation: vigorously kinetic yet meticulously controlled; balletic in its interweaving of aural and visual rhythms; full of the sort of trivia and esoterica that fascinated...
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