The Film Stage

Caught Stealing Review: Darren Aronofsky Blends a Zany Caper with His Customary Brutality
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Hank Thompson (Austin Butler) was born and bred San Francisco Giants baseball. Named after one of the most significant Giants in major league history––back when they were the New York Giants, a clever nod from writer Charlie Huston, who adapted...
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Telluride Review: This is Not a Drill Offers a Sharp Highlight of Climate Activists Who Still Fight
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About an hour into This is Not a Drill, the new documentary from director Oren Jacoby, comes a moment that is stark and unsettling. Sitting next to her daughter, Louisiana climate activist Roishetta Ozane asks what she thinks of the...
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Telluride Review: Ballad of a Small Player is a Delicious, Nasty Exuberance
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In Ballad of a Small Player, we are given the gift of Colin Farrell overdoing it. Nobody overdoes it like Colin Farrell, and to take this for granted is a disservice. Written by Rowan Joffé (based on Lawrence Osborne’s 2014...
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Telluride Review: Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere Features Great Performances Inside Stagnant Frames
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The line “you did the best you could” is spoken at a crucial moment in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. It’s a platitude often used as a band-aid to cover up all manner of sins. But here, in writer-director-producer Scott...
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Venice Review: Cover-Up Is the Most Important American Documentary of the Year
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Three years after Venice welcomed (and awarded the Golden Lion to) Laura Poitras’s documentary about artist and activist Nan Goldin, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, another filmic portrait by the Academy Award-winning director graces the Lido. Cover-Up, co-directed by Poitras...
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Venice Review: Luca Guadagnino’s After the Hunt Offers a Regressive, Unimaginative Take on Post-MeToo Era
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“It’s a fucking minefield, Alma,” the Dean of Humanities at Yale warns Julia Roberts’ Dr. Imhoff. Barely a few days have passed since her colleague, Hank (Andrew Garfield), has “crossed the line” with one of her students, Maggie (Ayo Edebiri),...
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Venice Review: Ghost Elephants is Werner Herzog’s Yearning, Materialized
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What opens Werner Herzog’s Ghost Elephants, even before we hear the German filmmaker’s distinctive cadence, is the National Geographic logo. While production credits are far from noteworthy in most cases, this one may stand out to the viewer by implying...
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Venice Review: Strange River Announces Jaume Claret Muxart as a Major Talent
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Traveling in a foreign land can be disorienting. Established routines lose their meaning. Unfamiliar sights, sounds, smells may trigger old memories or brand-new desires. Premiering in the Orizzonti sidebar of the 82nd Venice Film Festival, Catalan filmmaker Jaume Claret Muxart’s...
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First Teaser for Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother Arrives Ahead of Christmas Release
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Six years since The Dead Don’t Die (long enough for that film to now be underrated), Jim Jarmusch is back with Father Mother Sister Brother, which finds him returning to the episodic structure of Night on Earth and Coffee and...
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New to Streaming: It’s Never Over Jeff, Buckley, Together, She Rides Shotgun, Venice 2025 Shorts & More
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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. Emergent City (Kelly Anderson and Jay Arthur Sterrenberg) Full transparency: I’ve been to Sunset...
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