The Film Stage

Note: This review was originally published as part of our 2025 Sundance coverage. Rabbit Trap opens in theaters on September 12. It’s always thrilling when a horror film explores the power and possibility of sound. Much modern horror is too...

Is the idea of a Claire Denis film changing? There was likely an image one formed in their head when that name emerged: elliptical, sexy, avant-garde. Yet recent works are suggesting a different direction, one far more direct and less...

While the only thing more hit-or-miss than directorial debuts are directorial debuts from actors, one of the more accomplished in recent memory is Harris Dickinson’s Urchin. The rather riveting character study follows a London man trapped in a cycle of...

“I’m done being a superhero.” An international movie star who’s become synonymous with her intergalactic onscreen persona in a wildly successful television show, Muriel (Kim Taff) has reached her creative breaking point. She confesses as much to her boyfriend Joe...

Sunfish (& Other Stories on Green Lake) is the kind of small film you hope to discover at a festival. Written and directed by Sierra Falconer in her feature debut, this lovely drama is built from her own personal history....

Described as the heart-warming tale of a farmer who saves and befriends an injured white stork in North Macedonia, Tamara Kotevska’s The Tale of Silyan is actually a harrowing, sadly resonant story about survival during an era of increasing wealth...

Coming off one of the very best films of the century thus far with The Beast, we’ve been waiting to see how Bertrand Bonello will follow up that time-jumping, decade-encapsulating masterwork. We got a hint this summer that his next...

You might wonder if you’re watching the wrong movie during the prologue to Ben Wheatley’s Normal. The setting is Japan, three Yakuza are being reprimanded by their boss, and blood is splattering against the walls. Then you recall the screenwriter...

To hear a story from Azrael (Stephen McKinley Henderson) is to know the full potential of an angel’s work. He doesn’t just worry about natural disasters or inspiring genius––he saves lives by reminding lost souls of their value. Gabriel (Keanu...

Stanley Kubrick, in one of the most famous director disses ever, remarked that the failing of his friend Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List was that the Holocaust was six million people being killed, while the film decided to make it about...