The Film Stage

Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala on The Devil’s Bath, Unhomely Houses, Depression, and Empathy
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It’s rare for a festival like the Berlinale to allow a genre film in its main competition, and this year it was Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s third feature, The Devil’s Bath, that stood out. The period horror film is...
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U.S. Trailer for Close Your Eyes Brings Víctor Erice’s Triumphant Return Stateside
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Despite being seen exclusively on the festival circuit, Víctor Erice’s first feature in 30 years, Close Your Eyes, ended up at #20 on our best-of-2023 list. One imagines it’ll land higher when we take stock of 2024: it’s finally getting...
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My Old Ass Trailer: Aubrey Plaza Gives Advice to a Younger Version of Herself in Sundance Comedy
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Premiering at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, Megan Park’s coming-of-age comedy My Old Ass has a bit of a light sci-fi twist. On her 18th birthday, Elliott (Maisy Stella) is visited by an older, 39-year-old version of herself...
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Sebastian Trailer: A Journalist Explores Sex Work for Research in Sundance Drama
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Premiering earlier this year at Sundance Film Festival, Sebastian marks the sophomore feature from writer/director Mikko Mäkelä (whose debut was the 2017 gay romance A Moment in the Reeds). Following a burgeoning young journalist who turns to sex work to...
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A Quiet Place: Day One Review: A Tender, Uneven Franchise Origin Story of Existential Despair
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For a movie so deeply focused on sound, there’s a bit of an arrhythmia to A Quiet Place: Day One. Michael Sarnoski directs his own screenplay, dabbling within this improbable sci-fi franchise to suit his interests. Despite the Pig director’s...
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A Realistic Coup of the U.S. Government is Attempted in First Trailer for War Game
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While thankfully the January 6 insurrection wasn’t successful in the intended coup of the United States government, the threats posed play out to another, far more disastrous conclusion with the new documentary War Game. Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber’s Sundance...
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Here Trailer: Robert Zemeckis Crafts a Single-Perspective Epic Spanning Centuries
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It was just yesterday we learned Robert Zemeckis was taking another ambitious formal gamble in his career with Here. His adaptation of Richard McGuire’s comic, which spans a single space from 500,957,406,073 BCE to the year 22,175 CE, was shot...
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MaXXXine Review: Ti West Takes a Self-Aware Victory Lap
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If knives weren’t already being sharpened for Ti West prior to MaXXXine––the third installment in his X series of exploitation throwbacks––they likely will be at the ready once discerning horror fans experience it. On the surface, this is West returning...
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Garrett Bradley’s Time Gets Sequel with Time II: Unfinished Business: Watch the First Trailer
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As we near the halfway point of the decade thus far, there’s still no better documentary to arrive than one that premiered in the first month of the 2020s. Garrett Bradley’s Oscar-nominated poetic masterpiece Time follows Sibil Fox Richardson, who had been...
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Robert Zemeckis’ Here Takes Place from a Single POV for Entire Runtime
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Writing about Robert Zemeckis’ Here in our 2024 preview, we noted the potential between source material and director: “it adapts Richard McGuire’s comic spanning a single space from 500,957,406,073 BCE to the year 22,175 CE, and set (somewhat) closer to...
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