The Film Stage

Sean Baker, Miguel Gomes, Véréna Paravel, Laura Citarella, and Eduardo Williams Plot New Films

Sean Baker, Miguel Gomes, Véréna Paravel, Laura Citarella, and Eduardo Williams Plot New Films

Any film that earns you, personally, the greatest number of Oscars since Walt Disney is a tough act to follow, so one must admire Sean Baker’s lack of pretension in succeeding Anora with a tribute to one of the, let’s say, three least-reputable film genres: ’60s / ’70s Italian sex comedies. Speaking with Variety, the […]

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Berlinale Review: Tristan Forever Highlights a Jaded Doctor’s Search for Purpose

Berlinale Review: Tristan Forever Highlights a Jaded Doctor’s Search for Purpose

There’s a melancholy to Tobias Nölle and Loran Bonnardot’s Tristan Forever that is comforting. A lingering, existential question hangs over everything: where does one belong? In the film, a Parisian doctor (Bonnardot himself) decides to permanently move to the South Atlantic Ocean island Tristan da Cunha, one of the most remote places in the world. […]

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Berlinale Review: Mouse Offers a Tender Companion After Loss

Berlinale Review: Mouse Offers a Tender Companion After Loss

It’s the last day of junior high for Minnie (Katherine Mallen Kupferer) and her best friend Callie (Chloe Coleman); the veil of adulthood has never felt as thin as it does on that late-June morning in the car, blasting Michelle Branch’s 2002 pop hit “All You Wanted.” Branch belts “If you want to, I can […]

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Berlinale Review: We Are All Strangers Channels Edward Yang to Kitschy But Compelling Ends

Berlinale Review: We Are All Strangers Channels Edward Yang to Kitschy But Compelling Ends

The new film from Anthony Chen takes a minute to find its rhythm. For the first hour or so of its admittedly substantial runtime, I couldn’t help but wonder if an LLM, prompted to make the most normcore script imaginable, would be able to conjure a story of such modest simplicity. Stick with it a […]

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Berlinale Review: Alain Gomis’ Dao is a Riveting Family Saga

Berlinale Review: Alain Gomis’ Dao is a Riveting Family Saga

To belong to the diaspora is to inhabit a paradox: a state of in-betweenness, neither fully inside or outside one’s home and adoptive countries. Films trying to map that condition also tend to feel somewhat “suspended,” populated as they are by characters grappling with a double consciousness—“either I’m nobody,” Derek Walcott captured that limbo in […]

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Berlinale Review: Rosebush Pruning is a Maximalist, Muddled Attempt at Cinematic Transgression

Berlinale Review: Rosebush Pruning is a Maximalist, Muddled Attempt at Cinematic Transgression

Moulding cruel or nihilistic characters into darkly attractive protagonists requires a deceptively delicate touch. We’ve grown so used to seeing it done effortlessly that a movie like Rosebush Pruning can perhaps be some useful reminder of how difficult it is to pull off. The latest from Brazilian sensualist Karim Aïnouz (of Futuro Beach and The Invisible […]

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“We Cut 95% of It Out”: Matt Johnson on Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, Constant Re-Editing, and Season 3

“We Cut 95% of It Out”: Matt Johnson on Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, Constant Re-Editing, and Season 3

From its humble beginnings as a scrappy viral web series nearly two decades ago, Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol’s Groundhog Day-esque mission of attempting to book a show at Toronto’s Rivoli Theatre has now, two TV seasons on, reached the big screen in truly miraculous fashion. Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie sets the […]

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The Criterion Collection’s May Lineup Includes Akira Kurosawa, Bob Fosse, and Joachim Trier on 4K

The Criterion Collection’s May Lineup Includes Akira Kurosawa, Bob Fosse, and Joachim Trier on 4K

Every so often Criterion upgrades a title so old it is, in effect, new again. Case in point: Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, first put on DVD around the time this year’s college graduates were born, is coming to 4K this May. If it’s not quite one of his lesser-known works—certainly not on the same level […]

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First Look at Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Set for August Release

First Look at Jane Schoenbrun’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Set for August Release

After Jane Schoenbrun’s haunting, astounding second feature I Saw the TV Glow topped our list of the best films of 2024, we’ve been counting down the days for the release of their follow-up. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, which stars Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, has now been set for an August 7, […]

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NYC Weekend Watch: Diane Keaton, The Brown Bunny, 2001 In Cinema & More

NYC Weekend Watch: Diane Keaton, The Brown Bunny, 2001 In Cinema & More

NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. Film at Lincoln CenterA Diane Keaton tribute features films by Woody Allen, Warren Beatty, and Francis Ford Coppola on 35mm. Roxy CinemaValentine’s Day at the Roxy brings 35mm prints of Romeo + Juliet, The Brown Bunny, Crash, and Twilight. Museum of the Moving ImageA massive […]

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