The Film Stage Presents

A world-cinema fixture who's earned the support of Martin Scorsese, M. Night Shyamalan, Olivier Assayas, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Béla Tarr, Claire Denis, Christian Petzold, Tilda Swinton, and Ryusuke Hamaguchi––among many others––Carlo Chatrian reshaped the festival landscape with his work as artistic director of the Locarno Film Festival and Berlinale, his influence such that an abdication of...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.  Today we discuss David Cronenberg, one of the truly great Canadian geniuses and the filmmaker credited with the advent of “body horror” (a distinction he bristles against, for what it’s worth). Our B-Sides today include Fast Company, The Broo...

Given her work in and around cinema, it’s no surprise that Stephanie LaCava would write a novel that is, no small feat, cinematic. Said novel is Nymph, a slim and elliptical and fully satisfying character piece about a young woman, Bathory––called “Bat” for short––whose parents’ strange lifestyle, either involving spy craft or assassinations or just being out-and-out weirdos, brings her down dark...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we talk about a performer that we lost far too soon: Bill Paxton. Our B-Sides today include Brain Dead, Indian Summer, Traveller, and Frailty. Our guest is Billy Ray Brewton, and we cover a lot of ground. We dive into Paxton’s Roger Corman o...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.  Today we talk about maybe the greatest actor who ever lived: Philip Seymour Hoffman. But seriously, did Hoffman ever give a bad performance? We talk about it! Conor and I are back and our Philip Seymour Hoffman B-Sides are Leap of Faith, Owning M...

Ed Wood died the better part of a half-century ago, and to this day his reputation as the world's worst filmmaker persists. Even in this era when seemingly everything can be reclaimed, few have made the effort for Plan 9 from Outer Space, Glen or Glenda, or Night of the Ghouls, making all the more compelling a new book that does so without necessarily making the case for Wood as a strictly speakin...

If you live in New York and care about movies, the beginning of the New York Film Festival—this year, specifically, on Friday, September 26—is perhaps the most exciting moment of any year. Though he served on the committee for a number of years, since 2020, Dennis Lim has shepherded the festival, his dispensation as a journalist and critic carrying naturally to his inclinations as a programmer. On...

In remembrance of the legendary Robert Redford, we're resharing this conversation from 2024 on his extraordinary career and most overlooked performances. Welcome to The B-Side, from The Film Stage. Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we talk about the movie star. The person who if you looked up “mov...

With exposure to Brazilian cinema being so pitiful, I thought it would be past due to host both an episode and screening that put a bit of spotlight on their rich cinematic history. One of my favorite films I’ve seen in recent years is Carlos Reichenbach’s Movie Dementia, which is both the cinema-induced madness its title suggests and a gritty view of national disaffection circa the 1980s––think G...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Today we discuss John Frankenheimer, a true expert of the craft and a man who could make any kind of film. Our B-Sides today include Prophecy, 52 Pick-Up, Dead Bang, and the HBO Film Against the Wall (for which Frankenheimer won an Emmy!) Our...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars, movie directors, and sometimes––sometimes––movie writers! Today, we speak with author and screenwriter Jordan Harper, whose novel She Rides Shotgun got made into a movie of the same name, directed by Nick Rowland and starring Taron Egerton and Ana Sophia Heger. The film is in theaters this Friday, August 1, 2025. We spoke with Harper about ada...

Few people have contributed more to cinema and cinephilia in the last 50 years than Dave Kehr. He’d have some claim to this title solely as a major critical voice, his work remaining currency decades hence––just look at the popular Not Dave Kehr Letterboxd account for a symbol of his enduring prominence. As a film curator at the Museum of Modern Art, however, Kehr has emboldened one of the world’s...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars, movie directors, and sometimes - sometimes - the companies that made the movies those stars and directors made! We were lucky to speak with Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler of Killer Films in honor of Metrograph’s 30th Anniversary program, with screenings starting on August 2, 2025. Vachon and Koffler speak on curating the celebratory progr...

You'd have to be very bad at interviews, or really just conversations, to not get something from Abel Ferrara, who's the perfect combination of endearing and pugnacious, amenable to ideas while unable to entertain even a hint of bullshit. He's especially verbose discussing Turn in the Wound, his most recent documentary, which premiered at last year’s Berlinale and is now streaming on the Criterion...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars and movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between. Sometimes we are lucky enough to even speak with them about their work. And sometimes, they are both a movie star and a movie director. Today that’s Embeth Davidtz, director of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, now in theater...

Raise the subject of documentaries about filmmaking and you'll probably first go to Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse. Or the film you’re thinking about instead was directed by somebody was thinking about Hearts of Darkness. Or, assuming the film came out earlier, it was perhaps directed by someone who later saw Hearts of Darkness and wishes they made a film as good. Which is no disresp...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we sometimes talk about movie stars! We sometimes talk about movie directors! Today, we talk about both! Specifically, the B-Sides of the Mission: Impossible franchise. It’s just Conor and I today folks, waxing poetic on Tom Cruise’s legendary franchise and the B-Sides that we were inspired to discuss. We’ve chosen one for each of the Mission movies. It’s also July 3rd...

Perhaps no line of dialogue better encapsulates lived experience than this bon mot offered by John Huston’s Noah Cross: “Of course I'm respectable. I'm old! Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” I thought about this line––granted, a line I think about at least once a week––while watching Alex Ross Perry’s Videoheaven, which is perhaps the closet a mo...

When people call music cinematic, I think they just mean it sounds like it could be in a movie. About which, fair: being in a movie would do so. But the term is a little frivolous and unevocative. So take me at my word when I say U.S. Girls, the band fronted by American ex-pat Meg Remy, evokes such in its grand, powerful, barreling, vivid sound. I’ve loved her music for years––a super-aggressive s...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie directors! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.  Today we discuss Mike Leigh, one of our greatest living filmmakers. Born in England in 1943, Leigh remains an artist for the everyday person more than most. And this descriptor is quite reductive, as the writer/director’s aesthetic is deceivi...

I've spent my offline hours producing The Jag, a new play that runs from June 21 to July 6 at the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research. Even without some of my fingerprints, this makes a curiously cinema-centered creative team: directed by Paul Felten (Slow Machine) and written by Robin Schavoir (The Plagiarists), it combines the lo-fi grittiness and observant humor that have defined either's outp...

The release of a new Tom Cruise film is less about the film than it is about Tom Cruise. Ceaseless junket and red-carpet interviews with supposed journalists who were perhaps invented on the spot to ask him questions, clips of these interviews that quickly go viral, endless rankings of the movies, and between all of it the… acknowledgement, perhaps, that Cruise is connected to (or currently partic...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.  Today we return to one of our earlier subjects: Ryan Gosling! Our B-Sides are The Ides of March, Gangster Squad, Only God Forgives, and First Man. Our guest is our dear friend Cory Everett, creator of Cinephile: A Card Game!  We talk about Goslin...

Welcome to The B-Side! Here we talk about movie stars! Not the movies that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones that they made in between.  Today we discuss Clint Eastwood, the director and the movie star. Our B-Sides are Breezy, White Hunter Black Heart, Blood Work, Flags of Our Fathers, and The Mule. Our guest is the impeccable Mitchell Beaupre, Managing Editor at Letterboxd.  We t...

In a city where the rents are too high, the subways are too slow, and morale barely hovers above cope, repertory options might make such troubles worthwhile. So one thinks while looking over Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us, a career-spanning, 35mm-rich, two-cinema retrospective that began last weekend at Japan Society and will continue at Metrograph. It was my pleasure to sit down with those th...