Ethan Vestby

1 week ago | thefilmstage.com | Ethan Vestby

You can say that Danny Boyle was once the filmmaking avatar of Cool Britannia: a director who, at age 40, still managed to perfectly capture the zeitgeist of 20-year-olds, as seen in Trainspotting. In the span of time between then and 2017’s T2 Trainspotting, Boyle had won a Best Director Academy Award for a rather square crowd-pleaser and helmed the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics––he no longer had any claims to not being a sell-out.

3 weeks ago | thefilmstage.com | Ethan Vestby

Maybe it’s a bad sign when you can predict the exact moment a title card is going to drop. So is the case with Dangerous Animals, a new thriller-horror hybrid from the talented Australian director Sean Byrne. The Aussie first caught the attention of global genre fans with his clever teen horror film The Loved Ones on the festival circuit back in 2009; one hoped he’d live up to its promise and become one of our next B-movie greats.

1 month ago | thefilmstage.com | Ethan Vestby

Ever since Turn on the Bright Lights debuted in the summer of 2002, Interpol frontman Paul Banks has been the epicenter of cool. Trying his hand at a variety of musical projects––from solo albums to instrumental experimentations to, even, collaborations with RZA––he’s never not been trying new things.

1 month ago | thefilmstage.com | Ethan Vestby

Do you want someone to whisper into your ear or yell? In most cases, you’ll answer the former, but if the decibel level is at the point where you can barely hear––and might even be losing interest in what’s being said––you’ll reconsider. This is a succinct way of describing Black Tea, which maintains so low a tempo while having such an inevitable conclusion that you wonder what the intention, exactly, might’ve been.

1 month ago | thefilmstage.com | Ethan Vestby

The abyss stares back––that’s the overwhelming feeling of David Mamet’s new film Henry Johnson. It’s based on his play of the same name from 2023, and with both that date and Mamet’s recent public persona, one would probably have some assumptions about this story’s political bent. Watching the film, you’re reminded that we can come to some kind of mutual understanding with those on the other side.