The Film Stage

2 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.

2 weeks ago | thefilmstage.com | Rory O'Connor

The new film from Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne is much like the others. The actors are mostly non-professional; the locations are real; the themes are sociological; the mood is often tense. The subject of their latest is unplanned pregnancies and the options made available for young French women who feel that their situation, whether exterior or interior, might not be suited for raising a child.

2 weeks ago | thefilmstage.com | Rory O'Connor

It’s a brisk March morning in Luxembourg and my conversation with Paul Laverty has turned to Cantona. “Remember that goal he scored, with Brian McClair?” A classic, I agree. “He did that lovely 1-2, looked up, dented the ball,” Laverty explains, whistling the arc, “and then just stood there and stuck out his chest. He was everything you could be.” I was curious how Laverty, who wrote Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric, in which Cantona played himself, had approached the player with the script.

2 weeks ago | thefilmstage.com | Rory O'Connor

Among the best things in The President’s Cake are the colors. There’s the deep red of a rooster’s comb as it peeks out from a young girl’s carrying pouch; there’s the white decorations that adorn her uncle’s blue car; and then there is the opening vista, in which a deep evening sky is disturbed by the roar of two American fighter jets. We’re somewhere in the ’90s, the country is Iraq, and the decorations are for its president, Saddam Hussein.

2 weeks ago | thefilmstage.com | Nick Newman

The last decade of cinema has brought no greater certification than Kiyoshi Kurosawa as Japan’s preeminent filmmaker. The thought occurs to me looking at the programming for Japan Society’s 2025 edition of Japan Cuts, sponsored by GU, running July 10—20, and North America’s foremost showcase for Japanese cinema that boasts four of his features––two new, two repertory, two named Serpent’s Path, and one on a head-spinningly rare 35mm print.