The Film Stage Show

Welcome, one and all, to the latest installment of The Film Stage Show! Today, Michael Snydel, Bill Graham and I are joined once again by Danielle Zimmerman to discuss the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Endgame. The Film Stage is supported by MUBI, a curated online cinema streaming a selection of exceptional independent, classic, and award-winning films from around the world. Each day, MUBI hand-picks a new gem and you have one month to watch it. Try it for free at mubi.com/filmstage.

Welcome, one and all, to the latest installment of The Film Stage Show! Today, Michael Snydel, Bill Graham and Brian Roan are joined by Lawrence Garcia to discuss Claire Denis's peculiar space drama High Life starring Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche. We are also now on Spotify and Stitcher! Enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor. The Film Stage is supported by MUBI, a curated online cinema streaming a selection of exceptional independent, classic, and award-winning films from around the world. Each day, MUBI hand-picks a new gem and you have one month to watch it. Try it for free at mubi.com/filmstage.

Welcome to The B-Side, a new podcast from The Film Stage where we explore movies starring established movie stars that flopped at the box office, have been forgotten by time, or remain hidden gems. These aren't the films that made them famous or kept them famous. These are the other ones. So strap in and listen close as we dive into the big swings and big misses from some of biggest names in the business. In the latest episode, Dan Mecca and Conor O'Donnell discuss the b-side to Matthew McConaughey's career, specifically the films he made in between How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and the beginning of The McConaissance, The Lincoln Lawyer.

Welcome back to Intermission, a spin-off podcast from The Film Stage Show. Led by yours truly, Michael Snydel, I invite one guest to discuss an arthouse, foreign, or experimental film of their choice. For our tenth episode, I talked to Cody Corrall, an editor at Filmcred and a regular contributor to Chicago Reader and Cine-file, about Antonio Campos’ polarizing 2016 character study Christine, which is available to stream on Netflix, Hulu, The Criterion Channel, and other locations. A dramatization of the real-life tragedy of Christine Chubbuck––a Sarasota, Florida TV news reporter who committed suicide on air in 1974––the film is notably less interested in that end than using that milieu to explore mental illness, exceptionalism, sexism, and performance. Unusually, one of two films in 2016 about Chubbuck (Robert Greene’s reflexively discomfiting study, Kate Plays Christine, approached the subject radically differently), Christine is a complicated proposition and easy to underestimate. There’s a whiff of prestige vanity to its construction and star-studded cast and more pointedly, exploitation, if you consider the impending fate of the main character. Those real-life events hang like the sword of Damocles over the whole film, but that’s both a reduction of its achievements and an easy way to slip into bad faith assumptions. Even with those occasional misgivings, Christine is a rich text to examine between Rebecca Hall’s lived-in awkwardness in the lead role to the ways that Campos’ fixation on routine illustrates her internal and external pressure. Buoyed by a supporting cast that feels both slyly archetypal (Michael C. Hall’s jock anchor who swears by transactional analysis, Tracy Letts’ sternly pragmatic boss) and slippery (J. Smith Cameron’s compassionate but unequipped mother, Maria Dizzia’s stalwart supporter); all of these character dynamics smartly sidestep any attempt to diagnose Christine or explain why she did what she did. Our podcast conversation began with discussing these many complementing and contradicting elements. But it soon changed into a very different conversation about our personal histories with journalism, illusions of objectivity, and how Christine dredged up so many of those feelings. Intermission episodes are shared exclusively with our Patreon community before being posted to The Film Stage Show's main feed. One can also enter our giveaways, get access to our private Slack channel, and support new episodes by becoming a Patreon contributor. For a limited time, all new Patreon supporters will receive a free Blu-ray/DVD. After becoming a contributor, e-mail [email protected] for an up-to-date list of available films. Intermission is supported by MUBI, a curated streaming service showcasing exceptional films from around the globe. Every day, MUBI premieres a new film. Whether it's a timeless classic, a cult favorite, or an acclaimed masterpiece — it’s guaranteed to be either a movie you’ve been dying to see or one you’ve never heard of before and there will always be something new to discover. Try it for free for 30 days at mubi.com/filmstage.

Ep. 300 - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom by The Film Stage Show