The Film Stage Presents

The Film Stage Presents

Subscribe for conversations presented by The Film Stage, your spotlight on cinema since 2008.

Episodes

July 3, 2025 153 mins
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 on the day this episode is publish...
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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 movie can come to putting us back in...
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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 start in ambient, atonal sounds that...
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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 deceivingly simple and incredibly effecti...
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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 output. (To say nothing of a certain be...
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June 13, 2025 37 mins
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 participates in) the horrific doings of S...
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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 Gosling’s television career as a young ...
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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 talk about Clint’s Casper cameo an...
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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 theaters' respective programmers, Ale...
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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.  It’s a day to celebrate! We discuss the legend Maggie Cheung! Our B-Sides include Lost Romance (a.k.a. Story of Rose), Full Moon in New York, Green Snake, and Sausalito. Our esteemed guest for this episode is Nick Newman, host of the Emulsion podcast for The Film Stage. We talk ...
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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 the great Debra Winger! Our B-Sides include Legal Eagles, Betrayed, The Sheltering Sky, and Forget Paris. Our guest is the inestimable Murtada Elfadl, Culture Writer, Critic, and Film Curator. We discuss Winger’s stratospheric rise to stardom, her indescribab...
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Amalia Ulman has followed El Planeta, one of this decade's most auspicious debuts, with the equal-parts caustic and sincere Magic Farm. With its limited release beginning today, Nick Newman had the fortune of speaking with her and Chloë Sevigny in an interview that highlights the particular relationship between a writer-director-actor and her co-star.
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Hello everybody and welcome to The B-Side podcast for The Film Stage, here we talk about movie stars; not the films that made them famous or kept them famous, but the ones they made in between! And today, with The Accountant 2 out in theaters, we thought we’d revisit our episode on the B-Sides of Ben Affleck! Originally recorded in March 2020, at the time of the release of The Way Back, our friend Marie Bardi joins us to talk abo...
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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 talk about two American icons: Joel and Ethan Coen. Our guest is an icon all his own: Stephen Sajdak from the We Hate Movies podcast! We discuss the B-Sides The Hudsucker Proxy, The Man Who Wasn't There, Intolerable Cruelty, and Burn After Reading. There’s also time ...
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Alexander Horwath's Henry Fonda for President stands among the most notable releases of a still-young year, is certainly the most lauded essay film in recent memory, and was assuredly of personal interest when my friend Zach Lewis offered his approval. As adventurous and open-minded a cinephile as any I know, Zach has equal-parts interest in both the films of Henry Fonda and essayistic, landscape-centered cinema––some Thom Anderson...
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An essential document of a moment in time for a story very much still unfolding, The Encampments is a thorough, engrossing portrait of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Beginning in April 2024, the protest was formed by Columbia University students who called for their university to divest from U.S. and Israeli weapons companies that are aiding in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of Palestinian people. Following an opening week...
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The restoration and release of Shinji Somai's Love Hotel is no small occasion, and dovetails nicely with this show's ambition to speak with people outside the well-known confines of film culture. Thus this new episode is an interview with Edward McCarry, whose work at Cinema Guild has made the Japanese master, by leagues and bounds, more accessible than was ever thought possible. In our conversation, McCarry shares his passion for ...
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April 1, 2025 128 mins
In honor of the legendary Val Kilmer, who has passed away at the age of 65, we're sharing The B-Side's episode from 2022 discussing his career and most overlooked films. Subscribe to The B-Side: https://pod.link/520164968 See the original description below: Today, we discuss one of the most intriguing actors of his generation: Val Kilmer! To tackle such an enigma, we bring in the legendary Katie Walsh! A must-follow on Twitter,...
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This week consecrates a major turn in the 50-year career of Alan Rudolph, which began as an assistant to and screenwriter for Robert Altman before transitioning into decades writing and directing original, romantic, occasionally unnerving American cinema at a time parallel to (if never quite reaching the fame or acclaim of) Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford Coppola, Terrence Malick, and David Lynch. Th...
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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 talk about two legends: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger! Our B-Sides include I Know Where I’m Going!, The Small Back Room, Gone to Earth, and The Elusive Pimpernel. Our guest is the legend Katie Walsh, podcaster and film critic at the Tribune News Service & LA T...
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