Michael Frank

The hook for Hungarian writer/director Lili Horvát’s second feature doesn’t lack intrigue. Following a doctor who returns back home to Budapest after a chance, love-inducing meeting with another at a surgical conference, Preparations to be Together for an Unknown Period of Time––a mouthful of a title for the mystery-first drama––lives in the grey areas of the workplace, relationships, and loneliness. Once Vizy Márta (Natasa Stork) arrives to meet her hopeful-lover, Drexler János (Viktor Bodó)...

From The Bourne Identity to Mr. & Mrs. Smith to Edge of Tomorrow, Doug Liman’s scale has come a long way since his smaller-scale breakouts Swingers and Go. With Locked Down, the director’s filmmaking style is pared down once again, focused on a couple quarreling during the COVID-19 lockdown in London. Reminding us he’s more than just an action or franchise director, Liman’s latest finds him going back to his roots, drawing eyeballs with a stacked cast led by Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor...

Rob Christopher
Years aren't relevant any more, if they ever were. Truth is truth. My top ten first views of 2020:
CAMERAPERSON (2016, Kirsten Johnson)
DON'T THINK I'VE FORGOTTEN: CAMBODIA'S LOST ROCK'N'ROLL (2014, John Pirozzi)
FIRST COW (2019, Kelly Reichardt)
I'M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS (2020, Charlie Kaufman)
JASPER MALL (2020, Brett Whitcomb & Bradford Thomason)
THE LONG WALK (2019, Mattie Do)
PARASITE (2019, Bong Joon-ho)
QUEEN & SLIM (2019, Melina Matsoukas)
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY (20...

If you have followed the basketball world in the 21st century, you know Tony Parker’s name. You know he’s a great player that became a central figure in the San Antonio Spurs dynasty that lasted the better part of a decade. Parker slowly but surely became one of the best French basketball players of all time, becoming a household product, a Finals MVP, and a 4-time NBA Champion. Netflix’s new documentary, Tony Parker: The Final Shot, doesn’t change any of that, nor does it investigate more di...

After highlighting 40 films we can guarantee are worth seeing this year and films we hope will get U.S. distribution, it’s time we venture into the unknown. Due to all the pandemic-related delays, our most-anticipated list this year may ring familiar to those who follow our coverage, but there’s still plenty of currently under-the-radar movies that will hopefully make a mark in 2021.
While the majority might not have a set release–let alone any confirmed festival premiere–most have wrapped pr...

Let’s face it, the pandemic has changed everything, including the way we live and the way we consume entertainment. With most cinemas still shutting down, leaving us stuck at home with nothing much to do, TV has become our number one companion throughout 2020. But it’s not entirely a bad thing, most especially considering the big leap that TV writers and creators have been making for years. From bonkers horror like Lovecraft Country to inspiring comedy like The Good Place, TV has offered us p...

As we've done every December, we asked the writers of RogerEbert.com to pick a performance they particularly loved from the just-passed year of film. The submissions ranged from the performers who are picking up awards buzz to a group of actors and actresses who may not be getting as much as attention as they deserve. The requirement here was just to pick one performance to write about and we limited the entire piece to one performance per film, so the feature below is in no way comprehensive...

For our most comprehensive year-end feature we’re providing a cumulative look at The Film Stage’s favorite films of 2020. We’ve asked contributors to compile ten-best lists with five honorable mentions—a selection of those personal lists will be shared in the coming days—and after tallying votes, a top 50 has been assembled.
It should be noted that, unlike our other year-end features, we placed no requirement on a selection being a U.S theatrical release, so you may see some repeats from last...

Our year-end coverage continues with a look at the best performances of the year. Rather than divide categories into supporting or lead or by gender, we’ve written about our thirty favorite performances from 2020, period. (A few more, if you add some groupings we couldn’t leave out.) Check out our countdown below and start watching the ones you’ve missed here.
30. Frances McDormand (Nomadland)
Frances McDormand’s work in Nomadland is all about isolation, While she shines in the communal seque...

“A cinematographer is a visual psychiatrist–moving an audience through a movie […] making them think the way you want them to think, painting pictures in the dark,” said the late, great Gordon Willis. As we continue our year-end coverage, one aspect we must highlight is, indeed, cinematography. From talented newcomers to seasoned professionals, we’ve rounded up the examples that have most impressed us this year. Check out our rundown below.
An Easy Girl (Georges Lechaptois)
The French Riviera...

10 series that made sheltering in place a little easier.
Did we watch more TV this year than last year? Or even, perhaps, more than we’ve ever watched before? I don’t know. Probably. It might not be useful to think back on our former selves before we were slumped over couches for months on end, living in stained sweatpants long after the excitement of sourdough baking wore off, the only novelty being our newest patterned mask hanging from a doorknob.
Nobody had a good year, and we need not pr...

On Monday, we released the RogerEbert.com consensus Top Ten Films of 2020, led by Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe: Lovers Rock.” Today, we dig deeper, presenting you with all submitted lists from our brilliant critics and independent contributors. There are over 200 films cited below as among the best of 2020, displaying both the diversity in quality at the cinema this year and the unique voices that cover it for our site. It's a huge collection of lists but it should give you an overall picture o...

The 10 movies that made us miss theaters most.
As if it wasn’t painful enough last year to look back on the 2018 filmgoer’s utopia that was Moviepass, 2020 has been considerably more of a struggle—not only can you not get into movies for free with a weird fake credit card anymore, but spending two hours in a theater could actually kill you and/or those around you. We’re lucky, however, that COVID waited until 2020, a year when streaming services’ production companies have caught up to and eve...