Editor-in-Chief of The Film Stage.
Four favs = last 4.5 or 5-star new-to-me watches.
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Rebel Ridge 2024
A ruthlessly efficient thriller fueled by boiling rage, Jeremy Saulnier’s Rebel Ridge wastes no time setting the stakes. Terry Richmond (Aaron Pierre) is listening to metal music on his headphones, biking into the fictional small town of Shelby Springs, Louisiana, when a police cruiser crashes into him, forcing a tumble to the ground. He sold his car and a stake in a restaurant he had. With the resulting $36K in cash, he was on his way to bail out a…
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Just the Two of Us 2023
A seemingly blissful union rapidly crumbles in Valérie Donzelli’s Just the Two of Us, a domestic abuse-drama presented as a harrowing-if-simplified psychological thriller from which escape seems near-hopeless. It’s impossible for Virginie Efira and Melvil Poupaud to give a bad performance; this drama certainly doesn’t break the streak. Yet Donzelli and Audrey Diwan’s black-and-white, overworked script is missing the kind of nuance each lead exudes in their physicality as they navigate a suffocating relationship where the smallest action or word…
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West Side Story 2021
Only Steven Spielberg could make a shot of someone standing in a puddle one of the most beautiful images of the year.
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