What to Watch: "Rebel Ridge"/ IFFBoston's Fall Focus Guide

I caught up recently and far too belatedly with “Rebel Ridge” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐), which debuted on Netflix in September and promptly took over the top spot. There’s been some online angry response from action fans who’ve gone into this revenge thriller expecting the high body count typical for the genre and have come out cheesed that – spoiler alert – nobody dies. A number of characters get seriously hurt, true, but this represents writer-director Jeremy Saulnier messing with audience’s heads yet again. His 2013 breakthrough “Blue Ruin” was a startling southern-fried art-house drama whose violence erupted in jagged, unexpected spurts, and Saulnier’s follow-up, “Green Room” (2015), is just one of the best, most hellacious suspense freak-outs of the new century – taut, smart, funny and scary as hell, with the added bonus of Sir Patrick Stewart as a back-country neo-Nazi gang leader.

After all that bloodletting, one might approach “Rebel Ridge” with caution, but while the new movie covers similar thematic ground as the earlier work – a loner passing through a small southern town falls afoul of a crooked police force and has to think and fight his way out – it errs on the side of slowly-built tension and strategizing rather than straight-up ass-kickery.

Aaron Pierre plays the loner – the “Underground Railroad” actor stepped in after John Boyega had to bow out of the production – and Don Johnson plays the town sheriff with a good-old-boy grin and cold, dead eyes. A special treat is AnnaSophia Robb, the one-time kid star of “Bridge to Terebethia” and “Because of Winn-Dixie,” as the sole local in the hero’s corner – Robb has a wary, spectral decency all her own. And Pierre is fantastic as a blue-eyed Black Marine veteran in a white cracker town, barely raising his voice above a whisper as he catalogues the crimes a penny-ante police department – and, implicitly, white America – is capable of.

“Rebel Ridge” isn’t up there with Saulnier’s earlier films – it just doesn’t have their force of originality – but it’s still something rare in the commercial movie landscape: A work of pure professionalism behind the camera and in front of it. Someone give this man a real budget and cut him loose, please.

Another recommended Netflix offering, premiering today, is “Woman of the Hour” (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2), the first film to be directed by actress Anna Kendrick and a deft, well-acted tale of true-life creepiness and threat. It’s based on the actual case of a serial killer, Rodney Alcala (Daniel Zovatto), who appeared on “The Dating Game” in 1978 as a contestant, but, really, it’s about the bachelorette who appeared opposite him (Kendrick) and the fear every woman carries inside her that any smiling stranger could turn out to be her worst nightmare. My Washington Post review is below the paywall, along with reviews for Guy Maddin’s “Rumours” (⭐ ⭐ 1/2) and the wan romantic drama “We Live in Time” (⭐ ⭐).

The Independent Film Festival of Boston has just announced the line-up for its 10th annual Fall Focus and, as usual, programmers Brian Tamm and Nancy Campbell have done yeoman’s work in bringing some of 2024’s and 2025’s best to local screens ahead of their theatrical release.  The dates for this year’s Fall Focus are Thursday October 31 through Monday November 4, and all screenings are at Cambridge’s legendary Brattle Theatre except for the closing night screening of “The Brutalist,” which will be shown in 70mm at the Somerville and, if possible, should be seen that way)

 Through the magic of total coincidence, I’ve seen most of this year’s Fall Focus offerings and can testify that this is one of the strongest slates the programmers have fielded. If you’re in the Greater Boston area, do your level best to patronize this, the autumn installment of our city’s best film fest, and if you live elsewhere, keep an eye out for these excellent films when they come to your town.

Here's the schedule and ticket-buying link, with release dates noted and some kibitzing from yours truly. Film titles are hot-linked to their trailers where possible.

Thursday (Oct 31):

7:00pm NIGHTBITCH – From the novel by Rachel Yoder. Amy Adams (above) plays the exhausted mother of a toddler, with fantasies of freedom that involve transforming into a dog and running with the pack. Directed by Marielle Heller (“The Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”), with Adams at her feral best, Scoot McNairy as her befuddled husband, the return of Jessica Harper, and some curiously pulled punches in the home stretch. (⭐ ⭐ ⭐) (In theaters December 6.)

 9:00pm IT’S NOT ME – I haven’t seen this yet, but it features the brilliantly unhinged director Leos Carax (“Holy Motors,” “Annette”) spelunking through his own filmography, and that’s good enough for me. (Theatrical release TBA)

 Friday (Nov 1):

6:30pm EEPHUS – IFFBoston is always good at finding New England content, and this sounds like a winner: The final game of a small town amateur baseball team before their stadium is demolished. Directed by the fine cinematographer Carson Lund (“Ham on Rye”), filmed in Douglas, MA, and featuring acting appearances by baseball great Bill “Spaceman” Lee as himself and documentary legend Frederick Wiseman. (In theaters March 2025.)

9:00pm DEVO – A highly enjoyable rock bio-doc about the “Whip It” boys, tracing their beginnings back to the early 70s. Bet you didn’t know the band was formed in response to the killings at Kent State, which founding members Gerard Casale and Bob Lewis witnessed and which prompted their theory of human de-evolution. They have yet to be proven wrong. (⭐ ⭐ ⭐) (Theatrical release TBA)

 Saturday (Nov 2):

12:00pm THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG -- A loving husband and father of two daughters (Missagh Zareh) is promoted to the post of judicial investigator just as the 2022 mass protests over the death of Mahsa Amini gather force. Mohammad Rasalouf directs a powerful story of a family’s disintegration under the pressures of the Iranian theocracy, with the narrative an allegory in miniature of life under totalitarian misogny. A nail-biter. (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) (In theaters November 27.)

3:15pm ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT -- A poetic, almost novelistic drama, slow but sure, about two Mumbai nurses, roommates in the city’s crushing bustle, who clash and then deepen their bond during a visit to the countryside. Writer-director Payal Kapadia keeps the pace attuned to the women’s inner lives while capturing the sounds and colors of the outer world with ecstatic wonder. It’s a movie alive with a luminescence Virginia Woolf might recognize. (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) (In theaters November 15.)

6:00pm ON BECOMING A GUINEA FOWL – A new film from Zambia’s Rungano Nyoni (“I Am Not a Witch”), about a young woman unearthing her family’s dark secrets. The director’s daring mix of black comedy, magical-realist drama, and social commentary made it a buzz film at Cannes and Toronto. (In theaters December 13.)

8:00pm BIRD – Another Andrea Arnold movie, another beleaguered young British woman to cherish and drive everyone around her mad. It’s Arnold’s first dramatic feature since “American Honey” in 2016 and first narrative work since TV’s “Big Little Lies.” (In theaters November 8.)

Sunday (Nov 3):

12:00pm FLOW – Animals gather to find dry land after a great flood in this much-praised animated film from Latvia. (In theaters November 22.)

1:45pm NICKEL BOYS – RaMell Ross’s adaptation of the Colson Whitehead novel is one of the year’s best films, a heartbreaking present-tense drama of past American sins, told in a POV camera style that shouldn’t work over the long haul but does. A movie told with unblinking poetic compassion. (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐) (In theaters December 13.)

4:30pm GAUCHO GAUCHO – From the directors of “The Truffle Hunters,” another documentary look at a species of human headed toward extinction: The cowboys and cowgirls of Argentina’s cattle country. Shot in lustrous black and white, this has been a festival buzz film all year long. (In theaters October 25.)

6:30pm HARD TRUTHS – New Mike Leigh! Marianne Jean-Baptiste is astounding as a woman whose vitriolic anger toward the world masks a profound sadness whose wellsprings remain a mystery. A rich portrait of London’s middle-class Black community, with warm supporting performances and a gorgeous string score. (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) (In theaters December 6.)

8:30pm A REAL PAIN – Jesse Eisenberg (who also wrote and directed) and Kieran Culkin (above) play two mismatched American cousins on a Holocaust tour of Poland in a terrific human comedy that was one of my favorite Sundance experiences of 2024. Culkin especially knocks it out of the park in a role that’s the Chaotic Good to Roman Roy’s Chaotic Evil. (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐) (In theaters November 1.)

 Monday (Nov 4):

6:30pm THE BRUTALIST – Actor-turned-director Brady Corbet (“Vox Lux”) goes for broke with a three-and-a-half hour epic about a visionary architect (Adrien Brody), a Hungarian refugee in post-WWII America, who tries to build a rich man’s dream and make it his own. Steadily engrossing, rich in incident and atmosphere, it explores the ways a country can offer newcomers opportunity while denying them acceptance. With Guy Pearce, Felicity Jones and a rapturous score by Daniel Blumburg. (⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 1/2) (In theaters December 20.)

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