‘Chop Shop’: New York Neorealism in the Shadow of Shea
The ugliest part of Queens — Willets Point, or “The Iron Triangle” — never looked so stunning as it does in Ramin Bahrani’s neo–New York–realist film. One of this city’s most assured and confident young directors, Bahrani takes a classic, street-romantic story — two young kids scrabbling to make a living in a junkyard of auto parts — and pulls astonishing performances from his debut actors. David Edelstein, for one, called it a “low-budget vérité triumph.”

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