LaKeith Stanfield has emerged as one of the best actors working today. Hands down. No doubt about it. When he’s on the screen, he’s got … well, he’s got “it,” whatever “it” is. He’s got an acting style that we might have seen in the ’70s, when auteurs ruled the screen, with a unique grit and gravitas that’s impossible not to notice. Think of a movie like Knives Out (when I bring this movie up in the interview, Stanfield immediately says how much he wants to work with director Rian Johnson again), where there’s an entire all-star cast, by design, hamming it up for the camera. Yet there’s Stanfield, as the erstwhile detective, just doing what he does, laying the groundwork of a character we could all latch onto, surrounded by eccentric weirdos. It’s remarkable how he still stands out, even in a hyper-stylized situation like that. (TL;DR: No matter how good your movie might be, if you want your movie to be better, put LaKeith Stanfield in it.)