When you are the director who helped the likes of Jennifer Lawrence into stardom, actors will be drawn to you. But that doesn’t mean you have to capitalize on this and chug out movie after movie. Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone, Down to the Bone) certainly did not do this. Winter’s Bone, which launched Lawrence into the public eye with her first of, as of 2017, four Academy Award nominations, was released in 2010, but this is Granik’s first non-documentary film since then. And, for critics, it was worth the wait. At the time of this review, her new film Leave No Trace has a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. And, just as a recap, Rotten Tomatoes is an aggregate of critics’ reviews. So a 100% rating doesn’t mean that a critic thinks it’s a four-star movie. It just means she gives it a favorable review. And I’ll be the first to say that if I was a Rotten Tomatoes critic, I’m uncertain if that aggregate rating would still be 100%. Ultimately, I do fall on the side of giving this film a favorable review, but it is far from a great movie. Based on the trailer, I thought I was going to love Leave No Trace. However, I found it to be not just slow but boring. And I wanted to understand one of the two lead characters much more. There was a desire during the middle of the movie where I wanted to learn more. Unfortunately, it never quite quenched that thirst.
Continue reading Leave No Trace (2018) →