Leave No Trace

Yesterday I saw Leave No Trace, starring Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie.

Will (Foster) is a veteran suffering from PTSD, raising his teenage daughter in the woods of a public park outside Portland, Oregon. Tom (McKenzie) accepts this life with grace as it's all she knows. We assume mom has passed away, but she's only mentioned briefly, quite vaguely, so we're not sure.

When Tom gets spotted by a hiker, their life is exposed and social services relocates them to temporary housing on a farm. There, Tom begins to make friends with nearby kids her age and Will works on the owner's tree farm in exchange for lodging. Tom loves it and Will hates it.

After just a few weeks, Will insists they leave and soon enough, they're back to a transient lifestyle. For the first time Tom lets Will know that she was happy with the structure and stability of the farm life. Though it pains him to make her suffer because of his issues, that doesn't prevent him from caving and they continue to press on.

The film is both tender and excruciating to watch. This father and daughter are genuine friends, and their love runs deep. Tom has learned amazing survival skills from Will, but his unreasonable need to be off the grid is unfair to her and she comes to realize that. Though his actions make you angry, you feel for him and that's a testament to the pain that comes through Ben Foster's eyes in every scene.

Tom McKenzie is also convincing as a young girl who just wants more out of life, but doesn't want to hurt her father.

If you're looking for a film that moves along at a quiet, but important-to-the-story pace and also makes you re-think every homeless person you encounter, give this a chance. It may just bring perspective along with the tears.

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The Goonies

On Saturday, June 5, I saw The Goonies, starring Jeff Cohen and Josh Brolin.

As I nestled into a small Astoria, Oregon theater for this 25th anniversary screening, it had been only days since I last saw the film on DVD, but over 24 years since I'd seen it in a theater. I'm pleased to say it was just as magical for me at age 34 as it was for me at 10.

The story appeared strangely timely as our hero, Mikey (Sean Astin) and his brother Brand (Brolin) face the loss of their family home to foreclosure. The looming threat of papers being signed causes the kids to act fast in search of a treasure that could save them from moving. They achieve this by following an ancient map found in their attic with a host of their friends, who call themselves "The Goonies."

The iconic monoliths of Cannon Beach serve as their guides into the unknown, where they uncover a vicious crime family who is committing murders, and reveal clues from the treasure map one-by-one, putting them in a series of dangerous situations.

What sets the film apart from other kids-finding-treasures stories is the fact that the kids really talk like kids. It's a great credit to screenwriter Chris Columbus that they swear, discuss unimportant (yet vital at that age) topics, and form genuine bonds over old-fashioned pacts and crushes.

The movie is also heavy on comedy, provided mostly by Chunk (Cohen), a character known for exaggerating and eating. One scene where the bad guys are trying to torture him into talking is still one of the funniest, most believable 'kid' scenes in existence.

For those who have yet to see the film, I won't spoil it by discussing the ending, but will say the final beach scene still brings delightful chills to my spine.

What a pleasure it was to see that after all these years The Goonies remain timeless despite their 80s roots.

For more on The Goonies 25th Anniversary, visit Cinebanter.com.

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Wendy and Lucy

Tonight I saw Wendy and Lucy, starring Michelle Williams and Lucy.

Have you ever been in a situation where one bad thing happened and then another followed, and another, until you felt as if the whole universe was against you?

This is how you'll feel watching events unfold in the life of Wendy (Williams), a young girl from Indiana who is headed to Alaska to work in a Ketchikan cannery.

We first see her playing with her dog Lucy (Lucy) in the woods and learn she is in Oregon. After she wakes up to a security guard telling her she's not allowed to sleep on Walgreen's property, she realizes her car won't start. And thus begins her own personal spiral to hell.

With one bad choice, her world soon spins out of control and we're held emotionally hostage wanting so badly for it to all turn out okay for her. Why do we care? This is what makes the movie good: we have very few clues as to what put Wendy in this situation, yet her almost numb responses to each event make us unimaginably sympathetic. She seems like a decent person who is just down on her luck—and haven't we all been down on our luck at one point in our lives or another?

The film moves at a slow, quiet pace, but is never boring. The few supporting characters that emerge (the security guard, the mechanic, etc.) feel as though they're real people who we may actually encounter when we have car trouble ourselves; the dog is undeniably sweet.

And Michelle Williams amazing performance makes this very human story work.

See this movie—you'll painfully cringe at her misfortune while joyfully tearing up at the sight of the kindness she experiences.

Feast of Love

This morning I saw Feast of Love, starring Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear.

I liked this movie a lot more than most critics.

Set in my home city of Portland, Oregon, the story follows Professor Harry Stevenson (Freeman) as he observes his friends and neighbors falling in and out of love as they're guided by (or prisoners of) fate.

The tender relationship he maintains with his wife Esther (played refreshingly by Tell Me That You Love Me's Jane Alexander) acts as an anchor to the turbulent love lives of virtually everyone he encounters.

His friend Bradley (Kinnear), who owns a coffee shop, is irritating in an unintentional way and this ultimately causes him to lose his wife to a lesbian. As he dusts himself off and tries to find another match, we're introduced to Oscar - one of his coffee shop employees who is a former heroin addict and his love-at-first-sight girlfriend Chloe.

Of all the relationships, theirs is the most genuine.

But that's not to say the rest aren't believable. There are many a married men who can't read their wives, cheat on them and make futile attempts to keep it together. And there are also mistresses who are genuinely in love with other women's husbands and still other women who may decide to switch teams after several years of being straight.

The main problem with this movie is that it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be an aw-shucks romantic comedy or a Crash-like preachy lesson on love, God and fate.

There's also a ridiculous character called The Bat, played by Fred Ward, who is possibly the worst-written alcoholic father in the history of cinema.

Nonetheless, I still enjoyed it (despite the fact that one of the scenes features a loud thunderstorm that would never happen in Portland).

If nothing else, go to be charmed by the ever-appealing Freeman.