Leave No Trace

Gaining access to a new streaming service full of independent films, Kanopy, I was excited to see what they had to offer. So, being that Jojo Rabbit is my favorite movie of all time, and Thomasin Mckenzie (Elsa in Jojo Rabbit) starred in this, I figured that it would be fitting to start with Leave No Trace. In a lot of ways, I was reminded of Hunt for the Wilderpeople, except kind of the opposite. The arc of the characters goes on the same path as Hunt for the Wilderpeople, except backwards, which works. The story was emotional, and being that it deals with the affects of isolation quite a bit, I felt that it was very relevant to watch today. That being said, the movie has quite a few glaring issues. While the look of the film was clearly full of a strong motive and artistic passion, I just felt that overall, the way that the movie looked lacked differences between shots. Almost every shot was done in a very similar way, with a similar color pallet, which did sometimes make it difficult to make sense of some things. As mentioned, I was drawn into this movie because of Thomasin Mckenzie, from Jojo Rabbit, her performance of this definitely lives up to my expectations, she was definitely able to convey the appropriate emotions in an effective way. As for Ben Foster as the father, I enjoyed him at times, but truly, it seemed like he just really didn’t do anything too great. In terms of the script, I thought it was fine for what it needed to be, which has kind of been my overall feeling with the movie. It’s definitely an extremely fun movie, and it’s one that’s emotional in the right ways, however, it’s nothing that’s anything that great, it’s slightly above average, which is still just fine. 8.3/10