Coming-of-Age

Leave No Trace: Out of the Woods, But Not Fitting In

Jeremy BeckReviews
Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie and Ben Foster in "Leave No Trace"

Every night before they go to sleep, the 13-year-old girl and her father, nestled snugly in a cramped tent, say goodnight to each other without using words. Instead, they make a sort of clicking sound, bringing their tongues against the back of their front teeth, the type of noise one might use to summon a horse: “tchic-tchik.” In other contexts, it might sound silly; here, it’s an expression of sincere, absolute love.

To my recollection, nobody actually says “I love you” in Leave No Trace—the gentle, empathetic, quietly devastating new movie from Debra Granik—but the concept of devotion is nevertheless sewn into the film’s very fabric. It’s present in the relationship between the father, Will (Ben Foster, against type), and the girl, Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie, revelatory), who open the picture residing comfortably and illegally in the verdant woods outside Portland. It’s found in the respect that the two demonstrate for nature, with all its wonders and terrors. (The title derives from a popular conservationist ethos.) And it’s apparent in the warm regard that Granik displays for her characters, whom she treats with curiosity, tenderness, and honesty. Read More

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Thoroughbreds: Horsing Around, with Mai Tais and Murder

Jeremy BeckReviews
Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke in "Thoroughbreds"

It is an exhilarating feeling, watching the work of a first-time director who operates with absolute confidence, with an imperceptible clarity of vision. As someone who’s only been going to the movies for a few decades, I’ve felt that sensation just a handful of times—during personality-fueled debuts like Brick, Being John Malkovich, and Michael Clayton—but I like to imagine that the cinephiles of yesteryear experienced something similar when they wandered into the theater and settled themselves for a screening of The Maltese Falcon or The 400 Blows or Blood Simple. I felt stirrings of it watching Thoroughbreds, the bold and provocative first feature from writer-director Cory Finley. I have no idea where Finley’s career will take him; maybe he’ll ascend, maybe he’ll flame out. I do know that with this impossibly gripping movie, he’s made one hell of an entrance.

Speaking of entrances, Thoroughbreds begins with a doozy, a short and sharp cold open that instantly announces its seriousness of intent as well as its formal rigor. We open with a direct shot of a horse, its alien snout practically poking through the screen, before turning to the face of a teenage girl, regarding the animal with a mixture of curiosity and indifference. The lighting is dark, the mood eerie, so by the time the camera reveals a large, glittering knife, our nerves are already on edge. Read More

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Lady Bird: Desperate to Leave the Nest, But Still Learning to Fly

Jeremy BeckReviews
Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf in "Lady Bird"

There is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment late in Lady Bird, Greta Gerwig’s funny and piercing and achingly humane directorial debut, that perfectly encapsulates the movie’s warmth and lucidity. Christine, the tempestuous teenager at the center of Lady Bird who insists that everyone refer to her by the film’s title, is repainting her bedroom. As a ribbon of white varnish rolls over the formerly pink wallpaper, it obliterates the printed names of two boys that Lady Bird had previously scrawled into the wall. Those names, which once filled Lady Bird with ardent longing, have been erased, the desires they inspired living on only as relics of her own memory. The implications are plain: Time passes. People change. And life—forgive me if you’ve heard this before—goes on.

Movies, however, must end. Yet when the final frame of Lady Bird cut to black, I was not ready to be done with it. I preferred to linger a few moments longer in the finely textured world that Gerwig had conjured with such candor, intelligence, and care. Perhaps I was simply overpowered—by the film’s sincerity, by its humor, by its grace—but I like to think that I was expressing fidelity to one of the clichéd-but-undeniable truths that this movie articulates with such heartbreaking clarity: When you love someone, it is hard to let them go. Read More

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It: School’s Out for Murder

Jeremy BeckReviews

Fear is universal, even if it’s also personal. We’re all afraid of something, but our fears are typically our own. As many pop-culture artifacts have done before, It attempts to trade on this inherent tension between the institutional and the individual, conjuring a parasitic, metaphysical evil that torments its victims by transforming into the very thing that terrifies them most. In this, the film invites you to imagine being confronted not just by the nightmarish visions visited upon its characters, but by the horrors of your own heart.

“What are you afraid of?” the trailer for It asks ominously. Good question. My own list of fears is quite lengthy, and while it contains a number of garden-variety phobias—snakes, rats, heights, etc.—it also includes a few anxieties specific to my temperament and amateur occupation. Like, say, the fear of being trapped in a theater watching a 135-minute horror movie that is by turns repetitive, silly, and dull. Read More

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Your Name.: Trading Places, and Finding Feelings

Jeremy BeckReviews
Two teens trade places in "Your Name."

Part playful comedy, part wistful romance, part sci-fi mind-bender, Your Name. (yes, the period is part of the title) is a strange and beguiling experience. It’s a movie that nimbly hopscotches between tones and across genres, but it always demonstrates firm commitment to its characters. Visually, it’s a beaut, but the loveliest thing about it is its tenderness.

The ultimate intensity of Your Name.’s emotions sneaks up on you, given that the film initially scans as a poppy Japanese update on America’s cheesy ’80s comedies. Taki (voice of Ryûnosuke Kamiki), a high school student living in the clattering hub of Tokyo, is a typical teenage protagonist—comfortable with his male pals, awkward around his female crushes, and nursing a nagging worry that his existence lacks real meaning. The same is true of Mitsuha (Mone Kamishiraishi), a dreamer living in the country village of Itomori; she has a relatively peaceful life going to school and making traditional sake, but she longs for the bustle of the big city. Residing in decidedly different worlds, Taki and Mitsuha have no connection to one another, except for one little thing: Intermittently and inexplicably, their minds get swapped into one another’s bodies. Read More

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