REVIEW: Lorelei [2021]

I make my own chances. They had a plan. Wayland (Pablo Schreiber) would make as much money as he could running drugs for his local motorcycle club until he and high school sweetheart Dolores (Jena Malone) had enough to drive to Los Angeles and make their dreams come true. An undercover police officer changed all that, though. Instead of watching the sunrise over the Pacific together, Wayland found himself in jail for fifteen years while Dolores sought to make do on her own en route to having three kids from…

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REVIEW: Leave No Trace [2018]

We can still think our own thoughts. It’s easy to depict PTSD-suffering war veterans as unstable, dangerous, and beyond help from inevitable tragedy. This depiction has sadly become the Hollywood norm to conjure volatile dramatics devoid of the empathy those struggling to combat their demons deserve. If anyone could supply the necessary humanity to portray that plight, writer/director Debra Granik is she. Never afraid to take exploitation-free narratives into the desperate yet manageable rural squalor (relatively speaking) of mid-west locales—blind spots to the narrow vantage of urban dwellers (see Winter’s…

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