REVIEW: What Still Remains [2018]

People need to stick together. There are two kinds of people still watching “The Walking Dead”: those who love the gore quotient and believe zombies are the true enemy of the people and those who understand that the undead are merely a catalyst to expose the evil that has always lived within. I’m of the latter group because the drama is always more real when it builds between two very different people trying to survive via diametrically opposed ways than when it’s just the living bashing the skulls of unfeeling…

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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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