Pictureland

It's significant that  one of the most moving bits of communication between daughter and father in Debra Granik's Leave No Trace is not an exchange of words.  It an occasional clicking sound, an affirmation between the child and parent.  It's a tolling of animal sympathy and understanding.  A simple, eloquent expression of love beyond speech.   Delivering her third memorable feature film, Debra Granik wrote the script with her long-time creative partner Anne Rosellini.  Their collaboration in the case Leave No Trace is a masterwork of understatement, if not blatant minimalism.  Both father Will (Ben Foster) and Tom (Thomasin McKenzie), whom we first meet living secretly amid the lush vegetation of forested public lands somewhere outside of Portland, Oregon, tend toward the laconic in speech.  Granik and Rossellini, like their characters, speak mainly when they have something important to say. From this source, this minimal scri...

From it's earliest sights and sounds - a vintage Paramount logo, black and white photography and a score rich with fiddle, dobro and other implements of Americana - Alexander Payne's Nebraska would seem to announce itself as something aiming for timelessness.  Something big and American and perhaps even profound. Hence, the broad, emblem of a title, placing us in the proverbial heartland of the country.  Bruce Springsteen did much the same in 1982 with an album bearing the state's name as its title, whose fairly bleak cycle of songs also tried to get at the simple heart of the country by way of some it less fortunate constituents.  Of course, Payne has a bit more claim to the title and state as a Nebraska native. To his credit, Payne goes after his big theme -whatever that might be -  in a small way.  As usual, he grounds his work in very credible detail.  Payne has taken us on the road before, in About Schmidt and Sideways .  The directo...