Michelle Williams in Kelly Reichardt's frontier western

‘Meek’s Cutoff’ – Lost on the Oregon Trail on Amazon Prime

Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff (2010) opens without preamble. We are given a place and a year—”Oregon, 1845,” stitched into a piece of homespun embroidery—and then dropped in the high desert to observe three frontier families ford a river. They wordlessly, almost morosely, march across, then take the opportunity to fill canteens, wash and check the […]

Zoë Kravitz, Bruce Greenwood, and Ethan Hawke in 'Good Kill,' directed by Andrew Niccol

‘Good Kill’ – War at a distance on Netflix and Showtime Anytime

Good Kill (2015) tackles writer / director Andrew Niccol’s favorite theme: the intersection of technology and humanity. His problem is that his art is rarely as interesting as his ideas. The Truman Show works because Peter Weir is very good with the human equation, and Gattaca, to date, is Niccol’s most successful film, in part […]