Michelle Williams stars in Kelly Reichardt’s road movie about a single young woman living off the grid with her dog, just one setback away from disaster.
Tag: Oscilloscope
‘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 […]
‘The King’ – An Elvis road trip through the American Dream on Amazon Prime Video
Elvis Presley is ostensibly the subject of The King (2018), Eugene Jarecki’s rambling road movie of a documentary. The award-winning director drives Presley’s 1963 Rolls-Royce across the US, from Mississippi and Memphis to Nashville, New York, Las Vegas, Hollywood, and elsewhere, talking to historians, musicians, members of Presley’s inner circle, and everyday Americans. Elvis centers […]
‘The Messenger’ – The bearer of bad news on Hulu
In The Messenger (2009), combat veteran Will Montgomery (Ben Foster) may be “a goddamn hero,” in the words of his commanding officer, but in the final months of his enlistment he’s assigned to the most challenging mission of his career: casualty notification and the emotional minefield of civilians dealing with the death of a loved […]