There’s a part where Tati is in a waiting room and sitting on all these squeaky chairs, and then you hear clickety-clackety sounds in the hallway. Kelly Reichardt’s sophomore feature is a zen-like study of aging and male friendship, and Criterion’s elegant package celebrates the independent initiative that brought it to the screen. It doesn’t seem like a huge effort for him; that’s just the way his mind works. Beautifully attuned to the in-between moments of everyday life, her films such as OLD JOY, WENDY AND LUCY, and MEEK’S CUTOFF portray the journeys and struggles of outsiders and dreamers with an eloquent minimalism in which stillness speaks volumes. At the time I was living above a dry cleaner, and I became obsessed with every smell around me. Kelly Reichardt’s stark and poetic drama is set in 1845, the earliest days of the treacherous Oregon Trail. Aside from her performance and her sense of framing, I love the way she plays with genre in unexpected ways in this movie. I love the opening with the birds, which serves as this sublime foreshadowing of what’s going to happen—although I bet some birds probably got hurt in the making! Who else was doing that at that time? Over the course of six features, Kelly Reichardt has established herself as one of American cinema’s sharpest observers of place and character. A wagon train of three families has hired mountain man Stephen Meek ...Directed by Kelly Reichardt • 2016 • United States The lead performance is amazing, and I just love the way it all unfolds. I don’t understand. She doesn’t talk much at all, but because of her gestures—even just the way she makes coffee—the movie never feels stilted.This movie has been a touchstone for me through my entire adult life. Everything about her life and the morality depicted in it is so 1950s, but she’s this outcast, and is not even very likable. www.criterion.com/current/top-10-lists/370-kelly-reichardt-s-top-10 Julianne Moore is amazing in the movie—is there a better performance? Kelly Reichardt’s darkly funny debut feature brought the writer-director back to the suburban landscape of southern Florida, where she grew up with her detective father and narcotics-agent mother. There’s this feeling throughout the movie that there were many different ways that it could have been put together. A lmost from the moment it arrived on screens in early 2006, Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy was celebrated as a new milestone for American cinema, even an expression of independent filmmaking’s delayed arrival at maturity. This emotionally wrenching and politically trenchant road film cemented Kelly Reichardt’s status as one of the most highly-regarded auteurs of contemporary cinema. I first saw I used to use this in a class I taught on sound. Wendy Carroll (Michelle Williams) is driving to Ket...Directed by Kelly Reichardt • 2010 • United States The expanses of the American West take center stage in this intimately observed triptych from Kelly Reichardt. Two old friends reunite for a quietly revelatory overnight camping trip in this breakout feature from Kelly Reichardt, a microbudget study of character and masculinity that introduced many viewers to one of contemporary American cinema’s most independent artists. Beautifully attuned to the in-between moments of everyday life, her films such as OLD JOY, WENDY AND LUCY, and MEEK’S CUTOFF portray the journeys and str...Directed by Kelly Reichardt • 1994 • United States
It’s one of my biggest discoveries on the Criterion Channel, which makes everything so convenient.This is a perfectly structured film. Shot on...Directed by Kelly Reichardt • 2006 • United States I love the contrast between how clean and slick everything in that set is with his little umbrella and raincoat.