NIGHT MOVES - LFF 2013 - Day Eight

As some of you may remember, this blog used to be called Movie Reviews for Greedy Capitalist Bastards, because I am one, and I have no truck with pretentious nonsense, vegetarians, and hippies.  So Kelly Reichardt's new flick NIGHT MOVES, fell right into my lap!  It shows you how do-gooding radical lefties can be as self-serving and arbitrarily violent as they would have usgreedy  capitalists be.  It's just that we own it!

So, in this movie three radical tree huggers decide to blow up a damn because this is going to supposedly disrupt the water supply and teach us ipad users a lesson or two.  The first hour of the flick basically plays as an anarchist revolutionary's handbook and I could definitely have done with a faster pace and more thrilling tense feel. It's always the way.  Indie directors think they can do genre, but genre movies are hard, and shouldn't be condescend to.  Making a taught thriller is not easy. 

Reichardt is on safer ground in the second half of the film where he can do his trademark interior exploration of psychology and mood.  Once the deed is done we see problems open up.  The preppie girl, Dena (Dakota Fanning) starts to feel guilty and blab.  Peter Sardgaard's Harmon becomes all too predictably, the manipulative sinister voice on the end of a phone.  That leaves us with the real  emotional and psychological heart of the film: Jesse Eisenberg's Josh.  His performance is so nuanced and moving in the final twenty minutes of the film that it elevates a rather second rate thriller into something altogether finer.   

NIGHT MOVES has a running time of 112 minutes.  NIGHT MOVES played Venice Toronto and London 2013. It will be released in France on March 5th 2014.

London Film Fest Day 2010 Day 7 - MEEK'S CUTOFF

Meek's Cutoff is a real-life trail in Oregon, originally followed by Stephen Meek in 1845. He led a group of pioneers down that route, losing many to dehydration, but eventually helped open up Western Oregon with his trail. In director Kelly Reichardt's (WENDY AND LUCY) movie the story is stripped down and pared back. Rather than hundreds of pioneers we have three families, and rather than epic confrontations with Native Americans we have a single dramatic relationship. Lost, desperate for water, the pioneers capture a lone Native American, and force him to lead them to water. This confrontation brings out the worst prejudices of Meek, and the paranoia of some of the women who have been brought up on vicious tales. But it also brings out the essential decency and courage of Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams) - the moral and emotional heart of the tale. The ultimate idea of the movie is subversive. The trail is named after Stephen Meek, and the pioneers are much to be admired, but as the movie progresses the captive becomes captor. He is still bound up by the pioneers, but they are completely dependent on him to find water and to survive.

I find Kelly Reichardt's films alienating. I find the stillness, the quietude, disturbing and, ultimately, dull. I admire the beautiful cinematography and the acting - but it's a kind of abstract admiration. I suspect that audiences will either love this film - for its visuals and its central idea - or hate it - for its silence, and its oblique ending. I am glad I watched it, even if I didn't really enjoy it. I admire the project, if not the product.

MEEK'S CUTOFF played Venice and Toronto 2010. It does not yet have a commercial release date.