Meek’s Crossing (***)

This is a western like no other, but something like director Kelly Reichardt’s earlier work, which includes Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy. That is, it is a very quiet movie, where you actually need to watch, and not just listen, to understand what’s happening. I noticed this, for example, when the traveler played by Michelle Williams is listening to her husband confer with another of the men traveling with them. Reichardt doesn’t let us hear what they’re saying, just lets us watch her watching them. There are three couples traveling by covered wagon in the Oregon Territory of 1845. We can only guess what has led them to make the dangerous trip, or how they came to rely on the uncertain advice of an unsavory character played by an unrecognizably bearded Bruce Greenwood.


Williams starred in Wendy and Lucy, but this movie really has no star (although possibly recognizable names Will Patton, Shirley Henderson, Paul Dano, and Zoe Kazan play other members of the group).  Though the landscape was prominent in Reichardt’s other movies, here it’s something like a main character. I am no expert about westerns, but I’ve not seen one that so captures the frighteningly empty mystery that the traveler would have experienced, with no communication, no roads, no map, and no stranger to guide them. The way that some of the actors speak seems modern to me, but otherwise I was transported to this setting where an encounter with an Indian, one who spoke no English, could represent real danger, and where you could die in the desert for not knowing where to refill empty water tanks. It does take awhile for the conflicts to develop, and you never find out too much about what happened before, or what next, after the film ends.

IMDB link

viewed 5/11/11 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 8/9/11

Wendy and Lucy (***)

Wendy is a young woman with a dog. She is passing through Oregon. She has $525, some old clothes, and not much else. Her plan is to drive to Alaska for work. But her car breaks down in some town off the interstate. First, she has to push her car out of a parking lot. The guard won’t let her park there. The service station isn’t open. Wendy and Lucy need food, so Wendy asks the guard where a market is. They begin to walk.

Reading the above paragraph will give you some feel of what this movie is like. I saw it compared to a distaff Into the Wild, maybe because of the character being alone and heading for Alaska, but that’s not exactly right. Chris McCandless is looking for solitude and the meaning of life. His story is existentialism writ large. Solitude has already found Wendy (for reasons of which we only get the barest glimpse), who is only looking for work. It is the viewer who may wonder about the meaning of life while watching this melancholy tale. It is existentialism writ small.

The movie shows only a few days in Wendy’s (Michelle Williams) life, and only takes up 80 minutes on screen, though it could have—perhaps should have—been even shorter. Kelly Reichardt, who directed the adaptation of Jonathan Raymond’s story “Old Joy,” adapts another Raymond story. As the author has noted, when novels get made into movies, they can feel crammed. With a short story, it feels like the movie instead elaborates the story. I can’t say I found it extremely moving or anything (maybe if I was a dog lover…), but there was something appealing in its artless simplicity. (There is not even a score.) Williams, who looks like a boy here, exactly fits the part of unassuming Wendy. I haven’t read Raymond’s stories, but a Raymond Carver story is what the movie seemed like, only more placid. It’s not for everybody, but you can probably tell if it’s for you.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 1/28/09

The Fog (**1/4)

This is a mostly bloodless (literally and figuratively) remake of John Carpenter’s 1980 film. It retains the same plot of ghosts haunting an island town a hundred years after its founding. The main characters are handsome twentysomethings played by Tom Welling (Smallville’s Clark Kent) and Maggie Grace (Shannon on Lost), although Selma Blair, playing a hip radio deejay, is probably the best known actor. (I liked her character best too, though the boring soundtrack undermines her claim of being a gal of taste.) There are two problems with the movie. First, the whole fog thing? Not that scary. Sure it’d be scary if you knew it was hiding some dead geezer trying to kill you, but, in and of itself, fog’s not that frightening. At least not here. The repeated sound effect, really loud knocking, only helps somewhat.

The other thing is that what the ghosts do doesn’t make much sense. They sometimes kill people with tools, sometimes magically convert them to dust. Considering how long ago they all got wiped out, they’re pretty good at messing with computer monitors as well. Who they kill doesn’t make much sense either, except that they carefully limit themselves to the supporting cast. The barest suspense is provided by waiting to learn exactly what happened. One character meets a surprising fate. My favorite part of the movie was when someone happily reunites with a family member but never asks about the other family member who was with the person. Someone must have shown her the script.

IMDb link

circulated via email 10/20/05 and posted 11/16/13