Wednesday, March 9, 2011

'Meek's Cutoff' Trailer

Kelly Reichardt, you'll remember, is the shrewd and buzzworthy American filmmaker who directed Michelle Williams in "Wendy and Lucy," that trim and slyly affecting drama that'd make a mean double feature with "Bicycle Thieves." Now Reichardt returns with her third feature ("Old Joy" was her first), directing Williams again in "Meek's Cutoff," a literal Oregon Trail offshoot with strong whiffs of "Days of Heaven," "Stagecoach" and "There Will Be Blood." As I wrote in a recent blog posting at Popcorn for Dinner, that's a potent referential mix.



This might be the best trailer I've seen so far in 2011 ("The Tree of Life" clip dropped in 2010, if I recall correctly). With a broader scale and at least somewhat larger budget than Reichardt's previous work, the festival fave suggests more than ever that its maker is a true natural whose talent, like Daniel Plainview's precious oil (evoked here in the setting, score and presence of Paul Dano), is still just bubbling beneath the surface. I think we can expect to gradually see a lot of great things from Reichardt.

1 comment:

My Blog said...

Great read, thank you.