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Showing Up

2024-05-26 by Steve

After the success of 2019’s First Cow, you might have expected Kelly Reichardt’s 2022 follow-up, Showing Up, to be a bigger hit than it was. Critics liked it; audiences not so much. It seems that Reichardt most hits the target with paying punters when she delivers westerns. See also Meek’s Cutoff. But all her films are engaging, and she’s always up to something, often in the background, as she is with Showing Up, which is the story of an artist who struggles through the distractions of everyday life to produce her work. But what Reichardt is she actually up to, that’s the question. Is this a slice of life? Or the story of … Read more

First Cow

2024-10-022021-01-12 by Steve

Kelly Reichardt’s films often operate at two levels. At the surface one story plays out, while somewhere to one side, and often as a comment on the first story, something different is going on. First Cow could really be called First Love, since it’s the story of two men who meet in difficult circumstances and then form a bond that lasts until death. What it looks like, though, especially at first, is a western, a story of a cook who’s travelling with hard-bitten fur trappers. They’re all out in the forest and there isn’t enough food. And even if there was, the trappers don’t seem to like what the cook’s been serving. There’s … Read more