Kelly Reichardt | www.jaredmobarak.com

REVIEW: First Cow [2020]

2020/07/022020/07/06 Jared Mobarak

I believe different things in different places. It begins with two skeletons lying side by side in the dirt, their lives an untold story lost to the annals of time that can never be found regardless of whether their remains are. Why? Because they were nobodies in history’s eyes: loners and dreamers wishing to one day become more than nameless strangers to those they walked by on the way to town. And they may have become that and more if they hadn’t tragically been prevented from reaching their potential. Maybe…

REVIEW: River of Grass [1995]

2018/01/112020/04/13 Jared Mobarak

Murder is thicker than marriage. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Kelly Reichardt‘s debut feature River of Grass considering I’ve never quite been able to appreciate her films’ glacial pacing. It’s never made me hate anything of hers that I’ve seen, but it definitely had me checking out of Wendy and Lucy too often and deciding that the short story triptych construction of Certain Women perfectly suited her style. So how would her first foray go? Would we see the blueprint for what was to come? Or would it…

REVIEW: Certain Women [2016]

2016/10/262016/10/27 Jared Mobarak

“She’s my lawyer. I’ve got reason to kill her.” I didn’t love Wendy and Lucy, the only Kelly Reichardt film I had thus far seen. The slow pacing and stripped-bare plot allowed for Michelle Williams to deliver a magnificent performance, but I found myself undeniably bored by the steady stream of troubles chipping away at her resolve. This reaction dissuaded me from Reichardt’s other features, but the almost universal critical praise—yet again—for her latest Certain Women dragged me back into her orbit to see if it would strike a louder…

REVIEW: The Loneliest Planet [2012]

2012/12/312013/08/08 Jared Mobarak

“Give me a verb” Films like Julia Loktev‘s The Loneliest Planet are what make me fully aware of the fact I will always be a cinema lover who writes about movies and not a legitimate critic. Like the work of Kelly Reichardt, I just can’t access the importance so many of my peers easily uncover. I get what’s happening—the psychological verisimilitude on display with an engaged couple trekking through Georgia’s Caucasus Mountains—and yet I’m numb to it all. Traumatic experiences hit everyone and it’s not always pretty when each victim…