Enter a Rotten Tomatoes movie slug to inspect the stored movie, batches, snapshots, and reviews.
Movie ID: 1166
RT slug: meeks_cutoff
RT URL: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/meeks_cutoff
Release year: 2011
Runtime: 101 mins
Wide release date: —
Limited release date: 2011-04-08
Festival premiere date: —
Streaming release date: 2012-07-24
Tomatometer final: 86%
Audience score final: 53%
Genres: Western
Directors: Kelly Reichardt
Writers: Jonathan Raymond
Producers: Anish Savjani, David Urrutia, Elizabeth Cuthrell, Neil Kopp
MPAA rating: PG
Executive Producers: —
Created: 2026-08-15 12:42:43
Updated: 2026-08-15 12:42:43
During the 1840s, six settlers and their guide are caught in a dangerous situation: They are lost, food and water are running out, and the surrounding desert threatens to claim them all. Meanwhile, their guide, Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), refuses to acknowledge that they may be several weeks off-course. When a Native American (Rod Rondeaux) is captured, Emily Tetherow (Michelle Williams), one of the settlers, shields him from Meek's wrath, and he offers to lead the group to water in return.
Moving at a contemplative speed unseen in most westerns, Meek's Cutoff is an effective, intense journey of terror and survival in the untamed frontier.
Canonical reviews: 137
Canonical fresh: 118
Canonical rotten: 19
Canonical calculated Tomatometer: 86%
Latest snapshot UTC: 2026-08-15 12:35:25
Snapshot Tomatometer: 86%
Snapshot review count: 137
Snapshot fresh count: 118
Snapshot rotten count: 19
Source note: Imported from manual review paste batch #2801 (full_snapshot)
| Company | Role |
|---|---|
| Oscilloscope Pictures | distributor |
| Film Science | production |
| Harmon Productions | production |
| Billing | Name | Character |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Michelle Williams | Emily Tetherow |
| 2 | Bruce Greenwood | Stephen Meek |
| 3 | Will Patton | Solomon Tetherow |
| 4 | Zoe Kazan | Millie Gately |
| 5 | Paul Dano | Thomas Gately |
| Batch ID | Status | Mode | Created | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1182 | processed | — | 2026-08-15 12:42:43 | Processed successfully into movie_id=1166 using update_mode=merge_non_empty. |
| Batch ID | Local Snapshot | UTC Snapshot | Entered % | Entered Count | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2801 | 2026-08-15 07:35:00 (America/Panama) | 2026-08-15 12:35:25 | 86% | 137 | processed | Mode=full_snapshot. Processed 137 row(s); 0 row error(s). Parsed unique reviews in this batch=137, fresh=118, rotten=19, tomatometer=86%. Net new reviews added=137, fresh=118, rotten=19. Current canonical totals=137 reviews, 118 fresh, 19 rotten, tomatometer=86% (86.131%). Entered review count matched parsed batch count (137). Entered tomatometer matched parsed batch value (86%). |
| ID | Critic | Outlet | Fresh? | Score | RT Time Raw | Approx Published UTC | Quote |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 243588 | Adam Kempenaar | Filmspotting | Fresh | 4.5/5 | 2026-06-15T21:43:49.000Z | 2026-06-15 21:43:49 | ...a bleak road movie with the sheen of a Western. |
| 243589 | Kathy Fennessy | Seattle Film Blog | Fresh | 4/4 | 2025-05-04T17:26:25.000Z | 2025-05-04 17:26:25 | Kelly Reichardt's meditative take on the genre, written by Jon Raymond, feels more enigmatic than most--with the possible exception of Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man--even if the period details look right. |
| 243590 | David Griffiths | Subculture Entertainment | Fresh | 4/5 | 2024-10-29T05:22:06.000Z | 2024-10-29 05:22:06 | Meek’s Cutoff shows that are still some creative films that can surface from the U.S. and only proves the fact that Kelly Reichardt is one of the most important filmmakers of our generation. |
| 243591 | Sarah Vincent | Sarah G Vincent Views | Fresh | — | 2024-06-09T20:48:04.000Z | 2024-06-09 20:48:04 | Reichardt is less interested in recreation than exploring how gender, race and relationships influence power dynamics in a vacuum, a wasteland, where survival should be the only goal. The events in the film feel more like a reimagining of untold history |
| 243592 | Marya E. Gates | Cool People Have Feelings, Too. (Substack) | Fresh | — | 2024-02-13T03:47:31.000Z | 2024-02-13 03:47:31 | The end of this film is one of my favorites in all cinema, showing that filmmakers do not owe audiences a tidy bow at the end of their films. |
| 243593 | George Elkind | Metro Times (Detroit, MI) | Fresh | — | 2023-03-03T21:19:50.000Z | 2023-03-03 21:19:50 | Reichardt finds cracks in foundational American imagery by calling attention to its roots in shaky ground. |
| 243594 | Keith Garlington | Keith & the Movies | Fresh | 3/5 | 2022-08-24T13:48:25.000Z | 2022-08-24 13:48:25 | Reichardt certainly doesn’t romanticize the American frontier life, instead creating one of the most genuine portrayals of the hardships and struggles that faced the settlers in the new territory. |
| 243595 | Rene Jordan | El Nuevo Herald (Miami) | Rotten | — | 2022-08-09T19:07:00.000Z | 2022-08-09 19:07:00 | A type of East not from daydreams, but rather a nightmare. [Full review in Spanish] |
| 243596 | Brian Eggert | Deep Focus Review | Fresh | 4/4 | 2022-02-14T01:13:32.000Z | 2022-02-14 01:13:32 | A haunting film about people finally resigning themselves to the chaos of the universe. |
| 243597 | Amelie Lasker | FF2 Media | Fresh | — | 2021-02-25T19:51:06.000Z | 2021-02-25 19:51:06 | Slowly, our own exhaustion and concern grow with the travelers' weariness. With deft acting and skillful pacing, you can feel the heat and dryness in their throats. |
| 243598 | Bianca Garner | In Their Own League | Fresh | — | 2021-02-02T22:51:47.000Z | 2021-02-02 22:51:47 | This a slow, artistic, revisionistic take on the Western film so it'll certainly be a good film to watch and absorb over the course of a long hot summer's afternoon. |
| 243599 | Felicia Feaster | Charleston City Paper | Fresh | — | 2020-01-17T22:13:14.000Z | 2020-01-17 22:13:14 | Meek's Cutoff could be the most understated, and historically accurate, horror film in history. It's both the scariest and most poetic film of the year. |
| 243600 | Debbie Lynn Elias | Behind The Lens | Fresh | — | 2019-11-16T02:51:54.000Z | 2019-11-16 02:51:54 | [T]his story is one in which the audience will become so invested in the unvarnished struggle, the hardship... that one can't help but walk away from the theatre with a new sense of understanding and appreciation for America's history. |
| 243601 | Kelly Jane Torrance | Washington Examiner | Fresh | 4/5 | 2019-01-08T19:51:50.000Z | 2019-01-08 19:51:50 | [Director Kelly] Reichardt, who previously directed Williams in Wendy and Lucy, shows us with great subtlety the physical and emotional drama here, one that's properly underplayed, given the strictures of the time. |
| 243602 | Dorothy Woodend | The Tyee (British Columbia) | Fresh | — | 2017-08-15T23:31:37.000Z | 2017-08-15 23:31:37 | Certainly, the film is grim in many ways, but there is also great, almost astonishing, beauty. . . |
| 243603 | Sean Burns | Philadelphia Weekly | Fresh | — | 2015-05-03T08:38:16.000Z | 2015-05-03 08:38:16 | I was hypnotized from the opening sequence. |
| 243604 | Blake Griffin | We Got This Covered | Fresh | 9/10 | 2013-11-11T11:45:29.000Z | 2013-11-11 11:45:29 | Meek's Cutoff is a thoughtful, and intimate narrative that is beautifully shot and has outstanding direction. |
| 243605 | Glenn Dunks | Trespass | Fresh | — | 2013-09-15T12:14:51.000Z | 2013-09-15 12:14:51 | Reichardt's film is - to put it simply - a masterpiece. |
| 243606 | Kevin Carr | 7M Pictures | Rotten | 2/5 | 2013-08-26T23:22:37.000Z | 2013-08-26 23:22:37 | presented people who were so devoid of personality, humor and interest that I didn't care if any of them made it out alive |
| 243607 | Emanuel Levy | EmanuelLevy.Com | Fresh | B- | 2013-02-26T11:08:49.000Z | 2013-02-26 11:08:49 | — |
| 243608 | Dan Jardine | Cinemania | Fresh | 80/100 | 2012-07-21T07:52:57.000Z | 2012-07-21 07:52:57 | The film is both evocative and provocative; atmospherically and conceptually, respectively. |
| 243609 | Jeffrey Overstreet | Filmwell | Fresh | A- | 2012-06-15T20:45:41.000Z | 2012-06-15 20:45:41 | I rarely feel the heart-in-my-throat suspense that I felt as Reichardt's characters sent a covered wagon down a steep hill ... |
| 243610 | John Beifuss | Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN) | Fresh | 3.5/4 | 2011-11-17T10:01:04.000Z | 2011-11-17 10:01:04 | A better complement than 'The Big Trail' would be 'The Blair Witch Project,' another film that taps into an American unease with the wilderness that is the shadow twin of the country's bold sense of manifest destiny. |
| 243611 | Robert Roten | Laramie Movie Scope | Rotten | C | 2011-10-27T15:32:07.000Z | 2011-10-27 15:32:07 | I felt like I was trapped on a slow-moving wagon train to nowhere with a bunch of people I wanted to escape from. |
| 243612 | Michael Nordine | Not Coming to a Theater Near You | Fresh | — | 2011-10-14T05:15:08.000Z | 2011-10-14 05:15:08 | Reichardt puts such an unequivocal spin on this well-trod territory as to make it feel heretofore uncharted and of her own reckoning. |
| 243613 | Dennis Schwartz | Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews | Fresh | A | 2011-09-27T04:11:01.000Z | 2011-09-27 04:11:01 | Offbeat and most interesting western about emigrant pioneers lost in the prairie. |
| 243614 | Sean Axmaker | Parallax View | Fresh | — | 2011-09-14T13:33:00.000Z | 2011-09-14 13:33:00 | ... a primal piece of filmmaking, wrought from dirt and rock, calico and splintered wood, and illuminated by natural light and campfire. |
| 243615 | Jason Best | Movie Talk | Fresh | — | 2011-08-08T02:55:09.000Z | 2011-08-08 02:55:09 | Be warned. Some stretches are almost as much of a slog for the viewer as they are for the pioneers... But Meek's Cutoff conveys a far more realistic account of what life was really like on the frontier trail than John Wayne or Clint Eastwood ever did. |
| 243616 | Unknown Critic | National Post | Fresh | 3.5/4 | 2011-07-15T05:15:05.000Z | 2011-07-15 05:15:05 | — |
| 243617 | Simon Miraudo | Quickflix | Fresh | 4.5/5 | 2011-07-14T22:07:15.000Z | 2011-07-14 22:07:15 | This is a film where life and death decisions are made at every turn; where the very concepts of religion and humanity are dissected in gorgeously subtle yet devastating ways. |
| 243618 | CJ Johnson | Film Mafia | Fresh | 3.5/5 | 2011-07-13T17:01:20.000Z | 2011-07-13 17:01:20 | Kelly Reichardt's extremely modest film is slow, but it is also intriguing, moving and meaningful. |
| 243619 | Duane Dudek | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | Fresh | 3/4 | 2011-06-23T12:06:29.000Z | 2011-06-23 12:06:29 | May well be truer to what the migration west was like for many settlers than Hollywood's romanticized and sanitized version of such stories. |
| 243620 | Jim Schembri | The Age (Australia) | Fresh | 3.5/5 | 2011-06-16T01:38:36.000Z | 2011-06-16 01:38:36 | Michelle Williams is now the only Dawson's Creek cast member with a chat-worthy film career. |
| 243621 | Rob Thomas | Capital Times (Madison, WI) | Fresh | 4/4 | 2011-06-10T07:54:14.000Z | 2011-06-10 07:54:14 | "Meek's Cutoff" works wonders even if you don't buy the political metaphor, instead appreciating the film as a historical survival tale and a meditation on the nature of trust - how others win it from us and why we give it to them. |
| 243622 | Susan Granger | SSG Syndicate | Fresh | 6/10 | 2011-06-09T10:00:23.000Z | 2011-06-09 10:00:23 | Exhausting and ambiguous, it's for moviegoers who relish a quiet, arduous chronicle of bleak hardship, seemingly portrayed in real time. |
| 243623 | Clem Bastow | The Vine | Fresh | 5/5 | 2011-05-31T13:35:14.000Z | 2011-05-31 13:35:14 | Sparse, uncompromising and bewitching. Reichardt has stripped back all but the bare essentials, scattering the characters across the sun-bleached landscape like marbles. |
| 243624 | Thomas Caldwell | Cinema Autopsy | Fresh | 4/5 | 2011-05-30T17:34:08.000Z | 2011-05-30 17:34:08 | By privileging the dynamics between the characters over story, Reichardt has created an extremely rewarding cinematic experience that is rich in political commentary, pathos and visual beauty. |
| 243625 | Keith Cohen | Entertainment Spectrum | Rotten | 2/4 | 2011-05-27T19:07:02.000Z | 2011-05-27 19:07:02 | It will definitely divide audiences. Some may find it a graceful and understated master class in observation. Others may be put to sleep. |
| 243626 | Clint O'Connor | Cleveland Plain Dealer | Rotten | B- | 2011-05-27T14:47:31.000Z | 2011-05-27 14:47:31 | Yes, it's sharply shot, and its stark realism is refreshing. But Meek's Cutoff never gets anywhere. |
| 243627 | Ben Sachs | Chicago Reader | Fresh | — | 2011-05-27T10:35:38.000Z | 2011-05-27 10:35:38 | Imagine a collaboration between John Ford and Wallace Stevens and you might get a sense of what Kelly Reichardt pulls off here: a sincere re-creation of the pioneer experience, brought to life through careful, often unexpected detail. |
| 243628 | Bill Goodykoontz | Arizona Republic | Fresh | 4/5 | 2011-05-26T13:54:13.000Z | 2011-05-26 13:54:13 | Greatly enhanced by the performances of Michelle Williams and Bruce Greenwood, director Kelly Reichardt's film quietly becomes engrossing - it almost sneaks up on you. |
| 243629 | Tim Brayton | Antagony & Ecstasy | Fresh | 9/10 | 2011-05-25T20:50:39.000Z | 2011-05-25 20:50:39 | [Rides] a thin line between the intangibly graceful and the merely frustrating in its rejection of narrativity. |
| 243630 | Rene Rodriguez | Miami Herald | Fresh | — | 2011-05-25T15:18:32.000Z | 2011-05-25 15:18:32 | There are stretches that are, frankly, boring. But the vivid details and intimacy you develop with these travelers sticks with you, leaving you in awe of the insane feats people had to accomplish in order for us to enjoy the world we know today. |
| 243631 | Ian Buckwalter | DCist | Fresh | 10/10 | 2011-05-22T22:55:46.000Z | 2011-05-22 22:55:46 | The subtle ways in which Reichardt explores how these characters have been playing their socially and religiously assigned parts throughout the movie, and likely their entire lives, is the core of an absolute masterpiece. |
| 243632 | Corey Hall | Metro Times (Detroit, MI) | Fresh | A- | 2011-05-20T20:13:07.000Z | 2011-05-20 20:13:07 | returns to the craft of the deconstructionist western, ...stripped bare of the mythmaking, shiny spurs and hero worship, leaving a reality so stark it makes the Coen brothers' harsh take on True Grit seem like an episode of Gunsmoke. |
| 243633 | Dave White | Movies.com | Fresh | 4/5 | 2011-05-20T05:15:03.000Z | 2011-05-20 05:15:03 | If there's a genre even more suited to political allegory than horror, it's the Western. And if you can make it through this grim, grimy wide-open-space odyssey without thinking of Iraq then it's because you're not thinking hard enough. |
| 243634 | Ann Hornaday | Washington Post | Fresh | 4/4 | 2011-05-20T05:05:04.000Z | 2011-05-20 05:05:04 | A mesmerizing cinematic journey that is often as arduous and spare as the lives of its hard-bitten protagonists. |
| 243635 | Dustin Putman | TheFilmFile.com | Rotten | 2/4 | 2011-05-19T16:32:46.000Z | 2011-05-19 16:32:46 | A promising, intermittently entrancing film that the viewer wishes could have made more of an impact than it does. |
| 243636 | Roz Laws | Birmingham Post | Rotten | 2/5 | 2011-05-19T10:09:20.000Z | 2011-05-19 10:09:20 | We watch them trudge for miles, growing tired of listening to the squeaky wheel of a wagon. |
| 243637 | Tom Long | Detroit News | Rotten | D | 2011-05-13T12:56:59.000Z | 2011-05-13 12:56:59 | This is the sort of film critics love to praise because the filmmaker has done good work before; and well, there must be something there. Well, there's not. |
| 243638 | Brian Tallerico | HollywoodChicago.com | Fresh | 5/5 | 2011-05-13T12:38:37.000Z | 2011-05-13 12:38:37 | Thanks to brilliant directorial decisions matched by a cast that was clearly inspired by this unique effort, this will surely be one of the most memorable films of 2011. |
| 243639 | Rick Groen | Globe and Mail | Fresh | 3.5/4 | 2011-05-13T10:37:10.000Z | 2011-05-13 10:37:10 | A film ponderously slow in pace yet kinetically charged with insight; starkly realistic yet allegorical too; psychologically astute yet politically resonant. |
| 243640 | Liz Braun | Jam! Movies | Fresh | 4/5 | 2011-05-13T10:09:42.000Z | 2011-05-13 10:09:42 | Stripped of Hollywood embellishment, Meek's Cutoff examines issues of leadership, trust and 'the other' in ways that suggest it could be taken as a metaphor for the American way of thought, then or now. Well, maybe that's just us. |
| 243641 | Peter Canavese | Groucho Reviews | Fresh | 3.5/4 | 2011-05-13T07:21:30.000Z | 2011-05-13 07:21:30 | An existential nightmare of maddening uncertainty, a notion only emphasized by Reichardt’s commitment to ambiguity. |
| 243642 | Erik Childress | eFilmCritic.com | Rotten | 2/4 | 2011-05-13T05:11:19.000Z | 2011-05-13 05:11:19 | Whatever allegory of pre-feminist roles that Reichardt hopes to achieve is slowly put to sleep along with the rest of the audience with a less-is-less narrative style that, like Meek, is too stubborn to realize how lost it is. |
| 243643 | Joe Williams | St. Louis Post-Dispatch | Fresh | — | 2011-05-13T03:48:33.000Z | 2011-05-13 03:48:33 | Those with the courage to explore uncharted territory will be rewarded with a rough gem of a movie. |
| 243644 | Roger Ebert | Chicago Sun-Times | Fresh | 3.5/4 | 2011-05-12T14:21:39.000Z | 2011-05-12 14:21:39 | "Meek's Cutoff" is more an experience than a story. |
| 243645 | Michael Phillips | Chicago Tribune | Fresh | 3.5/4 | 2011-05-12T08:54:49.000Z | 2011-05-12 08:54:49 | If you allow its windswept silences to work on you, "Meek's Cutoff" gathers its own snakelike sense of momentum... |
| 243646 | Matt Pais | RedEye | Fresh | 3.5/4 | 2011-05-12T05:02:48.000Z | 2011-05-12 05:02:48 | Meek's Cutoff, certainly a deliberate title for a story touching on fear of the unknown, is the human experience stripped to its bones. |
| 243647 | Linda Barnard | Toronto Star | Fresh | 3/4 | 2011-05-12T04:09:25.000Z | 2011-05-12 04:09:25 | It's the anti-western western, a story stripped of Zane Gray romance, sagebrush and mythic heroes. |
| 243648 | Matthew Sorrento | Bright Lights Film Journal | Fresh | 9/10 | 2011-05-08T18:36:22.000Z | 2011-05-08 18:36:22 | Of Time and Place: An Interview with John Raymond on Meek's Cutoff |
| 243649 | Jeffrey M. Anderson | Common Sense Media | Fresh | 4/5 | 2011-05-06T15:50:53.000Z | 2011-05-06 15:50:53 | The movie gives thoughtful viewers plenty to ponder, and plenty of situations in the story have two right answers, but no definitive one. |
| 243650 | Kelly Vance | East Bay Express | Fresh | — | 2011-05-06T13:42:07.000Z | 2011-05-06 13:42:07 | Demanding, ultimately mesmerizing variation on an antique theme wanders off into a wilderness of its own where the essential stoic loneliness of what we call the American character comes into focus. |
| 243651 | Kimberley Jones | Austin Chronicle | Fresh | 3.5/5 | 2011-05-06T13:20:20.000Z | 2011-05-06 13:20:20 | This revisionist Western -- intellectually, aesthetically, and narratively absorbing -- rattles to the bone, but never quite rends the heart. |
| 243652 | Chris Hewitt | St. Paul Pioneer Press | Fresh | 4/5 | 2011-05-06T05:33:41.000Z | 2011-05-06 05:33:41 | I guarantee you that, in a decade or two, it will be regarded as an enduring film classic. |
| 243653 | Mick LaSalle | San Francisco Chronicle | Rotten | 2/4 | 2011-05-05T18:08:36.000Z | 2011-05-05 18:08:36 | Boring. |
| 243654 | John Hartl | Seattle Times | Fresh | 3/4 | 2011-05-05T17:49:10.000Z | 2011-05-05 17:49:10 | Vast and mysterious, the American West of Kelly Reichardt and Jonathan Raymond's "Meek's Cutoff" is not quite like any other landscape. |
| 243655 | Gary Thompson | Philadelphia Daily News | Rotten | C | 2011-05-05T14:55:05.000Z | 2011-05-05 14:55:05 | "Meek's Cutoff" is earnest and sober to the point of suffocation, which often happens when the decision is made to shut off the air of entertainment. |
| 243656 | Steven Rea | Philadelphia Inquirer | Fresh | 3/4 | 2011-05-05T14:53:45.000Z | 2011-05-05 14:53:45 | The cinematography, by Chris Blauvelt, captures the rugged landscapes and rainless skies with a homespun elegance. |
| 243657 | Ty Burr | Boston Globe | Fresh | 3.5/4 | 2011-05-05T14:06:00.000Z | 2011-05-05 14:06:00 | Told largely in long shot, it's a painfully, beautifully slow film, which is understandable given the time, place, and situation. |
| 243658 | Peter Keough | Boston Phoenix | Fresh | 3.5/4 | 2011-05-05T04:05:23.000Z | 2011-05-05 04:05:23 | This is the arid equivalent of Werner Herzog's Aguirre, Wrath of God. Reichardt offers the minimum of genre conventions and none of the genre's satisfactions or resolutions. |
| 243659 | Rob Humanick | Projection Booth | Fresh | B+ | 2011-05-04T14:28:48.000Z | 2011-05-04 14:28:48 | The prose of Jack London has been effectively translated to film via the sparsity of Reichardt's intensely detailed neo-western. |
| 243660 | Cynthia Fuchs | PopMatters | Fresh | — | 2011-05-01T07:07:46.000Z | 2011-05-01 07:07:46 | Violence -- potential and inevitable -- shapes each moment in this extraordinary film. Rarely visible and never cathartic, this violence is instead like the land that offers possibility and lays down limits for the emigrants. |
| 243661 | Peter Rainer | Christian Science Monitor | Fresh | B | 2011-04-23T05:15:01.000Z | 2011-04-23 05:15:01 | Williams also starred in Reichardt's last, and best, film, Wendy and Lucy, and she clearly has a special affinity for the director, for whom she shows off her subtlest shades. |
| 243662 | Josh Larsen | LarsenOnFilm | Fresh | 4/4 | 2011-04-22T19:48:02.000Z | 2011-04-22 19:48:02 | At once gossamer and purposeful, it's Terrence Malick with a map. |
| 243663 | Joe Morgenstern | Wall Street Journal | Fresh | — | 2011-04-22T05:29:08.000Z | 2011-04-22 05:29:08 | Amounts to a master class in the power of observation. |
| 243664 | Shawn Levy | Oregonian | Fresh | B+ | 2011-04-21T16:12:56.000Z | 2011-04-21 16:12:56 | Like the bits of home life its pioneers have brought with them to an alien landscape, the careful craft grounds the film in a reality that is as much felt as it is observed. |
| 243665 | Betsy Sharkey | Los Angeles Times | Fresh | 4/5 | 2011-04-21T14:39:18.000Z | 2011-04-21 14:39:18 | Reichardt has stripped "Meek's" down to bare essentials and careful emotions. The cast captures that quality beautifully - like the water that is running out, everything is conserved. |
| 243666 | Christy Lemire | Associated Press | Fresh | — | 2011-04-20T10:26:55.000Z | 2011-04-20 10:26:55 | Reichardt trusts her audience, encourages her viewers to feel comfortable in the stillness and the quiet, and to draw their own conclusions from an ending that's as profound as it is enigmatic. |
| 243667 | Alistair Harkness | Scotsman | Fresh | 4/5 | 2011-04-20T05:11:44.000Z | 2011-04-20 05:11:44 | It's Reichardt once again subtly overturning the myths that have sustained American cinema for decades... |
| 243668 | Kate Stables | Sight & Sound | Fresh | — | 2011-04-19T05:15:02.000Z | 2011-04-19 05:15:02 | Meek's Cutoff is simultaneously cerebral and astonishingly cinematic, a historical road movie that stretches the inhospitable landscapes and marginal living of Wendy and Lucy in intriguing directions. |
| 243669 | Robin Clifford | Reeling Reviews | Fresh | B | 2011-04-18T05:15:05.000Z | 2011-04-18 05:15:05 | ...a reinventing of the [western] genre where nothing seems to happen but lots does. |
| 243670 | Philip French | Guardian | Fresh | — | 2011-04-17T15:12:03.000Z | 2011-04-17 15:12:03 | It enlivens and illuminates a genre that once dominated the American cinema and still holds a considerable grip on our imagination. |
| 243671 | Laura Clifford | Reeling Reviews | Fresh | A- | 2011-04-16T12:35:45.000Z | 2011-04-16 12:35:45 | In Reichardt's latest, she takes the great American film genre - the Western - and makes it her own by making the point of view distinctly feminine. |
| 243672 | Eugene Novikov | Film Blather | Fresh | B+ | 2011-04-16T08:47:54.000Z | 2011-04-16 08:47:54 | At once an intimate drama about a group of emigrants led dangerously off-course in 1874 Oregon, and an epically ambitious think piece about nothing less than the fate of western civilization. |
| 243673 | Derek Malcolm | London Evening Standard | Fresh | 3/5 | 2011-04-15T05:22:53.000Z | 2011-04-15 05:22:53 | A sterling effort, determined to tell some of the truth of the times. |
| 243674 | Anthony Quinn | Independent (UK) | Fresh | 3/5 | 2011-04-15T05:15:17.000Z | 2011-04-15 05:15:17 | The ending will divide opinion between "hauntingly ambiguous" and "cop-out." |
| 243675 | Damon Wise | Radio Times | Rotten | 2/5 | 2011-04-14T14:52:21.000Z | 2011-04-14 14:52:21 | It's an intriguing take on actual diaries kept by women pioneers of the time, but their journey may be as punishing for some viewers as it was for them... |
| 243676 | Catherine Bray | Film4 | Fresh | 3/5 | 2011-04-14T14:34:35.000Z | 2011-04-14 14:34:35 | Not an easy journey for the characters or their audience, Reichardt's film demands respect for its sheer bloody-minded determination to leave its own questions frustratingly up for debate. |
| 243677 | Adam Woodward | Little White Lies | Fresh | 3/5 | 2011-04-14T12:05:34.000Z | 2011-04-14 12:05:34 | Reichardt's boldness in eschewing a sprawling retelling of how the West was won should be applauded, but she hasn't yet earned the right to take this long saying so little. |
| 243678 | Peter Bradshaw | Guardian | Fresh | 4/5 | 2011-04-14T08:15:46.000Z | 2011-04-14 08:15:46 | Kelly Reichardt's gaunt, mysterious and superbly calibrated movie about pioneers and the old American west appears to have come from another age - from the early days of Malick or Antonioni. |
| 243679 | Lisa Schwarzbaum | Entertainment Weekly | Fresh | A | 2011-04-13T12:34:39.000Z | 2011-04-13 12:34:39 | Under Oregon skies, there's political subtext for the taking in this terrific, unsettling film. |
| 243680 | Leo Robson | Financial Times | Fresh | 4/5 | 2011-04-13T10:30:57.000Z | 2011-04-13 10:30:57 | It delivers a patient, swoony account of itinerant tribulations in which conflict and intrigue bubble up only occasionally, and always gently. |
| 243681 | Philip Concannon | The Skinny | Fresh | 5/5 | 2011-04-13T05:44:14.000Z | 2011-04-13 05:44:14 | Simultaneously a compelling allegory and a hallucinatory fable, Meek's Cutoff is the most ambitious and accomplished film Reichardt has yet made. |
| 243682 | Tim Evans | Sky Cinema | Fresh | 3/5 | 2011-04-13T05:41:27.000Z | 2011-04-13 05:41:27 | Reichardt's parched tale builds up a pressure cooker of tension and loyalties are strained and doubts are sewn... but then doesn't seem to know what to do with it. |
| 243683 | Leslie Stonebraker | New York Press | Rotten | — | 2011-04-11T15:55:07.000Z | 2011-04-11 15:55:07 | While I would love to fully appreciate this circular, feminist, counter-cinema perspective, no payoff makes for an audience that feels cheated. |
| 243684 | Ian Freer | Empire Magazine | Fresh | 4/5 | 2011-04-11T06:24:43.000Z | 2011-04-11 06:24:43 | This impressionist Western won't be everyone's slug of bourbon but it's a slow burn that will richly reward the patient. |
| 243685 | David Denby | The New Yorker | Fresh | — | 2011-04-11T06:05:17.000Z | 2011-04-11 06:05:17 | It's a pleasureless, anti-sensuous aesthetic, but the movie, in its thorny, grudging way, is stirring, with many startling details. |
| 243686 | David Edelstein | New York Magazine/Vulture | Fresh | — | 2011-04-11T06:00:08.000Z | 2011-04-11 06:00:08 | Reichardt's westward-ho is a world of confusion, geographical and moral, a dislocation beyond the remedy of water or Bibles. |
| 243687 | Cole Smithey | ColeSmithey.com | Rotten | C- | 2011-04-09T20:26:09.000Z | 2011-04-09 20:26:09 | There isn't a fully developed storyline, and there aren't enough ideas in a movie that film snobs will congratulate themselves for adoring. Pshaw. |
Showing the latest 100 canonical reviews for this movie.