First Cow
A24 | Release Date: March 6, 2020 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
90
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 44 Critic Reviews
Positive:
42
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Irish TimesTara BradyJul 9, 2021
As ever, Reichardt works in delicate movements as a storyteller. Magaro and Lee’s wonderful chemistry keeps perfectly in step with the filmmaker. Read full review
100
CineVueChristopher MachellMay 27, 2021
What we are left with instead is a story of astonishing tenderness; a study of love as a tempering salve to the sublime of history’s passing. Read full review
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayMar 11, 2020
We might go into a Kelly Reichardt movie thinking we’ll be told a story, but we emerge with our consciousness subtly and radically altered. Read full review
100
The AtlanticDavid SimsMar 11, 2020
First Cow is a masterwork of indie cinema—a tale that’s both charming and unsparing, suffused with equal measures of wonder and dread. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMar 10, 2020
In Reichardt films ranging from “Wendy and Lucy” to “Meek’s Cutoff” to “Certain Women,” the lives of outsiders are defined by the natural world, economic circumstance and by their own dreams of connection. First Cow is one of her very best. Read full review
100
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinMar 7, 2020
This haunting movie transports you to another world — and redefines home. Read full review
100
The Associated PressJake CoyleMar 6, 2020
The joys of First Cow are many. The thoughtful, unshowy textures of its clothes and surroundings. The fabulous chemistry of its two leads. The softly stirring guitar of William Tyler’s score. All of these details add up to a wholly original western, one with its own rhythms, ideas and iconography. Read full review
100
TimeStephanie ZacharekMar 6, 2020
A picture that’s both tranquil and dazzling, two qualities that should be at odds with one another yet somehow bloom in tandem under Reichardt’s gentle touch. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comAllison ShoemakerMar 6, 2020
First Cow, adapted by Reichardt with frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond from the latter’s novel "The Half Life," is many things. A simultaneously gentle and unsparing dissection of the formative flaws of capitalism, and thus of the “American dream”; a frontier story which captures the harsh realities and simple pleasures of a life built painstakingly from rock, wood, and soil; a heist movie; an argument for the power of baked goods. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternMar 5, 2020
First Cow is vividly alive on arrival and grows into pure enchantment, although it starts at a saunter and its physical scale is small. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangMar 4, 2020
Suffice to say the plot’s every unfolding development is a deft and delightful surprise, and it may be the most suspenseful and entertaining demonstration yet of Reichardt’s rigorous attention to detail — her patient, genuine and remarkably cinematic fascination with the workings of process and minutiae. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottMar 3, 2020
First Cow is fundamentally a western: It takes up questions of civilization, solidarity and barbarism on the American frontier. And like many great westerns it critiques some of the genre’s foundational myths with bracing, beautiful rigor, including the myth of heroic individualism. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim RobeyFeb 26, 2020
Starting her film with an aphorism of William Blake’s – “The bird, a nest; the spider, a web; man, friendship” – she not only does justice to the human end of this equation, but looks out for a rare spectrum of the animal kingdom into the bargain. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter BradshawFeb 22, 2020
It is a tremendously engaging story which does something that very few movies do: mention money. Something very palpable is at stake, the jeopardy is real and it’s a question of survival. Read full review
100
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneySep 4, 2019
While not a lot happens in First Cow by the standards of most two-hour narrative films, and some may wish for a less open-ended conclusion, the drama's rough-edged lyricism kept me rapt the entire time. Read full review
100
VarietyPeter DebrugeSep 4, 2019
Reichardt specializes in pared-down narratives, sometimes stripping away so much that boredom sets in. First Cow may be lean, but it offers ample room to ruminate in the comparison between its two time periods. Read full review
98
PolygonKaren HanMar 10, 2020
If only every film could achieve the sublime tenderness of First Cow. Read full review
91
Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganMar 12, 2020
If the film wants to implore us to understand the essence of man, how its portrayal of burgeoning American capitalism and entrepreneurial spirit is undoubtedly, jarringly, at odds with the nature of mankind. At its core, humanity craves companionship, stability and understanding, while capitalism breeds selfishness, inequality and isolation. Read full review
91
The Film StageVikram MurthiMar 6, 2020
It’s First Cow’s buddy relationship that instills the film with a reserved, yet palpable emotional core. Read full review
91
Entertainment WeeklyLeah GreenblattMar 5, 2020
A bittersweet comic absurdity, told in the rhythms of real life. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnSep 4, 2019
Once again, Reichardt has crafted a wondrous little story about two friends roaming the natural splendors of the Pacific Northwest, searching for their place in the world. The appeal of this hypnotic, unpredictable movie comes from how they find that place through mutual failure, and the nature of that outcome in the context of an early, untamed America has rich implications that gradually seep into the frame. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMar 12, 2020
First Cow sneaks up on you a little bit. You become engrossed in these men and their relationship, then their business, then their survival. And that’s definitely not nothing. Far from it, in fact Read full review
90
Vanity FairK. Austin CollinsMar 6, 2020
It manages to be about a great many things—but above all, it’s a movie about two men, two bodies, and the masculine, economic codes of the West. Which, in retrospect, feel so much more moveable and introspective than our usual depictions of the period allow. Read full review
90
Rolling StoneDavid FearMar 6, 2020
How it informs so much of what the movie is getting at is something you’ll find yourself mulling over for weeks after you’ve left the theater. The feeling that you’ve just witnessed a major work from a great American filmmaker, however, is instantaneous. Read full review
90
TheWrapElizabeth WeitzmanMar 4, 2020
Reichardt and her outstanding team ensure that we are fully invested in her striving heroes, and equally anxious for their promising young country, as well. Read full review
90
Film ThreatLaura JacobsFeb 27, 2020
By examining the subtleties of friendship, the film is transfixing and charming. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrMar 11, 2020
The movie’s of a piece with shaggy recent westerns like “The Sisters Brothers” and “Slow West,” and it owes a debt of gratitude as well to the work of Robert Altman, especially the classic “McCabe and Mrs. Miller.” (That First Cow marks the final appearance of Altman regular and “McCabe” costar Rene Auberjonois is a lovely poetic touch.) Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRichard RoeperMar 11, 2020
The gifted director Kelly Reichardt (“Old Joy,” “Wendy and Lucy,” “Meeks Cutoff”) adds to her impressive canon of minimalist, Oregon-set treasures with an immersive and deceptively simple and uniquely original frontier morality play set in the unforgiving Pacific Northwest of the 1820s. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzMar 9, 2020
As audiences, we lean toward demanding a near-constant auditory assault – that if we’re not hearing something, we’re missing something. Director Kelly Reichardt has no qualms with upending this, and other pieces of conventional cinematic wisdom with First Cow, a film that takes great care to remind us of the whisper-quiet bones of America’s history – a time when there wasn’t much to hear except what nature was telling us. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenMar 6, 2020
Never underestimate what people will do for a beaver hat, a pail of milk, or a warm oily cake. Read full review
83
Original-CinKaren GordonMar 12, 2020
Some movies deal with the settling of the American West as mythic. And then there are films like writer/director Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, which strips it down to its basics for a more human scale and poetic vision of the Western era. Read full review
83
The A.V. ClubA.A. Dowd Mar 4, 2020
Just don’t mistake the lightness of step for a softness of philosophy. There’s a political dimension to all of Reichardt’s films, which almost invariably follow characters muscled to the margins of society. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerMay 27, 2021
First Cow is archetypal Kelly Reichardt, slow, small and perfectly formed, elevated by stellar but understated performances from John Magaro and Orion Lee. Read full review
80
SlashfilmMarshall ShafferMar 4, 2020
By grounding her intellectual explorations in intimately observed human drama, Reichardt delivers another nuanced behavioral portrait as well as an incisive historical tome. Read full review
80
Time OutDave CalhounMar 4, 2020
The film is a beguiling window into a distant world – one that at times evokes such claustrophobia as to feel more like a peephole. Read full review
80
Screen DailyStephen Whitty Mar 4, 2020
Its quiet humanism and painstaking attention to detail are sure to appeal to the core audience which has faithfully followed her for more than a decade. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesJul 9, 2020
The plot isn’t sturdy enough to fill two hours. An honorable mention, but no best in show. Read full review
75
Movie NationRoger MooreJul 6, 2020
A soft-spoken cast given to underplaying, a muddy, overcast setting in the beaver-trapping era on The Frontier and reveries about the simple pleasures of home, dearly bought in a rough and tumble world of men make this quiet, almost melancholy movie one to be savored. Read full review
70
SlateConor WilliamsMar 3, 2020
Even in a film so sumptuous, with such tender performances, Eve manages to distinguish herself. It’s the kind of turn in a film that could lead the way to a long-lasting career — if not for Eve, then for others like her. “She is here, ready for her next big project,” Henry says. “I don’t think people consider cows as leading characters, but that may change after this movie.” Read full review
67
UproxxVince ManciniJul 23, 2020
There’s a lot of beauty in First Cow, I just wish I could turn the volume up a little. Read full review
67
The PlaylistRodrigo PerezSep 4, 2019
First Cow is faint, deliberately paced filmmaking where you can often hear a pin drop. But in its tiny way, the modest and gentle little film is moving and poetic. Read full review
63
Slant MagazineKeith UhlichOct 7, 2019
The sense of a nascent community rising up out of the primordial muck is palpable, so it’s unfortunate that John Magaro and Orion Lee's characters ultimately feel outside it all. Read full review
60
The New YorkerRichard BrodyMar 4, 2020
Reichardt films the workingmen’s friendship and their frustrated strivings sympathetically, and observes with dismay the official’s domineering ways and pretentious airs, but she reduces the protagonists to stick figures in a deterministic landscape. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleMar 10, 2020
With Reichardt, you really do feel like you’re actually there. The only problem is that, a lot of the time, you’re really not happy to be there. Read full review
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