Meek's Cutoff
Oscilloscope Pictures | Release Date: April 8, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
85
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 36 Critic Reviews
Positive:
32
Mixed:
3
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Washington PostAnn HornadayMay 19, 2011
A mesmerizing cinematic journey that is often as arduous and spare as the lives of its hard-bitten protagonists. Read full review
100
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternApr 21, 2011
Kelly Reichardt's marvelous, minimalist epic, amounts to a master class in the power of observation. Read full review
100
Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumApr 13, 2011
Temperamentally in sync with her "Wendy and Lucy" director, Michelle Williams plays one of the toiling wives. And the actress, with her calm center, compresses the entire history of frontier wifeliness into the concentration with which she gathers firewood and loads a musket. Read full review
100
The New York TimesA.O. ScottApr 7, 2011
Meek's Cutoff is as unsentimental and determined as Ms. Williams's character, its absolutely believable heroine. It is also a bracingly original foray into territory that remains, in every sense, unsettled. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubScott TobiasApr 7, 2011
Meticulous and immersive, Meek's Cutoff feels like history in three dimensions. Read full review
100
IndieWireEric KohnApr 5, 2011
Reichardt crafts a highly textured narrative that both invokes the mythology of the American frontier and cleverly transcends it. Read full review
100
Boxoffice MagazineSteve RamosApr 4, 2011
Epic in scope, and featuring a powerful lead performance by Williams, Reichardt does justice to the myth of the wagon train settlers and makes a Western every bit as beautiful and poetic as Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven," and thankfully a bit more energetic. Read full review
100
SalonAndrew O'HehirApr 4, 2011
In this quiet, beautiful and terrifying fable about a group of lost pioneers, Reichardt combines epic ambition with a focus on intimate, personal detail. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesBetsy SharkeyApr 21, 2011
A lyrical poem for some, like watching paint dry for others. I'd argue for embracing the poetic, a rare commodity in American films these days. Read full review
90
TimeMary PolsApr 8, 2011
It's a deceptively small piece of onscreen art that resonates afterward with such insistence that I felt positively nagged by it. Read full review
90
MovielineStephanie ZacharekApr 7, 2011
Meek's Cutoff is an ambitious feat of visual storytelling that's alive to both its landscape and the actors who people it. Read full review
90
VarietyJustin ChangApr 4, 2011
Working on a richer and more intricate canvas than she's previously attempted, Kelly Reichardt has pulled off a rare thing with Meek's Cutoff -- a low-budget period Western with a bracing feminist spin. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenMay 13, 2011
En route, what emerges is the kind of film, rich in paradox, that's common to Reichardt but so rare anywhere else – a film ponderously slow in pace yet kinetically charged with insight; starkly realistic yet allegorical too; psychologically astute yet politically resonant. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchJoe WilliamsMay 12, 2011
Notwithstanding exquisite images that evoke Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven," city-slicker audiences may find themselves getting saddle sore. But those with the courage to explore uncharted territory will be rewarded with a rough gem of a movie. Read full review
88
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertMay 12, 2011
Meek's Cutoff is more an experience than a story. It has personality conflicts, but isn't about them. The suspicions and angers of the group are essentially irrelevant to their overwhelming reality. Reichardt has the courage to establish that. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsMay 12, 2011
The film is not for the frantic of spirit. Its steady rhythm and even-handed tone threaten occasionally to stultify. But little things mean a lot in this universe, as they should. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrMay 5, 2011
There's nothing out there remotely like Meek's Cutoff, for which some viewers may be thankful. The ending seems calculated to drive the literal-minded screaming out of the theater and yet it's the only possible way out. Read full review
88
New York PostV.A. MusettoApr 8, 2011
A Western, but any similarities between it and, say, a Gene Autry or Hopalong Cassidy shoot-em-up are nonexistent. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversApr 7, 2011
Reichardt has crafted a haunted dream of a movie to get lost in. Read full review
85
NPRElla TaylorApr 7, 2011
If Meek's Cutoff is every inch a Western, it's an art-film mutant of the genre, inching along with intensely naturalistic obsession for detail that courts tedium even as it dares us not to pay attention. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn LevyApr 21, 2011
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. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzMay 26, 2011
Greenwood is fantastic; his Meek occasionally lets down his facade of omniscience - but only occasionally. And Williams gives Emily not dignity exactly, but a calm, steely insistence on survival. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderBen SachsMay 12, 2011
Reichardt keeps this so hypnotic from shot to shot that you can easily get wrapped up in it as a sensory experience. Read full review
80
EmpireIan FreerApr 11, 2011
This impressionist Western won't be everyone's slug of bourbon but it's a slow burn that will richly reward the patient. Read full review
80
SlateDana StevensApr 10, 2011
This is a grippingly original work, with gorgeous cinematography by Christopher Blauvelt, and the first hour or more achieves something like greatness. Read full review
80
The New YorkerDavid DenbyApr 8, 2011
Reichardt is trying, as she was in her previous film, "Wendy and Lucy," for a mood of existential objectivty. She takes us from the florid grandiosity of Western myth to the bone-wearying stress of mere life. [11 April, 2011 p.89]
80
Village VoiceJ. HobermanApr 5, 2011
Cinematic as it is, Meek's Cutoff has an uncanny theatricality. The scenes alternating between windswept emptiness and the dark void could be played on a barren stage. For all its detailed authenticity, this minimalist "Wagon Train" is less naturalistic than existential. Read full review
78
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesMay 5, 2011
This revisionist Western – intellectually, aesthetically, and narratively absorbing – rattles to the bone, but never quite rends the heart. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaMay 5, 2011
I wanted to like Meek's Cutoff more than I did. Reichardt and her writer, Jonathan Raymond, bring a quiet, watchful sensibility to their work, allowing the actors room to reflect and riff. But the stilted language and rectitude of the times don't always mesh with the acting. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerApr 23, 2011
For a movie about hard-driving pioneers, there is nevertheless much existential ennui in the air. Read full review
70
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungApr 4, 2011
A realistic slice of pioneer life that offers a disquieting alternative vision of America's most mythic location. Read full review
63
Miami HeraldRene RodriguezMay 25, 2011
To call Meek's Cutoff slow doesn't begin to describe its pace. There are stretches that are, frankly, boring. But the vivid details and intimacy you develop with these travelers sticks with you. Read full review
60
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinApr 11, 2011
For all its indirection, Meek's Cutoff is an utterly conventional film. But it's worth asking whether Reichardt's drowsy rhythms, stripped-down scenario, and female vantage add up to something illuminating. And here's where she earns at least some of those plaudits she's been getting. Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanApr 8, 2011
In this visually and emotionally severe landscape, Reichardt has created the sort of film that will inspire grad students to write passionate thesis papers - and casual moviegoers to feel as lost as her would-be settlers. Read full review
60
Time OutJoshua RothkopfApr 6, 2011
Meek's Cutoff has found its passionate defenders, those who admire it almost because of its meandering, heavily politicized nature. Yet you might try it-and try it again-and still only grab a handful of dust. Read full review
25
ObserverRex ReedApr 6, 2011
Who goes to the movies for 104 minutes of punishment? Where is John Wayne, now that we need him? Read full review
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