Review: Certain Women (2016)

* * * 1/2
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Starring: Laura Dern, Michelle Williams, Lily Gladstone, Kristen Stewart

Over the course of six feature films, writer/director Kelly Reichardt has become a master of the small-scale story, narratives where the stakes are slight and deeply personal, driven by character more than plot. In Certain Women "plot" barely even registers; things happen, but what happens seems almost incidental. It's a film that's all about reaction, about how the women in the film respond to things they hadn't anticipated and how they're changed, or not changed, by them. It's an expertly told, intuitive film that tells three tenuously connected stories, each one anchored by a different actress. Most films struggle to find room for one good female character; this one features four and makes it look so easy that you're left wondering what the problem is with other movies.

Review: Night Moves (2014)

* * * 1/2
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Dakota Fanning, Peter Sarsgaard

Director Kelly Reichardt is not a filmmaker who could ever be accused of making plot-driven films. Her films tend to be driven more by character and mood than by plot, and in that sense her latest, Night Moves, might be said to be the closest thing she's made to a "conventional" film. That said, Night Moves is only conventional relative to Reichardt's previous films and not when measured against just about anything else you can find at the multiplex. In other hands, this story of three environmental activists and their plot to blow up a dam would take the form of a thriller, but Reichardt's style, which favors a meditative tone rather than an urgent one, is probably too much of a slow burner to properly qualify as a "thriller." It's a character film built around a centerpiece sequence of incredible tension that will satisfy some and move too sedately for others, but if you're a viewer who has yet to experience Reichardt's work but want to, Night Moves may prove to be the perfect gateway.