Kelly Reichardt's "Wendy and Lucy" starring Michelle Williams

An Important Indie About a Homeless Roadtripping Girl and Her Dog, with a movie star sans makeup. Just long enough at 75 minutes or so, but this is not as odd or intriguing as Old Joy. I like Williams better in everything else I've seen her in, including "Dawson's Creek." The supporting actor who plays her security-guard ally pretty much steals it.

also, can someone fix the motherfucking apostrophes???

i really liked it! i dont know why you're capitalizing "Important," this is a pretty quiet and easy-going movie

What apostrophes?

Lolz at Morbz watching Dawson's Creek.

the apos' in the thread title and first post...

s1ocki, easygoing? it's trying to be a minimalist tragedy, kinda heavily. I don't think it's bad, but the praise just had me expecting something a little less rigorous and more alive (and the scene w/ Larry Fessenden as the mencing guy in the woods is pretty bad).

I don't get it. You want them to be smart quotes?

Also, I don't think it is trying to be a tragedy. I think it is trying to show how the vicissitudes of daily life can become frustratingly magnified for those not materially equipped to deal with them.

The apostrophe thing is a browser problem for IE; they look fine in Firefox.

the vicissitudes of punctuation can be frustratingly magnified for those not materially equipped to display apostrophes properly.

haha to me Firefox is an old film, I no speaka de language

boy Will Oldham was bad in his 90-second scene here (after being fine in OJ).

It's definitely not "trying to be a minimalist tragedy." Or any kind of tragedy.

i'm stoked for this. i loved Old Joy.

yes, Old Joy was better, but it'sa good,too.
maybe the biggest problem is that you feel youve seen that movie before..hints of Dardenne's Rosetta for example.
i like the fact that Reichardt keeps her movies short, i like the nuances (the train theme, the fire as symbol of brotherhood(also included in Old Joy...)
but maybe Old Joy was better because it deals with the developing connection between 2 friends, where here, the main character is lonely all the way through.
theres more than one hint of alienation in the movie, but the interesting thing here that it comes not only because of a permanent society situation, but also because she choose to be alone/individualist/cant establish profound relationship with others.(

maybe the biggest problem is that you feel youve seen that movie before..hints of Dardenne's Rosetta for example.

it's funny, but i had the same feeling watching 'ballast' a few months ago, which i liked. i'm looking forward to seeing this. has also drawn comparisons to agnes varda's 'vagabond' and de sica's 'bicycle thieves' good influences, certainly!

influence can be a terrible thing (and Rosetta ia the dardeenes film I dislike)

morbs... otm?

some more backstory would have been nice; the phone call didn't really do it for me.

Dardennes? Well this one just slipped to the bottom of my to-watch pile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilsonville,_Oregon

i really loved this.
i thought the security guard was this guy:

http://www.michaelvox.com/film/g/gw_301.sm.jpg

but it wasn't.

some more backstory would have been nice

I went in not knowing what to expect, and it felt ponderous when I was watching it, but the ending and Williams' performance have stuck with me. A lot of critics seem to single out the mechanic as the oddity that doesn't work, but I thought the All-American Boy Scout who busts her was worse. His exchange with the manager felt like something out of Bubble (or another bad Soderbergh movie).

And re: the ending, it seems like a little bit of a cliche but reminds me of my favorite photograph. It's from Eugene Richards's Americans We: a wide-angle closeup of a homeless man on a street or in an alley, laying on a soiled mattress, clutching his mutt (with a rope for a collar) to his chest like it's the last, most important thing in the world to him.

I went in not knowing what to expect, and it felt ponderous when I was watching it, but the ending and Williams' performance have stuck with me. A lot of critics seem to single out the mechanic as the oddity that doesn't work, but I thought the All-American Boy Scout who busts her was worse. His exchange with the manager felt like something out of Bubble (or another bad Soderbergh movie).

― sad man in him room (milo z), Monday, February 23, 2009 5:18 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ocean's 12?

also otm about backstory... soooo not ness

Has anyone read any of the Jon Raymond stories? I just read the NYRB thing about this movie and Livability, and now I am intrigued.

yeah, i read livability-
the stories are good; a couple as good as the two that became the films, but the writing's kind of boring?, which isn't something i'd say about anything else; just, very minimal and concise but without the grace that is evident when some others write that way.

hmm, i was thinking about checking this guy out after watching Wendy and Lucy on Saturday. great stuff, but I think I dug Old Joy a little more.

also this is crazy pants--i don't always need backstory, i like ambiguity sometimes

some more backstory would have been nice; the phone call didn't really do it for me.

totally.

p.s. i am going to listen to this: http://www.vanityfair.com/online/culture/2009/04/08/jon-raymond-reads-from-livability.html

this was really good. i could watch a million more quiet movies like this.

i think i'd rank old joy > wendy and lucy > meek's cutoff but they are all really great.

I think about this movie all the time. I wish there were more like it.

occurred to me that i would really have loved kelly reichardt to direct krakauer's "into the wild" instead of sean penn, would've been 100x better

i wish i like this woman's movies more! they seem kind of art-cinema-by-numbers to me.

Old Joy really flicks my switches and i do find it quite singular and not by-numbers but i didn't like the other two at all. I found W&L relentless, gratuitous but, ultimately, uninteresting.