Popular reviews

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 3

  Interesting to read so much about character "likeability" with regards to this movie which seems so beyond the point of its slow, feel-bad procedural style that I don't even really know how to address that. It's very clear that the goal here is to capture how thoroughly dispiriting environmental activism can feel. Whether that's a politically useful lens in which to view the subject is one thing but personally, I found by hyper-focusing on the alienation of everyday complicity vs. the logistical flaws of resistance Reichardt dramatically captures the soul-crushing genius of this system which is that it is so overwhelmingly large it makes both joining it and resisting it an act of individual moral compromising. Bleak stuff.

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  Review by Alice Stoehr ★★★★ 6

  I jotted down some notes about this movie while at work, so I figured I might as well transcribe them here:

  This is a bleak movie. A muted, narrow terrorist thriller. It contains exactly two acts of violence, both represented obliquely. But the anticipation of or fallout from these acts permeates every remaining second. These are three characters who are going to do something—who, before long, have done something, the end result of meticulous planning. That fact about them informs their behavior, strains their relationships, controls their lives.

  On its surface, this is a story about activism; it immerses itself in the question of how to change the world for the better. But you'd never mistake it for agitprop or…

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  Review by Matt Singer ★★★★ 6

  This movie is basically divided in two by a crucial event at its midpoint; I'd rate the first half a masterpiece of procedural suspense, and the second half a solid good, so we'll call it a 4-star movie overall. My big beef with the latter part is Eisenberg; he makes a one-character piece a bit too one-note. Eisenberg can play a marvelous motormouth; here he's cast as brooding loner, and not a particularly convincing one; I found his coiled spring of paranoia and anger surprisingly flat. Some of the early scenes, though, are as good as they come. The way Kelly Reichardt conveys information with a glance or a lingering shot is just incredible. Plus, all the HOT FERTILIZER PURCHASING ACTION (which is actually the best sequence in the film).

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  Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★★½ 2

  if I ever see that little mark zuckerberg bitch in person... it's on sight

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  Review by fran hoepfner ★★★½

  if I've learned one thing from cinema, it's to never follow Peter Sarsgaard to a second location

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  Review by davidehrlich ★★★½ 2

  Reichardt's slow-burn hippie thriller is a major minor Dostoyevsky-esque thriller haunted by convictions & their consequences.

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  Review by Lucy ★★★½ 2

  “you said no one would get hurt”

  as far as the premise and pacing goes, this is easily one of the most accessible additions to reichardt‘s filmography. and still, i don’t think i’d recommend it over most of her other films. her narratives thrive best with more wide open space to keep things as atmospheric as possible. this is sparsely thrilling and and will probably grow on me with time, but i feel like i’ll be returning more often to the others

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  Review by Joe ★★★★ 5

  Second movie with this title not to have any Seger on the soundtrack, it's not funny anymore guys, quit it.

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  Review by comrade_yui ★★★★★ 1

  reichardt methodically lays out the bleakness of our situation by converting our cathartic fantasies to their inverse expression: the quintessentially american ambition to 'be a hero', when applied to the environmental movement, means that what should be a mass mobilization becomes a way of cutting yourself off from the world to fulfill some unconsidered yearning for martyrdom, no matter how ineffective the terrorist act may be. the self-loathing of perceiving climate change, yet not being able to conceive of a meaningful way to combat it, gives rise to a fragmented worldview that sees activism as a series of consumer choices -- note how reichardt meticulously shows the transactions that go into our team acquiring their equipment, and that she ends…

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  Review by Auteur ★★★★★ 5

  With Night Moves Kelly Reichardt has solidified her place among my favorite American directors working today. A crossover in any sense of the word, this film is not only her most accessible in terms of story, but also her most significantly evolved work of art, a character study cum film noir that recontextualizes the genre's tropes into a claustrophobic masterpiece (with a welcome air of cynicism), that simultaneously observes and comments on the fine line between progressivism and anarchy. It's also a major indication of the power and control a director has over his/her work, and one of the greatest arguments for having final cut that contemporary cinema has ever seen.

  The film begins quite brilliantly in medias res, as…

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★½ 1

  doesn't really tug hard enough on the thread of nature and environmentalism (and by extension humanity?) being corrupted from within and without, both by radical activism and corporatization, instead becoming more rotely thriller-y as it goes on. but a "weak" Reichardt ecoterror potboiler is still light years from something like the risible THE EAST.

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  Review by CinemaVoid 🏴‍☠️ ★★★

  Slow-burning eco-thriller that skillfully navigates ethical intricacies like tolerating Jesse Eisenberg’s crestfallen visage throughout the entire runtime.