Some spoilers follow for “First Cow.” Kelly Reichardt’s films are chameleons. At first, they seem like romanticized versions of American tropes: the bond between a girl and her dog, in “Wendy and Lucy;” a pair of friends on a camping trip, in “Old Joy;” the pioneering spirit of early settlers, in “Meek’s Cutoff.” But look again, and the deeper emotional truths of these films are revealed: the crippling grip of poverty; the foreign terror of the frontier; the loneliness of adulthood.
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