Kelly Reichardt's "Showing Up" is one for the fans

by Cláudio Alves

As the resident Kelly Reichardt fanboy around these parts, it's my duty to inform the TFE readership that Showing Up is currently available on PVOD, and it's another smashing success from the director. Admittedly, such effusive verbiage is at odds with the film proper. You see, Reichardt has produced a film of such self-evident smallness it seems to arrive pre-labeled as a minor work in the auteur's canon. Then again, all of the director's features could be similarly described by those misaligned with her insularly specific wavelength. No Kelly Reichardt film feels big, not even when containing sprawling landscapes, multiple storylines, or the ghost of past lives haunting present earth.

And yet, Showing Up takes things to another level, closing itself in a cantankerous mood and hyper-precise milieu, playing with anti-dramatics to the point it feels like a provocation directed at those who don't get it. In other words, this may be Reichardt's version of 'one for the fans'...

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Oscar Race: Best Cinematography

Here's an interesting punditry challenge. We aren't going to find out what the American Society of Cinematographers feels about this past year in cinema until March 9th, which is the day before the Academy's ballots are due. This allows us one whole month to wonder what the cinematographers in the industry are feeling about what they're looking at. Anything is possible, really, until it's not. Remember when Germany's Never Look Away scored an out of nowhere nod just two years ago? Here's what our crystal ball says right now though its imagery isn't always in focus.

PREDICTIONS

the only locks...

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