Please don't spend money on this.

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The movie goes from nowhere to nowhere. Everything is very dragged and no character has a clearly identified profile or psychology. When the movie ends you think "Hey, that's it?!?". Although some people think it's a work of art, I think it boring. There is much monotony and nothing, absolutely nothing, excites. The vote of praise stands for a part of the photograph, with very beautiful images in some takes, but that's all.

I live in Oregon so I was interested in this movie. To bad it went on and on and never ended. It almost starts to go somewhere, it even heads in a direction, but much like the wagon train, it is hopelessly lost. This movie is terrible. It confirms why I never trust the critic's reviews on movies. Only film students and someone obsessed with wagon trains should be forced to watch this film

Although defined as a genre, the western has been a diverse one. From the idealized image of the Old West in John Wayne's movies to the revisionist image in the spaghetti westerns to the indictment of big business in Robert Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" to over-the-top satire in Mel Brooks's "Blazing Saddles", this genre covers many bases. But it is likely that few if any westerns have been like Kelly Reichardt's "Meek's Cutoff". This one portrays a group of pioneers making their way across the west in the 1840s. Their guide claims to know which way they're going, but it's not clear that he does. The pioneers run into a series of problems along the way. Ambiguity arises when they come across an Indian and don't know whether to view him as the enemy or employ him as a guide.There's little dialog in the movie, and some of it is muffled (as though we're not supposed to know what the characters are saying). The only obvious thing is that this group of people is trapped in this barren landscape, not knowing if they'll reach their goal. I suspect that the end is deliberately ambiguous (like the end of John Sayles's "Limbo").This is the first Reichardt movie that I've seen, and it impressed me. It's not a masterpiece, but I liked the unusual look at the Old West. Also, this is an atypical role for Michelle Williams. Far from her glamorous roles, she plays a dowdy individual who fires a rifle if she fears for her life (her bonnet obstructing her side view reflects the lack of connection that the characters with the rest of the world). Co-stars Bruce Greenwood, Paul Dano, Will Patton and Zoe Kazan put in fine performances also. I recommend the movie.

Earlier tonight I described "Meek's Cutoff" (2010) to a friend as "For fans of independent films, it's 104 minutes of licking the icing off chocolate cake." Director Kelly Reichardt redefines the Western genre with this somber tale of three families crossing the Oregon badlands together by covered wagon in 1845, but don't let the seemingly dull and uninteresting setup dissuade you from watching: the story isn't found within words or in tracking shots following bonnet-adorned women trudging in the dust behind creaking wagons, but in the unspoken complications of the characters' interaction and mistrust of each other as their situation deteriorates from unpleasant and exhausting (imagine walking across the desert to Oregon) to urgent, life-threatening and desperate.Many viewers will lose patience and give up in the middle of the second reel, complaining that the pacing is "too slow" or that "nothing's happening" or that "it's not interesting at all." But that is asking to have your cake and eat it too, and all at once. Meek's Cutoff does not reward its audience with immediate Hollywood-style gratification, or hand-hold impatient viewers by offering pat explanations and solutions, neither does it pander to the popcorn crowd by including gratuitous romantic side plots or wild West-style gunfights and shootouts.Tension, fear and anxiety must be purposefully assembled, element by unsettling element, if our suspension of disbelief is to support the terrible weight of dread, or joy, that lies just over the horizon. Or does it? But certainly tomorrow will deliver the answer beyond the next ridge. Surely we'll know by the end of the day ... or will we?IMDb.com readers gave Meek's Cutoff just 6.5 stars. I'm giving it 9, and each one is solid gold.