A loner and cook (John Magaro) has traveled west and joined a group of fur trappers in Oregon Territory, though he only finds connection with a Chinese immigrant (Orion Lee). The men collaborate on a business, although its longevity is reliant upon the participation of a wealthy landowner's prized milking cow.... (Full plot summary below)
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A loner and cook (John Magaro) has traveled west and joined a group of fur trappers in Oregon Territory, though he only finds connection with a Chinese immigrant (Orion Lee). The men collaborate on a business, although its longevity is reliant upon the participation of a wealthy landowner's prized milking cow.
Leave your thoughts about First Cow.
| The New York TimesA.O. ScottFirst Cow is fundamentally a western: It takes up questions of civilization, solidarity and barbarism on the American frontier. And like many great westerns it critiques some of the genre’s foundational myths with bracing, beautiful rigor, including the myth of heroic individualism. |
| Washington PostAnn HornadayWe might go into a Kelly Reichardt movie thinking we’ll be told a story, but we emerge with our consciousness subtly and radically altered. |
| The AtlanticDavid SimsFirst Cow is a masterwork of indie cinema—a tale that’s both charming and unsparing, suffused with equal measures of wonder and dread. |
| The Associated PressJake CoyleThe joys of First Cow are many. The thoughtful, unshowy textures of its clothes and surroundings. The fabulous chemistry of its two leads. The softly stirring guitar of William Tyler’s score. All of these details add up to a wholly original western, one with its own rhythms, ideas and iconography. |
| RogerEbert.comAllison ShoemakerFirst Cow, adapted by Reichardt with frequent collaborator Jonathan Raymond from the latter’s novel "The Half Life," is many things. A simultaneously gentle and unsparing dissection of the formative flaws of capitalism, and thus of the “American dream”; a frontier story which captures the harsh realities and simple pleasures of a life built painstakingly from rock, wood, and soil; a heist movie; an argument for the power of baked goods. |
| Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsIn Reichardt films ranging from “Wendy and Lucy” to “Meek’s Cutoff” to “Certain Women,” the lives of outsiders are defined by the natural world, economic circumstance and by their own dreams of connection. First Cow is one of her very best. |
| New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinThis haunting movie transports you to another world — and redefines home. |
| TimeStephanie ZacharekA picture that’s both tranquil and dazzling, two qualities that should be at odds with one another yet somehow bloom in tandem under Reichardt’s gentle touch. |
| Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternFirst Cow is vividly alive on arrival and grows into pure enchantment, although it starts at a saunter and its physical scale is small. |
| Los Angeles TimesJustin ChangSuffice to say the plot’s every unfolding development is a deft and delightful surprise, and it may be the most suspenseful and entertaining demonstration yet of Reichardt’s rigorous attention to detail — her patient, genuine and remarkably cinematic fascination with the workings of process and minutiae. |
