Promises a harrowing depiction of poverty and its Catch-22s and its moral judgment and shames, and delivers on that, so hey, you can’t say you didn’t know what it would be like.

Full Review | Aug 12, 2022

Delivers a modern-day version of Vittorio De Sica's Umberto D. (1952),

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 21, 2022

Watching Wendy lose her precarious grip on everything she holds dear is quietly heartbreaking - and a bracing reminder in these straitened times of how easy it is for someone like her to be tipped over the edge when there isn't a safety net around.

Full Review | Nov 21, 2020

It is about a real person facing real situation. Instead of looking at something like the U.S. financial collapse or a stock market crash, we get a more intimate story.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 2, 2020

A tragic tone poem for a modern day America, struggling to find a sense of hope in an increasingly hopeless world.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 7, 2019

[A] spare and haunting film.

Full Review | Aug 29, 2018

Wendy and Lucy (2008) isn't the romantic road movie of Alexander Supertramp in Into the Wild. This is survival, revealed in all the mundane details of a documentary portrait and the simple power of Michelle Williams' unadorned performance...

Full Review | Mar 2, 2018

Giving quiet, but pointed consideration to the cinematically ignored economic anguish and wistful unhappiness of one end of American life...

Full Review | Nov 16, 2017

It's a really simple story, but humanity, companionship and will power aren't that complicated either.

Full Review | Oct 7, 2015

Wendy and Lucy -- with its simple shots and edits and an elegantly musicless soundtrack -- proves you don't have to be flashy to be compelling.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2015

Wendy and Lucy is a little masterpiece about the painful realities of life among the have-nots during tough economic times.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 27, 2015

Wendy and Lucy refines Reichardt as a poet of the overlooked American working class.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2015

Wendy and Lucy's minimalist aesthetic relaxes rather than taxes our awareness, allowing it to linger over minute details, which, in turn, become monumental developments.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2015

In happy sum, Reichardt is one more of the current American directors, most of them still young, who are endowing our film world with pleasure and hope.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2015

I expect there will be more stories like Wendy and Lucy's in the coming months and years. The wonder will be if they articulate their compassion and distress with such unforced eloquence.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2015

The climax is a heartbreaker, and in its haunting finale the movie recalls no less than Mervyn LeRoy's Depression-era classic I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang.

Full Review | Mar 27, 2015

The simple construct yields such a rich world is a triumph, thanks in no small part to director Kelly Reichardt's hawk-like narrative focus and good casting sense.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.4/10 | Mar 27, 2015

Wendy and Lucy is an old-school indie portrait of a woman in a desperate situation. It's quiet -- virtually silent in parts -- and at just 80 minutes, it makes its point without overstating it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 27, 2015

Wendy serves as both detailed portrait and metaphorical expanse. Her pain is specific but also vague, her loss exact and all-encompassing.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10 | Mar 27, 2015

Reichardt does her best to make the grim story feel organic, bringing a muted, hypnotic stillness echoed by her marquee star. But given our nation's woes, it's likely viewers will cut Wendy and Lucy the teensiest bit of slack that it needs.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Mar 27, 2015