Though it doesn't feature Old Joy's Air America radio call-in Greek chorus, Kelly Reichardt's follow-up Wendy and Lucy is nonetheless a somber politicized lament for hardscrabble lives struggling to exist on the economic precipice. Reichardt's latest (based on Jon Raymond's short story Train Choir) opens on Wendy (Michelle Williams) and her beloved dog Lucy amiably strolling through the Oregonian woods, their casual and affectionate rapport amidst their verdant environment underscored by the soundtrack's melancholy humming by Wendy, who's on her way from Indiana to Alaska in the hopes of finding employment at a Northwest fish cannery. Dressed in a flannel shirt, a hooded sweatshirt and homemade corduroy cut-offs, and boasting a boyish haircut, Wendy looks the part of an aimless drifter, yet her desire for stability becomes clear once she comes across a group of itinerants' campfire, her face peering through the brush with fearful hesitancy that suggests her stark contrast with these nomads. Her plans to reach Alaska, however, go awry in a small Oregon town when she's arrested for shoplifting dog food and carted off to jail, with Lucy left to fend for herself while tied to a post outside the grocery store. When Wendy makes bail and returns to retrieve Lucy, the dog is gone, initiating a desperate search that soon consumes the narrative.  Nick Schager