Sweetgrass (2009) NYT Critic's Pick

[lsanderson]

Pat Connolly is one of the cowboys seen at work in “Sweetgrass.”
Montana Cowboys Lead, Coax and Cajole Their Charges Amid a Chorus of Bleats
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: January 6, 2010

The tagline for the wonderful documentary “Sweetgrass,” the first essential movie of this young year, is “the last ride of the American cowboy.” I suppose the word shepherd, with its pastoral evocations of maidens in pantaloons and lads with flutes, doesn’t have the necessary grit or mythic punch. But the quiet and cantankerous men in this movie, mostly in cowboy hats — one of which is charmingly ornamented with a sheep pin on the crown — are keeping and sometimes losing sheep as surely as Little Bo Peep did. More