First Cow

First Cow (2020) is Kelly Reichardt's frontier drama you can watch online on iFILM. Set in 1820s Oregon Territory, it follows two outsiders who bet everything on a little stolen milk.

Cookie Figowitz (John Magaro), a soft-spoken cook, drifts west with a crew of rough fur trappers who have no use for him. Along the way he crosses paths with King-Lu (Orion Lee), a Chinese immigrant on the run. The two misfits share a cabin and hit on a scheme: bake sweet oily cakes and sell them to homesick settlers. The catch is the milk, skimmed in secret from the only cow in the territory, owned by a vain English landowner.

Reichardt shoots slow, in a boxy frame, turning a quiet friendship into a meditation on where American capitalism began. The film draws on Jonathan Raymond's novel The Half-Life. If you are worn out on loud, gun-heavy westerns, this small story about trust and tenderness lands harder than any shootout. Stream First Cow (2020) online on iFILM.