"the footage itself is so gorgeous... Reed Morano's lensing radiates texture and warmth, and though he doesn't overdo it, [director Elgin] James can hardly resist the occasional scenic insert shot -- a strategy that dates back at least as far as Terrence Malick's Badlands, an early prototype in the same small-town-girls-gone-bad genre..." -- Variety

"Little Birds doesn't reinvent the entropic teen escape story, but its cinematography by Reed Morano captures the lithe bodies and empty faces of aimless youth. Even more vividly, it follows the kids through ruins, first in a desiccated natural and human beach of abandonment, and then in a skanky improvised urban cave in Los Angeles where you would expect nothing legal to happen." -- Screendaily

"The film offers an evocative portrait of life in Salton Sea, a post-apocalyptic world of decaying dusty streets, tired trailer parks and empty pools surrounded by strewn about, rusting household items. Cinematographer Reed Morano's stark camerawork enhances the protagonists' suffocation by isolating them against this larger, decaying backdrop. When the girls make it to L.A., one form of wreckage is replaced with another, as they join the boys in the burned out shell of an old building, the grime from which seeps off the screen." -- Film School Rejects

"...the film is notable for the standard of its photography (by Reed Morano)..." -- The Spectator

Morano's work on Little Birds and her use of 2-perf 35mm film is the subject of several articles: it is featured in a piece on the Kodak website and is further discussed in the 2011 Cine Gear News magazine, and in the January 2011 issues of InCamera and ICG magazines.

      

"[Director Victoria] Mahoney's style -- rendered incredibly tactile by ace d.p. Reed Morano... runs heavier on nostalgic touches than on in-the-moment sensory detail, as reflected in everything from a scratchy hip-hop score to such set-decorating details as a pair of old tube-style TVs stacked unused in the living room." -- Variety

"Warm vibes are echoed in the cinematography (which makes even a troubled home glow with late-afternoon hues)..." -- The Hollywood Reporter

"...the film [has] a certain New Wave panache in its inventive handheld camerawork..." -- Screendaily

       

"So real... It doesn't look like a movie, doesn't feel like a movie, it's a wonderful depiction of poverty in America that took my breath away... Somewhere around the last hour it put my heart in a vice and proceeded to twist that vice until the last frame. And all of a sudden this completely naturalistic movie was one of the most exciting thrillers I'm going to see this year... " -- Quentin Tarantino, Sundance 2008 Awards Ceremony

"Reed Morano, the cinematographer, has a subtle sense of light. Every tone, from the bright to the virtually black, is handily in [her] chromatic scale. Hunt has had Morano's help in keeping every shot either the rightly inevitable one for that moment or a variation of the expected that freshens -- sometimes beautifies -- the moment." -- The New Republic

"...cinematographer Reed Morano render[s] the trips across the river in the freezing cold with excruciating tension, and these passages form the heart of the film." -- The Hollywood Reporter

"Cinematographer Reed Morano delivers sterling work for a film of any level, capturing the frigid environs with an almost poetic melancholy." -- Box Office

"[Director Courtney] Hunt and cinematographer Reed Morano do justice to the land's clear poverty as well at its wintry beauty... Frozen River linger[s] on a break in the trees, the sloping entry to the St. Lawrence that Ray and Lila use to smuggle their human cargo. Mohawk Territory is nearby and it's as if there are two separate worlds but that icy doorway becomes the film's symbol of opportunity as well as understandable defeat." -- indieWIRE

"...Cinematographer Reed Morano creates an unostentatiously virtuosic lighting effect: It's as if the women were walking across the surface of the moon." -- The House Next Door

"Movies about women get far fewer Oscar nominations than movies about men, and movies about working-class people get fewer still. True to Academy Award form, Frozen River got little notice from the Oscar nominators, except for Melissa Leo's performance and Hunt's screenplay... I would have chosen director of photography Reed Morano's capture of the bleak junkyard-cluttered winter landscape for the cinematography award." -- indypendent.org

Reed Morano's work on Frozen River was the subject of an article in the August 2008 issue of American Cinematographer magazine.

         

"[Directors] the Stulbergs, whose film's stunning look is a combination of good cinematography and a majestic New Mexican landscape, achieved marvelous access to what has to be a very closed and insular community... The various characters come to vivid life as crises large, small and unresolved are explored..." -- Variety

"A beautifully shot trip into an outsider community that is hard to forget." -- Agnes Varnum, Doc It Out

"Off the Grid looks like an eerie mix between Lord of the Flies and Kid Nation." -- BuzzFeed.com

"The film looks beautiful. . . I was moved to tears." -- Ingrid Kopp, Shooting People