geezer cinema: montana story (scott mcgehee and david siegel, 2021)

A quiet tale about grief and family that never oversells its emotional moments. A sister and brother must come to turns with their pasts as their father lies near death in a coma. The characters are mostly well-drawn, and the two leads, Haley Lu Richardson and Owen Teague, are sensitive and believable as siblings. The Montana landscape is inescapable ... as viewers, it's overwhelming in a good way, but it's easy to see why it might turn into a less-appealing overwhelming if you had to live there all the time. The family saga has nothing new, but McGehee and Siegel do a good job of revealing the full story gradually. Gilbert Owuor is fine as the father's live-in nurse, but the character is drawn as the kind of all-knowing minority (the nurse is from Kenya) that reduces the nurse to something less than a person and more as a stand-in for the things the siblings are struggling to accept. Ultimately, the blend of setting and character make Montana Story a solid, if minor, film.

[Letterboxd list of Geezer Cinema movies]