Small Town Murder Songs (2011)
Average Rating: 6.1/10
Reviews Counted: 19
Fresh: 15 | Rotten: 4
No consensus yet.
Average Rating: 6.9/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 8 | Rotten: 0
No consensus yet.
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Average Rating: 3.1/5
User Ratings: 1,138
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Movie Info
A modern, gothic tale of crime and redemption about an aging police officer from a small Ontario Mennonite town who hides a violent past until a local murder upsets the calm of his newly reformed life. -- (C) Official Site
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Cast
-
Peter Stormare
Walter -
Jill Hennessy
Rita -
Martha Plimpton
Sam -
Aaron Poole
Jim -
Stephen Eric McIntyre
Steve -
Ari Cohen
Washington -
Jackie Burroughs
Olive -
-
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All Critics (19) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (15) | Rotten (4) | DVD (1)
"Small Town Murder Songs" moves so deliberately, with such confident authority, that every small event takes on cumulative significance...
Top CriticBeneath a deceptive calm, it uncovers a core of fear and loathing as ominous as the backwoods world of "Winter's Bone."
A redemption parable that occasionally finds balladlike lyricism in its biblical solemnity and oddball Lynchian rhythms.
Boldly succinct yet confident enough to take its time.
STMS succeeds as an Ontario Gothic mood piece, a story of alternately repressed and exploding passion.
Rarely does cinema sight and sound mesh as boldly as this, and it's all to the good.
... the film is only an hour-and-a-quarter long, and that's just as well; spells are hard to sustain. Yet it's big enough.
Atmospherically steeped in rural noir. . .Stormare's agonized face keeps the focus on more a tormented character study than a mystery. . .greatly heightened by rootsy songs.
Peter Stormare is a limited actor who only manages to exude the resolute nothingness of the role.
The soundtrack ... goes miles toward making what would be an unmanageably dour experience into an acute emotional resonance; the songs are freed to say more than the characters onscreen.
Stormare's performance towers over the flimsy story. Besides the effective ensemble acting, another asset is the outstanding cinematography. This captivatingly haunting crime drama never gets tiresome and knows when to bring the...
Why are recent movies about small towns with murderous secrets so good?
A lawman seeking redemption can't seem to escape sin in Ed Gass-Donnelly's haunting, rural drama.
For all that Small Town Murder Songs hints at, there isn't enough delivery here.
The force in Stormare's performance is enough to suggest we've witnessed only a fraction of the character's anguish.
While it's easy to admire the unique stylistic accents director Ed Gass-Donnelly fearlessly applies to his northern Ontario murder mystery, it's not so easy to enjoy them.
...Small Town Murder Songs [features] an oppressively deliberate pace that effectively holds the viewer at arm's length from start to finish...
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June 2, 2011:
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Foreign Titles
- Small Twon Murder Songs (AU)
Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal sums up this film perfectly: the film "moves so deliberately, with such confident authority, that every small event takes on cumulative significance." Yes, but the slowness, or in Morgenstern's words, "deliberateness," of the film weighs on its subject. I think it's easy to know that the film knows where it's going, but that doesn't mean that we always do. And the title cards between the film's chapters are wholly unnecessary and do little to advance the plot or clarify the themes.
Peter Stormare is very good, creating a strong character out of subtle moments, and the rest of the cast rides on his coattails.
Overall, this is a good film, but it's pace can easily drag on the impatient viewer.