{"id":11546,"date":"2011-02-04T11:07:42","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T19:07:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=11546"},"modified":"2011-02-04T12:23:37","modified_gmt":"2011-02-04T20:23:37","slug":"small-town-murder-songs-ed-gass-connelly-2010-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=11546","title":{"rendered":"Small Town Murder Songs (Ed Gass-Connelly, 2010): Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Veronica Vanglin<\/a>. Viewed at Metropolitan 4, The Santa Barbara International Film Festival.<\/p>\n

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I saw\u00a0Small Town Murder Songs<\/em><\/a> at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and I was pleasantly surprised by the cast of this movie. Peter Stormare did a great job portraying Walter, a middle aged police officer who spent his days giving speeding tickets. Stormare also has a strong line up of supporting actors who helps carry the story that by itself isn’t that strong. For example Martha Plimpton who played Walter’s new girlfriend was highly celebrated for the part. Another thing that really stood out to me was the amazing music by Bruce Pininsula. His mix of country, rock and gospel was genius and worked with the film.<\/p>\n

Ed Gass-Donnelly, the director and screenwriter, is from a small town in Canada which influence most of his films. He is called ” a director to watch” by the critics. He likes to explore by putting ever day people in unusual situations which Small Town Murder Songs is all about. The film has many combined story lines which keeps the interest up but feels like very unnecessary information at times.<\/p>\n

As I mentioned, police officer Walter Rude spends his days with nonsense because nothing ever really happen in his town. One day a murder occurs and Walter is finding himself in a very stressful situation trying to investigate the case. He is a born again christian after a violent past and his big love, Rita (Jill Hennessy), left him for another man. When this man all of a sudden get suspected for the murder, Walter get accused for trying to set him up since he has clear motives for wanting him out of the way.<\/p>\n

Small Town Murder Songs reminded me a lot of last year Oscar nominated A Serious Man. They are both simple men who unexpected get put in a situation out of their ordinary every day lives. They are both almost loosing their minds while trying to cope with the situation.<\/p>\n

This film was somewhat confusing to me because the cinematography wasn’t all that great and neither was the script. So the combination of not always being able to see what was going on and a very diffuse story didn’t work for me. There is one sentence in the end, and if you would miss that the entire meaning of the film is ruined. So be alert and listen in between all the bible quotes and while trying to figure out what your watching since the lighting is so bad. If you are a fan of music – go and enjoy the music because it is absolutely amazing. If you are a fan of film – you might like it, I didn’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Veronica Vanglin. Viewed at Metropolitan 4, The Santa Barbara International Film Festival. I saw\u00a0Small Town Murder Songs at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and I was pleasantly surprised by the cast of this movie. Peter Stormare did a great job portraying Walter, a middle aged police officer who spent his days giving […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,146],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-santa-barbara-film-festival-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11546\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}