Montana Story is like a slow burning powder keg, waiting to explode all of its emotions out on to the viewer

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jul 29, 2024

Montana Story is an expected tale of family trauma that is enjoyable, but leaves the audience wishing it had more substance.

| May 23, 2024

Rather than relegating its traumatized characters to a boring arc of unending pain, Montana Story sets the stage for what’s ultimately more interesting: renewal, redemption, and moving on in health.

| Jan 27, 2023

Montana Story had very strong performances, instinctual story telling, and very rich emotions when it comes to the subject matter on trauma and guilt. This is very well crafted script and lends itself to this very surprisingly open ended narrative

| Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 26, 2022

A well-worth-seeing domestic drama; more backstory than story, beautifully shot with a pleasant sense of place, sensitively acted and directed.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 30, 2022

It feels at times as though the script is being purposefully indirect to pad out the film’s almost-two-hour runtime and give more space for gorgeous scenery. That’s not altogether a bad thing, as the leads give lovely performances.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 21, 2022

Though ambitious and heartfelt, Montana Story risks feeling like an illustrated thesis about Western mythology.

| Original Score: B-plus | Jun 16, 2022

There are not many actors today doing it as well as Haley Lu Richardson. Her ability to communicate her thoughts at any given moment without saying a word is what the great ones are made of.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 14, 2022

McGehee and Siegel score major points in casting their two leads, who give unselfconscious performances that are fully present and, often, fully heartbreaking.

| Jun 10, 2022

An inaptly executed and lazily paced indie drama whose fair story deserved a bit more grittiness.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 9, 2022

Montana Story gives [Richardson] a role quite different from any she has played yet, and I can’t help feeling there’s more where this magnificent performance came from.

| Jun 2, 2022

Using their own original script, the directors take subtle steps with symbolic elements like an aging horse or an abandoned mine that reflects elements of Dante’s inferno. They succeed at creating a soulful piece, one that sees both resolution and hope.

| Original Score: C | Jun 2, 2022

Good acting, beautiful scenery, so so story that never involves the audience like it should,

| Original Score: 5/10 | May 30, 2022

It touches you in unexpected ways, reigning as both a commentary on familial proprioties and a scathing indictment of a nation nursing a dubious past glossed over by a story rewritten so many times we no longer know what to believe.

| Original Score: B+ | May 28, 2022

This understated character study about damaged people and broken relationships is painful, touching, and emotionally powerful, from its restrained beginning to its most forceful final blow.

| May 27, 2022

Montana Story is a movie loaded with emotion yet handled with remarkable restraint.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | May 27, 2022

It’s a simple but moving story about a family thrown back together under trying circumstances, and how they are able to move forward from this point in time.

| May 27, 2022

“Montana Story” is a smart, credible, and ultimately moving interpersonal drama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 27, 2022

McGehee and Siegel’s screenplay reminded me of the novels of great modern writers of the West like Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane, with indelible characters and a deep sense of place.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 26, 2022

Introduces an element of finality to the American West...part of a new wave of films that herald the death of the Western.

| May 26, 2022