Noite de Sábado em Small Town

The writing was lovely and characters were charming. John Hawkes' performance was fantastic, and really carried the film in many wars for me. The story itself is a bit too familiar but there was some nice mirroring of individual storylines. It could probably stand to be shorter. The pace is pretty slow but it reflects the pace of life in a small town like the ones these characters are all but trapped in. It felt more like a novel, really, as it depends more on the relationships between the characters than any real action to speak of, but for fans of this type of film it is a nice watch with some really solid acting throughout.

Grows on you, really fine piece of movie-making. Watch it a few times over the years, and you'll see what I mean. This is NOT a toss off film, it warrants a far higher rating than what I'm seeing so far on IMDb.

Great mixture of real life drama, comedy, making tough decisions that every moviegoer can relate to. Love the performances of all the key players, especially Chris Pine and Bre Blair... and the ones playing the 'major eff ups' do an extremely fine job, too. That's how people like that truly ARE.

Music is well integrated and appealing. Ryan Craig is a first rate writer and director, not just a good one. He has a fine touch for the human in us, while finding a sterling silver lining in the cloud.

Rhett Ryan (Chris Pine) is a car mechanic with Nashville dreams. He is about to move there with his girlfriend (Bre Blair). Only she has second thoughts. She is still tie to police officer Carson (Shawn Christian), the father to her daughter. Meanwhile there are all kinds of characters in this small town of Prospect.

This is a slow moving indie for the first half. There are a few too many characters in their mundane lives. It's a boring slog through a lot of nothing scenes. The direction isn't the most exciting. It does improve with the bank robbery.

Director/writer Ryan Craig needs to move the plot along quicker. And for a movie about a country singing mechanic, he waited until the end to let Chris Pine sing. He's actually not that bad (unless he was dubbed). I don't understand why he doesn't sing early in the movie. Anything would improve the first half.

This film tells the story of the residents in a small town, and what they are up to on a certain Saturday afternoon. The day is eventful, and people are all geared up for a big Saturday night.

The story revolves mainly about the sheriff, a criminal, an insecure young man and a aspiring country singer. Their life story is told engagingly, and I feel very much for the poor young man who has an overbearing mother. I applaud his courage to do what he does at the end of the film. It is quite surprising to me that a small independent film can have both Chris Pine and Octavia Spencer in it, I don't quite know how the producers get such great talent to star in an independent film like this. Overall, the film is a little plain to me, but I say plain not in a bad way, as the film seems a reasonable portrayal about life in a sleepy small town.

Chris Pine wants to get out of the small town and get his country music career going. But his girl is still married to local cop Shawn Christian, his father Robert Pine needs his help, and so forth.

With the movie locked in the low-level depression of nothing to do and no place to go, the whole town seems to be like a surly teenager, with the main event being people getting drunk at the one bar in town without getting into a fist fight. As a portrait of that sort of hamlet (population 1382) it seems like a thousand dying towns scattered throughout the country, and the performances are all right. As a story it reminds me of Roman Hruska's assertion that the mediocre deserve to serve on the Supreme Court.