Memorial Day weekend is for all intents and purposes the start of summer — and, therefore, blockbuster season. This weekend, you can catch the high-flying follow-up to one of the earlier contenders to earn that moniker. But there is also a quiet, small family drama lighting up the screen at Sisters Movie House you can also check out.

“Montana Story” is a gorgeously shot, methodically paced melodrama about two half-siblings who return home to their small family ranch in, you guessed it, Montana, after their father suffers a debilitating stroke that leaves him comatose.

Cal (Owen Teague) arrives to find his father’s housekeeper, Valentina (Kimberly Guerrero), hospice nurse Ace (Gilbert Owuor) and a mountain of debt his father has left. While he attempts to sort out everything before his dad’s inevitable death, his estranged sister, Erin (Haley Lu Richardson) arrives, clearly triggered just by being back in her childhood home, but mostly by seeing her father again. The tension between the two is thick, and there’s much they do not and cannot say to each other.

Erin, though trying to get out of there as quickly as possible, realizes that Cal is planning on putting down a 25-year-old horse that she was attached to as a kid. She postpones her departure, determined bring the equine to her upstate New York home. Determined to see it through, she stays, and the two reconcile with their pasts and the betrayals they felt because of it.

Directors Scott McGhee and David Siegel handle well the steady-paced script they penned along with Mike Spreter while keeping the film’s leads equally steady. Their pacing lets the story and cast steep in the audience’s minds, giving “Montana Story” its effortless heart.

Shot on location in Montana on 35mm film, the striking scenery and blustery autumnal backdrop lend themselves to the figurative frigid distance between the siblings and the memory of their soon-to-be-late father.

Though the script itself is incredibly realistic, it does suffer from excessive monologues that jar the overall flow of the story. As the language gets overtly poetic, it doesn’t always jibe with the rest of the dialogue or with the established arcs of the characters delivering them. This is most obvious with Cal. He’s clearly a well-educated civil engineer, but what he says during normal dialogue doesn’t match the cadence and verbiage of the monologues.

The film also lacks a strong climax given the story and the discoveries made by the characters. When the emotional crux of the film finally comes to a head, it doesn’t feel as important as it could. McGhee and Siegel seem to have opted to downplay that moment slightly, which keeps it on an even keel with the overall tone, but it costs the climax its punch.

The journey to the film’s inevitable conclusion is full of small emotional and memorable moments that work well, building up these characters’ bonds and the story’s depth, but the soft ending prevents it from being great.