Little Children 2006

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Little Children slowly loses its grip, becoming just another story about infidelity, albeit an exceptionally polished, well-acted one. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Unnervingly good, Little Children is one of the rare American films about adultery that feels right -- dangerous, hushed, immediate -- even when the sex takes a back seat to other longings. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: As Little Children skitters along, it gathers weight, like a snowball, until it finally knocks you cold. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: From start to finish, it is artistic, viable, wry and wrenching. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: As in Field's first film, the characters are drawn with such compassion their follies become our own and their desires seem as vast as the night sky. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Filled with moments of painful revelation, real comedy and emotional insight. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: This is a pitch-perfect slice of dark suburban life. Read more

Bob Longino, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Complicated, involving and just plain smart, Children is the kind of movie that worms its way back into your head days after you've seen it. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Genuinely unsettling. Read more

Kathy Cano Murillo, Arizona Republic: Little Children includes all the cliched scenarios of a midday TV sudser, but they're ratcheted up several seedy degrees. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: What Little Children understands so well, and so poignantly, is a kind of parental existentialism that hits 30- somethings with kids: How does having children make you such a less interesting adult? Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: One of the few films I can think of that examines the baffling combination of smugness, self-abnegation, ceremonial deference and status anxiety that characterizes middle-class Gen X parenting, and find sheer, white-knuckled terror at its core. Read more

Tom Charity, CNN.com: Field is a rare American director who appreciates the virtues of breathing room: he allows scenes to develop in their own sweet time, trusting that we will find the undercurrents of human behavior as fascinating as he does. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: Although some of the actors are terrific, especially Winslet, Haley, Adams, and Phyllis Somerville as Ronald's loving mother, their work is undercut by the film's attitude of smirky superiority toward its characters. The superiority is unearned. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: A small wonder of a movie that puts its characters in playground swings and then gives them a push. Watch them fly this way and that, dangling between peril and ecstasy. And see if you don't recognize yourself. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Little Children [is] a jolting, artfully made drama set in and around a suburban playground somewhere between American Beauty and In the Bedroom on America's psychic highay... Read more

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: A film you watch with mounting dread, yet cannot tear yourself away from: It's paced like a thriller with the timing of a smart comic. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: It is a shrewd, darkly humorous look at supposed civility, at the ways in which we allow ourselves to settle and a rare depiction of motherhood as a less-than-awesome experience. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: There's enough humanity exhibited in Little Children to forgive its occasional submission to wanton excess. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: Wilson's overgrown adolescent, Winslet's bored, discontented wife and Haley's creepy, self-loathing sex offender are complex, deeply flawed characters -- they're the 'little children.' Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Field knows how to create a world. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: Built from a perfect story-telling collaboration. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: Seldom these days does one encounter such an intricate narrative so persuasively performed by the entire cast, most notably by Ms. Winslet and Mr. Wilson as the adulterous lovers. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Little Children is disturbing and smart and the best satire of modern American suburbia since American Beauty. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: The main story deals with Sarah and Brad, but the other characters are given existences of their own, which is rare in motion pictures, and Little Children is richer for it. Read more

Jim Emerson, Chicago Sun-Times: I didn't like any of these characters, but I kept pulling for them anyway -- right up to the shock-o-riffic ending, when I felt I'd been sucker-punched. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: I'm sorry, an interesting premise, a keen eye and a veneer of emotional seriousness are not enough. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Field and Perrotta share a real affection for even their most thwarted and self-deluded characters. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: To these disappointed eyes, Little Children seems a frustrating mess. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: Field and Perrotta find the humour in human foibles, but it is the drama of humdrum lives that draws their fascination and sympathy. And in Winslet and Wilson, they have found a most fascinating pair. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: Director and co-writer Todd Field establishes some very nontraditional premises, both stylistic and emotional, that give his film -- based on a novel by Tom Perrotta, who collaborated on the screenplay -- a creepy, hypnotic edge. Read more

Ben Walters, Time Out: Little Children ultimately seems to display the conformity to convention that so alarms its central characters. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: An engaging tale of middle-class suburbia, with its attendant fears, yearnings and rushes to judgment. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: A deftly made, emotionally acute and at times a tad fastidious examination of cracks in middle-class American family life. Read more

Ella Taylor, Village Voice: Suburbia continues to serve as the dartboard of choice for filmmakers bent on demonstrating their urbane superiority to the dull denizens of tract housing. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: A hugely absorbing social drama that is, by turns, excruciating, sad and sardonic. Read more