Snow Angels 2007

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: With the sublimely moving Snow Angels, writer-director David Gordon Green has made the best film about parents, children and relational perils since Little Children. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Rockwell gives a towering performance, perhaps the best of his zigzagging career. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: In spite of strong performances and a characteristically vivid sense of place, the film feels disjointed and heavy. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: Yes, it's painful, but Snow Angels is so full of rich performances and characterizations that even gunshots can't kill its power. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Enough with these meek, banal exercises, David Gordon Green. Hit me with the sledgehammer in your heart. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: Snow Angels begins with a wink, but it ends with a sucker punch. And somehow this doesn't feel fair. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: It's a relatively impersonal project for Green, though the performances are never less than genuine and the two stories unfold in graceful counterpoint as the movie hurtles toward a harrowing and heartbreaking conclusion. Read more

Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle: It's well-made. Searingly acted. Potent. And by the time it was over, its climax realized at the water's edge of insanity and grief, I felt beaten about the head with sticks. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: So do the final 15 minutes negate the power of all that's gone before? Unfortunately, yes. Unless, that is, you're in the mood to embrace awfulness. In which case, rock on. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Snow Angels is such a fascinating smorgasbord of flawed behavior that it exerts the voyeuristic pull of a first-rate small-town soap opera. Read more

Mark Bourne, Film.com: So when the film's moment of horror arrives, it's not with suspense but instead the sort of dully anticipatory inevitability that drains as much energy from the story as from the audience. Read more

Jason Anderson, Globe and Mail: Thoughtfully crafted but ultimately lugubrious, Green's latest only really connects when the director sticks to the small stuff. Read more

Amy Nicholson, I.E. Weekly: A great director shines a light into the lives of the ordinary; a lame one offs a child and pretends that's magnitude. Read more

Jan Stuart, Newsday: Writer-director David Gordon Green's brave and magnificently performed period piece (mid-'70s) witnesses an adolescent's first romance as it blossoms amid a dissonant backdrop of disintegrating marriages. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Parts of it are amusing, and there are wintry images that eat into the mind. But it's one of the most disjunctive things I've ever sat through. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Rockwell's never been a guy who makes a movie comfortable, but when he turns up in this film, he brings along a serious case of the willies. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: Despite some foreshadowing in the opening scene, the film's change of key in the second half feels like a betrayal. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: It's one of the most relentlessly honest and bleakly disturbing mirrors to American despair since American Beauty, at half the price. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: It's a movie that keeps its distance from the characters, so much that we can shudder at what we fear is to come but aren't really allowed to mourn the innocent trapped in this downward spiral. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: The writing and the performances are such that as things go from bad (sad motel-room affairs) to worse (a 4-year-old gone missing), the film's characters get inside your skin, your soul. It's enough to make you want to cry. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Director David Gordon Green gives us glimpses into the lives of the characters populating his canvas but there's a feeling that he's only scratching the surfaces of stories that have deeper undercurrents. Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: David Gordon Green, among the most gifted of the young independent filmmakers, creates a mood that engulfs you in the lives of his characters. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: A drama that finds a delicate balance between the consolations of romance and the bitterness of its failure. Read more

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Read more

Teresa Budasi, Chicago Sun-Times: Snow Angels will please steadfast [David Gordon] Green fans, even if its star power makes it seem as if he's been inching toward the mainstream all along. Read more

Susan Walker, Toronto Star: The sabotage plotting, sometimes engaging dialogue, visual inventiveness, a distant soundtrack and some occasionally gripping performances only add up to a film that leaves one feeling as frozen as those snow angels. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: The film's success is due in large part to actors who are both faithful to all the social minutiae and seductive enough to keep you watching. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: The plot becomes disjointed in the second half and suffers from tone changes. Still, the performances are compelling enough to make Snow Angels worth seeing. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety: The beautiful outdoor photography extends [director] Green's fascination with nature as a realm of beauty and danger, a place where men, women and children alike experience their final reckonings. Read more

Variety: Read more

Nathan Lee, Village Voice: Green keeps mum until the end, charging his tale with an effective (if manipulative) aura of suspense. Read more

John Anderson, Washington Post: What, after all, is Snow Angels? It feels like a comedy at first and is often blackly comedic, but it also reflects a universe in which each human spins alone. Read more