Snow Angels

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

David Gordon Green's captivating winter-chill tragedy, is a tale that encompasses murder, divorce, adultery, alcohol abuse, mental breakdown, and the disappearance of a small child. In other words, it's downbeat enough to make the recent Oscar-nominated films look like party games.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Green is a rare bird in American filmmaking: a humanist who knows how to tell a story.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

The result feels less like selling out than growing up.

Film Threat Jeremy Mathews

With a deep understanding of his characters, Green has crafted a film that's devastating and uplifting without sounding a false note.

Premiere Glenn Kenny

All of these actors are incredibly fine, and as a confirmed Beckinsale non-fan, I'm obliged to say that she really knocked me out here.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Disturbingly good. 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.

Variety Justin Chang

Emotionally harrowing and gentle by turns, this well-acted winter's tale is a more narrative-driven experience than Green's more lyrical Sundance entries, "George Washington" and "All the Real Girls."

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

Few filmmakers these days are as capable and assured with the fumbling ambivalence of human conversation as Green is; his ear for the half-truths, misapprehensions, and long-simmering defensiveness of everyday dialogue is a wonder to behold.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Revelatory as well as unsettling.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

For all the misery and emotional mess of Snow Angels, Green finds resilience and hope in the kids and even in some of the grown-ups.

Washington Post John Anderson

Despite the foibles that have affected his films, the dramatic image has always been important to Green, who has developed quite a cult following and deserves it.

Time Richard Corliss

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.

The Hollywood Reporter Duane Byrge

Snow Angels succeeds because of the depth of its well-drawn characters. With no cinematic sugarcoating, it's an organic story that draws us in to these people's lives, as flawed and destructive as they may be.

Village Voice Nathan Lee

What saves this heavy, heavy material from sinking into the chill, familiar turf of the Small-Town Midwinter Tragedy is Green's practiced ear for verbal idiosyncrasy and off-kilter conversation rhythms.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

A power­ful drama, but if I didn’t know Green had directed it I probably wouldn’t have guessed.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias

In spite of strong performances and a characteristically vivid sense of place, the film feels disjointed and heavy.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

It does give Sam Rockwell another opportunity to creep us out, and Kate Beckinsale a new shot at believability. Too bad the movie around them meanders.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Jason Anderson

Thoughtfully crafted but ultimately lugubrious, Green's latest only really connects when the director sticks to the small stuff.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Frankly, Snow Angels is a downer. This isn't inherently a negative - after all, some of the cinema's most powerful motion pictures are downbeat. However, in this case, there's no emotional force behind all the gloom - just a sense that something's missing.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Green knows how to convey a mood visually and develop tension with his camera. He just doesn't give people enough interesting things to say or know when to shut them up.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Despite all-around wonderful performances and excellent dialogue, the story never quite coheres narratively. Instead it moves toward a hopelessly bleak -- and I mean bleak -- climax that's more traumatic than dramatic.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

For a film full of murder, jealousy and fatalism, Snow Angels feels curiously small and anecdotal, and its impact diminishes as it nears its terrible conclusion.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Beckinsale tackles the downscale role manfully, but Rockwell is nearly unrecognizable as the pudgy, suicidally depressed, chronically inept Glenn, who's acting out a half-convincing portrayal of himself as a born-again Christian.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Kate Beckinsale is too good for any of the guys in Snow Angels and too good for this movie. Her inventiveness exposes just how puny this movie is.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

I left as frustrated as that band teacher is at the beginning of the movie. Enough with these meek, banal exercises, David Gordon Green. Hit me with the sledgehammer in your heart.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

Scene by scene his (David Gordon Green’s) new film, Snow Angels, isn’t terrible. 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.

TV Guide Ken Fox

Green and his regular cinematographer Tim Orr have a feel for the sad, generic landscape of small-town America, but rather than adding to an overarching melancholy it only reinforces an already drab, at times bizarrely comic tone.

USA Today Claudia Puig

An intriguing and somber tale of disintegrating and disappointing relationships fused with a coming-of-age story.