Though occasionally clumsy, it manages to accurately re-create the especial lonely pain of nascent pubescence, the shock of change and the feeling that no one has ever lived through the sort of emotional weather you're required to endure.

The children are operating without a safety net or a script typed with kid gloves, and that makes it all the more easy to fear for and sympathize with them, even as the plot takes outlandish twists.

[Director Michael] Cuesta has found a terrific cast.

Twelve isn’t always easy to watch. But it feels emotionally authentic -- not exploitive, not farfetchedly quirky.

The kids are very effective. Some laughs seem right, others catch in your throat. There is honest feeling, not sneering.

From the parents to the children, the cast is uniformly excellent. Weizenbaum and Renner deserve special mention for handling a potentially unsettling relationship with care.

welve and Holding unfortunately breaks down by trying to wrap up its problems too neatly.

A film that has a lot of good individual ingredients but no real idea of how to pull them all together into a satisfying whole.

Cipriano and Cuesta push things too far, as the kids' behavior moves from merely obsessive to downright sociopathic.