Snow Angels (2006)
Average Rating: 6.8/10
Reviews Counted: 110
Fresh: 74 | Rotten: 36
With fine acting and considerable emotional depth, Snow Angels aptly captures the highs, and especially the lows of human relationships.
Average Rating: 7/10
Critic Reviews: 34
Fresh: 23 | Rotten: 11
With fine acting and considerable emotional depth, Snow Angels aptly captures the highs, and especially the lows of human relationships.
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Average Rating: 3.5/5
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Movie Info
Director/screenwriter David Gordon Green adapts Stewart O'Nan's popular novel to the screen in this feature, which tells the parallel tales of a teenager named Arthur (Michael Angarano) and his onetime babysitter Annie (Kate Beckinsale) -- whose turbulent relationship with her estranged husband, Glenn (Sam Rockwell), leads the small-town waitress down a troubled path. Arthur is a high-school student from a dysfunctional family, and does everything in his power to avoid hanging around the house
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Cast
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Kate Beckinsale
Annie Marchand -
Sam Rockwell
Glenn Marchand -
Michael Angarano
Arthur Parkinson -
Jeanetta Arnette
Louise Parkinson -
Griffin Dunne
Don Parkinson -
Nicky Katt
Nate Petite -
Tom Noonan
Mr. Chervenick -
Connor Paolo
Warren Hardesky -
Amy Sedaris
Barb Petite -
Olivia Thirlby
Lila Raybern -
Grace Hudson
Tara Marchand
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All Critics (114) | Top Critics (35) | Fresh (78) | Rotten (37) | DVD (8)
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.
Top CriticIt'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.
A perfect match of material and sensibility.
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.
Yes, it's painful, but Snow Angels is so full of rich performances and characterizations that even gunshots can't kill its power.
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.
There's still a lot of excellent work in Snow Angels. The first hour is utterly engrossing. But there's also a lot of wasted potential, which is too bad.
Emotionally intense story of small-town America.
Frequently perched between the poetic and the twee, Green has been bitten by the Whimsy Bug
Impressive for the mood it creates, the film may not totally satisfy, but the characters are richly depicted and reflect the snowy winter chill that surrounds them
Hopefully, one of these days, Green will be bold enough to make a movie where nothing happens, where conversation is both his means and his end.
David Gordon Green is a very unique filmmaker.
Green is a director who takes his time with characters, allowing their different sides to self-illustrate in naturalistic settings as he simultaneously paints their worlds.
Powerful performances all around, but too many tangled and twisted family trees. Scorecard, please.
Powerful performances all around, but too many tangled and twisted family trees. Scorecard, please.
Rockwell, who brought a sense of desperate unease to his roles in 'The Assassination of Jesse James' and 'Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,' does the same here, with results that are at once frightening and pathetically sad.
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Strong performances by Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell highlight this indie drama, but the film's weakness is its inability to either reach the Altman Standard for interconnecting stories or link the stories with a common theme. The best that I can manage for a common theme is weak: I think the film suggests that relationships inevitably decay despite the grand optimism with which we enter them, a claim evidenced by the parallels between Annie and Glenn's marriage and their younger counterparts. But I feel like I'm doing more work than the film is in order to tease some semblance of sense.
Overall, this effort represents the dangers of trying to do too much and fit a whole novel into a medium that can't carry all the weight.