Snow Angels Critic Reviews

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.Read the full review

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."Read the full review

Revelatory as well as unsettling.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review