Snow Angels poster & wallpaper

Amy Sedaris, Griffin Dunne, Jeanetta Arnette

A drama that interweaves the life of a teenager, with his old baby sitter, her estranged husband, and their daughter.

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68% liked it

4,920 ratings

Critics

67% liked it

106 critics

R, 1 hr. 46 min.

Directed by: David Gordon Green

Release Date: January 19, 2007

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DVD Release Date: September 16, 2008

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Flixster Reviews (1,006)

  • EarthlyAlien
    November 7, 2009
    EarthlyAlien
    "It's funny how you can tell the fake smiles in pictures. You notice people don't bring out cameras on sad days?"

    ...( read more)albums/w25/EarthlyAlien/Snow_Angels_t500.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket">

    Based on the richly textured novel by Stewart O'Nan, Snow Angels is a searing portrait of three interconnected families living in a small Pennsylvania town, their lives affected and, in some cases, irretrievably altered through a series of tragic events. As faithfully adapted for the screen and directed by David Gordon Green, the film's escalating power and cumulative emotional impact can only be attributed to the care that this incredibly perceptive and poetic filmmaker brings to the project. Both in his depiction of a wintry landscape of lost souls and in his painfully accurate portrayal of characters struggling to make their way in a world that oft-times seems cruelly unfair and confusing, Snow Angels rings resoundingly true.

    Representative of four relationships in varying states of growth or disrepair, the film's centre of gravity is teenager Arthur Parkinson (Michael Angarano), who watches as his parents, Louise (Jeanetta Arnette) and Don (Griffin Dunne), mutually separate and his college professor father moves out of the house. At school, the cutely bespectacled Lila (Olivia Thirlby) has her eyes on him, but her obvious attempts at starting something romantic are lost upon Arthur, who can't imagine someone would be interested in him.

    At his job as a busboy at a local Chinese restaurant, he works alongside his former babysitter Annie (Kate Beckinsale), at the time a teen herself and now a somewhat hardened and overworked mother going through a difficult divorce with perpetual screw-up of a husband Glenn (Sam Rockwell). Against her better judgement, Annie has begun a seedy affair with Nate Petite (Nicky Katt) behind the back of his wife and her best friend and co-worker Barb (Amy Sedaris). When the unthinkable strikes after Annie's and Glenn's 4-year-old daughter Tara (Gracie Hudson) goes missing, it is the catalyst for everyone to finally face what they mean to each other and where they stand in the choices they've made.

    Snow Angels begins with what could only be looked at as a harbinger of doom to come. Arthur's marching band practice on the high school football field is suddenly disrupted when two nearby gunshots ring out in the frosty air. Rewinding the clock by several weeks, the film aims to explore what leads to this fateful moment in time, and for 106 minutes, Green holds us in rapt attention even as we occasionally find ourselves shrinking down in our seats, aware (even if subconsciously) of the inevitable conclusion being built toward. While there are light-hearted moments to be had, and the adorably burgeoning relationship between Arthur and Lila offers glimmers of revelatory hope, Snow Angels is extremely bleak and uncompromising in its tone and narrative turns. At the same time, save for a somewhat forced opening monologue by the overbearing band leader, the film is never less than glaringly authentic.

    The ensemble of characters are true originals, feeling, looking and sounding like real people rather than vaguely developed screenplay pawns. In the very specific milieu Green is working within, his characters are flawed, sometimes troubled, but sympathetic even in spite of some of the less savoury choices they make. All of them are simply trying to navigate the circumstances they've found themselves in and, unfortunately, a map has not been made to guide them.

    In a film of emotionally rattling moments, it is in the smaller, quieter interludes of human connection and reflection that are often most poignant. The way, for example, that Arthur gives Lila a pencil from his locker as a spur-of-the-moment present, is naive in the extreme, and yet exactly why Lila is charmed by him. A conversation they later have in Arthur's bedroom where he tells her about his remembrances of having Annie as a babysitter are heartbreaking in their subtle comments on the way innocuous childhood memories have a way of holding greater nostalgic value years later. Another moment in which Arthur and his mum reminisce over a photo album is unpredictably insightful.

    As with all the other four films Green has directed, the actors in Snow Angels are all doing some of the best work they've ever had in their careers, clearly delighted to be able to sink their teeth into unusually complex, three-dimensional roles. As Arthur, Angarano is just about as good as it gets for male actors of his late-teen/early-twenties age group. He has an everyman quality about him that makes him instantly identifiable, but also the kind of face that you just want to hug. He is perfect as Arthur, an otherwise ordinary teenager whose sensitivity and heart run a little deeper than most. Because of this notion, he and Lila, an embracer of the offbeat who refuses to conform to stereotypes, make for an undeniably sweet couple. Olivia Thirlby is an utter delight as Lila, worldly and intelligent yet mischievous and vulnerable.

    As the morally torn Annie, Beckinsale is a revelation. When you put aside the vampire-killing roles, she has been superb in the past (in Emma, Haunted, The Aviator) but, sort of like Jennifer Aniston in The Good Girl, she's never been given the chance to essay a role with quite so many layers and interior demands. She's obviously a gorgeous woman, but Green shoots her like the saddest one in the world, and it helps her to completely dig into the darker corners of a person's psyche. Her final on-screen look and utterance of "Oh my..." is especially haunting. It's usually the kind of performance that wins Oscars, if we were talking about a "bigger" film, of course.

    In perhaps the most difficult part to pull off, Sam Rockwell is mesmerizing as Glenn, a man who can't seem to ever do right - his forgetting to bring a stuffed bunny he has bought for Tara on one of the their days spent together is particularly symbolic of this - and whose mounting religious faith is at direct odds with the actions he takes in the third act. In lesser hands, Glenn could have become over-the-top and too broadly played, but Rockwell makes him as credible as the rest of the characters. As an actor who's been in more than thirty films in less than two decades, it never ceases to amaze me how Rockwell can make you laugh hysterically one moment and break your heart the next.

    Emanating a sense that what happens to these characters not only could happen in real life, but has, Snow Angels is mesmerizing in its sharp, fully-realized gaze at lives approaching a crossroads from which only some of them will reach the other side. Beautifully photographed by Tim Orr, taking advantage of his chilly, ice-drenched setting, it's ultimately such a provocative and effective film because of how David Gordon Green handles the tough material, lending equal weight to both the extraordinary and deceptively mundane moments of life in motion that make all of us startlingly, stingingly and intensely human.

    "I forgive you. I don't even know you, but I forgive you."
  • irisheyes686
    August 27, 2009
    irisheyes686
    WEIRD movie. All of the characters were odd and said random things that didn't make sense. Very depressing as well.
  • kiriyamakazou
    February 16, 2009
    kiriyamakazou
    David Gordon Greene continues a fabulous career. Here he shows his skills at adapting other peoples work. Sure it lacks the deeply buried emotions of George Washington and All the Real Girls, and is slightly less subtle, but it is still a powerful and excruciating story. Greene p...( read more)ulls no punches in delving far into his characters flaws and highlights events from all angles. The film cleverly starts with a gun shot in the distance. The film then goes back to a few weeks previously and depicts the events leading up to the gun shot. In this respect it is also a mystery. Who fires the gun? Were they shooting at someone? Will someone be killed? Why were they shooting? Luckily this never detracts from the story being told. In fact it results in more attention being paid as we try to calculate motives or predict where the film is headed. A wonderful movie, but not one to enjoy in a large group with buckets of popcorn.
  • ceWEBrity
    January 12, 2009
    ceWEBrity
    Absolutely heartbreaking. David Gordon Green had a damn good year, didn't he?

    More later
  • shortcartoonist
    January 12, 2009
    shortcartoonist
    The breakdown of the family unit and the faults that we each hold binds Snow Angels into an absorbing and touching view on small town life, where the community is close yet the people can be distant. While small in scope there is a great deal of heart to the production - with fin...( read more)e performances and emotional scenes.

    There is a lot to like in Gordon-Green's film of love in its many distant phases of its characters, but ultimately its small scope becomes a hindrance. Too often does the film feel like it has nothing truly special to say, and too often does it feel like a mere walk with these characters. Through its qualms though, Snow Angles manages to come out a very strong three stars.
  • magnolia12883
    November 24, 2009
    magnolia12883
    David Gordon Green's "Snow Angels" is a mosaical slice of life in a small town (filmed in Nova Scotia). It concerns the converging lives of everyone from a young dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant (Michael Angarano) to his sexy coworker (Kate Beckinsale), a mom in the midst of a ...( read more)separation from her deadbeat, suicidal husband (Sam Rockwell), the dishwasher's classmate (Olivia Thirlby), and the co-worker (Amy Sedaris) and her unfaithful husband (Nicky Katt).

    Green's fourth feature (after the superb "George Washington," "All the Real Girls" and "Undertow"; he has Judd Apatow's production "The Pineapple Express" coming in August!) is a powerful little movie based on the Stuart O'Nan novel.

    The only confusing thing is that it seems to be set in the 70s or 80s, yet Beckinsale has a very new looking cellphone at one point. Anachronism?

    Very good work on all accounts.
  • ythelastman89
    November 18, 2009
    ythelastman89
    A lot of interesting characters, some not exactly likable (Kate Beckinsale). It has tragedy and a love story going on at the same and somehow manages to make that work. It's a pretty good ensemble piece and sets itself apart from most movies like it.
  • sagapart12
    November 10, 2009
    sagapart12
    One of the biggest dissapointments of the last while. Me being a growing fan of David Gordon Green, this movie was just so deeply frustrating. For one, Sam Rockwell should never play a christian, he just is not believeable in the role, and I love him, so don't get me wrong. Bah b...( read more)ut this movie just pissed me off.
  • siewmaywah
    November 7, 2009
    siewmaywah
    I found it boring despite the glowing reviews. A rehash of "Winged Creatures", both films starring Kate Beckinsale.
  • leaflibrary
    October 25, 2009
    leaflibrary
    Chilling (no pun intended) and perfectly rendered by genius David Gordon Green

View All Snow Angels Reviews

Critic Reviews

April 11, 2008
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. full review

March 28, 2008
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 t... full review

March 20, 2008
Colin Covert, The Minneapolis Star Tribune

A drama that finds a delicate balance between the consolations of romance and the bitterness of its failure. full review

March 14, 2008
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. full review

March 7, 2008
Nick Schager, Cinematical

Flails about in search of poetry. full review

March 7, 2008
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. full review

March 7, 2008
A.O. Scott, The New York Times

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.

March 5, 2008
Armond White, The New York Press

This small town portrait isn't eccentric; it's just an indie-agnostic Peyton Place. full review

March 3, 2008
David Edelstein, New York Magazine

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. full review

View more Snow Angels reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

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