Excellent but underrated film

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Snow Angels is perhaps one of the most difficult films I have ever watched. This is almost a masterpiece that portrays realistic human emotions. Essentially this is a film that explores the ups and downs of human life and how people deal with them. This dialog-based film has some powerful but key moments that show the audience this. These scenes are genuinely emotional and may induce a tear or two. Difficult as it may be to watch, this film is a plus of cinema.David Gordon Green's film explores several characters and their relationships with each other. We see a shy high school kid, his old babysitter, and her estranged husband and how their lives interconnect with each other.The acting is nearly flawless. Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell deliver some of their finest and perhaps career-defining performances yet. Beckinsale proves that she does not have to be a vampire in the Underworld films to find out she can take these kind of dramatic roles just fine. She does have the emotional depth for these parts. We all know Sam Rockwell is a great actor and this is one of his craziest, but strongest roles.Overall, this is the small-budget masterpiece you'd come to expect. David Gordon Green has a way with giving his characters an emotional core. You come to sympathize for them no matter their flaws. This is just outstanding art that explores characterization to the deepest. With a strong script and engaging story, this is a film every film geek should watch. I rate this film 9/10.

"It's easy for...for us to block out the things that upset us. That's what I do. That's what most people do. But it's important that you feel through this." Hmmm. Ah...well. Where to begin with this one?I had high hopes for Snow Angels. I'm a fan of Sam Rockwell, Olivia Thirlby, and Kate Beckinsale, and was looking forward to seeing them all in an indie drama that seemed promising from all the reviews I've read. Needless to say, my expectations were not met.Snow Angels had an odd way of becoming less interesting and more muddled as it went along. It's like the writer became less certain of what he wanted to do and the story's message as the movie progressed. The beginning was promising, but by the the time the film meandered to its close, I was thoroughly confused about what the point was of all the interconnected characters and their actions.I quite enjoy "different" movies, as a rule, but Snow Angels did little for me. None of the performances were noteworthy enough to overcome a story that seemed to lack a central theme after it reaches an emotional highpoint near the middle of the movie. This one left me scratching my head, and not in a good way.

I have already read a few reviews of previous visitors and I must say that I highly doubt that I can make a big contribution to this list of reviews other than this: If you're a parent, you're probably going to enjoy this movie, simply because you can relate to it. I myself on the other hand did not really enjoy it. I don't have kids, and I watch way too many movies to be deeply impressed by this one. I started watching this movie with high expectations but I ended up being disappointed, sure it's a sad story but it took way too long before something actually happened. And it didn't really touch me at all.That being said, for some people this is going to be a great movie. If you're looking for a sensitive drama, a tearjerker and you're a parent. This is definitely your movie, so enjoy!

The location looks like it could be any Midwest town with a medium sized high school. It is winter, there is snow on the ground, the band is practicing outside for the halftime show of the next football game. We hear what sounds like a gunshot, we don't know from where. The students hear it too. Is it a school shooting?Then the movie flashes back a couple of weeks and is told in a linear manner, up and then past that point where we hear a shot. The first thing we figure out is there don't seem to be any "faithful" couples. At least we don't see them. The ones we see are fooling around with spouses of friends.I suppose the best summary is a "slice of life" in a small community, and for the high school kids it is part of their coming of age. Kate Beckinsale is Annie Marchand, she works in a restaurant and is separated from her husband. They have a small daughter. It seems he has had some emotional issues, received treatment, but still behaves like the kind of guy most people don't want to be around. He is a social misfit, often saying or doing exactly what shouldn't be said or done in the situation. Meanwhile Annie is secretly carrying on with a married man, while her husband seeks to reunite the family.Sam Rockwell is the husband, Glenn Marchand, and he plays the part very well. Separate from all this another family is having domestic problems. Michael Angarano (of 'Sky High' fame) is teenager Arthur Parkinson. He plays trombone, not very well, in the high school band. Seems his mom and dad aren't getting along very well, dad leaves home for a while. Meanwhile Arthur gets to be friends with a new girl at school, Olivia Thirlby as Lila Raybern, and they become young lovers. Interesting dynamic, when his mother one morning realizes he and his girl had spent a night together, she doesn't scold him at all, in fact expresses some amount of envy that he is getting some and she isn't.Anyway, as well-made and as well-acted as this movie is, when it was over I didn't feel good. I had just witnessed train wrecks where no one comes out of it in good shape. Had I known what all was going to transpire I would not have taken the time to see it. Not my kind of "entertainment", but I grant that some viewers will like it a lot.MAJOR SPOILERS: As Annie and Glenn are jockeying for position in the strained relationship, Annie wakes up from an unplanned afternoon nap and finds the small daughter missing. The town has everyone, even early dismissed school kids, begin looking for her in a 4-mile radius. Arthur, who as a kid had Annie as a babysitter, found the girl, dead at the edge of a frozen pond. This of course further strained relationships and Glenn went to Annie's house with a shotgun and shells, he waited for her, shot and killed her. Later, as he was driving away in his truck and realizing his life was essentially over, stopped and shot himself through the mouth and brain with piston. As the movie ends we see everyone else in the town just going on with their lives.