5/5 The power of love
  by Reader (Boca Raton, FL)
To me this is a film about young man Arthur's coming of age. Arthur is a teenager, growing up in a small town. He is a single child, but not spoilt. He goes to school, plays the instrument in the school marching band and keeps his part time job in a chinese restaurant with no chinese employees - which is quite ironic.

The adults around him have their own turmoils. Arthur's parents are separating and his co-worker and former babysitter is experiencing her own hardships with her former husband and a current lover. As the lives of adults spin out of control, Arthur slowly falls in love with his artsy classmate.

Without disclosing more, film shows a powerful pull love has on individuals. Arthur's love redeems his loss of innocence, his parents' love for each other pulls them back together again while his former babysitters' first love leads to a tragedy.

Kate Beckinsale is amazing in this film. She is so beautiful and yet able to show on screen that a beautiful face and great body are not ticket to an ever happy life of a woman. Michael Angarano plays young Arthur and for him I can say that he has a great acting future ahead of him.

4/5 snow angels dvd
  by Sylvia Path
This movie could have been plucked from the current headline news in any small town in America. However, the director and writers decided to take us behind the scenes of what leads up to these all too common tragedies. I was very surprised and impressed with Kate Beckinsale in this movie, I had only seen her in previous roles which did not prepare me for her very strong peformance. Sam Rockwell has done several roles playing unsavory characters ranging from child molester to sex addict. I mistakenly thought he was going to be different in this movie, a normal every day person for a change. Boy was I wrong! This movie does a great job in showing the vivid contrast between a normal relationship and a dysfunctional relationship. This movie was done very gritty and realistic which makes it all the more disturbing at the final end. This movie will depress the hell out of you and make you feel hopeful at the same time. The scenes will linger in your mind for awhile. Not a movie to view before bedtime, it will give you some nightmares. I highly recommend it all the same.


4/5 FALLEN ANGELS OF WINTER
  by N. Thomas
If you enjoy drama that does more than tear at the heartstrings--the kind that virtually eviscerates you at the very core of your soul--then you are in for an intensely emotional treat with 2007's Snow Angels.

Based on the eponymous novel by Stewart O'Nan, Snow Angels takes place in an unnamed northern state where, unsurprisingly, there is frozen precipitation aplenty. The protagonist is young Arthur Parkinson, played to clueless perfection by Michael Anganaro (whom I recognized as having played Elliott, Jack McFarland's son, on Will & Grace). Arthur is a high school student, a tuba player in the band, and an employee of his hometown's Chinese restaurant, owned by Oskar, who is decidedly not Chinese (I think he is supposed to be German).

Arthur's parents (Don, played by Griffin Dunne, and Louise, played by Jeanetta Arnette) are separating and his mother is an emotional whirlwind in the face of his professor father's egress. At work, Arthur flirts harmlessly with Annie Marchand (Kate Beckinsale in the most poignant role of her career), a waitress who spent many years babysitting young Arthur. Annie is estranged from her husband, Glenn (a blowout performance by Sam Rockwell), who has recently attempted suicide in the face of his marital woes. They have one child, four-year-old Tara, both adeptly and adorably rendered by Gracie Hudson.

New girl in school Lila Raybern takes an instant liking to Arthur; the role is handled admirably by Olivia Thirlby, who played Juno's best friend in the popular film of the same name. Lila, with her engaging chatter and delightfully retro cats'-eye glasses, waits patiently for Arthur to realize she has a significant crush on him.

A second couple, Nate and Barb Petite, find their lives hopelessly interlocked with those of Glenn and Annie. Barb, played by comedienne Amy Sedaris in an uncharacteristic dramatic role, is a fellow waitress at the Chinese eatery; Nate (played by Nicky Katt) is conducting an adulterous affair with Annie. Meanwhile, Glenn has become a rabidly born-again Christian and is busily attempting to rebuild his life by finding employment while living with his parents and aged grandfather (and let's not forget the dog, Bomber).

Suspicions fly and secrets are revealed in the ugliest possible scenarios, all of which find climax when an unthinkable tragedy befalls one of the cast and, as a result, several of the characters become lost completely.

I will advise that this movie is incredibly dark and extremely depressing, so be forewarned. Beckinsale and Rockwell, however, deliver stellar performances, and while the film may not be all sweetness and light, I would still highly recommend going out and visiting with these Snow Angels.


3/5 Almost 100% Depressing
  by Artist & Author (Near Mt. Baker, WA)
What a depressing movie. Any rational person in the position of 16 or 17-year old Arthur would have good cause to have second thoughts about romance. And, all this horrible stuff around him is happening as he tries to experience his first romance. I could have been a good lesson that adults have their problems with their marriages (just as one does as a teen just starting out in love), but that they can be solved. The movie would still have had merit if some of the situations were resolved positively.

My big, unforgivable, complaint with the movie is that the one who is made out to be an Evangelical Christian turns out to be the most evil person in the bunch. As millions can testify, there is nothing in Christianity that even remotely predisposes a person to evil; it is the other way around. [There are examples of those who are deeply evil try to use Christianity as a cover. But, those people don't get down on their knees in the privacy of their rooms, as was shown in this movie.] Any bad language or sexuality are of very minor importance in the film.

So, what might have been a good story is marred by excessively depressive events. This is amplified by a total misrepresentation of Christianity. If you want to have a nice evening bringing on or amplifying 'the blues' this might be the movie for you. The only positive note is that, in spite of all the negativity around him, Arthur seemed to be making progress with his new girlfriend (with her doing most of the 'helping along'). I prefer something more edifying and uplifting.

4/5 Intense Emotional Drama
  by Alric Knebel (Biloxi, MS)
The film opens on a winter afternoon, with a high-school band practicing on a marching field. Gunshots shatter the tranquility of the township, and the scene fades to black. Subtitles inform us that we've leapt back to "several weeks earlier," to a period in which all of the adult relationships in this story are already broken. The central relationship and the source of the greatest tension is between Annie Marchand (Kate Beckinsale) and her estranged husband Glenn (Sam Rockwell). Annie is living in a perpetual state of responding to the needs of those around her, barely aware of herself as at an emotional brink. In a misdirected attempt to get a slice of life for herself, she's having an unfulfilling affair with a married man. Her husband Glenn meanwhile refuses to accept the dissolution of his marriage, and skulks in her emotional shadow. During visitations with their daughter, he tells her to remind mommy he's changed. In the past he'd been more demanding, so at this stage of the story he has a restraining order against him.

Beckinsale nails it as a woman beleaguered in every direction. Rockwell delivers a compelling performance as a man with no place to turn but his idealized past with Annie. Hoping to amend himself, he takes up religion, but his crude faith is challenged beyond his wisdom by his sense of abject failure. Containing his desperation behind a rigid courtesy, he blandishes Annie with claims that he's a new man, redoubling his efforts to reclaim his happiness, while desperation drags him deeper into frustration and despair. Confused by her own kindness to ease his suffering, she nevertheless understands on a less emotional level that it would be at the expense of her own happiness. Then a terrible tragedy strikes.

This is great drama, with vivid performances by the entire cast. What makes it more compelling is the memory of those gunshots at the very beginning of the film. As the events unfold, the tension is ratcheted by our foreknowledge of a terrible ending. But for whom? You think you know, but as the story develops it's less certain, so you're drawn in closer, making it doubly wrenching to watch decent people unravel. These are lives too burdened with the plain ritual of necessity, enduring too much disappointment, everyone squirming in diminishing hopes. If there's a moral here, perhaps it's that there are no happy endings; only happy beginnings, as in the new love of the teenagers in the marching band. It's a haunting story because the drama is realistic, a bleak landscape in the dead of winter.
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