Snow Angels

Plot synopsis:
On a cold afternoon, with snow on the ground, a high school band is practicing for the last football game, when they hear gunshots. The film abruptly flashes back to a few weeks before, to a Chinese restaurant where a high school boy named Arthur buses tables, and his ex-babysitter, Annie, and her best friend, Barb, are waitresses. Arthur, who's a bit of a misfit, has a troubled home life caused by his constantly clashing parents, both of whom often forget about him. Annie's life isn't faring much better: she's now a single mother with an ill mother, separated from her husband, Glenn, who's on the wagon and becoming a born-again Christian in order to prove that he is responsible enough to spend time with their young daughter, Tara. Depressed and lonely, Annie is having an affair with Barb's husband, Nate, which eventually serves to only make her unhappier, as she feels great guilt over betraying her best friend. Desperate to prove himself and still harboring feelings for his estranged wife (whom he suspects is seeing someone), Glenn gets a new job and spends as much time as possible with Tara. Meanwhile, Arthur finds himself growing close to Lila, a new student at the high school who has a knack for photography.
The film focuses heavily on how people's lives can cross in a small town, especially when Tara wanders out of the house and goes missing while Annie, having just lost her best friend over the affair, is sleeping. The whole town spends hours desperately searching for Tara, before Arthur finds her body while smoking pot with his friend. To Annie's horror, Tara fell into the lake while playing and drowned when the water froze over. This turn of events leads to Glenn and Annie having complete breakdowns, which results in her going with him into the snow-covered woods, where she placidly kneels before his shotgun, ending with their murder-suicide.

Tags: depressing, murder, flashback

Review:
"Snow Angels" starts off as a fairly conventional, angst-ridden indie drama about life in an American small town, but the movie turns into a profoundly moving work after an unexpected tragedy strikes the community.Director David Gordon Green's screenplay (co-written by Stewart O'Nan) focuses on two disintegrating marriages - one belonging to Annie and Glen Marchand, and the other to Louise and Arthur Parkinson - and the effect the breakups are having on the children and extended families.
The people in both groups already seem profoundly unhappy with their lives, but when an unspeakable disaster occurs, things go from bad to worse for all concerned."Snow Angels" features insightful writing, sensitive direction and a profound sense of place and season (it takes place in the deep, dark days of a Midwestern winter, though the film itself was filmed in Nova Scotia).
It's not an easy movie to watch at times - its emotions wrenching and its characters' weaknesses all too human and recognizable – but excellent performances by Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, Michael Angarano, Jeanetta Arnette, Deborah Allen and Griffin Dunne, among others, make it worthwhile viewing..
'Snow Angels' is a movie based on a book by Stewart O'Nan. It is directed by David Gordon Green, and stars Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale, and Michael Angarano.
The movie follows the lives of several people, including Annie and Glenn (Rockwell), Arthur (Angrano) and his parents, and others as some relationships are built and others are destroyed.The movie has a strong real-life feeling to it, thanks to great writing by Green and great acting skills by the cast.
But in these moments with just Arthur and Lila being awkward and cute with one another, expressing their mutual attraction or making love for the first time, Green makes us believe that everything is right in this small town; if only for a moment.Possibly the biggest story of the film is the destructive relationship of Arthur's co-worker (and former babysitter), Annie (Kate Beckinsale) and her unstable ex-husband Glenn (Sam Rockwell).
Olivia Thirlby, one of my favorite young actresses, is also phenomenal as the unique, adorable young photographer who gets Angarano to fall for her; it's easy to see why.As almost everyone says, Snow Angels is an incredibly difficult film to watch, but one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had.
Here, writer/director David Gordon Green handles strong and intense material, yet creates a moving and unforgettable piece of film-making that I will not soon forget.In the same vein as American Beauty, Ordinary People and Little Children, this film explores the simple, everyday lives of people just trying to exist as best they can.
Kate Beckinsale needs to concentrate on serious films after this really sharp and heartbreaking role as Annie, a single woman struggling to cope with her daughter who she doesn't truly understand and her estranged husband who she regrets not being able to fix her relationship with.
Here, Green seems to be teaching by showing that even young people can and do understand the seriousness and complexity of real relationships.As I said before, this is a very sad film with most of the sadness directed at Annie and Glenn.
At the heart of the film is the crumbling relationship between Sam Rockwell as Glenn and Kate Beckinsale as Annie.
Only youth sees promise, has hope, etc.The film was far from perfect: Rockwell and Beckinsale's story line so dominates that the lives of the other characters become almost a distraction.
David Gordon Green is the most talented and consistently excellent American director to emerge this decade, making a splash he has yet to equal with "George Washington" in 2000, and gaining further recognition with the acclaimed, painfully true-to-life relationship drama "All the Real Girls".
I have not read the novel "Snow Angels", but I doubt there is any detail, no matter how painful, which Gordon Green didn't unflinchingly transfer to the screen.Although I enjoyed "All the Real Girls" a lot, I found that whenever the film was not focusing on the two leads it lost its edge and became a rather mundane, typical sort of film, with few truly interesting characters aside from the main two.
I quite like the Small-Town Midwinter Tragedy as a sub-genre, so I'm not going to say that this doesn't fall under that label, but I will say that "Snow Angels" achieves a sort of real, honest drama that can only come through true insight into the characters (in an interview with the Onion A.V. Club Gordon Green stated that this was a very personal project, and it shows), and a real understanding of them.
In that sense it goes far beyond most tragedies (the vast majority are shallow, miserable, soulless tearjerkers, no matter how far back in history you look), and although it's unpleasantly dark and grim, there is humanity to the film, mostly observed through the young couple in love (these scenes are somewhat reminiscent of "All the Real Girls", only without the complications), which really elevates this beyond your typical downbeat film, as ultimately devastating and depressing as it is.The film would be nothing without the performances, and as someone who couldn't have cared less for Kate Beckinsale before seeing this, I now think this was easily the best female performance of the year so far.
The rest of the cast are excellent too, in particular Sam Rockwell, who may annoy a lot of viewers with his performance in this film, but it is absolutely necessary for the character to work, and is eerily reminiscent of someone I used to know, and all the more effective for it.
Kate Beckinsale, as Annie, shows that she can act when not wearing tight leather in vampire films, going through the biggest changes of everyone with her mother to care for, the return of her husband, an affair with Nicky Katt's Nate, and the responsibilities of being a mother.True the actors are the real shining grace here, but Green deserves praise for their work and that of the aesthetic look on display.
However after looking deeper into the film, I believe Snow Angel uses not two relationships to portray its themes, not three, but four: Arthur and Lily, Barb and Nate, Don and Louise Parkinson (Arthur's parents), and finally, Glen and Annie.
Directed by David Gordon Green, Snow Angels is a somber, affecting meditation on sadness and fate, based on the novel written by Stewart O'Nan. It chronicles two weeks in the life of the central characters, whose lives are all connected in some way.The movie begins with striking images of winter, barren trees and snow.
not so here.From its very beginnings, S.A. is mired in a claustrophobic narrative progression, devoid of any definitive development from which it never quite recovers thanks to its perfectly listless screenplay.In this very movie we are told at some point that: "sometimes we do things we can't explain." Indeed, having watched this movie in its entirety, you'll probably be saying the same of your time spent trying to work out why anyone bothered going to the trouble of making a motion picture from such a rambling, pointless and ultimately disengaging collection of takes - all bundled together under one bi-worded title.Unfortunately, for us - the movie's hapless viewers...
For yet another indie relationship drama without a straightforward plot and more than one central character, David Gordon Green makes something of a quiet masterpiece out of "Snow Angels," based on the 1994 book by Stewart O'Nan. Although the film begins with us overhearing two gun shots and then backing up to show us their origin, "Snow Angels" takes a long time to develop its conflict, which puts pressure on Green to keep our attention.
Taking place in a small town where it's incredibly cold (it's snowing during football season), a high school student named Arthur (Michael Angarano) deals with his parents' separation and the new girl, Lila, (Olivia Thirlby) who he doesn't realize is completely into him.
In the Chinese restaurant where he works, his former babysitter Annie (Kate Beckinsale) is living the tough life of a single mother whose ex (Sam Rockwell) is a born-again Christian battling a drinking problem that wants to get his family back together.The stories connect structurally in that they both deal with divided families, but one really admirable quality about it is that Green will take an image or something that a character talks about in one sub-plot and manifest it in another.
Director David Gordon Green also helmed the ganja giggler Pineapple Express, Michael Angarano was just as blank-faced and dumb-looking as the token White Hope in The Forbidden Kingdom, Olivia Thirlby was the massive weak link in last year's best film Juno, and Sam Rockwell was just in the very Sam Rockwellian Choke.
Snow Angels is a bit more realistic with its setting, but that same blanket of bitter inevitability spoils absolutely any effectiveness this feel could have brought forth, and turns the film into a monotonous waiting game, staring down your watch until The Tragedies begin occurring.What makes this especially frustrating is that I know Gordon Green CAN do exactly the sort of downbeat lyrical realism he was aiming for.
Kate Beckinsale doesn't feel like she exists in this film, Sam Rockwell has a thankless cardboard derivation of Benicio Del Toro's 21 Grams character, and speaking of thankless, Amy Sedaris and Nicky Katt have the closest thing to interesting reality in the film, and even they get dipped in the film's dirty spittoon.The film is wall-to-wall plodding coincidences, featuring damaged relationships all around, with a generic and forgettable teenage romance thrown into the middle, starring the unceasingly bland Angarano and the adorable but useless Thirlby.
To some extent more convincing is the lovable, youthful romance that bounds between the high school boy and a nerdy girl.For a movie that only opened to two theaters on its opening weekend, Snow Angels is another film by Green that stands somewhat isolated as a poetic trace of the seemingly doomed life force of youth with an eye for the unplanned assets and deep idiosyncrasies of location and situation..
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.
Snow Angels (2008) **** David Gordon Green's big breakthrough may have come in the Apatow produced Pineapple Express, but his real achievement is a small movie that only a few people saw.
(In the style of Real Life 80's hit song "Send Me An Angel")Do you believe in trauma above Do you believe in cold love I won't tell a lie I won't be a false or untrue It will all come back to you Open fire on Sam Rockwell's character yearning heart Glenn's never been lucky in love His performance is not down through a kiss or a frown But it can't survive on its own If a girl like Annie played by Kate Beckinsale carves her name in a movie part I will not turn and run away Everyday Glenn being led astray It's hard for him to be lucky in love It's gets in his eyes It's making him cry Don't know what to Don't know what to do He is stalking at Annie calling heaven aboveSnow Angels Snow Angels See it right now See it right now Snow Angels Snow Angels See it right now See it right nowEmpty dreams can only disappoint in this northern town for a long while But they don't give up They don't give up They can be lucky in love This movie gets in your eyes It's making you cry Don't know what to do Don't know what to do You will be looking at love even with trauma above Snow Angels Snow Angels See it right now See it right now Snow Angels Snow Angels See it right now See it right now(End of song)OK, let me get to the real life of the film review of "Snow Angels".
This film made me sad as it reminded me of the sad things that had happened in my life, loss of love, family, friends and a whole lot of other things I had sort of shoved away, as at the time it was just to hard to deal with.But as much as this film has no real happy ending, it made me smile as my life had moved on to a better place, and it was great to see a solid movie based on human feelings, not the crap that seems to have come out of Hollywood for some years.8 out of 10.
That's what this movie is: A depressing well acted stupid movie, that could have worked, if the director would have read the novel objectively, before he wrote this mess of a script.Bottom line: If you like the actors, enjoy depressing films with few likable characters, and you want to see them do really nice scenes that make no sense.......Watch this movie, however, don't expect any satisfaction from the ending..
Arthur (Michael Angarano, who continues to impress with superb acting) is a high school kid, working as a dishwasher in a Chinese restaurant where his 'dream girl' (ex-babysitter) Annie (Kate Beckinsale) and Annie's best friend Barb (Amy Sedaris) wait tables, filling his spare time playing trombone in the high school band, and enduring the crumbling marriage of his mother (Jeanette Arnette) and teacher father (Griffin Dunne).
Arthur works in a restaurant along with Annie (Kate Beckinsale) who were his babysitter when he was younger and he had crush on her (sill has) but he doesn't move it along to a romantic level because she's a little older for him and she recently ended a relationship with Glenn (Sam Rockwell), a unpredictable and irresponsible man but also the father of their daughter.
I was surprised with this fact first because the story didn't follow this path, after all, besides the problems between the former couple they are dedicated fathers in their ways; and second, something happened to the girl and here in this movie I wasn't expecting possible answers for what happened, it seemed so right on the line, direct, with no false clues (things that usually occurs in many other films).After watching Green's "Undertow" (great film about a journey and what happens in it) and this one I can truly say that the director really knows how to make a simple movie interesting, worth watching despite its downer themes, yet he can put some questions and he doesn't force anyone to want answers, they will come naturally as soon as you watch the films and pay attention to details in it or details in life.
SNOW ANGELS (2008) ***1/2 Sam Rockwell, Kate Beckinsale, Michael Angarano, Olivia Thirlby, Amy Sedaris, Nicky Katt, Griffin Dunne, Jeanetta Arnette, Gracie Hudson, Tom Noonan.Heartbreaking yet consuming slice of American tragedy.Based on Stewart O'Nan's novel, indie filmmaker wunderkind David Gordon Green delivers his best effort yet in this examination of the American Dream and how two relationships dovetail with heartbreaking consumption.Set in an atypical American small town in all its wintry charm, Arthur (Angarano), is a high school student who is having a difficult time with his parents' recent separation after his instructor father Don (Dunne) simply decides to leave for no real good reason and his mother Louise (Arnette) seems to not be fighting it since she can only feel rejected.
Ultimately this will cause to dig deep under the surface of Arthur's angst he has kept to himself in spite of a lovely, budding relationship with cute new schoolmate Lila (Thirlby) who also sees Arthur as a wonderful being altogether and frequent subject of her creativity, photography.Meanwhile Arthur's co-worker at the local Chinese restaurant, Annie (Beckinsale)  who used to baby-sit for Arthur (who harbors an unspoken crush on her still)  is trying to get by in the aftermath of her husband Glenn's (Rockwell) suicide attempt gone awry leading to their painful separation, and their young daughter Tara (Hudson) caught in the middle.What transpires is a terrible tragedy that unites the community yet causes further chasm-like distance between Glenn's futile attempts to keep a job and his sobriety while Annie's fleeting affair with her best friend Barb's (Sedaris) husband Nate only fuels the fire that will ultimately lead to a devastating act.Green sublimely creates a tense yet believable environment for his principals and his quiet yet penetrating mood gets under the surface once the film begins to quicken its pace to its climax.
Green's camera, for whatever reason, has fallen in love with the most clichéd character of the movie - the small-town, redneck, ex-alcoholic, irresponsible but earnest, born-again, insecure, depressed, and delusional estranged husband played by Sam Rockwell.
He has his eye on a quirky, fun-loving offbeat girl named Lila(Olivia Thirlby), who has a deep crush on him.Arthur actually has hidden feelings for a young woman at work Annie Marchand(Kate Beckinsale), who is going through a rotten divorce and trying to raise her small daughter.
That's why its called the present." 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.
Sam Rockwell, who continues to impress the audience with his underrated performances in his previous films does it yet again in Snow Angels as unstable ex-husband to Kate's character Annie.
David Gordon Green's "Snow Angels" stars Michael Angarano as Arthur, a middle class teenager who is still infatuated with Annie (Kate Beckinsale), the young, beautiful, lower class woman who was once also his babysitter.
It's a tragedy, you see.If the film is wholly predictable, and fails to locate its characters' plights within any wider, social context, "Snow Angels" nevertheless possesses some fine acting by both Beckinsale and the always reliable Sam Rockwell.