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A story of love lost and found in a small town, Snow Angels is a heartrending portrayal of three couples in various stages of life orbiting around each other in search of connection and meaning. An unexpected act of violence disrupts the lives of these intertwined couples revealing the profound moments in which they each realize how precarious and remarkable life can be.Since 2000’s
George Washington, his disarming debut, David Gordon Green has thrown in his lot with an assortment of down-on-their-luck characters. That empathetic tendency comes to fruition in
Snow Angels, his most carefully-calibrated feature. Like a marginally more upbeat
Ice Storm, solemnity never gives way to cynicism. The narrative revolves around a circle of small-town individuals (filmed in snow-cover! ed Halifax, the action takes place somewhere on the East Coast). Restaurant worker Annie (Kate Beckinsale, in a career peak performance) is estranged from sporadically-employed high school sweetheart Glenn (
Joshua's Sam Rockwell). The two have their own child, but in her younger days, Annie took care of co-worker Arthur (
Lords of Dogtown's Michael Angarano), now a teenager himself. Arthur still carries a torch for his former babysitter, while artsy classmate Lila (
Juno's Olivia Thirlby) finds him equally appealing. With the adult relationships around him crumbling--including that of his own parents (Jeanetta Arnette and Griffin Dunne)--Lila’s flirtatious behavior leaves Arthur flummoxed. When Glenn finds out about his wife's affair with the married Nate (
Grindhouse's Nicky Katt), pent-up tensions give way to full-blown tragedy. In adapting Stewart O'Nan's novel, Green sets his film in the present rather than 1970s Pennsylvania, but the story is! universal enough to work in any time or place. In the film's ! press no tes, Rockwell says: "I believe the film is about second chances. Some of the people in the film get them, some don't." Fortunately, Green doesn't short-change a single one.
--Kathleen C. FennessyInspired by true events. Kate Beckinsale and Academy Award® nominee Matt Dillon (Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for
Crash, 2004) lead an all-star cast in this explosive story about a Washington, D.C. reporter who faces a possible jail sentence for outing a CIA agent and refusing to out her source. The all-star cast includes Academy Award® nominees Alan Alda (Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for
The Aviator, 2004), Angela Bassett (Best Actress in a Leading Role for
What's Love Got to Do with It, 1993); Emmy® Award nominee David Schwimmer (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for
Friends, 1994), Golden Globe® nominee Noah Wyle (Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Min! i-Series or Motion Picture for
ER, 1997-99) and Vera Farmiga (
The Departed).A U.S. President itching to start a war... A confidential report telling the Administration the opposite of what it wants to hear... A Beltway wife outed to the press as a CIA operative... And another woman, a hotshot reporter, threatened with jail because she won't reveal her source... Yes, it does sound like the Bush-era case of Valerie Plame and
New York Times journalist Judith Miller--and by the time you make it to the end of writer-director Rod Lurie's latest inside-Washington shadowplay, you may wish he'd served up that real-life story instead of half-baked fiction. Kate Beckinsale plays the reporter, a rising star with a ponytail and a Pulitzer-worthy scoop, "Watergate and Iran-Contra combined." The film's best scenes have her tussling with the Plame figure (the formidable Vera Farmiga). Lurie makes them soccer moms whose kids play together--a proto-feminist gesture b! efitting the creator of
The Contender (the movie with J! oan Alle n as a Vice Presidential nominee battling a sex scandal) and
Commander-in-Chief (the short-lived TV series featuring Geena Davis as America's first woman President).
Nothing but the Truth trumpets its this-wouldn't-happen-to-a-
man outrage but resorts to woman's-picture subplots involving weak, unreliable spouses--then compounds the lapse by leaving the male roles underdeveloped. Lurie seems to be working his way down a checklist of themes (sexism, the need to protect the freedom of the press, the way lives get left behind by the 48-hour news cycle) and possible impacts a person in Beckinsale's position might experience. Finally, his film is a make-your-own-movie kit leaving the viewer free to focus on favorite ingredients. Apart from Beckinsale and Farmiga, the name cast (Angela Bassett, Noah Wyle, et al.) is mostly reduced to revving their engines, though Matt Dillon scores as a special prosecutor mixing folksiness and cold calculation, while Alan Alda ! gets to showboat as a legendary defense attorney. The widescreen setups abound in irritating mannerisms and pointless foreground clutter, but since cameraman Alik Sakharov did clean work throughout the epic run of HBO's
The Sopranos, the blame must lie with the director. And that's the truth.
--Richard T. JamesonLone u.S. Marshal the only one assigned to antarctica must investigate a murder and track down a serial killer on the frozen continent within three days before the dark winter begins. Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 01/19/2010 Starring: Kate BeckinsaleBaby, it's cold outside: that's the problem for U.S. Marshal Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale), the only law-enforcement officer assigned to Antarctica. On the verge of shipping out before the really bad weather hits, Carrie is confronted with a mysterious murder that sounds like a riddle: how'd a lone corpse find its way to the middle of an ice field, as though dropped from a great height? And w! hat's this have to do with the prologue about a Soviet fighter! jet cra shing some decades earlier?
Whiteout, based on the graphic novel by Greg Rucka, solves these questions in a brisk if mostly preposterous manner, and it moves swiftly enough so you don't have to spend too much time on the plausibility of it all. Among the other snowbound stragglers are a U.N. investigator (Gabriel Macht, of
The Spirit), some cocky pilots (Alex O'Laughlin, Columbus Short), and a grizzled doctor (Tom Skerritt). If the presence of Skerritt conjures up memories of
Alien, with its ten-little-Indians structure and female warrior, hold on--
Whiteout doesn't actually have a supernatural twist to it, and Beckinsale is no Sigourney Weaver. But director Dominic Sena (undistinguished by his cheesy film
Swordfish) puts the screws to the material in a relentless way, and the vast exteriors (shot in Canada) are impressive. And when it comes to one particular wow-you're-really-going-there instance of potential amputation for a main character! , the film doesn't back down. In fact it sort of revels in the moment.
--Robert Horton
