This tragic story about the accidental death of a child raises a lot of issues about parenting, responsibility, guilt, blame and remorse. These issues have broader implications for society as a whole, far beyond this specific example.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Feb 2, 2012

A garbled melodrama striving to be tragic drama.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jan 13, 2012

A not very subtle and generally unpersuasive stab at tapestral grief-as-elegy.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Jan 13, 2012

Catherine Trieschmann's script, based on the novel by Leslie Schwartz, barely scratches the potentially loaded surfaces it serves up.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 13, 2012

Nothing sticks for long in this strangely muted, depressing drama that blows from one scene to the next without any particular rhythm like one of the pretty snow drifts in the film.

Full Review | Jan 13, 2012

Hopelessly bleak tragedy, as trumatic guilt gnaws on everyone's sensibilities.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/10 | Jan 7, 2012

Frosty and oddly cast

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 30, 2011

While there is a great deal of weeping and wailing going on in the town of Angels Crest, little of it is connected to a comprehensible or cohesive plot.

Full Review | Dec 30, 2011

Dellal gets respectable performances all around ... but they can't elevate "Angels Crest" ... beyond its one obvious and depressing note ...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 30, 2011

Despite several solid performances, the characters are too hazily sketched and too loosely linked to form a meaningful chain.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 29, 2011

A high-school production of a second-rate Greek tragedian.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 29, 2011

There's actually less here than meets the eye.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 29, 2011

a bare-bones affair for the cast and the audience.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 29, 2011

It relies too much on two particularly played-out indie clichs: a spare, plunky soundtrack, and a narrative structure that teases out characters' backstory far longer than necessary.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Dec 29, 2011

Parental sorrow is a fine big theme; all that's missing here is the detail-work to humanize it.

Full Review | Dec 27, 2011

Angels Crest opens with the laughter of children at play, but that's the only hint of happiness you'll find in this unflinchingly manipulative and pointless morality play.

Full Review | Original Score: 0/4 | Dec 27, 2011

The film can't locate the bone-deep sense of tragedy of Leslie Schwartz's novel -- it just keeps belching out empty, grief-stricken histrionics devoid of insight.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 20, 2011

The main story remains intriguing even if it never becomes profound.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Nov 24, 2011

Angels Crest has a number of peripheral problems, mostly to do with the sheer number of under-developed characters and subplots.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 4, 2011

The movie's real strength is Gaby Dellal's careful, subtle direction. She avoids the pitfalls of melodrama and histrionics that often plague movies about loss, keeping her actors' emotions grounded in recognizable truth.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | May 6, 2011