Margaret Colin is excellent as the harried mother, making desperate and perhaps humiliating efforts to win promotion, unable to pay sufficient attention to her two daughters, alternately angry and tender.

| Feb 16, 2021

One of the more stunning films I've seen on the subject of sexual abuse and family dynamics.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 3, 2020

There's nothing flashy about Moncrieff's filmmaking, and there doesn't need to be: from the start, she gets the emotional details right, and the viewer feels intimately engaged with the young protagonist. It's a powerful, fresh, honest debut.

| Mar 7, 2018

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Dec 6, 2005

...falters because it hews too closely to the witless cant of the average guy as a potential sex criminal.

Full Review | Original Score: B- | Jan 7, 2005

Though the story is fragile, Bruckner's superlative acting registers Meg's feelings with the dead-on accuracy of an emotional geiger counter.

| Feb 9, 2004

Vivid performances . . . the film's warmly luminous look and the richly rendered view of a troubled but talented teen's struggles with the adult world sustain the film.

Full Review | Dec 1, 2003

Cuts both ways: the poetry and the acting were hot, the story and the cinematography were not so hot.

| Original Score: B | Oct 23, 2003

I found this movie fascinating -- but not an easy one to sit through. It's seems excruciatingly real.

| Sep 27, 2003

At the film's center Bruckner more than holds her own, beautifully capturing the anger, uncertainty and yearnings of an unhappy kid impatient for her 'real' life to begin.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 12, 2003

Moncrieff, though seemingly incapable of lacing a story with surprises, writes snappy dialogue.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 18, 2003

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 16, 2003

The truest depiction I have ever seen on film of how children grow up with divorced parents. Hollywood blockbuster hype notwithstanding, this is actually the must-see movie of the summer.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 15, 2003

Painful to watch, yet it never sinks to melodrama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 14, 2003

Moncrieff grabs us with details and dialogue so authentic ... that she often makes us feel as if we're standing on our toes and peering in the window of one of our neighbors.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 11, 2003

Blue Car boasts great talent in Bruckner, Straithairn and Moncrieff... [but] that talent isn't enough to get over the obstacles in the movie's second half.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 2, 2003

borrows heavily from her television soap experience but doesn't collapse totally into the banal

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 27, 2003

...leaves Strathairn's possible predator frustratingly out of focus.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 19, 2003

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 14, 2003

There's nothing particularly original about the plotline, but the execution is pretty good and may be enough to keep you in your seat.

| Jun 14, 2003