Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 17, 2011

...ultimately establishes itself as a compelling little drama...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 6, 2009

It is phony, manipulative films like this that make people line up for Paul Blart: Mall Cop.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Feb 22, 2009

When Hill and Moore leave story and characters behind to veer off into suspenseless chases through cornfields, one wonders if the era of earnest American drama may be coming to a close.

| Original Score: C+ | Dec 12, 2008

A convoluted, discombobulated take on a small-town drama, Lake City shifts gears so often it never gets out of the driveway.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Dec 5, 2008

With all the high-profile movies blasting into theaters at this time of year, Lake City will probably get lost in the shuffle. That won't be a tragedy.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 5, 2008

The only thing saving Lake City from total ridiculousness is Spacek.

| Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 4, 2008

Mother and son have an uneasy bond that should be familiar to anyone who has ever seen a movie in which a child's room has been preserved and locked tight.

| Nov 26, 2008

An interesting little film.

| Nov 24, 2008

A movie that just didn't really ring true.

Full Review | Nov 24, 2008

The astonishingly inept finish could serve as a primer in screenwriting classes on how not to wind up a family drama.

| Original Score: C | Nov 21, 2008

One of those Deep Dark Secret movies, the dull indie Lake City combines a wholly uninteresting family mystery with a wholly unconvincing crime drama.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 21, 2008

Only natural spitfire Spacek, as the pickup-driving mom of the land, feels fresh.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 21, 2008

An intermittently admirable but largely incongruous work that suggests not only divergent sensibilities on the part of the two neophyte filmmakers, but a certain indecisiveness regarding their core audience.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 21, 2008

When Sissy Spacek speaks her cliched lines in the mediocre screenplay of Lake City, her delivery lends them a resonance that is not in the written words.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Nov 21, 2008

"Lake City" is a throwaway film with a cast it doesn't deserve.

| Original Score: C- | Nov 21, 2008

The movie has an earnest tone, and a burnished golden glow that's pleasing to the eye, but the characters have no life beyond their immediate problems, and the actions the plot requires them to take to resolve them.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Nov 20, 2008

All of these movies uneasily coexist under the umbrella title of Lake City, which is a shame because Sissy Spacek can be found wasting a genuinely affecting performance in this mess.

| Nov 20, 2008

The filmmakers rely excessively on a repeated dreamlike flashback and on foliage, fields and sunsets to remind us 'we are all part of a greater universe.'

| Nov 20, 2008

The story is as impersonal as it is labored.

| Original Score: C- | Nov 19, 2008