Some viewers will find the film's dreamlike mood overly arty and precious, but I was moved by its depiction of lives held in the balance on the cusp of adulthood.

| Nov 21, 2020

Falls flat under the weight of its own self importance.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 6, 2019

Every retouched color and dramatic visual effect serves to pollute the movie's already sloppy metaphysics with an unpleasant strain of hysteria.

| Aug 22, 2017

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 18, 2011

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 4, 2011

A hopelessly overblown melodrama, which oversteps its mark with pretensions of narrative complexity and social currency

| Aug 8, 2009

[Perelman] over-explains everything at the end with a montage of repeated scenes that ensures you never need see this film more than once.

Full Review | Aug 7, 2009

In the hands of the director Vadim Perelman, it becomes a jumble of dramatic scenes and disorientating flashbacks that merge into a confusing, stream-of-consciousness narrative, and the twist, when it comes, is a complete cheat.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 31, 2009

An American high school drama with a tiresomely familiar twist.

| Mar 31, 2009

A thoughtful, if sentimental, semi-successful attempt to craft a drama about life and choice around the difficult subject matter of a school shooting.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 28, 2009

The movie's relentless dream-like quality could induce slack-jawed wonder...or chronic narcolepsy depending how receptive the viewer is to non-linear narrative and super-stylised flights of fancy.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 28, 2009

A touching tale from director Vadim Perelman with a surprise ending that leaves you plenty to ponder.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 28, 2009

A sudsy potboiler with a twist you can see coming from the title.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 28, 2009

Part Elephant, part Jacob's Ladder, moments of bruising power are dulled by overwrought symbolism and a baffling wrap-up.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 27, 2009

Ambition and accomplishment are aeons apart in this would-be meaningful drama.

| Original Score: 1/6 | Mar 27, 2009

Surely the point of a "twist" is that it should slot into the plot with a satisfying click, not that it should invalidate 50 per cent of what came before it?

| Original Score: 1/5 | Mar 27, 2009

Vadim Perelman's drama is both tasteful and tedious. With its honeyed visuals, affluent air and coy portents of disaster, it's like an advert for private health care played out on an endless loop.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 27, 2009

The film's dogged repetition of its pivotal scene has to go somewhere, but it's enslaved to a narrative conceit even M Night Shyamalan might find a trifle gimmicky.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 27, 2009

Absorbing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 27, 2009

Flitting back and forth in time, it's too confusing to entertain, while Wood and Thurman look nothing like one another, making for a disjointed and often dire experience.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 27, 2009