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Snow Angels

David Gordon Green, a director who made his name creating detailed portraits of the small-town South (like George Washington and All the Real Girls), heads up to Pennsylvania and makes it look like the most middle-American place in middle America. People say grace in the food court, college professors have their midlife crises right on schedule, and the television is always on. Glenn (Rockwell), a born-again Christian, wants to move back in with his ex-wife (Beckinsale) and their daughter. Floundering in the attempt, he becomes a once-again drunk, to horrific effect. That tragedy is juxtaposed, clumsily, with stories from the so-called life of a high school student, as if the plot had sprained something in the course of its transition from Stewart O’Nan’s novel to the screen. This is only slightly less awkward than Beckinsale, a glamourpuss to the marrow, cast as a working-class gal whose boyfriend wears leopard-print briefs.