Rabbit Hole 2010

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: Kidman does some of her most effective work in a while here. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: Nicole Kidman does her best work in years in a film that at times is almost unbearably authentic. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: As heavy, stressful, relentlessly sad dramas go, this one goes quite well. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The film sets us up to judge and then upends those judgments. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: Though Rabbit Hole tells a familiar tale, its goofy, loving feel for human cruelty and rage, for kindness and breakthrough bursts of exuberance, lifts this lovely chamber piece high above the crowd. Read more

James Rocchi, MSN Movies: [It] looks like another American indie film of ugly feelings and beautiful furniture, big acting and small paychecks. It isn't; it's one of the best, most human, most true films of the year. Read more

A.O. Scott, New York Times: All that emotion never quite manages to inspire the deep, resonant empathy these stricken parents -- and, more to the point, we in the audience -- so desperately need. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: Easily the most gracefully performed grief-porn you'll see this season... Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: The Kidman in Rabbit Hole is a revelation. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: [Kidman's] beautiful performance transcends the specifics of the script, which David Lindsay-Abaire adapted from his play of the same name. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: A quiet, devastating, beautifully acted drama about the devastation of loss and the slow, muted, barely-there return of hope. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: Rabbit Hole is a tremendously sad movie, but it's also the furthest thing from a miserablist wallow, portraying grief as something that doesn't arrive in neat stages, but in unpredictable waves with forceful undercurrents. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: The film is quiet, patient, allowing for lived-in performances that get at the enormous change in the characters' lives. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Eckhart works close to the top of his range here -- Howie is a guy's guy ill-equipped to fight something he can't see -- but Kidman simply goes above and beyond. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: John Cameron Mitchell directed, making an impressive detour in style and subject matter after his flamboyant Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Conventionally made but extremely well-acted. It does what most stage-to-screen adaptations do not. It works. Read more

Tom Charity, CNN.com: Rabbit Hole isn't just well written and beautifully acted, it's simply devastating. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: For all its sympathy and intelligence, Rabbit Hole is ultimately too safe an experience for such a free-form tragedy. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: It's not exactly full of holiday cheer. Then again, perseverance can inspire and enlighten any time of the year. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Rabbit Hole, directed with grace and surprising humor by John Cameron Mitchell, is a delicate tale that shares a great deal of the hurt of Robert Redford's Ordinary People. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: The canniest thing about it is that it carves shrewd and lively dramatic arcs out of souls who are too damaged to feel their own feelings. Read more

Eric D. Snider, Film.com: There's a lot of beauty to be mined from that depressing-sounding scenario, thanks to well-drawn characters, impeccable performances, and sensitive direction. Read more

Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter: The writing is too self-aware. The film cries out for moments that are not about the couple's search for re-engagement. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: The piece as a whole feels earnest and well-meaning but rarely compelling, a film that is almost too decorous to be as involving as it should be. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Absorbing and hugely compelling, a thoughtful portrayal of the myriad ways in which we learn to deal with the unthinkable. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: How do you patch together a relationship that has been sundered by grief? The answers it gives, tentative and hard-won, may not be surprising, but they feel right. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: With performances like these, the result is not so much an issue movie as a study of human quiddity and stubbornness under siege. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: You never regret that Nicole Kidman ended up being the actress who got this made. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Kidman is able to draw you in even as the movie's solemn, morbid obviousness wears you out. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Kidman and fellow Oscar-winning Wiest could pick up Oscar nominations for this dryly un-sentimental black comedy. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Eschewing cliches, Rabbit Hole is disturbing yet refreshing evidence that for some people, redemption takes longer, and for others, the pain never goes away at all. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Wrenching, poignant, and quietly healing. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Those who venture into Rabbit Hole with their expectations properly aligned will leave fulfilled and perhaps with a slightly different perspective on a few things. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: The film is in a better state of mind than its characters. Its humor comes, as the best humor does, from an acute observation of human nature. We have known people something like this. We smile in recognition. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Kidman, doing her best work in years, just comes at you. Her final scene with the splendid Wiest, who builds her character with uncommon feeling, is devastating. So is the movie. It takes a piece out of you. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: As a viewing experience, the film is by turns heartrending and stultifying, but mostly stultifying. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Nicole Kidman is strikingly good as Becca, infusing clipped dialogue and fleeting expressions with great depth of feeling. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: A tough, raw drama about wounds that heal only gradually, if at all. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: Don't go down this Rabbit Hole unless you wish to see a superb film that treats a sad topic with unflinching honesty. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: A perceptive and sympathetic film by John Cameron Mitchell that looks at grief by way of selfish reasonableness. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: This is how movies can bring a great, grave theme to indelible dramatic life. Read more

Tom Huddleston, Time Out: The problem with 'Rabbit Hole' is that it plays at one unrelentingly gloomy frequency: occasional moments of humour or tension are simply unable to puncture the overriding sense of oppressive sadness. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Rabbit Hole is a finely tuned portrait of grief that takes its time unfolding, much like the actual process of mourning. Read more

Peter Debruge, Variety: Grief may be the topic under examination, but humor -- incisive, observant and warm -- is the tool with which it's dissected in Rabbit Hole. Read more

Karina Longworth, Village Voice: Here the proceedings are so lifeless that you find yourself rooting for the narrative to fully tread into the disaster zones with which it flirts. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: What on the surface seems to possess all the melodrama and photogenic suffering of a banal prime-time weepie instead becomes a lucid, tough, deeply sensitive examination of emotional fortitude. Read more