This is a smart film, told in a minor key, that augurs well for Whaley's directing career.

Has moments that are haunting, and it stays with you long after the lights have come back up.

Whaley's self-effacing but strongly etched and wrenchingly effective film.

One of my favorite U.S. fiction features at 1999's Sundance Festival.

A poignant, graceful little film.

The atmosphere of the movie is dense and unrelieved; it's a heavy role for such a little boy, and some people won't want to watch such a bleak, monster world.

The movie isn't a day in the park, but it manages to close on an existentially uplifting note.

Has enough simmering beneath its sweaty, grimy and disconsolate surface to be more than just another rite-of-passage missive set in the '70s.

Rarely falters but neither does it ever take flight.

Deftly realist character study.

Whaley successfully balances his scenes on a knife-edge of tenderness and anger that was Truffaut's trademark.

Leads you through a miserable childhood without sentimentality or relief. The effect is torturous.

A powerful little gem: a little bit of "The Outsiders" (the film's tone is remarkably similar to Coppola's film, minus the airy redemption and golden sunrises), a lot of "The 400 Blows," and a slice of "Radio Flyer" all wrapped up in a dirty black bow.

14-year-old Noah Fleiss gives a performance that's every bit as astonishing as Haley Joel Osment's work in "The Sixth Sense."