Metacritic reviews

All the acting in it is flawless, an overflowing handful of polished jewels.

This is not the easiest film in the world to untangle, but our attentions are soon rewarded.

The interwoven stories are haunting, but also darkly funny.

For all of Troche's skill and talent, The Safety of Objects (a splendid title) nevertheless tries to cover too much territory. In movies, as elsewhere, a little less sometimes can add up to a lot more.

The Safety of Objects doesn't carry the power of Ang Lee's "The Ice Storm," a similarly themed work about WASPS in crisis. Objects is too artificial, clunky with too many preposterous situations.

Not a complete waste of time, but it doesn't make us FEEL the way better dramas do, and, in the end, it lacks the qualities that would make it memorable or powerful.

The result is not a quilt, just a succession of story snippets that keep interrupting one another.

Outside of its star power, it reeks of indie film and doesn't hold much mainstream steam.

Troche's tone is so relentlessly, depressingly monotonous that the characters seem trapped in a narrow emotional range. They live out their miserable lives in one lachrymose sequence after another, and for us there is no relief.

Although it has moments of charm and poignancy -- this is one of Glenn Close's best hours -- the scheme and scope of the movie are just too darned obvious.