wrote, "with each successive trip back to the scene, things only become murkier and less compelling, lost in pretentious symbolism and obvious visual signposts"; Michael Sragow of Baltimore Sun made a similar criticism, saying, "Benjamin Brand's script is a puzzle without a satisfying solution." Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert, who drew comparisons between the film's narrative and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's five stages of dying model, argued "answers would be beside the point. Any other explanation, for example a speech by the psychiatrist or the cop explaining exactly what has really happened, would be contrivance. Better to allow November to descend into confusion and despair ... [it] does not bargain and does not explain." A review in Entertainment Weekly identified the film as "an homage to the work of David Hockney: Just as Hockney assembles smaller, overlapped Polaroids that don't necessarily make sense into a big picture that does". Marc Mohan of The Oregonian dismissed the film as "a post-Memento, mess-with-your-head thriller that thinks it's much cleverer than it is", but commented that Courteney Cox "doesn't embarrass herself" in her role, while The Hollywood Reporter felt that she was "as convincing as she could possibly be." Mark Holcomb, however, said Cox's demeanor "suggests impatience rather than depression," and F. X. Feeney thought "Cox’s performance is too muted to vitally illuminate this woman’s agony". Others such as Walter Addiego (San Francisco Chronicle) believed the film was a conscious decision on Cox's part to "establish movie credibility after the megasuccess of Friends". Most praise in reviews was directed towards cinematographer Nancy Schreiber's work on the film. Scott Tobias said the film "makes the most of its visual limitations;" Marc Savlov of the Austin Chronicle commented that it was "soaked to its noirish core in some fine cinematography." Kirk Honeycutt proclaimed Schreiber "the movie's real heroine, as she dramatically meshes the real with the surreal, creating different looks and emotions for each segment through light and color," while Jack Mathews wrote, "I suspect that it was her work—perhaps alone—that changed "November's" fate from a direct-to-video release to a brief first run in theaters." In its first weekend of release in the United States, November grossed $21,813 at eight theatres, and it debuted at number sixty-three on the box office chart. It peaked at number fifty-nine in its second weekend (aided by its expansion into nine more theatres) and generated $192,186 in ticket sales over twelve