Winter's Bone

I do not usually do reviews, but I read one too many 10/10 reviews. Guys, I'm gonna level with you. This movie is a well written, well directed and well acted snooze fest. This movie is terribly overrated. I'm all for indie movies, but come on people. What does this movie bring to the table? Maybe I'm just not a fan of dark/grim movies that you tell from the first 5 minutes is not going to bode well for the heroine. This movie has a similar feel to 'The Road' which I also did not like, so maybe I'm biased to this genre. I've already seen 200+ movies this year and the hype of this movie is sickening. I can think of 50 I would put well above it. If you go see this flick, do yourself a favor and bring a pillow and a red bull.

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source: Winter's Bone

While I have seen many more entertaining film and certainly more profound, I cannot remember the last time I saw a film so realistic I felt I was there. The very realism of "Winter's Bone" undercuts its pacing and dramatic impact. The film opens slowly and my wife nearly lost interest before the story engrossed her. Perhaps given my "country cousin" roots, I was immediately taken in. As a writer I was astounded at how many times I could not predict what would happen next. Yet, every scene flows naturally into the next. While I found some of the dialog unintelligible, the "natural sound" so accentuated the film's atmosphere I didn't care. Certainly, I had no trouble understanding all the necessary interchanges. While all performances are "pitch perfect," Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes certainly deserved their Oscar nominations and numerous awards. Likewise, writer/director deserved her Oscar nomination for writing. She should have received one for directing. In any event, she is one to watch and, in my opinion, a much better director than Oscar winner Kathryn Bigelow. There are no really "big" messages here. Nonetheless the "small" messages of humanity,community and personal honor shine like a beacon. I give "Winter's Bone" a "10".

Every now and then the most inexplicable movie gets nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, and you scratch your head wondering "why?" A few years ago it was my bewilderment at the nomination for Best Picture for "The Hours." The only award "The Hours" should win is "Most Boring Nominee Ever." "Winter's Bone" won't take that prize away from it, but it's still a head-scratching choice for an Oscar nomination. As I watched it, and now that it's over, I found myself desperately searching for a reason for the nomination. Could it have been the dull and slow moving story? Could it have been the passionless performances? Could it have been the less than spell-binding dialogue? What could it have been? There's so little here. The basic story has a largely unknown (to me at least) Jennifer Lawrence playing Ree. Ree is 17 and pressed into service as caregiver to her two younger siblings and her apparently mentally ill mother because her father has disappeared. One day the sheriff shows up and tells her that they're going to lose the house because dad, who was facing a trial, put the house up as bond and if he doesn't show it's going to be forfeited. So Ree sets out to find him. In the process she runs across various unpleasant people - most of whom she seems to be related to, because this is set in some sort of hillbilly area where everyone seems to be everyone else's cousin at least - who don't like her asking questions. So there's a mystery - what happened to dad? It finally becomes obvious that someone killed him (the family seem to have been involved in drugs) but obviously that piece of information isn't going to be shared. I've heard people refer to this as a wonderful study of humanity and human relationships. If so - God help humanity! It's a nasty piece of business, filled with people (including Ree, although she is the most appealing of the bunch with her devotion to her family) who you really wouldn't want to associate with in real life and who I didn't particularly care to be associating with on the screen. But it's nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture. Obviously some folks like it. Go figure.

"It ain't much, but it's all we have." Winner of two independent juries' prizes at this year's Berlinale, Winter's Bone is the unflinching telling of a Ozark Mountain girl's desperate quest to keep her family intact by finding a father who vanished after posting their home as bond. Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), the sole support of her younger brother and sister and mentally ill mother, is a classic film heroine who when up against impossible odds won't take no for an answer. Dead or alive, she must find her meth-cooking father, defying a near-cultic criminal syndicate that manufactures, supplies, and supports crank culture in the Ozarks. Based on a novel by David Woodrell and set on location in Christian and Taney counties in southwest Missouri, Winter's Bone uses experienced actors in the lead roles and local actors and residents for most of the secondary parts. Dale Dickey is electric in the role of Merab, wife and gatekeeper to the local crime lord. John Hawkes shows unexpected tenderness and loyalty as Ree's fearsome, addicted uncle. And Jennifer Lawrence inhabits the lead role with hardscrabble grit and enduring vulnerability as she tries to see her brother and sister through their own childhoods. After several scouting trips to the area, and with help from local guides to one of the North America's more exotic and dangerous locations, cinematographer Michael McDonough and production crew manage to skirt hillbilly cliché in settings of meth labs, run-down farms, and honky tonks. In one expert nighttime composition, Ree waits in her uncle's truck while he engages the opposition with some calculated violence, an American flag darkly reflected in windshield. In the Q&A, the largely German audience was particularly interested in a scene at a livestock auction. The rhythmic chant of the auctioneer was unknown to most, and there was some discussion of whether the man was singing or speaking, and what he was doing.

Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) is one tough girl. Her father is a convicted drug dealer, her mother is a drugged out imbecile, her neighbours are all drug abusing ass-holes, she has to raise her younger brother and sister all by herself, and.... Oh, I'm sorry, were you expecting there to be an "and", like some kind of plot? Well no, there is no point. Just that life sucks for Ree. How about a character study? No, not much to these characters either. Just that life sucks for Ree. The small plot which they were thinking about giving to us is that Ree needs to find her father. A third of the way through, she comes to the conclusion that her father is either alive or dead. Wow, now that is brilliant deductive power. For anyone who could have guessed before the film started that her father is either alive or dead, then I think you might be too smart for "Winter's Bone". The massive hype for this film seems to stem from the fact that it has great performances, in a richly detailed atmosphere, and was efficiently filmed on a low budget. Those are all positive attributes to have, but there are so many independent movies that are very effectively well made on a low budget with an actual story and characters, that comparatively, "Winter's Bone" is one of the worst films of the year, not one of the best.