Winter's Bone Reviews

After hearing many good things about this flick, I was quite eager to check it out. Eventually, it was an intriguing and gloomy drama about some meth-cooking hillbillies and even though I enjoyed most of it, I can’t say I was really blown away by the whole thing. First of all, the directing was pretty strong and you basically ended up in a rather strange world completely alien to me and maybe that was one of the reasons why I had a hard time to connect with this flick. I mean, usually, the whole point of making or dealing drugs is the easy cash but, here, they all lived in the dirt with some run-down houses and some cheap-ass trucks. That didn’t really make sense to me. Furthermore, I had a hard time to care about the story. I mean, I obviously understood the motivations of the main character thanks to a breakthrough performance by Jennifer Lawrence but when you finally get to know what is actually going on, you wonder why her ‘community’ didn’t want to help her out . The way they finally decide to show her the body and cut the arms(!) in front of her was really not necessary. It was pretty obvious that she and her family didn’t have anything to do with what her dad did so how hard would it have been to get the body at night and dump it on the side of a road to be found by the law enforcement the next day? Again, maybe it has to do with my ignorance of this very peculiar side of America, maybe it did actually make sense. Still, there was something quite spellbinding about the whole thing and I was also really impressed by John Hawkes who completely disappeared behind his character. To conclude, even though I wasn’t entirely convinced, it remains a strong feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

Very strange movie, people are really strange, weird people, barely seen, the place is also very strange, must be horrible to live in a place like this, especially with so many problems like the protagonist. She is a great actress, it gives a lot of penalty see all the suffering, makes you want to get her to care for and give a lot of affection, the film has a heavy atmosphere, cruel, hard, life is very unfair to some, The movie is pretty slow, but I also think that the movie does not nothing, is so incredible so far as to gain as much attention and winning an Oscar for example, is a sad and sentimental movie but after all is a good movie.

I read the novel Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell and felt like I could smell the mountain air, see the grey landscape and knew every psychological problem and feeling of main heroine Ree Dolly. In a novel that’s relatively short, with simple vocabulary but tense and disturbing atmosphere, Woodrell recreated an entire section of the country that most people never even give a second thought. It was not a pretty sight. I thought that a film adaptation would be doomed to fail. It couldn’t possibly find an actress to accurately play Ree, it wouldn’t capture the way that time seems to not exist in the Ozarks. Too much of the subtle minutia of the unwritten laws and hermetically sealed societies couldn’t possibly be translated properly. I was dead wrong.

Maybe it’s because the movie was made with a small budget and by a woman that it succeeded so strongly. Debra Granik, writer-director, never condescends to her characters or sentimentalizes their predicaments. In a style that brings to mind a journalistic distance and nonpartisan documentation, Granik presents this world, complete with the laws that have governed this world without the intervention of the outside, as it is. In a storyline that features a main character who isn’t wise beyond her years but forced to fake like she is, the most depressing thing is probably the proof that poverty is its own kind of generational violence (as if any were truly needed). And this is a film about methamphetamine addiction, cruel violence, isolation and one girl who’s a solid and stubborn presence throughout.

Jennifer Lawrence truly deserved her Oscar nomination for her lived-in performance. She doesn’t emote much, preferring to showcase to the world that has hardened her a steely-eyed squint and not much more. But her body language is so expressive. The smallest fluctuation in her squint speaks volumes. She’s smart, resourceful and bound and determined to go against the clan-like system and discover the whereabouts of her father. Her father put the house up as collateral for his jail bond and is nowhere to be found, her mother is a catatonic drug addict. Ree is the homemaker and care-provider for her two younger siblings. She’s also a high school student. And the way that Jennifer Lawrence portrays her as someone who is still a teenager, but far from a normal one is wonderful. Truly, she is a gifted and promising young actress. I look forward to watching her blossom and display her formidable talents in the future.

Winter's Bone is a movie with hicks. It is hardcore stereotype towards hicks, but its just a movie. Jennifer Lawrence signs in this movie, and defiantly deserved her Oscar nomination. John Hawkes was really good and was very impressive. The story really came together very well and the screenplay was really well written. Its a movie you should see, it scares, and gets your heart pumping.

"I'd be lost without the weight of you two on my back. I ain't going anywhere."

Reminiscent of 2009's The Road and Precious, the moviemakers behind Debra Granik's Winter's Bone were incapable of realising the distinction between profundity and plain old bleakness. Thus, Winter's Bone is yet another textbook implementation of the misplaced belief that "gritty, grim and real" automatically means that a film is a masterpiece. While Granik's picture indeed features a plethora of focused performances and a handful of gripping moments, nothing else exists to sustain interest or to prevent the narrative from descending into boredom and tedium. Plus, a number of hokey, contrived factors lethally hinder the "realism" approach. With the above in mind, I guess it's unsurprising that Winter's Bone earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, since it's long, boring, drawn-out, dull, and provides little enjoyment and thus minuscule replay value.

Set in rural Missouri, the protagonist of Winter's Bone is 17-year-old Ree (Lawrence) who has a lot on her shoulders. Ree is both the caregiver for her catatonic mother and the parental figure for her two younger siblings, and she must also keep the family's primitive cabin running as best she can. At the beginning of the story, Ree learns that her father skipped bail but put her family's farmhouse up as collateral, meaning Ree's dad must attend his scheduled court appearance the following week or the family will be left homeless. Thus, Ree sets off to hunt down her old man, meeting a host of frightening folk along the way, most of whom constitute her extended family. Suffice it to say, Ree's search for her father rustles up quite a few feathers amongst the locals.

The main problem with Winter's Bone is that the plot is powered by hopelessly contrived character behaviour. After the locals are impassive and unwilling to help Ree, they subsequently turn pointlessly brutal in the second act only to become implausibly helpful in the end. It doesn't help that the relationships between the characters are inadequately explained, generating confusion about how person B knows person A, and what (if any) bloodline they share. Also worsening matters is the dialogue, which often sounds much too screenwriter-esque. The narrative is rather weak, as well. A genuinely masterful thriller ought to have intricate details and intelligent surprises to keep you riveted throughout, but these necessities were lost on Debra Granik and co-writer Anne Rosellini. Granik succeeded in establishing a dark, at times engaging and even melancholic atmosphere, but the suspense gradually fizzles out. The mystery starts out intriguingly enough, but, on account of the implausible character behaviour and the meandering pace, interest dissipates long before the mystery is revealed.

Winter's Bone is set - and was filmed - in the Ozarks. To their credit, Granik and cinematographer Michael McDonough managed to capture the dejected beauty of the landscape in an effective way. The sense of place is visceral and occasionally gripping, and the detailed images are at times breathtaking to behold. Yet, the effect wears off quickly as the narrative continues to drag. Winter's Bone should have been enthralling and emotionally charged, but the filmmakers failed to achieve this - it's distanced and aloof when it should be involving and/or stirring. It was thus not able to captivate this reviewer to any commendable degree. The film did not need mindless Hollywood action elements, but instead more tension, intrigue, and a snappier pace. Additionally, for what's supposed to be a "gritty, grim and real" movie, Winter's Bone ends on an improbably optimistic note. Sure, a depressing ending would have been lacklustre as well, but it's even worse for the film's integrity to be sacrificed. Sorry, but give me movies like Toy Story 3 or The King's Speech over this malarkey any day of the week.

To the credit of the performers, the acting across the board is uniformly strong. For many (this reviewer included), this 2010 feature was the first opportunity to see the work of 19-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, whose career prior to Winter's Bone was relegated to small roles in TV shows and obscure movies. Winter's Bone represented her first chance to show her acting chops to a more mainstream crowd, and her performance is excellent, forceful and convincing. She is without doubt the strongest aspect of the movie, and she earned an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Also of note in the cast is the excellent John Hawkes as Teardrop (who was also nominated for an Oscar), and Garret Dillahunt who's amiable as the sheriff.

At a running time of over 100 minutes, Winter's Bone lacks adequate intrigue and suspense, not to mention it drags and leaves you feeling underwhelmed despite well-nuanced performances and a richly atmospheric setting. It's also a problem for a "grim, gritty and real" movie to come off as contrived in the scripting department. While the Oscar attention is hardly surprisingly, all of the other acclaim the film is receiving is, frankly, head-scratching.

5.4/10

Debra Granik delivers a riveting essay on a different America than the polished usually arrives on our screens. The white-trash community targeting the lens, the character gets a dump of souls, which burst through the pages of the novel by Daniel Woodrell. Within this closed society with its own codes and principles, a young girl with a lot of soul hundredweight - brilliantly interpreted by Lawrence - denies halt to it and relevant, of orthonontas stature among human shadows soaked to pinch and apathy, that rise from a chair usually only to threaten or act violently.

The absent mother, not uttering a word throughout the movie - as well decide the Granik - not interested let us witness of what suffers. There is also no coincidence that in this microcosm of a 17 year old and a U.S. Army sergeant end up being the only voices of reason in adults chapakomenous, stoned, lost and made by hand, just like the charred forest in which they vegetate through the cold, gray photo of Michael McDonouch.

After all this, the four Oscar nominations in major categories (best film, screenplay, A Women: Jennifer Lawrence, Actor: John Hawkes) come absolutely fair and normal. The «Winter's Bone» singles, indeed, for many reasons, not only for the separate scenes and kneel psychological surprise the viewer or the remarkable stylistic and aesthetic result.

To be honest, at the start I never really knew very much about Winter's Bone apart from it has been receiving a lot of positive reviews that has been named Oscar material and a contender for Best Picture so I couldn't hesitate to watch this and there was high expectations. However when I watched it, I did like it but I wouldn't say that this is worthy of Best Picture. Well, that is what I think anyway. The bits where I really enjoyed it was that the pacing of the film was normal and it didn't drag on and it didn't feel rushed either, there was a lot of suspense and it was a very dark adventure that is beyond any other than I have seen.


With an absent father and a withdrawn and depressed mother, 17 year-old Ree Dolly keeps her family together in a dirt poor rural area. She's taken aback however when the local Sheriff tells her that her father put up their house as collateral for his bail and unless he shows up for his trial in a week's time, they will lose it all. She knows her father is involved in the local drug trade and manufactures crystal meth but anywhere she goes the message is the same: stay out of it and stop poking your nose in other people's business. She refuses to listen, even after her father's brother, Teardrop, tells her he's probably been killed. She pushes on, putting her own life in danger, for the sake of her family until the truth, or enough of it, is revealed.


Jennifer Lawrence's performance as Ree Dolly was just incredible! I would say it is perhaps one of the greatest breakthrough performances of all time and because of this, she rightly deserves a Best Leading Actress Oscar nomination and I'll be damned if she isn't nominated. Then again, she might only just get the nomination like Melissa Leo did for Frozen River two years ago even though she wasn't a strong contender that year.


Debra Granik directed this one in a lot of ways like a road film like The Road and Into The Wild with quite a calm and suspenseful pace at the same time in terms of events happening. She also showed us a beautiful side as well with beautiful landmarks of filming on-set. I mean, yeah it looks pretty rough throughout most of the film but at the same time, it looks beautiful. There were some moments where you could identify Winter's Bone as a horror film due to the suspense and the rough neighbourhoods. It's not for the faint of heart. The script was fantastically written! The character development was about right for me and the pacing was about right also so therefore it was handled really well.


Overall, Winter's Bone is a film that I did really enjoy but don't think quite deserved all the critical acclaim that it got. It is quite a scary tragic tale that was brilliantly written and directed. Jennifer Lawrence needs that Oscar nomination and I'll be angry if she doesn't get it. Not quite one of the best films of 2010 but definitely not one that needn't be missed!