More Winter’s Bone Movie Reviews
They just keep coming folks, and I expect there will be more once the Sundance Awards are announced!
And now to my favorite U.S. drama without any movie stars at all: Winter’s Bone, directed by Debra Granik from a screenplay she cowrote with Anne Rosellini and based on a novel by Daniel Woodrell, is set in the Ozarks, where a very different teenaged girl, played with star-making self-possession by Jennifer Lawrence (left), is stretched to her limits. She’s protective guardian of her young siblings and caregiver to her incapacitated mother while her own crystal-meth-making daddy has skipped bail, having put the family home up for bond. Poverty is familiar to this young lioness, but without a home, she knows the family will fall apart . And as she sets out to find her father, this stark, underplayed, regionally authentic drama becomes a Western, a tribal saga, a mythic tale. Granik (whose fine 2004 drama Down To the Bone provided a breakthrough role for Vera Farmiga) works with the kind of commitment to narrative truth and attention to regional authenticity that characterized the earliest movies in Sundance’s long and lively history. I have no doubt Winter’s Bone will be picked up soon, if it hasn’t already. But you’ll have to seek this one out, because it’s quiet, and serious, and bleak. Do: It’s also another wonderful Sundance discovery, glinting like the silver that used to be mined in these Utah mountains.
from Entertainment Weekly, Sundance: ‘The Kids Are All Right,’ ‘Winter’s Bone,’ and films from around the world by Lisa Schwarzbaum
An elegant, soft spoken noir, Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone” exudes desolation. Adapting Daniel Woodrell’s novel of the same name, Granik simultaneously develops a dreary backwoods environment while situating her layered story of deceit within it. Set in the heart of Missouri’s Ozark woods, the movie revolves around despondent teenager Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence, in a focused, incessantly serious performance), whose father vanishes after selling their house as jail bond. Serving as a surrogate mother for her two younger siblings, Ree begins a trenchant investigation into her father’s whereabouts, desperately seeking to keep her family from losing the only shelter available to them. Her determination, emboldened by the discouragement of those around her, drives the narrative forward with pulsating momentum.
From Indiewire: REVIEW | Drama in Absence: “Winter’s Bone” by Eric Kohn
As the 2010 Sundance Film Festival closes in on its final weekend, indieWIRE‘s poll of dozens of Park City-present critics and bloggers is quickly making clear the best and worst of this year’s fest. The following is a list of the top ten films in both competition and non-competition programs (that have received 3 or more grades apiece). It will be updated throughout the coming days. For a full list of all grades click here.
Ten Best Competition Films
1. Gasland (Josh Fox, U.S. Doc)
2. 12th & Delaware (Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, U.S. Doc)
3. Blue Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, U.S. Dramatic)
4. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg, U.S. Doc)
5. Last Train Home (Lixin Fan, World Doc)
6. Waiting For Superman (Davis Guggenheim, U.S. Doc)
7. Winter’s Bone (Debra Granik, U.S. Dramatic) film page
8. Restrepo (Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, U.S. Doc)
9. Animal Kingdom (David Michôd, World Dramatic)
10. The Oath (Laura Poitras, U.S. Doc)
From Indiewire: Highs & Lows of Sundance: “Gift Shop,” “GasLand” Lead Critics Poll
