Winter's Bone

2010 • 100 minutes

About this movie

Winner of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize and Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, this tense, naturalistic thriller follows 17-year-old Ree Dolly as she confronts the local criminal underworld and the harsh Ozark wilderness in order to to track down her father, who has put up the family homestead for his bail. Featuring a star-making performance by Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone is sure to be one of the most-critically acclaimed films of the year.

Ratings and reviews

Although this movie did get high ratings, I do read the comments and lend some credibility to them depending on how they describe it. The ones who seemed most put off by it cited things like "Lawrence kept the same expression" or "I didn't feel sorry for the people at all", and that alone prompted me to watch it since those are terrible reasons to blast a movie. For one, this movie did an excellent job of recreating the look of poor whites and their troubles. I've seen my share of poor rural whites from my time in the military and living in Alabama and I'd be surprised if they didn't literally shoot on location using their houses and their clothes and their stories. Lawrence's performance was pretty good most of the time until she tried to act tough. It just wasn't believable to me. But the overall hopelessness these people contend with daily was well portrayed. Even at the end, which most people claim to hate, I thought it was perfect. So much potential to go in so many directions and it was left wide open for us to decide. If you don't think these people exist, or have been brainwashed to think only certain groups of people live in exceedingly hopeless circumstances, then you need to get out more.

That may sound harsh, but nothing made me care. I never, in a movie, in art, had to experience a harrowing experience of people that made me wish they don't exist. Really hated being put through this. And I'm sick of the pseudo- intellectual reviews of The Onion.

This is such a raw gritty and unfortunately all too real for some families. It takes you to the underground meth world and how bad a person's habit can get that they risk their own family being homeless all for a fix......For this being Jennifer Lawrences breakout role, it is a sign of what a great actress she is and will go on to become as legendary as those woman actresses before her. She pours herself into the roles she plays and still is a nice wholesome girl.