{"id":348,"date":"2010-07-09T16:06:04","date_gmt":"2010-07-09T23:06:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rayivey.com\/wordpress\/?p=348"},"modified":"2010-07-09T16:06:04","modified_gmt":"2010-07-09T23:06:04","slug":"film-review-winter%e2%80%99s-bone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rayivey.com\/wordpress\/film-review-winter%e2%80%99s-bone\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a>\"instagram\"<\/a>

\"winters-bone\"<\/a>The Ozark family-gothic thriller Winter\u2019s Bone<\/em><\/strong> gets so many things right it feeds the soul of this grumpy moviegoer.<\/p>\n

Director Debra Granik has pulled off a small miracle.\u00a0 Shooting on location in the hills of southwestern Missouri, she immerses us in a perilous world that drips with atmosphere and authenticity.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Lawrence (in a star-making performance) plays Ree, a young woman who finds herself, at the age of seventeen, the head of her crumbling household.\u00a0 Her criminal father is absent, her mother has retreated into a quiet, impenetrable madness, and her younger brother and sister are now her responsibility.\u00a0 A crisis looms when a sheriff\u2019s deputy (Garret Dillahunt) stops by to inform her that her crank-cooking dad put the house they\u2019re living in up as collateral for his bond.\u00a0 He\u2019s missing, and about to miss his court date.<\/p>\n

Ree has no choice but to scour the hills for her loser father.\u00a0 The problem is, even though she\u2019s at least somewhat related to half of the folks on the mountain, they do not seem much interested in helping her.<\/p>\n

There are all sort of kinds dangerous people, but perhaps the most interesting type is a scared, stupid person with a gun.\u00a0 Unfortunately for Ree, that description pretty much fits all of the folks she has to try to bully into helping her find her father.<\/p>\n

I mentioned that the movie gets important things right.\u00a0 Let\u2019s list a few of them:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u00a0Details, details, details.\u00a0 From the tattered towels on the clothesline outside the teetering shacks, to the threadbare animals and hungry dogs that seem to fill the screen, everything you see puts you into this poverty-stricken hillbilly world in which setting up a meth lab is what passes for a promising career opportunity.<\/li>\n
  2. Drop-dead casting.\u00a0 Granik\u2019s cast is full of professional actors, but oh, the faces!\u00a0 Talk about a ragtag crowd of characters who have been \u201crode hard and put up wet.\u201d\u00a0 Each new household of cousins Bree encounters feels more authentic than the last.<\/li>\n
  3. Smart script written for adults.\u00a0 One of the things I most admire about a movie is when it is realistic enough to leave important information out.\u00a0 Most movies don\u2019t have the confidence to do that, so half of the dialog sounds like artificial exposition:\u00a0 \u201cSo do we expect father home soon from the manor house where he\u2019s worked as a groom for the Earl lo these many years?\u201d\u00a0 The characters in Winter\u2019s Bone<\/em><\/strong> don\u2019t talk as if they know we\u2019re listening.\u00a0 The dialog is terse and spare, and many seemingly important facts are never cleared up or spelled out.\u00a0 That\u2019s actually how life is, and it makes the impact of the movie\u2019s story all the stronger.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It would be easy for a movie like this to descend into Dogpatch-esque caricature, but it never does.\u00a0 Though many scenes crackle with potential danger, Granik keeps us on edge while using remarkable restraint.<\/p>\n

    \"The<\/a>
    The talented Dale Dickey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    I have to point out two supporting performances.\u00a0 John Hawkes has long been one of my favorite actors, and he brings a flinty menace to his role as Teardrop, the brother of Ree\u2019s missing father.\u00a0 Hawkes brings his trademark mercurial intensity to this key role.<\/p>\n

    I never watched \u201cMy Name is Earl, \u201d so I wasn\u2019t familiar with Dale Dickey until today.\u00a0 I\u2019m now going to seek her out, because she delivers a knockout, Supporting Actress Academy Award-worthy turn as Merab, a creepy cousin with good manners who nevertheless seems just as likely to stuff Ree into a trunk as to offer her a cup of coffee.\u00a0 My blood ran cold when she demanded of Bree in an early scene: \u201cAin\u2019t you got any men can do this for you?\u201d\u00a0 Her magnificent face looks like something out of a a Walker Evans photograph.\u00a0 Looks like I\u2019m going to have to start taping \u201cSordid Lives.\u201d\u00a0 My hat is off to you, Ms. Dickey.<\/p>\n

    Also worthy of high praise are Affonso Gon\u00e7alves\u2019s tense editing, which gives the movie a mesmerizing sense of pace, and Michael McDonough\u2019s cinematography, which captures the stark, icy beauty of Missouri\u2019s Christian and Taney Counties.<\/p>\n

    I strongly encourage moviegoers who are weary of explosions and dopey plots to seek out this gorgeous, riveting movie.<\/p>\n

    Average Rating: 4.8<\/span> out of 5<\/span> based on 297<\/span> user reviews.<\/span><\/div><\/p>

    \n