Winter's Bone

Crank's ravages revealed
As crack cocaine is to inner cities and alcohol is to Indian reservations, so methamphetamine is devastating rural white communities across the United States. WINTER'S BONE, set in the remote Ozark Mountains, hauntingly depicts this plague. The story focuses on 17-year-old Ree Dolly, whose father has disappeared after putting up the family home as bail collateral. Unless she can find him, Ree and her younger brother and sister will be without a roof over their heads.

Ree's father is a "cooker" and her mother has been driven into a catatonic state. Ree is on her own in the hostile, clannish, and male-dominated community where she stumbles from trailer to trailer in her frantic search. Crank's ravages are everywhere, in the gaunt and grim faces, the harsh and sudden violence, the cruelty and hopelessness. Her father's only brother, Teardrop (flawlessly played by John Hawkes), holds a spoonful of the white powder out to her and asks, "Gotten the taste for it yet?" "Not yet,"...

No longer in art houses, here's one of the best American movies of 2010
In American movies, we don't often see how we really live, but you will in Winter's Bone, and you don't need to have had a rough childhood in the back woods for this movie to make you feel the grittiness and glory of life -- or for you to know, like you would know how to find your bed in the dark, that this is probably the best movie you will see this year. And maybe longer.

Winter's Bone, directed by Debra Granik, was adapted from a novel by Daniel Woodrell. It was made in the Ozarks, often in the homes of the people who live there. Shot digitally on a mingy budget, it could pass for state-of-the-art Hollywood --- just raw and unvarnished, like Hollywood never is.

The story is simple; this is a straightforward thriller. Ree's father, Jessup Dolly, was busted a while back for cooking methamphetamine. To make bond, he put up his family's house and 300 acres of virgin timber. Now his court date is a week away --- and he's nowhere to be found. The local lawman...

The early front runner for 2010 Best Picture
Adapted from the novel by Daniel Woodrell, WINTER'S BONE immediately sparked comparisons to last year's Best Picture winner, The Hurt Locker. Both films received limited runtime in theaters. But I must say this is by far the superior movie in just about every aspect imaginable, unless you count overwrought machoism, slanted anti-war sentiments, and explosions as a category. Don't get me wrong, The Hurt Locker was a decent film for what it was. But it won't leave the kind of lasting impression like this story will.

When you hear the word "backwoods", you might get the immediate impression of inbred, buck-toothed hillbillies wearing overalls and drinking moonshine. This story doesn't succumb to exploiting certain exaggerated stereotypes just to grab your attention. But these characters are definitely a little rough around the edges, to say the least.

Filmed in the Ozarks of Missouri, this is a simple but riveting dramatic tale about family, danger, and...

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