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You don't need a big budget to make a great movie. Winter's Bone proves that. It's a movie about real characters and real life in backwoods USA. It's a gripping story about a young woman Ree Dolly and her struggle. Her father has pawned their house and lands for bail from jail. He's gone missing and now Ree has to find him. If she doesn't find him till the court day and his father doesn't show up they lose their house. Ree gradually finds out more about his father disappearance. We don't get know too much too fast and it's good cause it's keeps the viewer guessing.

The movie has a sense of realness to it. The atmosphere is bleak and almost hopeless throughout the whole movie and this is also seen in the cinematography. Colors are cold and gray for the majority of the movie. The score sits well with the atmosphere. It's beautiful and almost haunting at times. The movie is tense and keeps you watching it closely.

The acting is top notch. Jennifer Lawrence is amazing in her role. She captivates Ree's character so well. Not only via dialogue but her expressions are really good. Ree is a young woman who's had to grow up very quickly in order to take care of her family, without her father. She is tough and Lawrence makes sure the audience knows that. In a supporting role we see John Hawkes as Ree's uncle. Who seems like a hard and even scary person, but he has a great story arc. There is not a bad thing that can be said about his performance. In general the characters feel very genuine and real. Movie's script is very good one of the best of the year and the dialogue between the characters is nice to listen.

I saw this movie back when it came out on DVD, but I didn't write reviews then. I just saw this for the second time and since I recently started writing (or at least I'm trying to write) some reviews, I thought might as well do a review on this one.

I found it a very solid drama that appeals to a wide variety of age groups. The main character is played by a quite attractive girl as well, which adds to the enjoyment of the film. Overall, highly recommended but don't expect it a life altering masterpiece.

The plot is very simple: it is about a girl who needs to prove that her dad is unable to pay his debs so that she can remain in her home with her two younger brother and sister.

I found interesting the depiction of poverty in the United States. As a Brazilian I didn't know that such extreme poverty also existed in the United States.

You can tell by the Title that this is going to be Cold and Hard. Add to that, Bleak, Despairing, Ruthless, and Sneering. There is Barely a Smile in this Study of the Backwoods with its Hypocrisy of Clannish Detachment. It is a Chilling Atmosphere that is Void of Sunshine and has Very Little to Offer in the Form of Empathy.

Outstanding Performances Inhabit this Unyielding Environment that is Captured by the Camera with its Unforgiving Truthfulness. There isn't much to Uplift the Spirit in the Film or the Audience. it is Realism through the Prism of Unflattering Faces and Unclean Milieus. It is a Slice of Life Without Spice.

When Our Heroine is asked by Her Uncle, offering Methamphetamine, "Have you gotten a taste for it yet?", She answers "Not so far." When She is skinning a Squirrel and Discards the Guts, Her little Brother asks, "Are we going to eat those?" She answers "Not yet."

This Demonstrates just how close to Total Surrender and Defeat things are. She is 17 and is Forced into a Situation beyond Her Years. She is Virtually Alone, on Her Own with Two Young Siblings Hanging in the Balance. This all is Interwoven with sort of a Mystery, but that is not what is going on Here. It is not so much a Story as it is a Reflection of Resolve and a Test of the Human Condition.

This one is not for Everyone and is an Independent Film that Tries Hard not to be Artsy but it is Despite Itself. The Characters, Dialog, Environment, and Story are Nothing if Not Beautifully Barren Americana.

Just back from seeing this at the Edinburgh Film Festival, and at the Q&A afterwards, the director, Debra Granik (refreshingly eloquent and well beyond the usual wanting to thank the world and his wife for being here at EIFF) described her film's subject matter as 'hard scrabble'. Although she wasn't referring to a Russian Roulette version of the popular literacy board game (now there's an idea for a film...), it was an evocative description of the tough slice of backwater American life served up here. The basic storyline – a teenagers plight to save her dependent family from imminent homelessness because of the actions of an errant and now-absent father – felt both authentic and compelling, as did the way the local community closed in around her, meting out both violence and support in equal measure.

Using grey and oppressive colour tones, the entire film is shot in a bleak wooded landscape, where the grizzle-bearded men all look like they've just left the set of 'Southern Comfort', and the straggle-haired, world-weary lined faces of the women add to the unspoken sense of the harsh reality of life here. I doubt they see many tourists in this neck of the woods, and at the same time, the film steers well clear of the 'and if they did, they'd probably eat them' stereotype. I liked the sparse and effective use of bluegrass-folky-type music, which cut through, and gave some relief to, an otherwise fairly unremitting sense of hopelessness.

Although the subject matter is an uncompromising reality-check to much of the superficial Hollywood drivel that fills our multiplexes, this is not a hard watch. At its' heart, it's a good story, well-told, with excellent central performances (particularly John Hawkes and Jennifer Lawrence) and an open-hearted sense of the local community here, in spite of their bread-line existence. 7/10.

This film tells the sad story of inbred, poverty-stricken, Missouri Ozark hillbillies trying to scratch out a living on poor soil and even worse personal resources, so it was no wonder meth production was embraced as a life-changing profit center that had the illegal potential to change their lives for the better. Their poor lives before meth had a certain dignity in the hard struggle for survival in an uncaring world that had passed them by or never allowed them to catch up, either or both, but cheap and dangerous drug production leading to fast but risky money took these unfortunates down a road that surely few would have chosen if they had a chance beforehand to see any of the personal and social harm it created in a society already at great risk of decent survival. What great harm it did was shown and acted brilliantly, as it pushed these already at-risk people lower down the chain of life than before and surely even lower than the wild animals they had to kill for food.

A young girl of 17, seeming older than her years, beaten up and beaten down, wary of those around her but needing their help, and with 2 young siblings and a helpless mother to care for, she learned that her drug-making, drugged-out father disappeared and missed a court date for a drug arrest, and the most important task of her life then became finding her father before they lost their meager home to bondsmen, as that sorry home place was all they had in the world but it was home and she intended with all her heart and soul to do whatever it took to keep it and her family together. The acting throughout was appropriately serious to deadly, with hardly even a smile to be seen, and left us thankful as seldom before for whatever our own lives give us compared to those in the story.

Such a grim and foreboding task the daughter had, with imminent harm threatening around every corner she turned and behind every door on which she knocked, even those of relatives. Determination can get you far, but only so far unless you get a few breaks, and that long quest for a decent break was what kept viewer's eyes glued to the screen until it all played out in the end as could be expected in that dire situation.

Bleak, stark, harsh, mean, cruel...all those tough adjectives were present in full force throughout her search, but present also was her eternal fire of human spirit and family duty that would never quit. When actual survival is at stake, this story showed well that some of us truly can find the right stuff to survive when no better choices are possible.