Winter’s Bone 2009

In the harsh backwoods of Missouri, 17-year-old Ree, smart beyond her years, takes care of her incapacitated mother and her younger brother and sister. When her crystal-meth-cooking father puts up the house for bail, she sets out to find him to ensure that he shows up in court. At every house she visits she’s stone-walled by some woman on the porch fronting for some guy inside. Her determination to uncover the truth behind her father’s disappearance only increases, inseparable from her determination to deliver her young siblings from the bleak expectations of their impoverished, drug-raddled kin. This dramatic ode to tough, persistent goodness was the big winner at Sundance this year and it is not at all hard to understand why. — BG

“Raw but utterly enveloping… The film’s atmosphere of suspicion, foreboding and everyday misery would be too much to bear if not for the rich emotional anchor supplied by Jennifer Lawrence. Emphasizing Ree’s patience, maturity and love for her siblings as much as her tenacity and courage, Lawrence delivers a striking portrait of someone who, though looked down upon by many for her youth and gender, alone seems to possess the guts and smarts necessary to survive…
The tale resolves itself in satisfying fashion, yet without giving away all its mysteries; indeed, the world Granik, lenser Michael McDonough and production designer Mark White have captured… conveys such a bone-deep sense of place, it’s hard not to imagine (even hope) that it harbors yet more evil secrets waiting to be discovered.” — Justin Chang, Variety