Sorry for the double-post, but about the movie: I still haven’t seen it, but it was filmed on location, and over the course of shooting and production, it was mentioned on the local news all the time. Everyone was excited to have a movie made here, even if it is a less than flattering work.
Just a bump to say that Winter’s Bone comes out on DVD tomorrow. Today. Tuesday. I saw it in the Red Box by where I work.
ArchiveGuy, I’m so glad you thought so highly of it! I’m beginning to think that you’re right and I’m wrong wrt Oscars. I fear it’ll be forgotten for awards season. We’ll find out soon enough, but I wouldn’t be surprised. So many great films get forgotten during awards season I have to be realistic. The timing is all screwy. It shouldn’t have been released to the theaters until right about now. But, maybe the DVD release will spark some attention. God I hope so.
Thanks again for suggesting I see this really great film.
My older brother just recently signed up for Netflix and has no clue what to order, so he has me ordering all his films for him. I have Winter’s Bone a little down the list, and I think he will really like it as well.
I saw it last night and found it pretty good, but not great. It did the naturalistic thing pretty well and seemed authentic enough in some regards (I liked that they cast fat people and homely people in a lot of the minor roles instead of making everybody beautiful), and I liked John Hawkes.
I had some problems with it, though. For one thing, I don’t think the tweakers really looked or acted like tweakers. Teardrop was always snorting crank but showed none of the physical or psychological characteristics of meth high or meth addiction (no tweaking or hyperactivity, no paranoia, no motormouth, no meth mouth, no facial scabs, etc.), and I felt like the movie downplayed the real effects of meth and almost defended rural meth labs as some kind of romantic civil disobedience no worse than moonshining. Maybe that’s even a realistic representation of how those people feel, but meth addiction was not portrayed realistically, so it wasn’t really completely honest.
I thought the actress playing the lead was no better than ok. She didn’t really have a lot to do other than look stoic. She was fine, but this was not any kind of star-making performance. The character was well written and the dialogue was good, but the performance was merely servicable, not transcendent.
I thought the ending sort of came out of nowhere and didn’t make a whole lot of sense given the previous behavior of those characters Just out of the blue, for no reason, that psycho grandmother (or whatever she was supposed to be) takes the girl to her father’s body just days after beating her half to death and terrorizing her in a barn with like 50 other scumbags for asking questions about her dad. She just arbitrarily changed her mind? I don’t think that was explained well. It just came off a little deus ex to me, like they needed a way to end the movie and couldn’t think of anything better. Also, are the cops really just going to let her chuck a bag of human hands on the sheriff’s desk and then just let her go without any further investigations or questions? I don’t think so.
I had other problems with it too. I thought the representation of hillbillies was a little bit sanitized. I get that it wanted to show them ina good light, and some of the things it showed were fairly authentic (the neighbors bringing each other food, for instance), but it also didn’t show any of the less admirable aspects of that kind of deep rural, white culture (namely the racism, xenophobia and religious bigotry. It did show the hostility towards the law, though). The overall effect comes off as a little condescending (look how brave and tough they are in the face of such odds), when I think it would have been better to show the culture with its warts (yes, I know it shows them as meth cooks who turn on kin, but even in that regard I think it sanitizes things. We never see the harm done by the drug).
Having said all that, it was a fairly watchable and entertaining movie even if the ending seemed a little contrived, and the authenticity was a little bit cherry-picked.
I do have one question.
Who killed Jessup? At the very end, Teardrop says, “I know who did it,” and it’s implied that he’s going off to kill Jessup’s murderer, but who was he talking about and how did he know? Did I miss something? There did seem to be an implication that the sheriff (Dillahunt) had intentionally leaked it that Jessup was a snitch. Was that who Teardrop was going to go smoke?
I don’t believe it was intended that we would know what he knows. The key point is that he had discovered who had actually done the deed and he would most likely be seeking retribution for his brother. But I don’t think there any clear clues as to who the actual triggerman was and in fact it was probably irrelevant to everybody but Teardrop himself.
I’m not sure I agree with your view that the movie sanitized or portrayed as noble the meth dealers/manufacturers. I think the main character is portrayed as noble, I don’t think her distant kin really are shown to be at all. And while I’m sure that there was racism and religious bigotry to be found in that community, there was never any reason for it to make an appearance in context - the tight-knit xenophobia I think was on abundant display.
[quote=“Diogenes_the_Cynic, post:44, topic:541014”]
I thought the ending sort of came out of nowhere and didn’t make a whole lot of sense given the previous behavior of those characters Just out of the blue, for no reason, that psycho grandmother (or whatever she was supposed to be) takes the girl to her father’s body just days after beating her half to death and terrorizing her in a barn with like 50 other scumbags for asking questions about her dad. She just arbitrarily changed her mind? I don’t think that was explained well. It just came off a little deus ex to me, like they needed a way to end the movie and couldn’t think of anything better. Also, are the cops really just going to let her chuck a bag of human hands on the sheriff’s desk and then just let her go without any further investigations or questions? I don’t think so.QUOTE]
In the book it was subtle, but it was hinted that other family members had put pressure on psycho-granny’s family to “do the right thing” of what they considered the right thing. As for the sheriff I always had the impression he was corrupt which would explain his behavior.
In the movie it’s kind of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, but when Ree is telling Thump that she’s got two kids at home who can’t support themselves, and a mom who’s sick and won’t get better, Merab had a look on her face like “Shit, I didn’t realize” and an awareness that Ree did need to have proof that Jessup was dead, not for any retribution/revenge purposes, but simply to get the bondsman off her back so she could keep the house. That’s a lot to put on a simple facial expression, but I realized that’s what that look was the 2nd time I saw the movie, before I read the book, and it explained to me too why she showed Ree where the body was.
Yeah that was my take too. Even hard, mean people can have some shred of humanity.
I agree with this. Perhaps my sensitivities are overly, well, sensitive, but I left the theater terrified of ever finding myself in that part of the country or anything resembling it. The setting came across as utterly bleak, backwards, and toxic, and its inhabitants largely as hostile, ignorant, broken, and barbaric.
It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the reality is even worse, but I definitely didn’t come away from the movie with a remotely favorable impression of anybody except Ree and her younger siblings. I thought the film treated meth dealing as essentially a disease thad had turned almost an entire community into monsters.
There’s definitely a sub-population in the hills like that depicted in the movie. But it is just that: a sub-population. Imagining that everyone in the hills is like that would be like imagining everyone in the northeast is like the kids on Jersey Shore.
Great movie, and I downloaded some of the songs too.
I thought Jennifer Lawrence was excellent in this, and the movie itself is excellent.
She’s rapidly becoming typecast, though, as her role in this was basically the same as her role in Poker House, which I liked quite a bit.
I’ve become quite the Jennifer Lawrence fan, though after looking at her upcoming projects I’m a little concerned about her script-reading skills. She has top billing in The Beaver, the movie with Mel Gibson carrying around a stuffed beaver all movie? Oofa.
You might like the songs from the movie Songcatcher. Different mountains, differnt era but similar music.
Typecast? You can’t get typecast when very few people have seen The Poker House. It’s so obscure it doesn’t have a listing on Box Office Mojo, and has no ranking on Rotten Tomatos. There are 4 Fresh reviews, but that’s not enough to give it a ranking. It seems that more people are discovering it now that Jennifer is getting attention from Winter’s Bone, I’d like to see it myself, but really, few people have even seen Winter’s Bone! It made less than $8 million worldwide, and while awards attention has caused it to be seen on DVD by more people than maybe otherwise, it’s not like the attention from a blockbuster. Typecast? I don’t think so. Besides, her X-Men role will take care of any even possible typecasting problems.
Although it looks completely bizarre, I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for 2 reasons. First, it’s directed by Jodie Foster, a very talented director, and she hasn’t directed a movie since 1995’s Home For The Holidays. She has her pick of movies to star in and direct, so there had to have been something very special about this script that made her want to take it on. Second, I’ve heard rumblings that the script is amazing and that it’s very dark humor, and I do love black comedies.
How can you fault an up and coming actress for wanting to a) work, b) work with Jodie Foster, c) work with Anton Yelchin, d) work with Mel Gibson, who for all his real-life craziness has been a damned good actor and has made a lot of damned good movies.
Here’s a slice of an interview with Jennifer about The Beaver. The rest of the interview is about Winter’s Bone and the X-Men reboot.
Dark and twisted, right up my alley!
Since this thread’s been bumped, I’ll say that while Winter’s Bone is not quite the major player during awards season I had hoped it would be, it’s still in play, and has gotten its share of attention. We’ll find out Tuesday if any of my predictions come true.
See it before you poo-poo my premise. It’s pretty good. If you like seeing Jennifer Lawrence as a teen with absentee parents who must care for her younger sibling(s) in a harsh life of poverty while surviving abusive family figures, you’ll love it.
Plus, it’s an autobiographical tale by Lori Petty, which gives it extra cool points.
Jennifer Lawrence is playing Mystique in the new X-men movie. That’s as far from Ree Dolly as you can get.
I’m not poo-pooing your premise, and I’m sure it’s good, which is why I want to see it. I’m just saying that an actor can’t get typecast by the general public when they haven’t seen the movies that are supposed to typecast them. NO ONE saw the Lori Petty film, which is a damned shame, and few people have seen Winter’s Bone, which is an even bigger shame.
But yeah, even if there were a slight danger, which there isn’t, it’ll get blown away by the new X-Men movie. I have faith it’ll be really good, because I have faith in Matt Adams. If it’s better than good, and I think it will be, it should be a repeat-viewing blockbuster. And Jennifer will be there for the sequels, and her real danger is being typecast as Mystique.
Hopefully. It’s a good sign that she is listed with top billing in the X-Men movie, as opposed to the mostly background part Rebecca Romijn had.
Looking at her imdb bio, in the only two movies where she has top billing that have already been released she plays the same basic role. And I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a very similar role in The Beaver.
The horror movie she has coming out in 2011 is probably the smartest move of all, though sounds like it could be yet another teen-girl-as-head-of-household. Probably not. Hopefully not. heh.
EDIT: Thinking back, the only actress in the entire X-Men franchise whose career benefitted from their X-Men role, at least that I can think of, is Anna Paquin. All those movies were Wolverine-centric, though. Hopefully this new one will do for Jennifer Lawrence what the old ones did for Hugh Jackman.
Ooops, it was late and I was tired. That wasn’t who I was thinking of, I was thinking of Matt Reeves, but I was wrong anyway. I should have said Matthew Vaughn. I have faith in him too.
Matthew Vaughn - directed Layer Cake, Stardust and Kick-Ass, directing X-Men: First Class.
Matt Reeves - directed Cloverfield and Let Me In.
Yay for the Matts! Both of them will give us decades of fantastic films. (and Matt Adams, all of them, will keep on plugging away too)
Ok, so last May, I said:
Gloat [overly smug]I was right!![/overly smug]
I’m so thrilled, and so happy for them.