WINTER'S BONE

Otm. It felt more like a matter-of-fact portrayal of a hard way of life. The girl, Ree (?) spent the whole movie trying to keep things from getting worse! "Wallow" my ass.

don't really agree that it was a matter-of-fact portrayal... i think it's like latebloomer says, a more stylized noir kinda thing.

This was pretty good. Loved the old biddy who plays the closest thing to a villain.

She was great! She played the town hooker in My Name Is Earl.

Didn't recognize Sheryl Lee!

I didn't either! Wow.

Laura Palmer was in this?! Who did she play?

She's in one scene, as the woman Jessup was having an affair with.

ohhhh ok! damn!

agree w/ Soto on that supporting actress

Recognized that actress as the meth head from that episode of Breaking Bad w/ the ATM. Didn't recognize Sheryl Lee at all.

it was good, but i expected more. a little overrated.

that's true, but i'll take what I can in the current American environment.

i thought this was great. it could have been improved by seeing a little more humanity among all the folks that ree has to deal with - everyone's either a monster or a brooding shut-in or both. country people are usually a lot funnier. i was also thrown by a lot of music that i think of as appalachian ("farther along", "high on a mountain") but i guess hillbilly country extends farther than i'd imagined.

it's not a noir in the classic sense though, right, because the protag isn't someone who made bad decisions that are now coming back to haunt her? i feel like noir protags are usually morally compromised somehow.. anyway, nice tidy story, great acting, especially (as has been said) john hawkes and the lead actress. had no idea hawkes could be so intimidating.

i was a little confused by the money at the end. i'd like to talk about it but maybe a SPOILER tag would be in order..

I was confused for a second too until I remembered that, even though we don't know the full story, we know enough of it to have a pretty good idea.

I think the implication was that someone anonymous had bailed her dad out of jail so the baddies could then kill him. The money was put up for bond, which meant the money gets returned (minus commission) once he turns up in court/morgue. So when he was proved a goner, she got the money. Which I did think was too tidy an ending for a movie whose protagonist - despite being smart and tenacious - already more or less just had to stick around long enough and wait for everyone around her to suddenly help her despite repeatedly professing their disinterest in doing so. And, you know, in some cases trying to kill her.

Regardless, still like a lot about this. Shame the actress is following it up with a mutant role in the fourth X-Men movie. Another one bites the dust.

like that precludes her from acting in other movies?

Sort of shows her priorities, doesn't it? Never a good sign when a potential Oscar nom for a breakout role leads to the heavily made-up fifth lead in the fourth film in a comic-adaptation tent pole. Pays the bill, sure, but it's a delicate balance. Ask Halle Berry.

you are a schmuck

hate that bullshit elitism. who gives a fuck what she does? I WILL DEFEND HER HONOR UNTIL I DIE

sorry for calling you a schmuck, that was unnecessary. just really hate that armchair "THIS is what this actor/musician/artist should be doing" crap.

you should be her manager.

No, that's cool. She may be awesome in the X-men movie (as have been other Oscar winners/noms)! I'd just rather her be awesome in a movie that's not the fourth X-men movie, because the last one was dire, and I don't see how playing Mystique will show off her talents. Has the potential to staunch her, well, potential. (Ha, she's apparently in "The Beaver," too). She can do whatever she wants, of course, but Hollywood rewards success over talent, and the lack of the former can allow the latter to languish. No matter how good you are.

I'm sure her manager told her to take the X-Men gig, because the $$$ will be potentially multiples the Winter's Bone budget. George Clooney has credited Batman & Robin with allowing him to do whatever he wanted with his career. But again, Hollywood is more forgiving of male stars than ingenues. There are too few good roles written for women in Hollywood as it is.

I wouldn't find it so offensive and condescending if there weren't so many examples of actors bouncing back and forth between indie movies and studio genre flicks. The paternalistic "aww, what a shame this girl isn't living up to her potential tsk tsk" tone is something that sets me off like nothing else. Maybe you didn't mean it like that, but it sure sounded that way.

There are a lot of examples of established actors bouncing back and forth, sure. But she's beginning her career with a likely Oscar nom, which is unusual, and places her in a precarious position. I didn't mean to be paternalistic, but I do know Hollywood is a lot less coy about its sexism and double standards for women actors. I'm glad there are indeed so many exceptions to the rule, and I wish Lawrence the best, but those Esquire swimsuit photos and sexy video montage back when, followed very quickly by news of her casting in X-Men 4, made me seriously wonder why she was trying so hard to counter her indie buzz with pin-up cred. But I'll say it again - whether or not X-Men 4 is a masterpiece, no one can possibly argue that jumping from an esteemed indie to a FX tentpole in blue body paint augers well for anything but exposure.

Then again, she may be the next Christian Bale!

i would chill out and just see what happens.

That seems like a good idea! Thanks!

I think the implication was that someone anonymous had bailed her dad out of jail so the baddies could then kill him.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, December 5, 2010 3:37 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

It probably wasn't someone anonymous, though, if you think about the flow of information throughout the film and also that it raises the idea, however faintly, that this might be the attempt of an admittedly cruel and broken culture to look after its own in the form of letting the money stay where it is.

Then again, she may be the next Christian Bale!

please god spare us

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NIhjnQz-xrA/SlmalGqqi7I/AAAAAAAAAQk/qKnVYg1lmas/s400/Shrug.jpg

i thought it was a de maupassant kind of thing: the hunt for her father is also the struggle for money & safety. by proving that her father can't be found, she gets the money

for some reason i thought that if person A puts up bail for person B, person B dying would mean that person A gets their money back. i didn't realize it would go to the next of kin of person B. or maybe i'm still not getting it. sorry to be so dense about a relatively uninteresting aspect of the movie but the plot kinda does pivot on it.

(also re: getting bailed out by your enemies who want you dead, surely a lesson should have been learned across america's entire criminal community by the events portrayed in the movie jackie brown and the book upon which it was based)

i thought that if person A puts up bail for person B, person B dying would mean that person A gets their money back

I think that's right but I'm pretty sure the marshal explains that person A basically walked into his office and plopped down a bag of money

they don't know who person A is so they give it to the next of kin. I think.

the marshal explains that person A basically walked into his office and plopped down a bag of money

that wasn't a marshal, it was the bail bondsman, right? and didn't he say something like "we took our cut and this is what was left" or something?

i guess the only way the money gets to rhee is through this loophole, when they don't know who originally put up that money, but in the real world there's no way bail gets granted without paperwork i don't think. even in missouri. sorry to be all plot-dickish but... it is kinda what the entire payoff of the movie depends on!

"paperwork" is pretty frequently a difference between the real world and the cinematic one, so it didn't really bother me - plus it had already been made clear the police were in cahoots with the community. and the bail bondsman def made clear what a lucky duck he thought she was.

really, as soon as the sheriff goes "welp, thanks for the fingers, you can go now" you can assume he's not worried about the paper trail

yes bail bondsman not marshal

in the real world there's no way bail gets granted without paperwork

I guess but they made pretty clear in the plot that whoever put up the money wanted to stay anonymous (for the reason talked abt upthread, most likely they wanted Jessup out of jail so they could kill him). maybe the only signature on the bail papers is the bondsman and whoever gave the bondsman the money doesn't really matter.

what the hell are you guys on about

Well, they said (if memory serves) that Jessup put up some of the money himself, leveraging the house, but that was hardly enough to cover bail; the rest came from the anonymous source. Tthey can't be talking huge sums of cash, but even modest bail would be a life-changing mountain of money in dirt poor Ozark terms.

eh. this was alright. don't get the fuss at all. was certainly a put on "stylized noir" thing (reading this grim, brooding seriousness as REAL LYFE is kind of lol). nothing wrong with that, but it did keep me emotionally distanced from whatever suffering this girl was going through.

That was my point upthread about the annoyingness of the stick of butter closeup: the director telegraphing LOOK SEE THEY HAVE NOTHING TO EAT when just a simple medium shot of the girl quietly looking for things to cook around the kitchen would have sufficed.

felt the same way about last tango tbh

no one explained to this country bumpkin the myriad ways in which one could put sticks of butter to use.

winter's boner

what the hell are you guys on about

we're talking about the plot of the movie

i feel like you have found the exact most boring thing about this movie to have an involved discussion about

neither is crack, though

i mean youd at least think thered be movies about meth _gangs_ or something

i liked 'down to the bone', the portrayal of heroin addiction here isn't ott like in most films, so it ends up evoking more empathy than gross-out. and vera farmiga is hot.

i think i remember finding post-OD mia wallace uma thurman v attractive in pulp fiction, & am glad that vera farmiga apparently maintained being v attractive even throughout her character's addiction arc in this movie

this movie is a mess structurally and its depiction of poor rural arkansas is pretty ridic. C-

i liked this line from A.S. Hamrah: "In Winter’s Bone, people are poor and dangerous, which is to say they have dignity."

it's rural Missouri, but just across the line from AR.

ozarks whatever

pfft whatever D+

p.s. you're a mess structurally!

:]

so when she gives the hands to the sheriff she says someone dumped them on her porch. why didn't they actually do that? i mean do they just make her fish him out to fuck with her? i feel like i'm missing a plot point here.

they make her fish him out to fuck with her

they didn't give a shit about her losing her home (iirc that was why she needed the body?) - probably couldn't be bothered

feel like this could've been more visually interesting with mise-en-scene and stuff. most of the time it was kind of uninteresting visually, then there were some really incredible shots that underscored how boring the rest was.

the scene where she's at the - idk slaughterhouse? and running across the beams after the guy: i often find myself remembering it

Debra Granik's new film at Sundance

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5309-the-daily-sundance-2018-debra-granik-s-leave-no-trace