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Men In Black 3

It’s not a sequel that needed to be made, but thanks to the charm of its leads and a tone that harks back to the wit and humour of the original, it’s a pretty enjoyable trip.

Bel Ami

The excellent female support cast saves this patchy effort, which is let down by its leading man and a flat screenplay.

The Dictator

A disappointing, often repulsive and mean-spirited mess of a film with seemingly only one real criterion on its agenda: to shock and offend.

The Woman In Black

Packed with atmosphere, this old-fashioned but deftly told ghost story delivers ample chills and thrills.

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Winter's Bone (Film)

by Julian Wood | November 08, 2010 15:26 | Edited November 08, 2010 16:27

While a tough film to watch, it nails the brutal atmosphere and is anchored by Jennifer Lawrence’s remarkable lead performance.

This second effort from American indie director Debra Granik (Down To The Bone) is set in the Ozark Mountains in the middle of America. The Ozarks are not that far from the Appalachians, which were marked indelibly on moviegoers' imaginations in Deliverance. The hillbillies in this one are only a couple of too-close marriages away from the rapacious bunch in that 1972 classic. Instead of banjo picking and illegal whisky, however, they prefer drugs and slapping the nearest interfering woman.

 

There's a strong feminist twist to Winter's Bone. The heroine is a teenage girl called Ree (Jennifer Lawrence), whose mother can't really cope, so it's down to her to anchor the family. This means dressing and feeding her two raggedy siblings, as well as running the house. Ree's dad has bolted but, before he left, he foolishly crossed the local loonies. He also skipped bail, and when the bondsman comes to collect, he tells Ree that she'll lose all if she can't turn up either her errant father or the money. As Ree sets out to find out what really happened to her dad, she is led inexorably into the nasty heart of this secretive community.

 

The bearded mountain baddies are wholly convincing, and Granik expertly conveys a kind of hermetically sealed, evil patriarchy where all the men abuse drugs and only the toughest women can fight back. Young Jennifer Lawrence is an absolute revelation as Ree, and is surely destined for bigger things. She has the sleepy-eyed quirkiness of Renee Zellweger, but also the gritty quality of Charlize Theron. Winter's Bone is not an easy watch; the cold, clammy and brutal milieu is so relentlessly hammered home that it becomes a bit one note, though it certainly has a point to make. It's a tough film with an uncompromising centre.