Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Winter's Bone: Brief DVD review

...liked this film, currently on the new arrivals' wall. Missed the fanfare for it - it took a Grand Jury Prize at Sundance - but caught up with it on DVD and was glad I did. It's less mood-oriented than Ballast and a little less devastating than Wendy and Lucy, but deals with equally bleak circumstances - a 17 year old girl faced with enormous responsibilities in a community that might, by others, dismissed as a bunch of distasteful, drug-dealing, violent white trash. The film gives its "trash" humanity, conscience, and integrity, however damaged and deformed these may be by the conditions under which it labours; and the film boasts two fine lead performances, from Jennifer Lawrence and a guy named John Hawkes (best membered by me as the clerk at Benny's World of Blood, in From Dusk Til Dawn - a role I always enjoyed). Worth a rental!

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