Granik and Lawrence paint a gray world in which the patriarchy is indifferent at best and actively hostile at worst to women’s aspirations and stories.

| Jun 11, 2024

What makes “Winter’s Bone” a revelation is not necessarily the story itself but the tonal and atmospheric understanding of this world that the cast and crew bring.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jun 10, 2024

This is an engrossing film, one about the different ways in which people react to impossible situations. And without becoming hackneyed or corny, the story offers a moving solution when it could have so easily fallen into a trap of hopelessness.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 9, 2023

Debra Granik’s 2010 Ozarks-set grand guignol Winter’s Bone, which launched Jennifer Lawrence’s stardom...

| Jan 3, 2023

Winter's Bone is a bone, hard to chew. [Full review in Spanish]

| Jul 19, 2022

The picture offers a rare look at a region that will seem as foreign to most moviegoers as the forest moon of Endor.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 28, 2021

Debra Granik's depiction of the Ozarks is never patronizing nor sentimental. Winter's Bone is filled with the lives of the locals in great detail and presented with great care, nothing seems out of place.

| Mar 21, 2021

A stunning and authentic portrait.

| Original Score: 4.0/4.0 | Sep 27, 2020

It's a harsh life in a hostile world, observed in such fine detail that the setting transforms into a living, breathing entity suffering through the same struggles as its characters.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 23, 2020

Though it can often be a long, opaque slog through the woods, the primary appeal of Winter's Bone is how convincingly it conveys the strange, orthodox logic of this parallel universe.

| Jan 22, 2020

Winter's Bone is a haunting film of life in America, one that depicts meth as the replacement for moonshine. Ree's character does offer hope but much more is needed.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 14, 2020

You can feel the chill of the Missouri winter and the dull ache of the characters' poverty in Debra Granik's film...

| Original Score: 8/10 | Dec 30, 2019

Call me a sucker for punishment but I find myself drawn to these harrowing tales, and Winter's Bone is certainly one of those.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 29, 2019

With locations and characters that feel so authentic, yet mysterious, it creates its own genre: anthropological horror.

| Aug 21, 2019

Just when you think the search is going to come to a frighteningly bloody conclusion, the story catapults you into an even more traumatizing wrap-up that somehow (???) eventually leaves you with some hope.

| Mar 8, 2019

Beautifully shot across the vast, bleak landscapes of the Missouri Ozarks, Debra Granik's minimalistic tale of strength and determination is a deeply moving experience, propelled by the amazing performances of Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 31, 2018

Granik and Anne Rosellini's screenplay is a simple affair, allowing Jennifer Lawrence's grim determination to keep you hooked. And it works.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 5, 2018

This harsh film, set in gray Ozark forests, represents a step forward in screen depictions of the rural South, and in the career of its writer-director, Debra Granik.

| Apr 23, 2018

. . .the film also hits every major poverty clich: hard men, harder women and a code of honour among the thieves and junkies that is as intractable as it is ancient. The notes are solemnly intoned one after the other.

| Aug 22, 2017

Beneath the fierce naturalism of the stark chilly/beautiful imagery and tough performances is a rural noir in an unforgiving world and Granik tells the story with great skill.

| May 12, 2017