A rewarding, richly detailed exploration of the strength of character required when confronted by ugly truths.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2010

The Coen Brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou? was the last film to make such delirious use of mountain music. The rest of the world can start drooling over Lawrence. I'm gonna git me a copy of that soundtrack.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 22, 2010

The film, adapted by director Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini from the novel by Daniel Woodrell, establishes a formidable tension between mystery and matter-of-factness.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 17, 2010

There is poetry here -- as artists as diverse as Walker Evans, James Agee and Harry Smith have found -- of the rawest, most desperate kind.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Sep 16, 2010

It is all given unironic dignity and power due to the outstanding lead performance from 20-year-old Jennifer Lawrence as Ree, a young woman who must take on some scary neighbourhood types to protect her family.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 16, 2010

Think a film like Trash Humpers offers insight into a crappy life in the poor South? Winter's Bone will make you see the light.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 16, 2010

A vivid reworking of Daniel Woodrell's novel that brings the book's conflicted heroine to searing life in a piece of unhurried filmmaking too rarely seen these days.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 15, 2010

Granik balances the pace and intrigue of a mystery thriller with total compassion for Ree, played with much skill by Lawrence.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 15, 2010

Like a Botoxed face, the movie never shows an interesting wrinkle or passion-attesting lifeline.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 15, 2010

It's a tight, gripping mystery with a well-chosen supporting cast and countless great little moments, such as a supremely spooky sing-song at a birthday party.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 15, 2010

It's bleak, slow moving … but in its gradual, aimless way it ratchets up the tension to terrific heights, and its climactic twists come home with the force of a shotgun blast.

| Original Score: A | Sep 5, 2010

Winter's Bone is a genuine triumph, a great movie with astounding performances so natural, so genuine, that you forget it's a movie.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 23, 2010

What we've been waiting for: a work of art that grabs hold and won't let go.

| Jun 28, 2010

With Winter's Bone, Granik has morphed from a director worth watching to one who demands our undivided attention. She's got mine.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 25, 2010

The result is a film and a character of unusual strength. Pity Ree, question her decisions, wonder about her future. But the girl does not quit.

| Original Score: A | Jun 25, 2010

Jennifer Lawrence gives a stirring turn in a gift-of-a-lifetime role.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 25, 2010

A masterpiece of sparseness.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 25, 2010

Winter's Bone is the kind of film that should be offered to us more often.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jun 25, 2010

Both a whodunit and a coming-of-age tale, dominated by Jennifer Lawrence's luminous performance as the resourceful, much-tested Ree.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 25, 2010

This is a world out of time and, despite the trappings of flinty realism, the film too unfolds like an elemental myth from the stormy past -- a Greek tragedy driven by dark fates and struggling toward a catharsis.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jun 18, 2010