Winter's Discontent

Though this year's Academy Awards have come and gone, I guess I haven't yet abandoned the "quest" to see all of the nominees for Best Picture. If you are on a similar quest, though, I'm suggesting that you might want to abandon it if you've not yet seen Winter's Bone.

The story revolves around a 17-year old girl named Ree, living with her catatonic mother and two siblings in the Ozark mountains. Her father appears to have fled from an impending court date, and has offered his only real asset -- the house they live in -- as bail. The struggling family will soon have no place to live unless the girl can locate her father and persuade him to turn himself in.

The movie is all character, all situation, and very little plot. It's almost like the story of Chicken Little in its sheer repetitiveness. For a huge chunk of the movie, every scene involves Ree going to someone else to inquire about her father and getting told off in a country-folksy way. The various criminal backgrounds of these simple people felt a lot to me like territory covered quite thoroughly by TV's Justified -- with far less skill and far less engaging characters than that series manages every week.

Really, the only reason to watch the film would be to see the performance of the young lead actor, Jennifer Lawrence. And she does well enough, I suppose, though I'm not really convinced it's an effort worthy of the Oscar nomination she received. Hailee Steinfeld, the actress who anchored True Grit, was a far more compelling young performer in a tonally similar role.

I'll throw a bonus point or two toward the film for the appearance of the great-but-underutilized character actor John Hawkes, and the good-in-everything-I've-seen-him-in Garret Dillahunt (though underutilized here). But it still only amounts to a D+, which comes out to one Oscar nominated film I suggest you steer clear of.