I seriously hated Winter's Bone.
Although I appreciated that Kenny Rogers decided to appear as the head of the secret society of hillbilly meth producers (or whatever the hell was happening in Winter's Bone), I took exception with the excessive dreariness and horridness of what Jennifer Lawrence's character had to do while searching for her drug cookin' father by the end.
Also, as a former midwesterner, I'm always annoyed by movies that depict the middle part of America as a frozen hell-hole where everyone dresses in whatever flannel garment happened to be on the for-sale rack when you walk into Wal-Mart, and every house is littered with empty pizza boxes, KFC buckets, and half finished bottles of Jolt Cola (by coincidence, the art direction in every single house in W'sB was that exactly). Sure, there are parts of the country that are probably like that, but not EVERYTHING between Arizona and Pennsylvania is like that, per most Hollywood and independent movies that are made.
And let me ask you this: Since pretty much everyone you meet in Winter's Bone is part of this secret society of crazed redneck drug manufacturers... who exactly are they supposed to be selling to? There's no one around but them, which seems like an extremely limited marketing pool to me. Are they selling to the one, grossly incompetent cop who bumbles through the movie every once in a while?
Anyway, although I hate to bag on independent movies that defy the odds and wind up getting a lot of attention, making money, and gathering a ton of award nominations, I also must implore you to avoid this painful 2 hours of cinema.
