Review of Winter's Bone (2010) by Solutions10 — 17 Mar 2014

An astoundingly boring, self-important, intentionally-stupid film that has the beginnings of a good plot, and then hides behind its unique setting and poverty-centered themes to cover up the simple fact that it's neither a well-written nor a well-directed film.

Strip away the setting and you don't even get half an interesting story. Without the hyper-poverty, backwoods backdrop that *is* the film in all its entirety, this staggeringly slow romp with no interesting characters and lazy directing is the beginning of a story that never turns into anything but a manipulative set-piece that clearly believes its setting is enough (for critics, I guess it was), one which wouldn't be awarded for anything at all if not for the setting.

I expected a lot from this film, but spent the entire time waiting for some sort of character or plot development, something to ignite the story into something worth watching, as opposed to just its setting.

Truly a manipulative film that seemed to fool everyone with an interesting-to-some romp through the backwoods in exchange for remarkably lazy directing. Boring beyond belief, and shamelessly self-important.