Winter's Bone: Press reviews

'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.'

'In its lived-in, completely non-ideological way, Winter's Bone is one of the great feminist works in film.'

'Winter's Bone really is one to treasure, for its skilled, economical storytelling, its committed sense of place and its full-blooded playing. But it has something else, something that nearly all great films have, which is an ability to surprise us'

'There's no denying the movie's power'

'But everything else is implicit threat, and the film creaks with menace. It's unmissable.'

'straightforward and suspenseful but also surprising and subtle'

'With an outstanding performance from Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone is a backwoods classic,'

'The tense, glowering Lawrence puts in a star-making performance as the indefatigable heroine, and John Hawkes is just as magnetic as her rat-faced uncle Teardrop. But it's unfair to single them out when the acting is so consistent throughout the cast'

'Winter's Bone is a quiet, subtly observed movie that immerses us in another culture'

'The film threatens to get stuck on a single note of gothic bleakness, but Granik punctuates this cloud of gloom with scenes of astonishing tension'

'A down-home neo-noir that never feels mannered, Winter's Bone is simple storytelling at its most elegant. It's also Lawrence's big moment – and it won't be her last.'

'Jennifer Lawrence is outstanding'

'The big strength of the piece is a committed central performance by Jennifer Lawrence'

'Decent, flat-toned, earnestly naturalistic'