Since I rambled a bit about Centurion in this space, I thought it might be apt to talk a bit about a film I liked significantly more. In this case, it’s Winter’s Bone, which I saw at BAM a few weeks ago. It’s impressive: the acting is uniformly top-notch, from familiar faces (a couple of Deadwood alums pop up)Â to actors I’ve never seen before, and the plot shifts its stakes neatly over the course of the film. The way in which it handles the story’s violence — mostly via implication — never softens its brutality. And it makes an emaciated John Hawkes — who’s fantastic in it — into a physically intimidating presence, which is no mean feat.
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Fun fact: I haven’t read the Daniel Woodrell novel on which the film is based (yet), but I did read his Tomato Red about a decade ago. I have now spent approximately an hour so far trying to locate it