Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

LouHomey From my favorite movies..

Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

dragokin Being impressed by Winter's Bone and thanks to the information on IMDb i reached out for Debra Granik's earlier work. It turned out only one title had been available. The funny trivia was that it also had the word bone in the title and dealt with drug addicts' world.Down to the Bone has been much less powerful than Winter's Bone. This hasn't been due to lower budget, rather because of the story itself. We encounter drug addicts and their lives that are for the most part turning into lies. Yet, there is little that sets this movie apart from numerous dealing with a similar topic.Actually, there is. This is the earliest Vera Farmiga's movie i've seen so far.

PhantomAgony I caught this last night on PBS as the Independent movie in their usual Classic/Short/Independent lineup on Saturday nights knowing that Vera Farmiga was the lead and hoping that she'd turn in a raw, unaffected, moving performance. In the end, her performance was good but the movie and the material was not and nothing could save this film. The movie is about Irene (Farmiga), who is a cashier at a local supermarket, a Mother to 2 young boys, who has had a cocaine addiction since High School and wrestles with the need to get clean and change her life around.Drab. Boring. Uninspiring. That would be 3 great words to describe this movie. Not much happens and while not much had to happen for it to be captivating or deemed a good film, the overall slow, monotonous way this film operates is enough to put anyone to sleep. It seems as if the movie starts at a certain tone, continues through that tone and ends in that same tone - no high points, no real low points, just one continuous tone that creates an overall dull movie.I'd rate this movie a 3 out of 10. I get that the movie was going for realism but every movie should have at least one heart pounding moment where the audience cares about what is going to happen to one of the characters and this movie just didn't have that or really anything to raise the tone above drab.Oh and a sidenote - the most annoying part of this move is the eldest of her two children. Someone needs to teach that actor to breathe out of his nose because every single scene he was in and there were many, all I could hear was him disgustingly breathing out of his mouth so loudly that I couldn't really concentrate on the dialogs or anything else but his sleep apnea like gasps of air. It was gross.

kairob75 I just got through watching this movie. It was quite real. I would have like to seen a bit more emotion. I would have liked to see this movie go on for another hour. It's one of those movies where the director could afford to do that with the audience. Bob is eye candy and the spitting image of my ex. I would have like to see him continue to evolve in the movie, to see the depths he might reach, had the movie continued on. I would have loved to see how Irene handled life as a single mother, totally single and dealing with her addiction, as well as her husband who was a total enabler and addict himself. It was nice to see another part of New York. I give this movie 8 stars because it, for those 138 minutes, had me experiencing someone else's life and entranced me. Total sequel movie. Hopefully it is in the making-I want to know how her and her husband met, how she was introduced to drugs, how she handled her pregnancies, and what feelings she was experiencing that kept her in her vicious emotional and destructive addictive cycle. Total sequel material.

Ed Uyeshima Having been intrigued by Vera Farmiga's idiosyncratic turn as a confused police psychologist in Martin Scorsese's viscerally impressive "The Departed", I was curious to see her in this critically acclaimed low-budget 2005 indie. As it turns out, she gives a startling, soul-bearing performance as Irene, a working class wife and mother with a cocaine dependency problem. The primary difference between this film and more conventionally moralizing addiction movies is how her drug-taking habit has so casually permeated her life.Written (with Richard Lieske) and directed by first-timer Debra Granik, the film provides a documentary-like feel for Irene's downtrodden existence in New York's blue-collar-dominated Ulster County as a supermarket cashier, who has been likely a stoner for most of her adult life. Cut off by her drug dealer for falling behind on her payments, she pilfers one of her children's birthday checks and realizes the depths she has plumbed. Checking herself into rehab, Irene looks like she is on the road to recovery, but she is hamstrung by an affair that starts with Bob, a male nurse recovered from his own addiction. Compounded by her firing from the market and a husband who continues to enable her, she finds herself in a vicious circle of entangled dependency and dwindling hope.The movie gets choppy and unnecessarily elliptical at times, although it is not as desultory as one would expect from the set-up. Don't expect any bravura set pieces for Farmiga, who is in almost every scene. It is the utter sense of emotional desolation she conveys in the small moments that resonates. Even when she shows how much she cares for her two sons or has moments of hope about a brighter future, there is a lingering melancholy that haunts all her scenes. Though clearly overshadowed, Hugh Dillon is quite good as Bob, as is Clint Jordan as husband Steve. I was surprised to find out from the informative commentary track by Granik and Farmiga that many of the supporting players were local non-actors. The 2006 DVD also includes the primitive but still impressive 1997 twenty-minute short, "Snake Feed", upon which the film is based.