Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Twilightfa Watch something else. There are very few redeeming qualities to this film.

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

lewiscranstonemail Looking back on 'Frozen River', you can clearly see writer-director, Courtney Hunt has planned and executed it with her own clear, well thought-out intentions. Not only to show a tale of a woman in danger, but to provide a well crafted insight into an American life that many may not be aware of. From life in a Native American reservation to the smuggling of immigrants, it also explores some unexpected themes too. However I found the visuals and atmosphere very very depressing, notably a shot showing popcorn being served for dinner in a grim caravan. Although this is intended, it doesn't make for the greatest cinematic experience. I'd compare the film to the Ken Loach film 'Kes' in its tone and everyman/woman characters, although 'Frozen River' is slightly more uplifting.

sesht This one kinda set a trend much, much before 'Winter's bone' did, and that is taking nothing away from Jen Law or John Hawkes in that one. Its just that this one kinda brought Melissa Leo back (for me at least), and she has been such a force to reckon with after this one, with nary a bad performance out of her. Misty Upham, on the other hand, hasn't had much mainstream support until 'August: Osage County' came along and brought her back into pop culture.Issue based movies are kinda difficult to make without their turning out preachy. This is kinda maddening, esp when the makers want their audiences to Feel, yet need to step back and play it like a surgeon does so each member of the audience gets to pick a side, and the (pretentious) critic also observes that the said makers are being fair/impartial. Very, very difficult to pull off without losing a section of the audience.This one walks that tightrope, and you come out feeling for each character, and their tales, their choices, albeit limited in nature, while also appreciating the reality of the situation they live in, while staying concerned about how this reality, and how what each person does, affects society (or communities) as a whole. If one were to try and learn something from these tales unfolding, it would be simply to do that from the perspective of rehabilitating those who have gone astray, though that might sound simple and cliché-ed.Having said all that, this is a dark tale indeed, featuring some fine locations, photography, soundtrack (appropriately minimalistic) while painting the grim portrait that it does. Once again, not for everyone, but deserves to be seen to open the window on that which we are quick to ignore/pretend-doesn't-exist.

octopusluke Frozen River caused quite the stir when it was realised four years back. After lots of festival attention, it earned two Academy Awards nominations. The first was for writer-director Courtney Hunt's original screenplay, and the second was a best actress nod for Melissa Leo. Finally catching up with this film, as the first in my "SHITTY Christmas!" series, I'm firstly left bemused as to why the Academy were so impressed with the clunky script, and secondly, angry that Leo's staggering performance didn't get the gong it deserved.Set on the snowbound American side of the New York/Quebec border, Leo plays the fatigued shop assistant Ray, with a ballsy, pugnacious streak. That ruthless attitude proves useful when her gambling addict husband takes off with the money the pair had been saving for a new static caravan home. Leaving crumbs for her and their two kids the week before Christmas, Ray must find a steadfast way to quash the family debt, settle the final payment on the new house, and have enough money to plant gifts underneath the tree.But luck strikes in the strangest of places. Whilst she's out wielding a gun and hunting for her husband, Ray bumps into the stoical Lila (Misty Upham), a young woman from a neighbouring Mohawk reservation. She's desperate for money too, needing enough to start up a clean life with her baby boy son, currently being sheltered by her mother-in-law (similarly to Ray, her husband bailed too). Lila's figured out how to make extra cash by ferrying illegal immigrants across the border via the connected frozen river – but she needs a 'trustworthy-looking' white woman to carry out the scheme.From the offset, it's clear that Ray & Lila's relationship is strictly professional. They argue, point guns, and exchange flippant racial abuse at each other. But they have one thing in common, a desperation to do what's right for their respective families, and they're willing to break the law, risk prison and even death to see that happen.An alleged 14 years in the making, director-writer Courtney Hunt's debut feature is perhaps a little belaboured. What could have been a very tight, singular character study, ends up being diluted and drowned by the ancillary characters and the extraneous plot depths they bring. Misty Upham seems to be on the brink of solid, stoney-faced characterisation but, like the rest of the cast, she is also upstaged by Leo. It's a huge problem in this little, $1million budget movie. Whenever Melissa Leo isn't in the frame, Frozen River is too dour to be entertaining, and everything ends up grinding to a halt.Fortunately enough, Hunt is aware that Leo really is the star of the movie, giving her the respect, creative license and screen time she deserves to pull off one astonishing breakthrough performance. In any other actor's hands, it would have been a melodramatic take on a woman on the brink of depression and despair. But, in something closely resembling Debra Granik's superior movie Winter's Bone, Leo turns Frozen River into an affecting, frosty depiction of female empowerment.Read more reviews here: www.366movies.com

johnnyboyz Frozen River unfolds on the cold, biting and rather inhospitable New York State Canadian-American border; a part of the continent in which huge trucks carrying their huge hauls rumble on through past toll booths and under barriers amidst the snow and ice which surrounds the locale for as far as the eye can see; the sort of place neon signs hang, limply, and unlit during the day while homes that look as if they've had little in the way of residency stand idly to the sides of roads. The film, a debut from Tenesse born writer/director Courtney Hunt, is a really pleasing, engrossing little American indie about adults in adult situations facing adult scenarios and dealing with them methodically, maturely and, above all, realistically - we are a long way from the snow-set mainstream posing of something such as Juno and the-like, a film which could only pretend to tackle a rather serious contemporary issue and trivialise such material with a bevy of brash, annoying and wholly unrealistic characters inhabiting a film more interested in entertaining you with its gift of the gab. Indeed, we are mercifully a long way from films such as Secretary and The Squid and the Whale and wholly indebted to Hunt for dragging us away from such films and back to this.We begin on a woman with an agonised expression; she is sitting alone in the coldness of the world she inhabits up against, it seems, not only the climate of her dwelling but the cold makeup of human nature. She smokes; she looks disenchanted; she is Ray Eddy and is played by Melissa Leo. Ray's world is one in which she has little in the way of money. What she dos have is a good-for-nothing gambler of a husband whom is long-gone; two, young sons; a trailer home hanging in the balance on account of the local council with their fees they demand for it and the prospect of not being able to buy a little-'un the diecast set of toy cars they so desperately want for Christmas. The Eddy family are one very much on the edge; a later altercation with a descendant of the Native American's whose land centuries ago this once was, named Lila Littlewolf (Upham), sees Ray put a bullet square into the entrance door to her trailer home, this following some aggravation – we get the feeling six months ago, it may very well have been a warning shot into the air but that sense of her being well past that point of 'warning' has arrived, that here and now at this new level of agitation is the plateau upon which she now resides.The film will come to follow these two and their uneasy alliance, an element to any film which when executed with the sort of bravado and effectiveness as is rather demonstrated here, can make for some fascinating viewing. Lila, a mere bingo house worker patrolling the floors and the player's little-to-no bingo playing activity, the film coming to reveal lives an equally dishevelled lifestyle in rather humble shack-like conditions; somebody whom is additionally devoid of a husband but very much with that out-casted, hermit-like existence similar to that of Ray. Their duty, as perpetrated by some local indigenous people whom Lila knows, is to smuggle people across the aforementioned border with what the instigators claim is within legality but was always ambiguous in its criminality, for large amounts of money; the zone through which they must journey is the titular frozen river, a stretch of icy nothingness doubling up as a moral grey zone neatly capturing the nature of Ray and Lila's activities; a zone devoid of most things and set well away from the confines of whatever passes for civilisation. Their first job, to transport an apparently untrustworthy young foreign man from place to place, sees Ray handed the gentleman's shoes before they all drive off on account it will "stop him from running away", in what is a neat, authentic touch systematically doing lots whilst doing very little.The film itself draws us into proceedings even more; the overbearing item to proceedings, or what's at stake, the fact this down-and-out family have the loss of their home on the line, something which Ray's husband practically gave away on account of his gambling habit. The film additionally makes use of Ray's infant son and his desperate pleas for a set of small, metallic cars with which he can play; Frozen River utilising such a notion or potential event without really exploiting such a child-like and innocent desire whilst keeping us wholly aware that if its lead does indeed get away with what it is she's doing, these two realities will be able to come to fruition. The film manages to have us will the lead on without ever really endorsing any criminal activity, instead, and by placing its characters into some rather harrowing situations born out of Ray's decision to engage in people trafficking, the film builds up enough of an unglamorous edge to proceedings to see it by. The culmination, of which, is an embittered and remarkably well played drama going on to cover some territory in the deftest and most capable of manners.