Winter's Bone (2010) Film 10/50

Found it! Found. It. The performance that was superior to Portman's in Black Swan. Jennifer Lawrence...you either deserved the Oscar or were raised by a meth addict and spent your childhood making hard decisions like Do we have stewed or fried squirrel for dinner tonight?

Winter's Bone is phenomenal but slow. So very, very slow. The tale follows 17-year old Ree Dolly as she hunts for her meth cooking father who has just been released on bail. If he fails to show up for his court date, Ree and her siblings and their catatonic mother will lose their home. In order to locate him, Ree must turn to her formidable Uncle Teardrop (played outstandingly by John Hawkes, who would have won Best Supporting Actor had he not had the misfortune of being up against Christian Bale's eerily spot-on performance as Dicky Eklund). And when Teardrop can't help, it just gets worse and worse for the poor Dolly girl.

Without trying to spoil anything for those of you who've not seen this film, here are the reasons why Lawrence should have won the Academy Award over Portman:

1) The way she can skin a squirrel. She's either been doing this her entire life or has an iron constitution. As a 17-year old girl, I would have vomited over everything trying to act out that one scene.

2) Her facial expression on the boat. That's all I'm giving you there. You've either seen the film and know what happens in this scene, or you'll just have to watch the film and find out. Just know that Lawrence is brilliant here.

3) Her character, both in writing and performance, is a hundred times stronger and more fierce than Portman's Nina Sayers. And the ordeals Ree must face are equally more terrifying than anything Nina experienced in her journey.

In the end Portman went home with the little gold man. Ah well.

As for Lawrence, we'll see her again soon as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. Watching Winter's Bone, I could see why she was the perfect casting for Katniss. Katniss and Ree. They're essentially the same character...just with a different number of siblings (that one was for you, Lauren).