+ Best Low-Budget Movie of the Year + Best Social Realism Movie of the Year
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| A sparse and cold, yet also evocative and curiosity-sparking poster for Courtney Hunt's Frozen River |
Ray has been left by her husband in her trailer home with two children, debt and a crummy discount store clerk job in upstate New York near the Ontario border, when she learns that she can earn some much needed money by trafficking illegal immigrants.
Frozen River is the debut for Tennesseean writer-director Courtney Hunt (The Whole Truth (2016)). It takes up some exciting topics and handles them with freezing, crude realism. The aesthetics are regrettably Dogme-like, - ugly, - and some of the amateur performances wobble a bit here and there.
To its credit as a social-realism drama, Frozen River features no great villains. Melissa Leo (Prisoners (2013)), Misty Upham (Expiration Date (2006)) and often also Charlie McDermott (The Middle (2009-18)) as Ray's son TJ are excellent as the ill-starred folks. Frozen River is a powerful, thrilling and unpredictable drama.
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Cost: 1 mil. $
Box office: 5.4 mil. $
= Big hit (5.4 times the cost)
[Frozen River premiered 18 January (Sundance Film Festival) and runs 97 minutes. Hunt based her scripts on stories she had heard from her husband's family of Mohawk Indians smuggling cigarettes across the frozen Saint Lawrence river. Shooting took place in freezing weather in New York and Ontario, Canada in 24 days in March 2007. The film opened #33 in 7 theaters to a 70k $ first weekend in North America, where it peaked at #29 and in 96 theaters (different weeks) and grossed strong 2.5 mil. $ (46.3 % of the total gross). The film's 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 1.2 mil. $ (22.2 %) and Spain with 722k $ (13.4 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to two notches better than this one. It was nominated for 2 Oscars: Best Actress (Leo), lost to Kate Winslet in Stephen Daldry's great The Reader and Best Original Screenplay, lost to Dustin Lance Black for Gus Van Sant's masterpiece Milk. It won an AFI award, 2/7 Independent Spirit award nominations, 3 National Board of Review awards, a Sundance award and many other honors. Hunt returned to directing on TV-series In Treatment (2009-10) and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (2011-13) and theatrically with Keanu Reeves-starrer The Whole Truth (2016). Leo was in 9 titles in 2008! Two of them short films and one a TV-series, - wildly impressive. She returned theatrically in Lullaby (2008). Frozen River is certified fresh at 88 % with a 7.3 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Frozen River?
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