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.

Steve West I admit I only watched this because I heard that Melissa Leo (who played Detective Howard in Homicide) had won some sort of recognition for putting in a good performance. It sounded like a good film on that basis and I wasn't disappointed. Frozen River offers a slice of life across the other side of the world (for me), it was appropriate watching it in the middle of a heatwave as others in the northern hemisphere (in certain regions) are experiencing these sorts of conditions at this time of year.It ticks all the right boxes of being interesting the whole way through, being well casted and acted. Detective Howard was more of a peripheral character on Homicide so it was good to see what Leo could do with a lead role. Upham is a good supporting actor and doesn't ruin suspension of disbelief due to crappy acting or anything (same for the child actors).The Native American aspect gives the film a unique flavour so in fact it is appealing from a number of different angles. It's fairly safe to watch with a general audience (no swearing that I can recall), some shots are fired and that's about as extreme as it gets.

alicecbr You like Mohawks, white trailer trash but both with a big heart? What writing!!! What understated, realistic acting! the cinematography of some frozen river in Plattsburgh, NY in the polar cold of winter is outstanding. And you really feel it. Course we're in the Blizzard of 2010 right now in Boston so it fits right in.The casual use of a gun is unsettling but this heroine is not blessed with a Ph.D. in anything. She just loves her sons and has been deserted by her gambling-aholic husband. She is just trying to get by and uses the gun only for 'emphasis' Fascinating to see that larceny is featured throughout this movie, but is more mean and ugly when it is legal. The double-wide trailer salesman who casually takes her $3000, has her sign a paper and doesn't even give her a copy. YOu know she will never see that trailer, as he will have 'no proof' that she has given him this CASH. The mother-in-law of the Mohawk woman who steals her grandbaby from the hospital. "The tribal elders don't get involved in this." She is smuggling to get money for support of the child, which she leaves at night looking in the window at her baby. The lying duplicity of the Yankee Dollar manager who has stringing Ray along for 2 years, promising to bring her on full time.....all legal. No benefits, rotten pay.The movie benefits from the fact that they had no money, so the weather man is the actual weatherman in Plattsburg, NY. The trailer salesmen were afraid they would 'ruin their image'????? Yet this was the big dream of this woman, not something she was forced into living in.And who didn't get this Christmas time movie's metaphor of the immigrant baby, who they leave by the side of the ice because the car is too heavy. The immigrant parents are in the trunk so they don't know until they let them out at the motel. The Pakistani manager interprets, "Her baby was in that satchel." These smugglers drive all the way back onto the ice and find the baby 'frozen dead'. The baby-less Mohawk woman doesn't want to hold her to her warm body because 'the baby's dead', but does. By the time they get back to the motel, she reports, "The baby's moving." So they give a live baby back to the illegal immigrant who collapses with relief. Christ child, anyone? A unique movie, you won't forget it. Parts will come back to haunt you, like the chance the white woman has to escape back to her children, knowing the Mohawk will be expelled from the Mohawk nation if she and the immigrants are not turned over to the New York state police. She doesn't take it and decides to go to jail. Contrary to stereotype, the trooper tells her she will serve 4 months ("if you're not on the black list"). See it.