leonblackwood Review: This is quite a deep drama about a young girl (Lawrence), who looks after her young sister while her drug taking mum is getting pimped out by her boyfriend. The movie follows her struggle to keep it together while her mum is holding parties in her house with various men coming in and out of her house. She's also an inspiring basketball player who wants to make a better life for herself but her day to day life at home, with hardly anything to eat, really gets her down. The acting from a young Jennifer Lawrence, was great and she made her character seem very realistic. The storyline was quite deep and emotional and you can't help but feel for these young girls who really don't get any love from there mum. I didn't quite get the story about Chloe Grace Moretz but she also put in a great performance, at such a young age. Its a shame that you don't get to visually see how Agnes's life turned out, especially as it's based on a true story, but it's a watchable, small movie which got its point across well. Watchable! Round-Up: I think that the main problem with this film is that we have seen this type of story, many times before. The main draw to the movie, for me, is the fact that that Jennifer Lawrence is in it and I haven't really seen her play a role like this before. It does show that the girl can really act and that she can do other roles away from the famous Katniss in the Hunger Games. Although the movie was only made 7 years ago, Lawrence and Moretz look extremely young and it's amazing how far they have come since this movie. Selma Blair, whose been in the Hellboy franchise and Legally Blonde, played the drug taking mum quite well and she also had some emotional alongside Lawrence. Anyway, the movie is a decent watch but it's quite predictable, with no frills.I recommend this movie to people who are into their emotional dramas about a young girl whose trying to find a way out because her mums on drugs and gets pimped out by her boyfriend. 4/10

diegorkz92 Story of a little girl, played by Jennifer Lawrence, who lived in "The Poker House", something like a house where they are, pimps, drugs, gambling, that sort of thing. A drama that reflects basically how it was to live there, with her sisters and mother.I found a good story, besides that is told by the same person who lived it, which makes it much more real, and they are many emotions in this film, which could reflect only living something like that.For this movie Jennifer Lawrence won an award for an outstanding performance. Thing with which I also agree, because she embody the character with enough personality and gave him a very real touch to it.Agnes: "I race the sun home in the morning, and the moon up at night. Anything can happen, and anything does. There's just today, and then there's tonight. And tonight is wonderful"

charlytully Unlike some people, I did NOT jump out of my seat when this movie ended. If anything, I had to work my jaw back into place, after observing how much implausible if not impossible (and certainly illegal, under U.S. federal law, for a MALE writer\director to depict with child actors, or even actors who could PASS for children) one woman could cram into her "based on a true story" film autobiography. Most Americans have no expertise as to whether THE KITE RUNNER novelist, who inspired the movie of the same name, is B.S.-ing us about conditions decades ago in Afghanistan. But some of us are in a better position to see if the events depicted here with admittedly powerful language and acting performances (tagged as more or less happening in Council Bluffs, IA, in 1976) pass the so-called "sniff test." (SPOILERS TO FOLLOW.) Jennifer Lawrence (nominated for Oscar for last year's WINTER'S BONE) is great bringing a combination of poetry, pathos, and the optimism of youth to writer\director Lori Petty's supposed childhood self, Agnes. The problem is, even for a fictional character, the woes and travails Agnes suffers are larded on to a ludicrous ledge of almost braggadocio. I mean, how likely is it that a girl a couple days past her 14th birthday could be 1) working TWO jobs (as a fast food clerk and professional journalist for the local daily), 2)be pulling down straight "A's" in classes including Calculus & Analytic Geometry and advanced poetry (the canon of which she is expanding with her own voice-over offerings, which she's shown scribbling into her notebooks between everything else), 3) serving as the primary care giver for her 10 and 12 year-old sisters, 4)doing the household shopping her coke-head prostitute mom is incapable of, while being threatened daily to start turning tricks on her own, 5)policing the sleep-over johns and regular pimps over-running her home through the sheer force of her personality, 6)refereeing mom's nightly booze-filled poker games, 7)driving her sisters all over town on errands in a full-sized Cadillac, 8)all the while smoking pot, cigarettes, and boozing herself, 9)while never getting caught out by her school authorities as 10)she becomes a local legend as apparently the best basketball player of EITHER sex in her fairly sizable town, while 11)living a totally color-blind life style, and 12)showing up midway through the second half of a PLAYOFF game with no explanation to anyone on the team (though this flick contends that despite being sexually abused years earlier by her long-gone preacher dad, Agnes' virginity somehow was preserved until a few minutes before game time, when one of mom's pimps forcibly rapes her in self-proclaimed business merger), and 13)scoring "27 points in 7 minutes" (NOT what the movie actually shows, to viewers paying attention, by the way) to eke out a two-point buzzer-beater victory for her visiting team? If you say, "C'mon, it's just a movie," I'd respond, so was HOOSIERS. But the latter film is believable in BOTH tone and events. Ms. Petty's version, on the other hand, sounds like one of Oprah's ill-advised book-of-the-month picks, which she has to retract a week later, when the facts come out.

KineticSeoul This is one of the story in the life of Lori Petty, and I never knew how much of a difficult childhood she had. It's basically a depressing and yet well acted and well made movie to some degree about girls struggles. Mainly because of a bad mother and not a very good environment to be growing up in. Now the negative aspect of this movie is that, it seemed to drag in a lot of scenes. In fact some of the scenes actually seemed quite pointless. Basically the plot is about a tough girl who is also smart, but don't always make the right decision having to take care of her sisters as well as overcome her struggles with the environment. The plot seemed all over the place at times and got boring during sometimes as well. This is not a near perfect movie but it isn't as terrible as some people claim it to be. The ending was okay though.6/10