After more than 20 years of acting, Melissa Leo finally is getting the chance to carry a film. Read more

In writer-director Courtney Hunt’s first feature, “Frozen River,” the two lead characters–both women–begin as rivals who, as mothers, are fighting for food, if you will, with which to feed their needy young. However, as they struggle to succeed, they realize their interests are actually mutual, and they form a bond as sisters. Read more

Kate Williams, the Australian-born editor frequently associated with Steve Buscemi (Trees Lounge, Interview, Animal Factory) came to Frozen River — first-time feature writer-director Courtney Hunt’s gripping upstate NY drama starring Melissa Leo and Misty Upham — once it was in the can. Read more

Under the banner of “community outreach,” Boston-based AWFJ member Jenny Halper screened “Frozen River” for her students at Emerson College’s Young Writers Program, then assigned them to review the film. Read more

It’s rare to see a film that sets up a world both extremely recognizable and rarely seen, and rarer still when it turns out to ask moral questions without preaching. In her debut feature Frozen River, Courtney Hunt creates a story that serves simultaneously as a thriller and an insightful examination of the line between morality and necessity Read more

The deserved winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, Courtney Hunt’s “Frozen River” tells the story of two desperately poor women–one Caucasian, one Mohawk–in dreary upstate New York who form an uneasy alliance to smuggle illegal immigrants across the frozen, yet treacherous St. Lawrence River that separates Canada from the United States.

Just before Christmas, Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) realizes her gambling husband has run off with all the money she was saving to buy a new double-wide trailer. Abandoned with only a part-time job at the Yankee Dollar Store, she’s destitute. Her squalid trailer is falling apart, her kids (Charlie McDermott, James Reilly) have only popcorn and Tang for dinner, and there’s nothing for holiday presents. So when she spies her husband’s car at a bingo parlor on the barren Mohawk reservation, Ray follows the woman who stole it. It’s Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham), a single mother who is trying to regain custody of her child by using the Dodge Spirit - with its pop-up trunk - to smuggle aliens from China and Pakistan. While neither woman truly trusts the other, their mutual struggle forms a bond of shared economic need. Racism is endemic with the border police, so a white woman driving is much less likely to be questioned than a Native American. Yet it’s a dangerous decision for both.

Writer/director Courtney Hunt creates a completely believable, wintry world that’s filled with suspicion and extreme anxiety, eliciting gritty, grounded performances from her entire cast, particularly Melissa Leo (”21 Grams”), who should certainly be on the short list for Oscar consideration. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Frozen River” is a compelling 9, as a compassionate, cross-cultural chronicle of humanity besieged by hard times.

Darryl Roberts, who comes to documentaries from music videos, commercials and narrative features, is an excellent researcher and storyteller. The elements he’s compiled in “America The Beautiful” add up to a powerful statement about issues that plague American women, causing them to endanger their health, go into debt and neglect the talents that make them unique and whole people. Read more>>

A lonely, working-class British teen falls under the thrall of an odd, aristocratic family in “Brideshead Revisited,” the film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s acclaimed 1946 novel. Stellar performances and magnificent period details help the movie overcome some directorial miscues and a jarring score. Read more>>

Ostensibly a political satire with a heart of mush, Joshua Michael Stern hopelessly muddled film cries out for the firm hand of either a dyed-in-the-wool cynic like Billy Wilder, who would have put some teeth in its jabs at amoral politicians and blindly ambitious journalists, or the steely humanism of a Frank Capra, whose tales of ordinary folks thrust into extraordinary situations are far sharper than the term “Capra-corn” would suggest. Read more>>

It’s revisiting “Brideshead Revisited,” since many vividly remember that lavish, 11-episode British mini-series first shown on PBS in 1982 and released on DVD in 2006. Read more