Winter’s Bone is a fabulous film that demonstrates once and for all that blood is thicker than crystal meth. Except when you’re a snitch. The neat, more or less airtight premise keeps this hillbilly stomp of a film tightly wound and tense.

The plot is so simple, it’s maddening. The setting is the Missouri Ozarks, which is apparently the Champagne Region for meth. Ree (a wonderfully stoic, no-nonsense Jennifer Lawrence) is a 17-year-old girl who, by virtue of not being a complete idiot, has become the head of her household. She’s been left to fend for herself, her two younger siblings, and a near-catatonic mother. To say Ree’s father is a lowdown deadbeat dad doesn’t do him justice. This crystal meth chef got himself in trouble with the law, put his house up for collateral for his bail, and promptly vanished. Ree is informed by the sheriff that if dear old Dad doesn’t show up in a week, her family’s home will be seized and her family be thrown out into the woods.

Ree must now enter the Heart of Darkness of the meth industry to track down her dad. She obviously doesn’t relish this quest, but it’s either risk her life or face dire poverty. The first monster she must confront is her father’s brother, Uncle Teardrop (played to greasy, frightening perfection by John Hawkes). He’s the sort of fella who tells his wife “I already told you to shut up once with my mouth.” Teardrop himself is a meth aficionado, and it’s clear he has no interest in helping Ree track down her father. Indeed, Ree gets stonewalled in every direction she goes, but she doggedly keeps following clues and narrowly getting herself killed a dozen times.

The ghost of Ree’s father pervades the film. We learn that he was a very careful cooker, so Ree doesn’t fall for the red herring that he died in a meth lab explosion. Ree eventually tries to gain an audience with Thump, the local meth kingpin, but he’s just as interested in helping out Ree as Teardrop. For the entire film, Ree faces stony silences, death threats, and finally gets a good ol’ Ozark ass-whuppin’. But try as you might to knock Ree down, she always gets back up.

And that’s the undeniable charm of the film. Ree is the pluckiest kid I’ve seen in a movie since that little boy faced down the ghost of Guillermo del Toro’s finest film, The Devil’s Backbone. Both Ree and that boy epitomize the stoical “Get ‘er done” spirit that I hold in high esteem and admiration. Throughout the film, the only thing that keeps Ree alive is that she’s kinfolk. She uses that distinction as a cop would a badge. It buys her time. It makes her adversaries pause. If nothing else, Winter’s Bone is a superb and very unusual police procedural.

There are really no good or bad guys in this film. Winter’s Bone is practically Miyazakian with its characters, who are both horrible and noble. The cinematography is top-notch, bringing out the forlorn beauty of the Ozarks woods and mountains, adorned by the detritus of our civilization, rusting cars and scattered plastic junk among the leaves of grass. Love among the ruins, indeed. My favorite scene involved Ree trying to chase down the mysterious ogre Thump through a surreal padlock of bellowing cows and strange, metal grate walkways that almost seemed cyberpunk.

The music is what you’d expect, a far grittier rendition of the score to O Brother Where Art Thou mainly because this flick ain’t no George Clooney goof-off. This here’s the real deal. And the ending, which would be criminal of me to give away, is so bang-on and gut punching that I actually exclaimed “Goddamn, boy!” without a trace of irony. All I gotta say is I’m sure glad my daddy weren’t no meth cooker.

Valhalla Rising blindsided me like a out-of-control Mac truck plowing through a crowded cafe. It’s that good. A brutal yet beautifully elegiac ode to the death of paganism and the rise of a new and equally violent faith, Valhalla Rising is a a sad, mournful film that takes no joy in its relentless violence. Nicolas Winding Refn’s punch to the gut follow-up to his masterful Bronson does not harbor one gratuitous scene. Valhalla Rising is so stripped of any romanticism that I could only stumble out of its presence in a punch-drunk melancholy, much in the same way I reacted to No Country For Old Men. Indeed, this Viking tale of horror and treachery could very well be a prequel of sorts to that film, as they certainly touch upon similar themes. A dismal tide, indeed.

The opening scene is all business. Our unnamed mute “hero” One Eye (Mads Mikkelsen, who does the Man with No Name routine with undeniable panache) is fighting for his life. In the blistery hills of Scandinavia, One Eye is tied to a post and forced to fight warriors so his captors can place wagers. It’s all very well he’s tied to the post, as his day job has transformed him into a feral beast who only knows survival. But One Eye is not resigned to his fate. He intends to escape, and escape he does in a singularly gruesome and efficient manner. If you’re looking for some balls to wall medieval combat, Valhalla Rising is your movie.

One Eye and his sidekick kid (a surprisingly charming Maarten Stevenson, acting as One Eye’s voice) set off for their life of freedom, and run into Eirik (a superb Ewan Stewart), who is leading a group of Crusaders hell bent on finding salvation, glory, and riches in Jerusalem. The sheer absurdity of Vikings traveling to the Holy Land for God knows what is the perfect frame for this film. Valhalla Rising does not bandy in common sense or compassion; there is only forward movement, violence, and madness. Eirik and his merry band represent the old school version of Christianity, which involves slaughtering infidels who would dare defy the Prince of Peace. But to One Eye, it’s all the same: They’re all bloody men in a bloody world, and which god you pray to is beside the point.

Valhalla Rising is divided into six chapters that are not only signposts guiding you to the Heart of Darkness. They represent the logical flow of theology and fanaticism, and perhaps what lies in store for the Viking people. The psychedelic sequences and occasional hallucinations blend smoothly. The film skillfully blurs the dream state and reality until they are one. One Eye and his companions do reach a Holy Land of sorts, and you could say everyone found what they were looking for.

Every performance in this film is powerful and rings true, to the resigned glare of One Eye to the grinning madness of Eirik. Walter Chaw suggests that One Eye harkens to Aguirre Wrath of God, but I say One Eye dives even deeper into our dark hearts, beyond avarice and religion. Whatever trappings you put on life, there is a primordial stew within all of us that makes any belief we harbor senseless and self-deluding. Christians are blasphemous heathens who eat their God, not out of reverence, but to create a simulacrum of life’s true nature. One Eye is these Crusaders’ Lord, and so the last chapter is aptly named Sacrifice. See Valhalla Rising with someone you love.

Unquestionably the finest product of the entire Canadian Tax Shelter era, the intensely grim yet bittersweet Christmastime caper The Silent Partner should be a holiday staple for those fed up with saccharine Christian sentimentality and 24-hour marathon reruns of A Christmas Story. Much like Bob Clark’s masterpiece Black Christmas, the Yuletide setting provides an ironic counterpoint to the nerve-wracking wintry paranoia that threatens to become overwhelming, with a villain who knows not the meaning of “Good Will Towards Men”. Or women, for that matter. Beneath its ice cold, pseudo-slasher surface is a genuinely heartwarming tale of love, spiritual redemption, and the temptation of all-consuming greed.

Based on Anders Bodelsen’s obscure potboiler Think of a Number, Curtis Hanson’s screenplay transposes the setting from Denmark to metropolitan Toronto, preserving the snowy atmosphere and excising a few subplots while adding a much-needed transfusion of good old fashioned Canadian charm. The story is deceptively simple: Miles Cullen (Elliott Gould), hapless everyman bank teller, discovers that a local Santa Claus is planning a holdup, and decides to skim a few grand from his till the next day. Predictably, Santa returns with a gun, scores, makes a clean getaway, and Cullen”s theft goes completely unnoticed. Neat. On top of that, he’s attracting the interest of his co-worker Julie (Susannah York), a longtime crush on which their sleazy sideburn-sporting boss has obvious designs.

In perhaps the only plot contrivance in an otherwise fiercely intelligent script, Miles is interviewed by a field crew for the TV news, becomes a little cocky, and discloses the exact sum total of money stolen, including the $48,000 he stuffed into his tin lunch box before it all went down. This is odd for a number of reasons, but perhaps Canadian reportage is really this candid; if the story took place in America, the bank would dispatch a suit who would then give a vague though undoubtedly inflated estimate of their losses in order to maximize insurance payouts. Stranger still, Miles must grapple with a new-found and unexpected celebrity, and take some lighthearted jabs from his extremely merry co-worker Simonsen (John God Damn Candy, on a break from SCTV). Will he work up the gumption to win Julie’s heart and shed his nebbish skin, or be content to live as a hermit collecting tropical fish?

More importantly, what is he going to do about Harry Reikle (Christopher Plummer), former disgruntled Santa turned bank robber, who thinks nothing of grand larceny and even less of common courtesy? It may be a coincidence that Reikle just happened to be watching the broadcast during Miles’ interview, but what thief wouldn’t want to experience the adrenaline rush of watching their own exploits on the news? While Miles is sensible enough to shuttle away his 48 grand in a safety deposit box, he’s powerless to prevent Reikle from bombarding his home with menacing phone calls and ransacking the place when he’s not there. Suffice it to say, the obsessive thief does not handle Miles’ lack of cooperation with much decorum, and the film contains more cruelty to fish than A Fish Called Wanda.

Despite the mayhem unfolding at home, Miles is still composed enough to come up with avoidance tactics when he’s not pursuing Julie, which involves going to a very depressing swingers’ party hosted by the sleazy boss and being the designated driver. The scene in her apartment is extremely well acted, not surprising given the deft touch director Daryl Duke has with actors: witness his ability to rein in Rip Torn’s unique brand of Method acting as his character becomes increasingly unhinged in the epic Payday. Likewise, Plummer’s performance is a masterwork of simmering rage manifesting from suppressed sexual frustration, alternately cool and terrifying, usually in the same scene. Gould plays it as low-key as possible, which is exactly the right thing to do.

Through an ingeniously executed plan that I dare not reveal, Miles succeeds in dealing with Harry, settles into his new life and begins building sandcastles in the sky, planning out exactly how to spend his 48 grand. Sure, he could only live a year or two on that much money, and the smart thing would be to invest the entire lump sum. But he’s starting to understand the allure of a life of crime, and paranoid about his skimming being found out. Around this time, he has a chance encounter with the stunningly gorgeous Elaine (Céline Lomez) and his burgeoning affair with Julie is jeopardized when the two strangers fall head over heels for each other.

For a short, blissful passage, The Silent Partner is sweet, romantic, and delicate; lest you think this quasi-love-triangle is an unnecessary detour (as it is in so many other Capers), think again. Gratuitous nudity and soft focus candlelit foreplay sequence aside, the secondary romance subplot is absolutely necessary not only for the brief levity it provides, but for the unexpected emotional payoff and tie-in to the A-plot. Oh yeah, also eye candy:

Nice as this flirtatious dalliance turns out to be, Miles does not have much time to enjoy his newfound status as a swaggering ladykiller. No, it’s not because it was approaching the end of the decade when someone like Elliott Gould could conceivably embody a suave Don Juan character, but rather when Harry returns, with a vengeance that is oftentimes vicious on a level nigh unseen outside of the horror genre. On top of that, Harry is such an asshole that most of his apoplectic rage is directed toward dainty, defenseless women; if we didn’t already hate him just on general principle of him being a greedy bank robber and all, his treatment of the fairer sex has drawn sharp criticism toward the film itself. Curtis Hanson’s script has been called misogynistic, sexist, and unnecessarily brutal, and while it’s hard to argue against the latter claim, the film itself is obviously not a celebration of machismo. Miles, in a sharp contrast to the antagonist, respects women so much that he’s intimidated by them; understandably so in the cases of headstrong, whip-smart British lass Julie and the ethereal Elaine.

The scene involving Elaine, Harry and the fish tank has often been referred to as one of the most repulsively violent scenes in all the sundry, seedy annals of exploitation, which is a bit of an overstatement. True, it’s protracted and uncomfortable, but that’s kind of the point of the scene: ratcheting up the tension and stakes to an unbearable fever pitch. Duke could have cut out a few seconds of beating and thrashing with no one wanting more, but perhaps he, like any typical viewer, was simply in awe at seeing Baron Von Trapp acting like Ike Turner during a PCP binge.

After a point, Harry’s rampage becomes less about recovering the 48 large and more about making Miles as miserable as humanly possible. You’d think a sensible bloke like our hero would cut ties and hightail it out of Toronto after a particular plot development, yet he doesn’t. Miles always has a plan, always has enough sand in him to stand up to his tormentor, even if he is deathly afraid the whole time. He’s a classic film noir protagonist, with several weaknesses and shades of gray complicating his character, while he undergoes misfortune after misfortune as a direct result of his dabbling in crime. He is also smart enough to realize the wide-ranging consequences of his actions, and humble enough to take drastic steps to correct his mistake.

Will there be a Christmas Miracle to save everything at the 11th hour? Will Miles and Julie’s be a romance for the ages? Will Miles learn that virtue is its own reward? Will Christopher Plummer be cross-dressing? We can disclose the answer to exactly one of these dilemmas. You’ll have to find out the rest.