Winter's Bone (2010)

Director: Debra Granik
Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Garret Dillahunt, Isaiah Stone, Dale Dickey

The film that landed Jennifer Lawrence her first Oscar nod, Winter's Bone has little in common with her feel-good turn in this year's beloved Silver Linings Playbook.

Lawrence carries the film (which was adapted from Daniel Woodrell's novel of the same name) as Ree Dolly, a teenager in the Ozarks, who takes up the mantle of matriarch from her ailing mother, and has to save her young family from eviction.

But to do so, she must first find her estranged father, a meth manufacturer on the run.