The Poker House (2008)

SPOILER ALERT they have 11 year old girl showing her beaver off as an 11 year old IN THE FILM. and I'm just going to guess the only reason is to make cash . this is an exploitation of children film done by a women with no more values than the greed of the dollar bill. if you love to see child-porn you will love this film otherwise you will hate it like me..Hollywood always has some reason to show little kids like this this wasn't a film about anything but child exploiting of the 11 year old actress in it showing pantie beaver shot of them i hate this film how does the FBI or the CIA not view this child exploitation got a bunch of naked girls in it to sell more profits and making rape seem like it would just be a fun time and you just walk it of go have a lap and you will be just fine.. this movie is an fake lying atrocity to make money and us have a pity party for her supposed life.. and she only tells it 30 years later so there is no possible Way TO FIGURE OUT IF SHE IS TELLING HTE TRUTH I SEE THROGUH ALL MOVIES TO THERE TRUE NATURES AND THIS ONES NAATURE IS GREED AND CHILDPORN TO BOOT IF YOU WANT TO JERK OFF TO THE SCENES OF LITTLE 11 YEAR OLD GIRLS There's YOUR Opportunity.. I HOPE THAT SOMEDAY CHILDREN WILL NOT BE EXPLOITED. IT CLEARLY HAPPENS EVERDAY YOU WATCH A Hollywood FILM

I enjoyed this movie from beginning until the end. Perhaps due to the evocative nature of the film and my own very early childhood. Like Adele, the lead character and narrator of the film, it fell upon me at way too young an age, after a parental separation, to pick up the pieces, both figuratively and literally. This film is so surprisingly different than anything else that Lori Petty has done in film that I was startled to find out that it was indeed the Lori Petty from Tank Girl who penned and directed this film. A tale of religion gone wrong and a mother who couldn't deal with the consequential aftermath, a tale of a girl old beyond her years, searching for a tender love that couldn't be bargained; I wish that you see this film and take from it the hope that it inspires, the longing that children have for a pure love and the understanding that you can't always get what you want or even what you need.

Selma Blair is amazing in The Poker House as a drug-addicted prostitute who has her three daughters living with her. Jennifer Lawrence also gives a wonderful performance as the eldest daughter, Agnes who takes care of her two younger siblings. The Poker House is narrated by Agnes as she tries to deal with being 14 and living in a house where there is gambling, drugs, alcohol, and pimps. The story definitely pulls on the heart strings at times, but it does not overwhelm with sadness that it makes it hard to enjoy. It adds just the right amount of humor that three young girls can produce while being silly together. I honestly was shocked by how well the movie was produced and the character portrayal. The Poker House is definitely something I would recommend to my friends, as well as watch again.

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.