Reviews

I daresay this review will mark me as irremediably old-fashioned in my tastes, but I cannot, for the life of me, find either wit or humor (and yes, this movie touts itself as a comedy) in a movie the principle dialogue of which consists of the two word expression "f... you," or variants of the same. Appalling. I lasted about 30 minutes before walking out. Caveat emptor.

Appallingly bad. This mish-mash of new-age sentiments and zingy, slangy one-liners wrapped up in special visual effects has about as much to do with Kipling's wonderful adventure book as the Kardashians have to do with Oxford University. It's directed in a campy, wanna-be-cool style that can best be described as neo-faux Hollywooden car-chase. It uses animals instead of crash cars, but it boils down to much the same thing.

Why (oh, why?) do film makers take wonderful books and trash them? Why do they take a genuinely moving tale and turn it into cotton candy? This movie is the cinematic equivalent of junk food.

In director George Stevens, RKO Pictures had a craftsman behind the camera who was known for his ability to elicit sensitive performances from his actors. In Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray and Hattie McDaniel, RKO had actors who were on the verge of being major stars. Stevens would go on to direct several remarkable movies including "A Place in the Sun," "I Remember Mama," and "Swing Time." Hepburn, MacMurray and McDaniel would go on to be... well, Hepburn, MacMurray and McDaniel. Given the level of talent at work on "Alice Adams," it's an inexplicable puzzle this movie turned out to be so god-awful. The fault, perhaps, lies in the story, by Booth Tarkington, from which the movie script was adapted. Tarkington's slice-of-life explorations of small-town, mid-western mores in the early years of last century have not weathered the intervening decades very well. "Alice Adams" follows the career of a young woman of modest means with gigantic social aspirations. In the title role, Hepburn gives an outrageously mawkish performance -- half tremulous maiden, half calculating man-trap. It's not attractive in the least. Pathos morphs quickly into bathos and rather than feel sorry for the sweet young thing, the viewer is more likely to want to shake her. We don't believe, for a second, that Fred MacMurray's character -- a decent and honorable young man -- could fall for such a chatty twit. The cast of the movie includes Fred Stone and Ann Shoemaker, who do their best with essentially one-dimensional characters, but the movie mopes and languishes on to its contrived (happy) ending and the moviegoer is ready for it all to finish long before it actually does. If you're a Hepburn or MacMurray fan, see "Alice Adams" just to be able to say you have seen it. Then, you'll never have to see it again for as long as you live.

In this engaging documentary film, director/writer Mary Murphy explores both the background to and impact of author Harper Lee's enormously influential and well-loved 1960 novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird." Drawing upon a host of resources including: interviews with residents of Lee's hometown of Monroeville, Alabama and personal friends of the author's; film footage of civil rights demonstrations in the U.S. south during the early and mid-1960's; commentary by a host of celebrities (Oprah Winfrey, Tom Brokaw, Rosanne Cash, Anna Quindlen, Scott Turow and many others); still photographs; and scenes from the 1962 movie starring Gregory Peck, Murphy weaves together a compelling portrait of the gestation of a literary novel. "To Kill a Mockingbird" -- which won a Pulitzer Prize -- is one of those rare books that manages both to look back in time to small-town southern life in the 1930's and also forward to the racial and social issues surrounding the civil rights struggles of the 1960's. It has rightly become a touchstone of American literature in the 50+ years since its publication. It is to filmmaker Murphy's credit that -- while not scanting the civil rights' issues the book antedates -- she keeps the major focus of this 2010 film upon the book and its author. By so doing, she manages to augment the viewer's sense of the book's impact; understatement possesses a quiet power that overblown rhetoric cannot touch.

At 78 running minutes, "Hey, Boo: Harper Lee and 'To Kill a Mockingbird'" is not a long film documentary, but it pulls the viewer in and commands attention. It is delightfully funny in some places (novelist Allan Gurganus' reminiscing about novelist Truman Capote -- a childhood friend of Lee's -- comes to mind); horrifying in others, and -- like the book it examines -- ultimately moving.

Well, yes. It certainly is. This 1936 Paramount feature, made and released in an era when Hollywood scriptwriters evidently still believed in the Mystery and Inscrutability of the Orient, has pretty good cinematography (by Victor Milner), a fine musical score (by Boris Morros) and, frankly, not much else. That's a fairly damning assessment for a movie that also happens to star Gary Cooper and the lovely Madeleine Carroll, but even those two were unable to bring this turkey to life. Directed by Lewis Milestone and set in war-torn 1930's China, "The General Died at Dawn" works overtime to be a hard-boiled thriller about gun-running and double-crossing, but it doesn't gel. The movie has great, gaping holes in its narrative line, for starters. Several western actors also do impoverished turns playing Asian characters (including Akim Tamiroff playing Chinese war-lord General Yang, and Dudley Digges as the proprietor of a Shanghai hotel). But the single worst feature of the movie is the howlingly bad, overwrought dialogue supplied courtesy of Clifford Odets. As you watch the movie, you may unwittingly find your lips moving, as you try to memorize the worst phrases that Mr. Odets has penned for these characters to speak. It might, however, be even better for you to keep a pad of paper and pencil beside you as you watch; there are so many bad lines to choose from and they follow so thick and fast, one after the other, that you'll have to write them down just to remember them all. The real problem is that Clifford Odets wrote dialogue that nobody would ever say. Lord knows the actors do their best, and aren't to blame... but what on earth was the studio thinking when it released this? There, now -- doesn't that sound like an inducement to watch this movie?

There's sometimes a fascination in watching a truly bad movie (think "Dune" or the Elizabeth Taylor "Cleopatra" or insert your own favorite here: ________________). But "The General Died at Dawn" really doesn't qualify to breathe that rarified air. It's just too cringe-inducing. Don't believe me? Go. Watch. But don't say you weren't warned...

Although color film technology had been experimented with for some twenty years before producer David O. Selznick decided to utilize it in 1936's "The Garden of Allah," it never achieved the lushness and depth seen in this movie until the 3-strip color processing technique patented by Technicolor came to the fore. And ravishing color is really the best reason for seeing this movie. Even with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer as its stars, "The Garden of Allah" doesn't manage to get off the ground. The beautiful score by Max Steiner, and creditable cameo performances by C. Aubrey Smith, Joseph Schildkraut, John Carradine and Basil Rathbone (among others) all do their best to lend drama to what is essentially a slow, meditative potboiler with heavily theological underpinnings, but alas, it's no go. The problem lies not only in the tepid filmscript but with the decision to cast Dietrich and Boyer in the roles of the star-crossed lovers. If there's one thing both performers possessed in abundance, it was smouldering sex appeal. In "The Garden of Allah," however, they're forced to play against type as otherworldly characters with somewhat saintly pasts, and -- frankly -- it doesn't click. It would be like casting Marilyn Monroe opposite Clark Gable in a lavishly produced movie about the First Council of Nicaea, and then expecting romantic sparks to fly. It would make no sense, and the audience wouldn't buy it.

The color in "The Garden of Allah," however, truly gorgeous... soft and deeply saturated and glowing with inner fire. It almost makes the movie worth sitting through.

In a year that saw the release of "City Lights," "Little Caesar," and "The Blue Angel," "Cimarron" was surely the oddest choice to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, but win it did, although the award failed to translate into big bucks at the box office. At over two hours, the movie is both long (for its era) and strangely sluggish given its action-packed western setting. Adapted from the novel by Edna Ferber, "Cimarron" is interesting primarily for the celluloid collision of two schools of cinematic acting. The first, exemplified by Richard Dix playing two-fisted, editor-pioneer Yancey Cravat, is the school of silent-film histrionics; the second, is the more naturalistic school of screen acting which found in Irene Dunne (playing Dix's loyal wife, Sabra) one of its more sensitive and enduring interpreters. The two styles don't mix well. Dix is all ham and bluster; shaking his fists, gesturing like a road-company actor playing Julius Caesar, casting his eyes up to heaven and ringing the bells loudly on every emotional change his character undergoes. Dunne, by contrast, engages in a quieter duet with the camera; one that allows her character to develop slowly over the course of the movie. The disparity between the two styles is unsettling; the viewer is left with the impression of having seen the same movie through two different sets of lenses. The fact that "Cimarron" is both incredibly dated and blatantly racist doesn't help much, either.

All that said, however, the movie's still worth watching, if only as an example of an early Hollywood blockbuster epic. The opening "land rush" sequence (with a cast of thousands) is compelling and cinematically sophisticated, even by today's standards. And there are several worthwhile cameo turns including one by Edna May Oliver, who manages to steal every scene she's in.

"Rango" is a fascinating oddity: a meta-Western, heavily larded with irony, sarcasm, cliché, and adult sensibilities, couched in an animated film format that uses the time-honored (some might venture to say "time-worn") plot structure of a movie for children. There's little doubt that the movie possesses technical brilliance; the animation is dazzling and dazzlingly executed, as one would expect from this first, animated feature out of Industrial Light and Magic. Director Gore Verbinski keeps the film zipping along at breakneck speed and the longueurs are infrequent. BUT... for all its not inconsiderable entertainment value, "Rango" doesn't quite succeed as a movie. The problem lies primarily in its unsettling disjunction between message and medium. "Rango" sounds like a children's movie, looks like a children's movie, but isn't a children's movie. It attempts to encapsulate the naiveté and wonder that are the distinctive hallmarks of childhood, but constantly undercuts those qualities by its heavy use of ironic, self-reflecting commentary. Adults viewing it will enjoy toting up the movie's clever samplings of "oater" cliché from time immemorial. Their enjoyment of it will be magnified by their knowledge of "High Noon" and other western flicks. Children, who -- for the most part -- lack that cinematic context, won't get it. And, since the movie derives much of its generative power from that context, children seeing "Rango" will have to fall back on the action chase sequences and the toilet humor for enjoyment. I suppose, given the impoverished level of much of what passes for "children's entertainment" these days, that may be enough for some kids. But I suspect the makers of "Rango" were after something better and I wish their "grasp" had lived up to their "reach." It's a shame, but I'd guess that many adult movie-goers (who would enjoy the flick, if they saw it) will bypass "Rango," thinking it a children's movie; many children will see the movie and come away from it confused about what it means, however (briefly) entertained they may have been by its gaudy mayhem. "Rango," in brief, would be a better movie if its movie-makers had been less concerned with showing off how clever and cutting-edge they were and more concerned with how best to tell their story in ways that were both appropriate to and apprehensible by their intended audience. With an "A" for effort and technical achievement, "Rango," alas, only merits an overall, ungentlemanly "C."

The first, starring movie vehicle of a very young Barbara Stanwyck, "The Locked Door" isn't a good film, but still worth seeing for the magnetic aura that already surrounds its leading lady. This early "talkies" movie comes from the era when stage actors and silent film stars were just beginning to make the transition to sound and -- to tell the truth -- many of them hadn't yet found their "sea legs" on the sound stages of Hollywood. Histrionics more appropriate to the live stage are greatly in evidence in this predictable murder mystery, which perhaps isn't surprising given the fact that the movie was adapted from an earlier stage play. Particularly egregious in that regard are the performances of Stanwyck's co-stars, William Boyd and Rod La Rocque who indulge themselves in hammy, wooden (Boyd) and oily (La Rocque) characterizations. But there's a most entertaining cameo performance by Zasu Pitts as a telephone operator, and Stanwyck, herself, gives a sure and carefully calculated performance as a woman wronged who goes to great lengths to save her sister-in-law (Betty Bronson) from a similar fate. Veteran "silents" director George Fitzmaurice is in control here, and while his direction isn't especially memorable (and how could it be given the script with its jaw-dropping coincidences and deus ex machinae?) he at least has the sense to keep the camera on Stanwyck as much as possible and let her emote. See "The Locked Door" for Stanwyck if you must, but don't expect to see an overlooked, early screen gem. It isn't.

There's no question but that "The Masquerader" is dated. This 1933 movie is set in a London contemporaneous with the era in which it was filmed and portrays a highly stratified social milieu that has all but disappeared in the intervening eight decades; one is almost surprised that the constable at the doors of the House of Commons doesn't pull his forelock as he addresses the parliamentarians who emerge. But the movie is nimbly and deftly made and features both good acting in its principal and secondary roles and sure direction by Richard Wallace. Portraying both the dissolute Sir John Chilcote and his identical cousin John Loder, Ronald Colman is afforded the opportunity to display both his louche and noble sides (qualities he was to exploit to greater advantage in "A Tale of Two Cities" made two years later) and Colman makes the most of it. He's ably assisted here by Elissa Landi, Juliette Compton and the ubiquitous Halliwell Hobbes (playing his faithful, if long-suffering manservant, Brock). And, really, it's the acting that makes this movie come to life; in the hands of lesser thespians the much-used plot and only serviceable dialogue would begin to display the threadbare attributes of the cinematically shop-worn. But good acting always has the ability to move us... or it should. The joy that Colman's and Landi's characters feel when the expected but nonetheless surprising ending to "The Masquerader" rolls 'round is palpable and -- in a cool, present-day cinematic era when highly charged emotion is regarded as somewhat suspect -- refreshing.

"Caught in her Own Love Trap... she could not stem The Fury of His Love!" screams the poster that was used to advertise this 1930 musical/operetta. If only it were true... Even though elegantly produced by Samuel Goldwyn, "One Heavenly Night" became one of the big flops of the year and the passing decades have not been kind to it. This "talkies" screen debut of West End singing star Evelyn Laye was obviously intended to launch her on a musical film career in Hollywood, but both critics and audience rightly perceived the flick as a turkey, and Miss Laye's career as a screen song siren never materialized. In fairness to the lady, it's difficult to imagine what vocal and thespian powers she might have drawn upon to overcome the stale script, the so-so music, and the stilted performances of her co-actors (including John Boles and a painfully unfunny Leon Errol). It's nice to know that -- after being bruised by Tinseltown -- Evelyn Laye returned to a long and highly successful career on the British stage and died in the 1990's, much loved and appreciated by her audiences, at the ripe old age of 95. As for "One Heavenly Night," if you get the opportunity to see it... don't...

MGM Studio execs. may have have wondered whether Director Sam Wood wasn't taking something of a risk when he hired Spencer Tracy (recently released by Fox, and known primarily for his action-packed B films) to play a tough-guy romantic lead in "Whipsaw" opposite Myrna Loy (fresh off a big success the previous year in "The Thin Man") but Wood knew what he was doing. The result is excellent. Tracy and Loy have terrific screen chemistry together in this 1935 cops-and-robbers movie. It doesn't even matter that the plot isn't particularly fresh, or that the dialogue doesn't always sparkle; the pleasure to be had in "Whipsaw" lies in watching these two screen pros slowly build a portrait of completely disparate characters who overcome their prejudices and their "better" judgments and fall in love. Since Spencer Tracy always played Spencer Tracy (no matter who the character he was portraying may have been) Myrna Loy had the more difficult transformation to accomplish here, and she comes up aces. Her performance is nuanced and understated and she's an elegant, intelligent foil to Tracy's more down-to-earth, beefy, good-guy persona. There's fine supporting work, too, from the secondary characters with John Qualen taking standout honors as a mild-mannered Midwestern farmer; and appropriately "noirish" cinematography from James Wong Howe. But the real story here is the performance by Loy and Tracy. In the flood of terrific movies that the '30's gave to us, "Whipsaw" is often overlooked. It shouldn't be.

"Rosalie" is possibly the movie people are thinking of when they remark, "I hate musicals." This 1937 MGM extravaganza has the stars, the music, the costumes, the over-the-top sets, the silly filmscript and the giddy, romantic settings that have become synonymous with the big, Hollywood musicals of the 1930's and '40's. So... why doesn't it work? Director W.S. Van Dyke (also credited with box office musical hits such as "Naughty Marietta") certainly knew how to pace his material; he's ably assisted here by a Cole Porter score, two big box-office stars (Nelson Eddy and Eleanor Powell), a rafter of comedic supporting players (including Frank Morgan and Edna May Oliver doing their best Frank Morgan and Edna May Oliver imitations) and a gazillion dancing, singing extras.

Perhaps the movie's failure lies in the fact that there's very little romantic heat generated between Eddy and Powell. If you're making a foolish (and "Rosalie" is nothing if not foolish) boy-meets-girl movie musical, you'd better have sparks flying between your boy and girl. Golden-throated Nelson Eddy does his moon-calf best to gaze adoringly at Eleanor Powell, but the only time you believe Eleanor Powell's character is when she's telling Eddy that she hates him. Which she does repeatedly during the course of the movie's two hours. In a movie like "Rosalie," the lack of chemistry between the two stars is a death sentence. All of a sudden, the viewer notices the threadbare plot, the formulaic comedy, the ridiculous settings (from West Point and Vassar to a mythic, Balkan kingdom named 'Romanza' which is apparently so small that Eddy and sidekick Ray Bolger have trouble finding it on a map but which is still large enough to be able to turn out ten million gorgeously arrayed peasants for big musical numbers) and the basic silliness of it all. In a romantic musical where there is chemistry between the stars, the audience forgives and accepts all; where chemistry is lacking, the audience suddenly realizes the movie hasn't a brain in its head.

Still, there are moments in "Rosalie" that make it worth watching. Does it matter that all those moments are music and dance numbers? Nope. That's what a musical is for.

"Payment Deferred" is, to my mind at least, something of an anomaly; a pennydreadful murder melodrama that appears to have been transmuted, almost intact, from its stage origins onto the silver screen. What makes the movie fascinating is the degree to which the estimable cast utilizes the gestural and vocal histrionics of stage acting in a cinematic context. Whether this was a conscious choice on the part of the director, Lothar Mendes or whether the over-the-top filmscript simply encouraged the frenzied scenery chewing that ensues, is debatable. But, alas, it doesn't quite add up. All the actors (and they are good ones, too) pitch into their parts as if they're being urged, offscreen, to "play to the balcony." But a movie isn't a live play and the shrieking, the sobbing and the swank of guilt and remorse that might play before theatrical footlights and a live audience seem both affected and slightly risible here. I have a very high regard for Charles Laughton, and his yawps and bellows in this movie are certainly not boring to watch, but -- by the end of the movie -- I found myself unable to muster up either belief in his character (let alone the other characters) nor emotional catharsis at the end to which he comes. And melodrama (whether live or filmed) that fails to tug on our emotions is, for lack of a better term, failure.

Oh, my. This infuriatingly bad movie is really nothing more than a D-grade horror/slasher film tricked out with up-to-the-nanosecond, cooler-than-thou, indie-film camera-work and special effects, a Hollywood blockbuster budget, and art-house cinema pretensions. Director Aronofsky has assembled a group of talented actors, but saddled them with a script that's notable primarily for its slacker-mentality mediocrity. Since I'm not competent to judge the merits of the dancing on display here, I'll leave it to the balletomanes online to do so. But as a movie, "Black Swan" fails even to live up to the reasonable expectations that horror film buffs might have. There's nothing especially horrific, new, startling or shocking about the backstage bitchery the movie's characters indulge in, nor suspenseful about the end(s) to which they come. I suppose one could make a reasonable case for Portman having earned the Oscar for her role in this film... but, then again, what actress wouldn't pull out all the stops when handed a script that encourages her to chew the scenery, go mad, and carry on like Tallulah Bankhead on speed? The real mystery of this film, to me, is for exactly what audience Aronofsky intended it. Since it possesses neither wit, menace, suspense, sophistication or intelligence, "Black Swan," I conclude, was designed to appeal primarily to underage drug addicts. May they have the joy of it.

"The Devil is a Woman" marks the end of the celebrated collaboration between Dietrich and von Sternberg and -- if rumor be true and the evidence of this film does tend to bear it out -- it came not a moment too soon for either one. As cold-hearted vamp Concha Perez, Dietrich spends a great deal of screen time pouting, posturing and being photogenically evil, while working her wiles on the likes of Lionel Atwill and Cesar Romero. But there's no heat in it, really; when Dietrich isn't acting mildly amused she appears to be mildly bored. Maybe she's thinking about the next costume change, which is perhaps understandable since she changes costumes about 2 million times during the course of this 75 minute movie. And what costumes they are! Like something out of a drag queen's fever dream. Being Dietrich, of course, she wears them beautifully and director von Sternberg makes sure she is photographed to a fare-thee-well while she's enswathed in them. But costumes and a star and beautiful cinematography (also credited, in part, to von Sternberg) really isn't quite enough to make this 1935 flick fly. John dos Passos is credited with writing the screenplay and it isn't much more than an excuse for Marlene to play the clotheshorse and blow smoke in a lot of mens' faces. This Woman, unfortunately, isn't the Devil; just a minor imp with a wardrobe the size of a Hollywood backlot.

How on earth could one not enjoy a screwball comedy like "Piccadilly Jim?" Directing a nimble cast that included Robert Montgomery, Eric Blore, Billie Burke, Cora Witherspoon, Robert Benchley and Frank Morgan, Robert Z. Leonard kept this '36 movie popping merrily along, stirring up mayhem of one kind or another and garnering plenty of laughter along the way. Yes, okay, it's dated, and one can see the denouement coming a long way off, but -- despite its predictable nature -- the film has a satisfyingly madcap flavor that can only from the comic timing and talent of the team of acting pros assembled here. Veteran Eric Blore (playing yet another of his seemingly unlimited roster of butlers) steals every scene he is in. P.G. Wodehouse wrote the story on which the movie is based and -- for once -- none of the multitude of writers and re-writers hired by the studio for screenplay adaptation purposes managed to deflate Wodehouse's airy insouciance. It's a small gem of a movie and one too infrequently seen. Nab it!

This sad disappointment of a movie is what happens when you gather a group of top-notch actors together, give them one of the wittiest and funniest plays in the English language, and then put them under the direction of a film-maker who does not trust his material (which is a shame) and who furthermore believes that by tweaking it he may "improve" on it and render it more palatable for modern audiences (which is a scandal).

To do director Oliver Parker some justice, "The Importance of Being Earnest" is a lighter-than-air comedy of social mores and is -- in its very essence -- not cinematic, but theatrical, as was its creator, Oscar Wilde. The witty absurdities tossed off by Wilde's characters can only truly become airborne in a theatrical milieu. An attentively listening theater audience engages in a sympathetic act of complicity with the actors on stage, one in which "the delighting ear outstrips the wicked tongue." But a movie camera is an eye, not an ear; it cannot provide the necessary complicity that would allow Wilde's arch dialogue to levitate. Robbed of that complicity, the characters die and the dialogue falls flat. Perhaps it is too much to expect this play ever to be given a 100% successful cinematic make-over.

Parker cannot be faulted for trying to translate this play into a cinematic medium; he is, however, guilty of ham-handed 're-writes,' unnecessary excursions, ill-considered excisions, and a feckless attempt to jam his cast into cinematic "dress" that doesn't fit them and that leaves them looking foolish.

Watching this film, I felt badly for all the fine actors ensnared in it. I'm betting Judi Dench has a superb Lady Bracknell somewhere in her... but it isn't on display here.

My advice is to skip this movie if you're considering seeing or renting it. Try the much better '52 Anthony Asquith movie with an amusingly rebarbative Edith Evans at the top of her form.

Oh, dear, dear, dear. What can one say about "Words and Music?" That it contains some boffo musical numbers? Sure. That it has cameo appearances by a whole galaxy of Hollywood musical stars? Check. That it keeps on going with a "and then this and this and this happened" rhythm that would make even the shaggiest of shaggy dog storytellers blush? Yup. Alas. This big, white-washed, no-expenses-spared movie musical has about as much to do with lyricist Hart's real life story as "Night and Day" had to do with that of Cole Porter. Rooney was (presumably) cast by the studio since he could sing and was a big box-office draw, but here he seems to be channelling the spirit of a chipmunk with Broadway aspirations; anyone seeing this movie would come away with the impression that Hart's fundamental problem was that he was short. Hart's alcoholism is (tastefully) glossed over; his homosexuality is never even mentioned.

However... every time the viewer is fed up with the bland dialogue, or the inability of the studio to decide just what era to set the film in, along comes one of those boffo musical numbers to lull (or club) you into dewy-eyed attentiveness. My advice is to rent this movie and fast-forward through all the "drama", pausing only to enjoy the musical numbers. You'll have a good time and it'll cut the film's running time down to a sparkling hour plus change

They don't make 'em like this any more, and perhaps that's not a bad thing.

An entertaining, film noir potboiler, "Witness to Murder" is the kind of movie you might want to watch if you're in the mood to eat popcorn and yell at the screen. Hand-cuffed to a pedestrian screenplay, the movie nonetheless gives Stanwyck more than ample opportunity to ring the emotional changes and co-star Sanders to suavely menace her in the guise of nemesis. Even Merrill, known less for his acting abilities than for his square-jawed, photogenic charm, gives a reasonably creditable performance. But any moviegoer looking for ingenious plot-twists should search elsewhere; there's not a bend in this movie's narrative road that one can't see around. The real stars that shine here are the camera-work and the appropriately moody lighting.

So pop your corn, turn the lights down low, and spend a pleasant 83 minutes. You won't be sorry you watched this movie, but in a couple days I'm betting you won't even remember the names of the characters in it.

There's not a single false note or misstep in this spare, brutal and beautifully made movie. Filmmaker Debra Granik has done a remarkable job in communicating an ultimately hopeful vision of a dirt-poor family in the Ozarks threatened by the epidemic of methamphetamine drug abuse. She has elicited extraordinary work from the acting ensemble she's put on screen. Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes give standout performances as seventeen year-old Ree and her uncle, Teardrop. But the entire cast is tuned to the same pitch and the result is a movie that not only holds a dark mirror up to the hardscrabble lives portrayed but one that also makes the viewer care deeply about those lives. I've sometimes heard singers and musicians speak about hitting a note "smack in the middle." This movie does the same thing in cinematic terms. This isn't a movie for viewers who are looking for a "feel-good" experience; it's a movie for adults who recognize that life -- any life -- is worth fighting for and who realize that that fight must be fought for on the terms that life offers. A good date movie? Nope. A good movie? You bet.

Gregory La Cava made some dandy movies (My Man Godfrey, Stage Door) but this isn't one of them. The film wants to be an early and sparkling exemplar of the madcap comedy genre. Alas, it is nothing of the kind. Asked to carry the weight of this film on his shoulders, Lee Tracy merely whines his way through it (although the whining is done at his usual warp speed) and is badly mismatched with Lupe Velez who comes across more as a shrew with a bad English language vocal coach than the Mexican Spitfire she eventually grew into in later roles. Frank Morgan does the best he can with the flat dialogue written for him, but even he can't bring the film to life. The plot lurches from situation to situation but none of the situations is especially funny and none of them connects with another to create a coherent narrative line. The Half Naked Truth is 77 minutes long, but it's a long 77 minutes.