A shy and nearly silent daughter (Horrocks) and a mother (Blethyn) who won't shut up, despite the fact she has nothing to say. "LV", for "Little Voice," like most silent people, hides a secret life: in her room she plays old records and sings along, in perfect imitation of Judy Garland, Billy Holiday, Marilyn Monroe and others. This fairy-tale setting develops in a fairy-tale way: Mom's equally noisy and sleazy boyfriend Ray (Caine) contrives to get LV on stage at a sleazy pub, thinking her gift will make him rich. The caged bird sings, unhappily, and the happy ending comes only, of course, when she is set free. But not before a climax straight out of Carrie, a horrifying crosscut between a burning house and the disintegration of drunken Ray. Most of the characters in this film are fully repulsive, bloated figures out of Ivan Albright, with noisy, matching personalities.

LV is a fine metaphor for the media industry, where sure success comes from bottling the audience's sense of deep yearning in a voice or a face, usually to the terrible detriment of the soul connected to that voice or song. The theme of compassion for the little voices who get lost amid the noise of contemporary life is compelling; interestingly the bird-in-cage metaphor is not sent down a predictable mush-brained path: LV's also quiet boyfriend (Mcgregor) keeps birds in cages, and does not merely set them all free in the end, but rather treats them right: showing that we need not do away with the "cage" of commitment in order to find "freedom," and thereby be "freed" from relationships altogether.

Horrock's abilities as a mime are impressive (her singing was recorded live), but at times it comes off as a distracting gimmick, not having the same magical effect on the film audience as it does on the audience in the film. That fact, combined with the darker moments and repulsive characters, make this film a mixed bag, leaving me with the feeling it might have been better.

A marvelous little tale of a group of orchestra musicians who work on the side as "freelancers", playing with whomever and wherever they can make an extra buck. In this case, we follow a half-dozen freelancers through the process of getting ready for a New Year's Eve gig in the mansion of a wealthy music lover who is famous for his concert parties. The film is full of "inside jokes" for musicians: the difficult tasks of rehearsing, getting along, and finding oneself as both an individual player as a part of a group of other players. The particulars here are especially beguiling: one musician can't read music, another is pregnant, the conductor is late for rehearsal and in one neat sequence they each take turns tying to conduct for the others. The host of the concert is especially forgiving, we learn, as he conducted an orchestra of POWS during war, and so discovered that the power of music is greater even than the limitations of the players. These players' problems get worse before they get better, but the makeshift "orchestra" pulls it off, and the freelancing goes on.

A more experimental version of this story than you're used to; the image is black and white and grainy, with the light areas overexposed and the dark areas underexposed. The director also seems to follow the Tarkovskian school of "sculpting in time," with unbearably long takes, letting the camera dwell on ordinary features of landscape and weather or human activities, such as bathing or pounding out dents in an autobody shop; the "what happens next" element takes a backseat to the timeless experience of "image." And given those long takes, the composition of moving action and timing of the performances is quite impressive.

There is a plot, nevertheless, which involves a wife and worker in the garage killing an overbearing and controlling husband. The lovers' relationship is disturbing, and a brutal (if fully-clothed) sex scene that begins as rape and turns into something only slightly less will be too much for some viewers. The moments of "passion" are contrasted with moments of excruciating passionlessness. The murder turns into a Blood Simple-like fiasco, and afterward we realize where we have been going all along. A policeman tells the boyfriend that even if he gets off in the court, Justice will get him in the end. This idea is set against the impassioned, if soft-spoken, words of a priest who lays out perfectly the Gospel of God's forgiveness, which is available to each of us no matter what we have done. And what is forgiveness, one must wonder, if not "getting away with murder"? The film's ending involves a most violent collision of the mutually-exclusive notions of justice and mercy, leaving the thoughtful viewer with much to think about indeed and discuss.

This film may not be for everybody, but those who do experience it will be haunted by the questions it raises for a long time.

As with the rest of the formerly linear, Modern world, "the road ended suddenly" for Soledad, a young female cabbie who flees civilization, and so her cab flies off an unfinished bridge into nowhere -- followed by a man on a motorcycle who spills reels of film all over the wreck. Shaking the dust off themselves, the two jump on the bike and drive to the isolated village of Rio Pico, where the whole town waits for the movies to arrive. The people have no choice but to wait because the movie theater is the only entertainment in town, ala Cinema Paradisio. But Rio Pico is the very last stop for movies after they've been screened everywhere else thousands of times, explains the projectionist Caruso to Soledad as he tapes together this latest broken film.

The people of the town, Soledad finds, are like the films: mixed up, out of order: conversation is one non sequitur after another. The poet in the cafe strings together, with great expression, and to great applause, words that have no discernable connection. "Reality has been replaced by a game," says a young man named Pedro, in a comment which may seem disconnected, but actually is connected firmly to the film's general theme. Pedro is the town's film critic and amateur moviemaker. Aside from his general disconnectedness, Pedro is also hampered in his art by his limp, and his filmed footage tends to bump around the screen. So Pedro donates his camera to the city fathers who feel a need to produce a newsreel for the cinema, recruiting Soledad as narrator ("Somebody who doesn't get mixed up like the kids here"). The scenes of filming the newsreel and the responses of the audience to the finished product are less coherent than the film itself, which seems to be part of the point here -- that the nature of cinema is to be a means of imposing order on chaos. Meanwhile, Soledad ends up marrying Pedro and learning to speak his language, thus finding -- amid the absurdity of life -- love.

Like those Latin American fantasy novels which this film recalls, the story skitters off into various idiosyncratic subplots. Among these, we follow Antonio Tardino, the town inventor, who because Rio Pico is cut off from the world, doesn't realize every one of his discoveries is a bit late (such as E=mc squared). Another involves Edgard Wexley, a seedy used-up actor who, like his own films, comes to Rio Pico at the end of his career to find a home. Alas, what little community (or "common story") is possible in this absurd world ends when civilization in the form of television reaches even Rio Pico. After a powerful montage of familiar blue flickers in windows all over town, Soledad notes, "A village with a tv is like any other," and she and Pedro leave.

"Something has happened in Rio Pico," narrated Soledad at the beginning of the film. "I warn you this film is not a comedy. It's based on a true story." Wind With the Gone may not be a comedy, but it will definitely make you laugh; but even if the story was "true," if you adopt its nonlinear and postmodern point of view, you'll lose your ability to know "true" from "false."

The narrator of The Mighty is Max Kane (Henson), a humonguous and learning disabled seventh-grader, who's lived with his grandparents ever since his low-life father went to prison for murdering his mother. The highlight of the film is the chirpy but likeable performance of Kieran Culkin, (who turns out to be brother McCauley's good twin), as Kevin, a boy genius who is fast on his feet with sly remarks -- despite the fact his feet are all-but-useless due to a spinal deformity which leaves him struggling along in crutches. Circumstances and a certain inevitability throw the two boys together. And when Kevin talks Max into taking him to see fireworks at the fair, the same inevitability raises the former on the latter's shoulders. "At that moment he became by brain and I became his feet."

Of course, when Kevin provokes the bullies by outgunning them in verbal abuse, Max has to do the running away for the both of them. The exchange that follows is gives you an idea of their relationship: "I don't know how someone as small as you can have a mouth so big!" grunts Max, to which Kevin fires back instantly, "I don't know how someone as big as you can be such a wuss!" Ultimately, the two halves make a whole, with Kevin functioning as soul (including brains, courage and conscience) and Max as body. Kevin is powered by his own imaginative vision, taken from the pages of King Arthur. "There are fair maidens to rescue and dragons to slay," he says, rousing the sleeping Max for a quest.

Max gives legs and arms to the moral vision Kevin carries in his head; Kevin dubs them "Freak the Mighty", and they walk through an evil world doing good deeds, awakening also the sleeping soul of Max in a way that will affect him the rest of his life.

The relationship between the two recalled a vague memory of a similar film I must have seen on the Children's Television Film Festival, about a pair of friends nicknamed Fatty and Skinny. And while I could sense my heart urging The Mighty to rise up and realize its obvious potential, even as Kevin does for Max, I must sadly report that the film never makes it above the level of a made-for-tv Disney movie, about on par with Angels in the End Zone. Which isn't bad, but I confess I had higher hopes (the prerelease advertising may have had something to do with that.)

Gillian Anderson is thoroughly unconvincing in her attempt to break out of the Agent Scully mold, coming off rather like Scully doing a bad hillbilly accent trying to play a drunken floozy. Sharon Stone is better against type, in approximately the Cher role from Mask, though not as tough, and more likable as a long-suffering if over-protective single mom of a handicapped only child.

The sometimes cartoony acting, a few extremely unlikely coincidences, and a completely unbelievable street "gang" serve to clash mightily with intense plot points, such as that business of Max's mother being murdered by his father, and the seriousness and degenerative nature of Kevin's disease. Add to all this the flashes of Max's murderer Dad, which are reminiscent of the horrifying vision of evil "Bob" in Twin Peaks, and you have a mixture of tone that prevents this movie from being fully either a gripping emotional drama or a light feelgood kids' movie.

Some people may think I'm being too hard on what is, basically, a kids' movie, but I think kids' movies can be great, and this one ain't. You could do worse I suppose, but if you'd like to do better, read to your kids the Newberry Award-Winning kids' book, Bridge To Terebithia, by Katherine Patterson, which is about facing the facts of life and death, but woven together with the vision of glimpses of a better world, in this case C.S. Lewis' "Narnia."