Songcatcher

Wonderfully chameleonic actress Janet McTeer (Tumbleweeds) gives another of her distinctive and deeply immersed performances here as a priggish music scholar who discovers ancient Scotch-Irish folk songs being sung in a remote Appalachian community in 1907. Backed by a strong story, well researched by writer/director Maggie Greenwald (The Ballad of Little Jo), the film boasts a whole slew of potent performances, including Adian Quinn as a hillbilly misanthrope banjo player and Pat Carroll as the choleric matriarch of the mountain. But as the film progresses, hackneyed characters and obligatory episodes begin to muscle in on the story, sending it into a bit of a downward spiral (plus it's clear early on that this is the kind of movie in which people's lives have to take a turn for the worse sooner or later). While there's a lot of heart here, and a lot of devotion to the music of a vanishing culture, there's also no denying that the banal embellishments are a drag overall on the film. Optional. (R. Blackwelder)