A prim, proper, prissy musicologist, pissed off at again getting passed over for promotion, flees to the Appalachians to visit her schoolmarm sister, and discovers in those mountains a hidden gold mine of folk music (this is in 1907) crying out to be documented. The music itself is agreeable and abundant (Iris DeMent singing from a front-porch rocker to a solo fiddle accompaniment is the peak), but the backwoods melodrama piles up to a laughable climax, and the coverage of it is oddly spotty (wouldn't you expect a reaction shot of the heroine if a barn-dance brawl breaks out at her feet? or if her work goes up in flames before her eyes?), and the women's issues -- not just inequities in the workplace, but the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name -- are strictly rote. Janet McTeer, Aidan Quinn, Jane Adams, Pat Carroll, Emmy Rossum; written and directed by Maggie Greenwald. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd
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