The Stone Angel

Prolific helmer Kari Skogland draws a fiery performance from vet Burstyn and a beguiling one from Christine Horne as the young Hagar. Yet the book's sheer "Giant"-like scope necessitates generational cross-cutting that's both rushed and cluttered; pic would have have been better served as a more leisurely miniseries.

Writer-director Kari Skogland adapts a beloved Canadian novel gracefully and with plenty of spunk, the same way its main character moves through the world from cradle to grave.

Burstyn gets to use her full bag of tricks to bring this crabby, hard-knocks survivor to life. Though she's aged 15 unflattering years, forced into awful old lady clothes and her character teeters on unsympathetic, the actress manages a rich, vanity-free performance, perhaps her best since "Requiem for a Dream."

This multigenerational family history has enough gripping moments to hold your attention, but ultimately it leaves you frustrated by its failure to braid subplots and characters into a gripping narrative.

Despite its cutesy comic-relief digressions and overdone solemnity, The Stone Angel finds its way past tonal inconsistencies to a moving conclusion that doesn't romanticize death.

A lesson in the perils of trying to cram a hefty Canadian novel that spans decades into a movie running just under two hours.