Written and directed by Karen Moncrieff

Starring: Brittany Murphy, Toni Colette, Marcia Gay Harden, Rose Byrne and Mary Steenburgen

89 minutes

Clip and save this review: Spoilers ahead!

Told in five outwardly unrelated segments of equal length, The Dead Girl examines how the murder of an insignificant crack whore affects a handful of psychologically broken women. It’s not a pretty picture.

As in her first feature, Blue Car, writer/director Karen Moncrieff paints a finely observed portrait of the impact violent behavior has on women. While the killer turns out to be a man, this is not a film that uses male-bashing as an easy out. Much of the emotional battery stems from mothers who are either verbally abusive or emotionally absent.

The film plays out in a semi-achronological order. The first image we see is of Arden (Toni Colette) – “The Stranger” who comes across the decomposed corpse – sound asleep in the overpowering arms of her invalid mother (Piper Laurie). A tortured, painfully shy momma’s girl, her discovery briefly thrusts Arden into the spotlight. People in the grocery store stop and point her out. Serial killer-obsessed bagboy Rudy (Giovanni Ribisi) goes so far as asking her on a date.

The recognition stops at home, where mom blasts her daughter for reporting the crime. This time, Piper Laurie makes Carrie’s mother, Margaret White, seem like Ma Joad. A bedridden walrus with an odious Jackie Gleason-sized cackle, she is a nonstop torture machine. On screen for no more than five minutes, Ma Laurie gives you every reason to understand why Arden turned out the way she did.

Leah (Rose Byrne) is “The Sister,” a forensics student working the county morgue. A student of death, she is still unable to come to grips with her sister’s abduction 15 years earlier. Her mother, Beverly (Mary Steenburgen), selects a bus stop bench photo of her late daughter with the same attention to detail she would choosing wallpaper.

A birthmark on the dead girl’s hand convinces Leah that it’s her sister. Even the slightest hope that the murder is solved causes Leah to briefly re-enter life. She even agrees to date a fellow student (James Franco) who’s been pursuing her for three years.

Who is “The Wife?” Is she the dead girl’s mother? Ruth (Mary Beth Hurt) lives in a trailer with her husband, Carl (Nick Searcy). The couple argues in their easy chairs, eyes glued to the TV set, never once looking at their partner. He goes out for drives that frequently last for days. Ruth wants nothing more than to be a passenger.

While there is no evidence that Ruth has any children, she is easily the film’s ultimate mother figure. After discovering Carl’s stash of deadly souvenirs, she still prepares and serves her little boy his TV dinner. The shot of Ruth naked and walking away from the flames she set to destroy the evidence remains the film’s most haunting image.

Melora (Marcia Gay Harden) is “The Mother” who learns of her estranged daughter’s past from Rosetta (Kerry Washington), a prostitute who worked with Krista (Brittany Murphy) at the time of her murder. The rush of backstory nearly fells Melora. Her daughter “sucked off assholes for cash,” and she discovers that Krista’s first sexual contact was at her father’s hands.

This segment houses the film’s only titter, and I had to dig deep for it. Krista’s daughter is named “Ashley Kutcher.” Ms. Murphy briefly dated “Punk’d” hunk Ashton during the filming of Just Married. Shortly after the coosome twosome split, Ms. Murphy told a “Late Night” audience, “I suppose the crux of [Ashton and Demi’s] relationship basically means to him that age doesn’t matter and to her that size doesn’t matter.” First a small dick crack, now a crack baby for a daughter. Let’s hope the unending abuse doesn’t cause Ashton to loop one end of his Kabbalah bracelet around his neck, the other over the shower curtain rod.

Bubbly to the point of being uncorked, there has always been something a tad bit unnerving about Brittany Murphy’s portrayal of brittle yet overly-outgoing characters. Even in multiplex-filler like Uptown Girls there is that unending ebb of neurotic desperation; lightning in a bottle about to be shattered by an earthquake.

Her early characterizations can easily be summed up by the titles of two of her most successful films: Clueless and Drop Dead Gorgeous. A prolonged dark patch (Girl, Interrupted, Cherry Falls, Spun) brought about more complex roles. She miraculously survived an unhealthy string of studio comedies between 8 Mile and Sin City. Good or bad, every second of prior screen time led to this explosive performance.

We never learn why Krista’s daughter lives apart from her. All that is important is that she turns 3 tomorrow and Krista needs a ride to Norwalk to deliver her present. Her boyfriend, Tarlow (Josh Brolin), has a Poison poster in his hallway, an “Eat Shit and Die” tattoo on his upper arm and only agrees to give her a ride in exchange for a free blowjob.

Thankfully, Ms. Moncrieff spares us Chapter 6, “The Killer.” She found the impetus for this film while sitting on a monthlong trial involving the death of a prostitute. “The tremendous waste of her life haunted me,” she wrote in a press statement.

Endless hours of MSNBC documentaries have transformed Krista’s type into a pathetic stock figure. Ms. Moncrieff recalled her time as a juror and fought not to go in the opposite direction by presenting “a sainted victim.” As she observed, “Both of these mental characterizations seemed to answer some need to avoid seeing this woman as a real person.”

By her own admission, Moncrieff makes dark movies because, “We live in a dark world, mostly with our heads down.” Her film’s hideous surfaces gradually reveal a brilliant depth of compassion and understanding.

Written and directed by Nick Cassavetes

Starring: Emile Hirsch, Justin Timberlake, Sharon Stone and Bruce Willis

122 minutes in CinemaScope

Alpha Dog is based on the real-life story of notorious drug dealer Jesse James Hollywood, one of the youngest men ever to make the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. Prepare yourself for a Gatling gun spray of profanity, violence, teen indolence and other generally deplorable forms of social behavior all packaged to look mighty enticing.

Perhaps in order to recall another tortured youth, home movies (presumably of the real Jesse James Hollywood) play over Eva Cassidy’s heartbreaking rendition of Over the Rainbow. We’re deep in Burbank. Entrepreneurial whiz kid Johnny Truelove (Emile Hirsch) slyly peddles pot (scored by dad Bruce Willis) out of his trunk, all under the idyllic beam of the giant Circus Liquor clown.

Jake Mazursky (Ben Foster), a frenzied skinhead with a two-week growth, is slow in paying, so Johnny kidnaps his 15-year-old brother, Zack (Anton Yelchin). Turns out baby-faced Zack makes the perfect hostage: When given a chance to make his escape, Zack decides to ride it out. And why not? Stolen Boy is having the time of his life!

Unlike his first love, Britney Spears, who immediately took the big-screen plunge with the bubble gum bomb Crossroads, Justin Timberlake took his time making it to the multiplex.

Screened a year ago at Sundance, it appeared as though Alpha Dog would suffer the same fate as Justin’s straight-to-DVD debut, Edison.

As Frankie Ballenbacher, Johnny’s unwitting accomplice/comic relief, Timberlake gives a rubbery, natural and completely engaging performance.

The film tends to hammer home a few points too many. Dozens witnessed the kidnapping and, to make sure we are fully aware of that fact, their names and witness numbers are continually stamped on the screen.

A film like this is destined to end in disaster. It does, especially when Sharon Stone, looking less divine and more like Divine, dons a Winona Judd fat suit.

With its frame-jumping opening interview footage, wanton drug use and a nubile cast engaging in soft-core sex, the Larry Clark links (particularly to Bully) border on plagiarism. It tires hard, but lacks that extra shade of scum. As entertaining as Alpha Dog is, Nick Cassavetes brought a little too much flea powder to the party.