ANNIE
Directed by John Huston
Screenplay by Carol Sobieski
There is a wonderful movie fighting to get out of this $50 million musical. Unfortunately for Producer Ray Stark, the movie is Camille, that transcendent Garbo weepie, which Daddy Warbucks takes his button-eyed orphan to see at a Radio City Music Hall advance screening. (Quite a bit in advance: Annie is set in 1933; Camille was released in 1937.) In an adroit 4½-minute condensation, the tragic story of Marguerite and Armand unfolds, brief and mesmerizingly beautiful. The clip also possesses an innocence, a sweetness of spirit, that this 1982 blockbuster never even tries to capture....