Come Early Morning – Dir. Joey Lauren Adams (Ashley Judd, Diane Ladd, Tim Blake Nelson)

Like so many little films that get quietly swept away without much notice, “Come Early Morning” is a delicious southern fried indie (a la “Junebug,” “Undertow,” “Eye of God”) about a handful of people moving through their lives in a small Southern town. Ashley Judd plays a hard drinking contractor, struggling to allow herself to have real relationships even when the occasional good guy drops neatly into her world. Although the reasons for her anxieties seem a bit trite, primarily stemming from her relationship with her hard drinking emotionally unavailable father, their relationship seems authentically stilted and real.

Directed by “Chasing Amy” and “Dazed and Confused” star Joey Lauren Adams, the film has a patient and natural feel to it. A lazy warm air kind of rolls through the film, neatly paired against the choatic mellowness of the characters. In many ways if you weren’t really paying attention to what was going on, this film would seem kind of boring and unoriginal but Ashly Judd is a very compelling actor especially when she literally becomes “real people” not the hard wired detectives she has gravitated towards in the years since “Ruby in Paradise.”