The story of this beauty pageant princess’ murder holds a lurid place in American popular culture — a recurring standby at the supermarket checkout lane. But unlike those who’ve come before her, smelling dollars in the exploitation of true crime and family loss, Kitty Green is up to something grander. Casting JonBenet may share a starting point with those other tawdry tales, but its technicolor journey is far more ambitious — an effort to engage with the very fabric of American culture. And like a series of Russian nesting dolls, Green’s story unfolds on and off the set of a fictional feature film (or maybe it’s a fictional fictional feature film?). The end product, as sumptuous as anything by David Fincher, is also as emotionally and intellectually satisfying as any film in recent memory.(DW)