In this she is aided by her acute curiosity, fine descriptive gifts and delight in detail.
She is aided by rival lawmen: Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), an ornery, hard-drinking United States marshal, and LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), a supercilious Texas ranger.
In this, she is aided not only by Foster but by Joel Grey, as Moonface Martin, the wimpy gangster ("Public Enemy No. 13") who helps out the stowaway Billy.
She is aided by a prose style which, though occasionally given to melodrama or tangled metaphors, is more often sharp and evocative.
She is aided by an assistant who is not permitted to see the field of play – an area perhaps half a tennis court in size.
She is aided by sterling technical contributions: Lauren Helpern's sets and Emily DeAngelis's costumes artfully conjure the period, while C. Andrew Bauer's video designs cleverly incorporate Ms. Gloeckner's drawings.
She is aided in this by her longtime partner Mr. Andrews, whose agile sound collage includes original music by Michael Schumacher and a seductive barrage of show tunes, sound effects, electronic burbles and orchestral snippets.
Unlike Mia Farrow's histrionically helpless Rosemary, however, Christine has instincts that run more toward fight than flight, and she is aided in her darkest hour by a crusading Presbyterian minister (John Malkovich) and a square-jawed, patrician lawyer (Geoff Pierson).
She has only one dimension, as a faultless, fighting mom, and she is aided by an equally uncomplicated guardian angel, Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), a severe and entirely impersonal Presbyterian minister who hates the Los Angeles police, and sees Christine as a tool to beat them with.
She is aided by a talented cast, most of all Richard Kind, who plays the Judge — five of the six characters are identified by only profession or position — with a comic befuddlement that seems as effortless as the mussed tuft of hair on his head.
She is aided by an assemblage of prominent collaborators, from the painstaking soul revivalist Raphael Saadiq to The-Dream, the singer and producer responsible for shaping so much of contemporary mainstream R. & B. There is a soulful calm throughout the record; when Solange is at her most explicitly defiant, she's also at her most vocally pliable.
