Amos Poe’s documentary about leftist singer-songwriter Steve Earle provides an interesting introduction to a compelling figure in contemporary pop music, but in all honesty I can’t say I’ve seen the whole film: at a preview screening, the masking of the 16-millimeter image cut off the bottom of the image, making most of the explanatory titles partially or completely unreadable. As long as I didn’t have to worry about these titles (some of which seemed important), I was held by Poe’s flashy style of processing and editing his material and by the plainspoken eloquence of Earle’s social and political commentarynot to mention the music. At 95 minutes, this clocks in at about the same length as the two-CD audio documentary of the same title. (JR)