Grade: B-

This isn’t your great-grandfather’s “Snow White,” but formally it certainly resembles the sort of movie he might have seen back in the day—a silent, black-and-white melodrama filled with heightened emotion and eye-catching use of light and shade. In that respect “Blancanieves” is essentially a cousin to “The Artist,” but it’s too strange and moody piece to replicate the success of that crowd-pleasing (and Oscar-winning) Parisian homage to early Hollywood filmmaking. Cinema buffs will find it an intriguing curio, though.

The setting is 1920s Spain, and the heroine a little girl named Carmencita (Sofia Oria), daughter of famed matador Antonio Villalta (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) and flamenco dancer Carmen de Triana (Inma Cuesta). When Antonio suffers a crippling injury at the horns of a bull in the ring, Carmen goes into labor and dies giving birth to the child, who’s turned over to her grandmother Dona Concha (Angela Molina) to raise. Meanwhile Antonio, confined to a wheelchair, foolishly weds Encarna (Maribel Verdu), the nurse who turns out to be more interested in his money than his companionship and fools around openly with the chauffeur Genaro (Pere Ponce).

Carmencita has a carefree childhood with her grandmother and her favorite pet, a scene-stealing rooster named Pepe, until Dona Concha dies and the girl falls under the control of her wicked stepmother, who becomes a Cinderella-like servant. But though she’s forbidden access to her invalid father, she sneaks into his room in one of the picture’s most entrancing scenes, and they develop a secret bond. No sooner does Antonio die, however, than Encarna directs Genaro to kill the girl (now played by Macarena Garcia). The sequence in which he attempts the deed is pretty terrifying, but she’s rescued by a travelling troupe of little people, who give comic shows as the Bullfighting Dwarves; and though she suffers amnesia as a result of her near-death experience, watching them leads her, now called Blancanieves, to remember the tips her father had given her, and she enters the ring herself, soon becoming a celebrity in her own right.

That attracts the notice of Encarna, now the very model of an ambitious pop-culture icon, and she plots to do away with the girl using a poisoned apple. She doesn’t quite succeed, however, and in a poignantly elegiac finale, the sleeping beauty is an attraction in a travelling carnival, lovingly tended by Jesusin (Emilio Gavira), the dwarf most devoted to her, while customers are invited to pay for the privilege of trying to awaken her with a kiss.

Obviously writer-director Pablo Berger has toyed with the element of the original tale, giving them a strongly Iberian cast and a tone very different from the Brothers Grimm. But most of the adjustments work well enough, juggling humor, pathos and menace to good effect, and Kiko de la Rica’s cinematography artfully employs the conventions of early twentieth-century filmmaking to give the film an entrancingly antique texture. The performances represent major contributions to the overall effect, with Oria and Garcia equally magnetic as the title character at different ages and Gavira nicely leading the colorful band of travelling players. Of course, as in a Disney cartoon, the quality of the villain is an important consideration, and Verdu’s extravagantly evil Encarna certainly fills the bill, with Ponce an able factotum in her malevolent plans.

As with “The Artist,” there’s a self-conscious artificiality to “Blancanieves” that keeps it from becoming a more than a cannily calculated stunt. But especially for those who appreciate actual silent films, it should prove an engaging one.

Grade: B-

Strippers are hardly rarities in movies, but male strippers are—which is the big selling point (for some people, at least) of “Magic Mike,” Steven Soderbergh’s visually loose but narratively conventional picture inspired by star Channing Tatum’s early stint strutting the floorboards for appreciative female audiences.

The milieu is the most impressive element of the movie, which finds Tatum playing the title role of the thirty-ish star of a Tampa bump-and-grind operation run by the suitably greasy Dallas (Matthew McConaughey). Mike’s been at the trade a long while and is damned good, but sees it—as well as his other sidelines detailing autos and working in construction—as merely a way to hustle the cash needed to finance his real dream of making hand-crafted furniture. Basically he’s an old-fashioned striver.

He’s also soft-hearted. When he encounters scruffy nineteen-year old college dropout Adam (Alex Pettyfer) on a roofing job (at which the youngster’s hopelessly inept), he befriends the guy, and convinces Dallas to give him a menial job. Before long The Kid (which becomes his marquee name) is part of the act, and making good money from it—though his straitlaced, medical aide sister Brooke (Cody Horn) is concerned about her brother’s life choices.

One can imagine plenty of interesting ways Reid Carolin’s script might have gone from here. It could have taken a very dark, gritty path and become a dramatically powerful downer. Or it could have gone the “All About Eve” route and turned into a bitchy competitive comedy. But it does neither, instead opting for a most obvious alternative. Mike and Brooke are inevitably attracted to each other but Adam’s increasingly reckless conduct gets in the way, especially after he not only starts popping pills at an alarming rate but agrees to start pushing them for house DJ Tobias (Gabriel Iglesias). And when he loses his stash at a sorority house gig that turns violent, it puts him in the crosshairs of Tobias’ vicious suppliers. Mike has to use his hard-earned nest egg to get the boy out of danger, and that—along with the soul-searching that comes from being turned down for bank loans and watching Adam’s descent—leads him to turn over a new leaf, as it were. The only thing lacking in the end is a photo of the glossy catalogue demonstrating that his line of glass tables has become an astronomical success. So for all its supposed edginess, “Magic Mike” is really no more than an oddly sentimental tale of a good guy’s wise career change.

But the movie has its compensations. One is Soderbergh’s anti-slick approach. Working again as his own cinematographer (under his nom de lens Peter Andrews), he goes for a jittery, New Wavey look accentuated by Mary Ann Bernard’s editing, and the result is so carefully calculated that it’s more fun than irritating. And Tatum not only delivers great dance routines—a throwback to his limber work in the original “Step Up”—but in the off-the-floor scenes delivers a natural, seemingly off-the-cuff turn totally unlike his stolid work in the glossy soap operas he’s specialized in of late. He’s certainly matched by McConaughey, whose over-the-top scene stealing as Dallas—off the dance floor as well as on it—adds to the career renaissance he’s built with “The Lincoln Lawyer” and “Bernie.” Pettyfer, meanwhile, finally demonstrates the charisma that eluded him in “Beastly” and “I Am Number Four.” And his tentativeness as an actor (and a dancer) suits the role, too.

Otherwise, matters are less happy. Horn is okay, but Soderbergh’s penchant for close-ups doesn’t help her performance. Olivia Munn unsuccessfully deals with the ambiguities of a psychology researcher Mike has a kind-of relationship with; the character’s motivations remain tantalizing but too oblique. And the other buff pretty-boy dancers—Ken (Matt Bomer), Big Dick (Richie Joe Manganiello), Tito (Adam Rodriguez)—don’t get much to do beyond snippets of their floor routines (though they’re all perfectly fine at them), while as Tarzan, burly wrestler Kevin Nash provides an amusingly incongruous presence.

“Magic Mike” will certainly satisfy viewers looking forward to plenty of skin, both of the abdominal and rear-end varieties. And the dance routines are sexy and bizarre. But the background offered an invitation for something emotionally deeper than what we get here, and the dramatic cop-out, like the incomplete finish of a strip-tease, is a little disappointing.