Movie review: 'The Florida Project' is a magnificent portrait of a joyous, troubled childhood

All childhoods must come to an end, few of them as piercingly as the one in "The Florida Project," Sean Baker's raw, exuberant and utterly captivating new movie. The child in question is a wild and irrepressible 6-year-old girl named Moonee, played by a startling discovery named Brooklynn Kimberly Prince.

Remember and cherish that name, not least for its playful suggestion of royalty: Moonee is very much the princess in this contemporary American fairy tale, and her kingdom is the Magic Castle, a sprawling, three-story motel not far from another Florida project called Disney World.

With its bright purple exteriors and discount fairy-tale trappings, the Magic Castle