Ali

Starring Will Smith, Jon Voight, and Jamie Foxx
Directed by Michael Mann
Year: 2001
IMDB / Wikipedia

The other day news came out that Ryan Reynolds would be starring in the reboot of the cult-classic movie Highlander. I am a fan of the original film and of Reynolds, but I’m not sold on the two of them being put together (not a chocolate-peanut butter moment). I got involved in a discussion on a message board about it and I said that I would like Reynolds in the part if he played it straight and not “Van Wilder Goes a-Lobbin’ Off Heads.” Reynolds is an actor who can take almost any role and turn it into a comedic one, like his turn as Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Sometimes this is endearing, but not always. There are two actors who pull it off regularly: Robin Williams and Will Smith but only one does it well.

Unfortunately, of those two, Will Smith doesn’t often do it well. In Ali he was portraying one of the most colorful characters in sports history, and the real Mohammad Ali was over-the-top in his own right, but Smith seemed to take something so organic and turn it into something woefully artificial.

The film spotlight’s Ali’s rise to the top of the boxing world, his troubles in his life, his contempt of the United States Draft Board, and his fight to return to boxing prominence. It showed Ali’s life in a way that only Michael Mann could have: in small chunks, showing every possible angle, showing every affect and consequence, all to paint as rich a cinematic picture as possible. It showed Ali was truly a flawed man who tried to stay true to himself and everyone around him, though he kept stumbling along the way.

Will Smith delivered a performance that tried to pay homage to The Champ but, instead, was more of a narcissistic impersonation–a caricature, if you will–of who Ali was. Instead of seeing something eye-opening and revealing about the character, the audience was treated to every stereotype and every preconceived notion every said or written about Ali. More would have been done for his character if this movie was a straight documentary instead of a Biopic. The tagline of the film was “Forget what you think you know,” but the film only delivered everything I had seen from old film clips and impersonations done over the years. There was simply nothing too revealing in this film.

The supporting cast was good but tended to be overshadowed. Even Oscar-winner Jamie Foxx turned a good role into a compelling one but too little was made of his character because of the shadow cast by Ali. This could have been one of Michael Mann’s triumphs but will be remembered at the time he made a movie about Will Smith’s boxing career when he called himself Mohammad Ali.

IMDB Trivia Tidbit: Charles Shufford, a real-life 235 pound heavyweight boxer with a 17-2 record who plays George Foreman, was given license to make his punches as real as possible, short of incapacitating the film’s star.

Trailer:

Aladdin

Starring Robin Williams, Gilbert Gottfried, and Scott Weinger
Year: 1992
IMDB / Wikipedia

When I was eight, Disney was coming forward into their second renaissance with the film The Little Mermaid. Had I been born a girl, I would have been more excited about this movie. It would not be until years later that I realized that this was, indeed a good movie and it truly was the rebirth of Disney movies on the screen. The technology associated with animation had caught up enough with the imaginations of the animators and creators to let them tell the story they wanted to in a fantastic new way.

Aladdin was the second film in Disney’s resurgence and it was one of those films that captivated everyone. I remember seeing this in the movie theater when a family friend took my sister for her birthday (she was turning three) and I got to tag along. At the age of 11 I was trying my best to be mature but this movie helped that fall away quickly. Never before had I been enchanted with an animated movie like this.

The thing that really stuck with me was the music. Even as a young person, the thing that stuck with me was the song and this film did not lack for music. I asked for, and received, the soundtrack on cassette some months later and I about wore it thin. When the movie came out on VHS, the family bought it and we enjoyed it a lot. From there, I was hooked on Disney films old and new.

Watching this film again on DVD recently was an experience because it made me feel like I was back in the movie theater seeing all of this for the first time. That quickly wore off as I started to hum and even sing along with some of the songs. The story was enchanting (though not as devious as I had remembered) and it was as satisfying after all these years. I am looking forward to sharing this kind of movie magic with my children (if/when I have any) and start them off with one of the true classics of Disney animation.

Most Valuable Actor: Robin Williams as the Genie (and others). This film would be nothing without Williams’ ability to summon up a myriad of voices and expressions to fit whatever the screenwriters could come up with. I imagine the animators had a difficult time to trying to match visuals to Williams’ animated vocal style.

Trailer:

Airplane! / Airplane II: The Sequel

Airplane! (“Don’t Call Me Shirley” Edition)
Starring Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Lloyd Bridges, and Leslie Nielsen
Directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker
Year: 1980
IMDB / Wikipedia

Airplane II: The Sequel
Starring Hays, Hagerty, Bridges, and William Shatner
Directed by Ken Finkleman
Year: 1982
IMDB / Wikipedia

To be funny often times means being topical. When theJim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers made the original Airplane! in 1980 they certainly did it at the right time. They saw the disaster movies made about airplanes and commercial airlines in the past few years, most notably Airport 1975, and decided that this was a topic they could twist and make funny juice come forth.

Now, don’t be fooled by the spoof movies you may have seen in the last 10-15 years. The Scary Movie, Date Movie, and Meet the Spartans all got their insipration (and sometimes their crew) from these movies. It can be said that these Airplane movies are the birth of the modern cinematic spoof.

But the comedy was topical at the time. Many of the gags and references made in both films are very dated when seen now and younger audiences may miss some of the truly funny parts. Thankfully, the filmmakers (perhaps) thought of this and made other funny references and pratfalls to appeal to a wider-range of audience. I think that’s why these movies are truly funny: they are timeless in their own way. That’s why nobody really remembers the Folger’s coffee ad references but everyone remembers Leslie Nielsen asking not to be referred to by a woman’s name.

The first movie was a classic, but the second movie received mixed reviews and rightfully so. It treads the line of being as funny as the original and another pointless sequel cash-grab. On the surface, the sequel is essentially the same story as the first movie–crew is incapacitated and an ex-military pilot with a haunted past must take the controls and save the day–and many of the jokes are recycled from the first film.

But this movie, held alone, does a great job spoofing its own unique genre. While the first movie spoofed the airport movies of the 1970s, the sequel spoofed the then-recent onslaught of science fiction movies and television shows by taking shots at everything from Star Wars, Star Trek, Buck Rogers, and Battlestar Galactica. And, true to form, it needed its own special cameo crew to pull it off, anchored by the great William Shatner.

And that’s something that makes these films great: the cameos. If it’s not Robert Stack, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Barbara Billingsley in the first film, it’s Shatner, Chuck Connors, and Sonny Bono in the second. Each of them is used to poke lightly at the fourth-wall and bring their own comedic senses to the screen.

So, while the films may not have the same appeal to the younger crowd (who may need a map to find the jokes) these movies are truly inspirational and truly funny pieces of cinema that can only be imitated, never copied.

Most Valuable Actor: Stephen Stucker as Johnny. The name  may not mean anything but the character was an undeniable comedic force in both films. As Johnny the outrageous balding controller, he provided many memorable quips that provided a nice cut of absurdity amongst all of the straight-men comedians in the film (no pun intended).

Trailer (Airplane!):

Trailer (Airplane II: The Sequel):

Air Force One

Starring Harrison Ford, Gary Oldman, and Glenn Close
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen
Year: 1997
IMDB / Wikipedia

As you may have guessed, I’m a sucker for a well-made action movie as well as moderately-made action movies (and even a few that aren’t so good). Air Force One is definitely a well-made action movie. It’s unsuspecting as how intricate and how brutal the movie truly is from the trailer, but the movie delivers so well that you almost have to look past the movie’s flaws to find something to hold onto.

I wouldn’t call myself a fan of Wolfgang Petersen’s work (although his submarine epic Das Boot is very good) just because he’s not a man suited to make contemporary action movies. He’s caught up with substance over style in an age where the more explosions and the more bullets fired equate to a better (or at least more popular) film. Sure, there’s a good amount of shooting in this film, but it’s not gratuitous. There’s a reason for every shot and it is so meticulously made that it is almost a beautiful movie. The tension is palpable and the action is well-suited for this kind of movie. Other directors would have made a movie into just another cinematic punchline (see: Gigli) but Petersen did well with this one.

But it was in no small part to the actors he got to stage this story. Harrison Ford has made questionable film choices this century, but in the 90s he was pure gold. With a supporting cast that shone in their own right, armed with role suited for their talents, this movie was a study of acting intensity and poise. Even Gary Oldman turns in a brilliant performance that may be remembered as his scariest.

Unfortunately, this movie still gnaws at me 15 years later and it goes back to the substance-over-style argument before. The end scene with the plan was so bad it is damn-near cringe-worthy. All of those directors who would have made this movie into a joke would have made that effect much better and much more realistic. So, it comes down to a question of whether it is better to suspend disbelief for a visually stimulating film, or have a well-crafted, well-thought out plot with some visual flaws. I know how I’m casting my vote, and I’m curious about your thoughts, which can be left in the comments section.

Most Valuable Actor: Glenn Close as Vice President Kathryn Bennett. It’s hard to find a female role that’s more intense and more commanding than Close. There are few female roles that are this challenging and she is one of few actresses that could do it. She didn’t go over-the-top like so many would (especially if it were a man in the role) but she did it with well-tempered intensity. Truly, a remarkable feat of acting. When you watch this movie, notice how she commands every scene she’s in, whether she is talking or not.

Trailer:

AI: Artificial Intelligence

Starring Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, and Frances O’Connor
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Year: 2001
IMDB / Wikipedia

There’s a reason I watched this movie alone and it’s not because my wife is sick in bed. This is a hard movie to watch. It evokes some of the most primal love instincts you may have and the protagonist’s story is one of undying (albeit programmed) love. At times it’s almost too much to watch as David comes to grip with love, loss, and his quest to become a real boy that someone could love.

The movie is the story of a sentient robotic boy named David, who is a prototype designed to feel love in a familial sense. The story is, on the surface, a moral story about what exactly is life and whether love can be real if it is artificially implanted. I think this is where I get a bit choked up.

When we are born our parents love us because we came from them. However, the child does not understand love from the beginning. When we are very young we are programmed to be dependent on those around us and we learn certain behaviors that allow us to attain the things we need to survive. At the beginning, we are simply mimicking our parents’ behavior to survive and it comes off as love. It is not until we get a little older do we start to understand the family bond, the connection between parent and child, and really begin to love for more than just our survival. Children who do not have that sense of love from their parents usually grow up without a basis from which to feel or receive love because it is still too foreign to them. Those people are still just trying to survive by putting on an act.

In the movie, David (Osment) is programmed to be a child surrogate in a future where there are strict laws on reproduction. The family who has David has a son who is in a coma due to a serious illness and uses David to supplement their son until the day the son wakes from his illness and returns home. The couple sees David as a form of catharsis and cannot anticipate the sibling rivalry that ensues when the couple’s song returns home.

From there, the movie takes a very dark turn and addresses issues of abandonment, fear, prejudice, hatred, and redemption with the underlying motif of love. Each action in the movie, positive and negative, is motivated by some form of love. The abandonment is motivated by love because, if David is returned to the manufacturer he will be destroyed. The hatred is fueled by love because some people view robots as a means to wipe out the human race and, for love of the species, they feel the need to lash out. Spielberg has an extraordinary way to approach each of these subjects which is why the film’s visionary, the late Stanley Kubrick, asked Spielberg to helm this film even before his death.

The greater question of this film is something that is easy to answer on the onset but gets harder to answer as the events of the movie go by: could you ever love something that is programmed to love you back? Could you ever receive a David and live with it as it was your own child? Could you cope with having a child who never ate, slept, or showed any emotion other than love and occasional fear? Could you stand having a permanent child in your life that, while it doesn’t need resources to survive, is sapping your energy? No matter what your answer is prior ot the movie, there will be something in the film that will make you change your mind or, at the very least, give you a better understanding of the other side of the coin. That is what great science-fiction is meant to do–get you to ask questions that may not have an easy answer.

IMDB Trivia Tidbit: The movie was originally to be titled A.I., but after a survey it was revealed that too many people thought it was A1. The title was changed to A.I. Artificial Intelligence to prevent people from thinking it was about steak sauce. (Ed. Are you kidding me? People who think they make a movie about steak sauce are fucking idiots. Than again, if they are going to make a movie out of Battleship and a TV show out of Draw Something, I guess it’s a plausible. But still … ) 

Trailer:

The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle

Starring Robert DeNiro, Rene Russo, and Jason Alexander
Directed by Des McAnuff
Year: 2000
IMDB / Wikipedia

One of my biggest gripes about most movie-goers is they think they are better than the films they see. They seem to expect every single frame to be worthy of an Oscar and anything less than that is garbage. Sure, there are a lot of things a person can do with 90 minutes than watch something utterly useless and kind of stupid, but where’s the fun in that?

That’s why I do not quite understand the venomous hatred of this movie. Despite being another stuido cash-grab using an old property from decades past, it’s actually pretty funny. Sure, some of the jokes are hackneyed and sophomoric, but so was the show. That didn’t stop the show from being beloved by millions over the years. So where’s the problem?

Was it the cast? Aside from the animated Rocky and Bullwinkle coming into the live-action world, their supporting cast was brilliantly selected. Their enemies Boris (Alexander) and Natasha (Russo) with their fearless leader, Fearless Leader (DeNiro) were sublimely cast and seemed to have a good time poking fun at the characters and at themselves. DeNiro also had a great scene when talking to Boris and Natasha where he even spoofed his own iconic lines from Taxi Driver when he questioned, “Are you talking to me?”

Could it have been the slew of great comedic actors, from Billy Crystal to Johnathan Winters to Jeff Ross to Whoopi Goldberg, that brought this movie down? Most of them weren’t in it long enough to make a dent on the story, so it couldn’t have been them.

But what about that story? Sure, the idea that the FBI has a doll-faced agent (Piper Perabo obviously training for her role in Covert Affairs with this film) would need to enlist the services of Rocky and Bullwinkle to defeat three cartoon characters-turned-real sounds very far-fetched, but this entire movie is far-fetched. If you think that Rocky and Bullwinkle should have starred in a movie with a Bourne-esque storyline filled with danger and international intrigue then you are a complete moron. Plus, you should know that the bad guys from Pottsylvaniya are no match for Moose and Squirrel.

So why the hatred? Is it because it’s so hackneyed? Then this movie isn’t for you. This movie is for the folks who loved and cherished the original show and all of the stupid and pointless things that happened on there that were actually funny. If you saw this movie and hated it then it is your fault to begin with because everything about this movie, from its marketing, to the trailers, even the DVD box presents it just the way it is–a movie based on a cartoon with a ludicrous plot and bad (but funny) jokes. Want something more cerebral? Look elsewhere!

IMDB Trivia Tidbit: This film was originally in pre-production in the early 1990s, with Danny DeVito and Meryl Streep set to play Boris and Natasha. Legal problems with copyrights prevented the film being made until several years later.

Adaptation

Starring Nicolas Cage, Meryl Streep, and Chris Cooper
Directed by Spike Jonze
Year: 2002
IMDB / Wikipedia

I really wanted to hate this movie. It is, as one of the characters described it, narcissistic and self-indulgent. Normally, any screenwriter/novelist/columnist/blogger who writes his or herself into their work needs to be thrown off a cliff into a sea of piranhas. No one cares about your method, your struggle, or any other masturbatory reason you have to put yourself into the pages of your tome. If you want to write a review, do it the normal way: go to WordPress.com …

But there’s something about this movie and this script that makes it endearing. Maybe it’s the fact that Charlie Kaufman‘s scripts are usually bordering on insane and brilliant and that breaking the fourth wall in a seemingly self-indulgent way is part of his game. We, as the movie-loving public, accept that of him and his quirky scripts, and we move on. No bitching or complaining, we just accept them as they are and either enjoy them or not based on their face value. Welcome to the new social contract of contemporary cinema.

This film is more a memoir of the struggles of writer’s block than anything. In the film, like in real life, Kaufman was charged with adapting Susan Orlean‘s book, “The Orchid Thief,” into a film. Kaufman found the book to be so convoluted and so structure-less that he could not adapt it into a film. This caused him massive amounts of stress and, after a breakthrough of sorts, he came forward with this script that was about his struggles with adapting the book to screen.

This kind of fractal-like storytelling is something that Kaufman is known for (Being John Malkovich and Synedoche, New York being two prime examples) where in the story is a self-aware memoir that is taken to, often times, ludacris conclusions. As in the other films, the starting point was based in truth but it spirals out of control from there. I would tell you more but I don’t want to spoil it for you.

Many years ago I wrote a book. It, too, included me as a character and, in the story, I was in the process of writing the book. It was a journey of self-indulgence that I felt I needed to get out of my system. I inflicted it on very few people (mostly curious volunteer friends and old LiveJournal acquaintances) and, after all the praise I received, I decided to trash it and not show it to anyone ever again. It became a footnote in my life and a bit of trivia about myself that I drag out when I’m desperate for an answer during meeting icebreakers (I never lead with it and I rarely mention it at all). There is some shame with having to fall back on yourself as a major subject of a fictional story you are trying to conceive. I had a professor tell me once that doing this means you lack imagination or your imagination was exhausted. My imagination is fine (which I why I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in 17 years) but I find myself reaching for the autobiographical when I try and be fantastical. It’s a sickness that only the truly talented can control and manipulate successfully.

Again, I want to hate this movie because it shows me that the crutch I have so often gone back to time and again has actually made someone’s career. But I cannot hate this movie because it is so well done. I’m conflicted. I’m glad I wrote about it.

Most Valuable Actor: Chris Cooper as John Laroche. Cooper is a character actor among character actors, able to blend seamlessly into any role he is placed. Too many actors would have been tempted to portray the backwoods Laroche as a caricature of what we believe the southern hillbilly to be. Cooper brought a quiet dignity and a sense of determination to the role that made it so much more authentic and believable. The missing middle teeth helped, too.

Across the Universe

Starring Jim Surgess, Evan Rachel Wood, and Joe Anderson
Directed by Julie Taymor
Year: 2007
IMDB / Wikipedia

Let it never be said that I do not like musicals. Though not a fan, I do seek out musicals on stage and on film that interest me. But I come to find that the musicals I like are a niche, referred to as a Jukebox Musical, using popular pre-published music to set the story. Though not a new trend, they have exploded in popularity in recent years with movies like Mamma Mia and the upcoming Rock of Ages, as well as stage shows like Rock of Ages, Jersey Boys, and Movin’ Out. Since I’m a huge Billy Joel fan I drug my wife to see Movin’ Out when the touring company came through town. So, because I enjoy musicals like these, I was interested in our film today.

Across the Universe is a  film as ambitious as its namesake song but fails to deliver the audience to those same great heights. What is evident on screen is that the tired old cliches of both cinema, art, and the perception of life is still alive and kicking. It seems that a writer or filmmaker cannot set a story in the 1960s without Vietnam, hippies, and the tired vehicle of older generations “not getting” the younger one. Sure, all of those things helped define the decade, but you can have a film set in the 1960s and mention other things. This film went back to the well too many times and use the music of The Beatles to weave together a paper-thin plot.

The story of young Brit Jude (Sturgess) who comes to America to find his estranged father takes a turn when he meets up with Max (Anderson) and then falls for Max’s sister Lucy (Wood). The socio-economic conflicts, along with the angst building up ion the world around them drive them together, then apart, and then together again (oops, spoiler). All of this is done while supplanting what culd have been a great script with renditions of Beatles classics and coy in-jokes based on Beatles lyrics (“Where’d she come from?” “Oh, she came in through the bathroom window.” *facepalm*).

What upset me the most was this movie struggled so hard to find direction. As soon as it appeared that the story would find its legs and share something interesting to say, another character would break into song disrupting the flow of the moment. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’d love for a lot of movies to forgo their shitty dialogue in favor of Beatles music or anything more interesting, but this movie used it as a crutch so often the legs seemed to wither and die. Coupled along with all of the cliches of the 1960s that have been romanticized and over-saturated for the last 30 years, this movie doesn’t have much of anything to say. Interestingly enough, the only lingering parts of the movie are the songs, and I already have them all.

I had high hopes for this movie and everyone in it. I wanted to like this but there wasn’t much to like. The music was great, but I knew that before I started watching. I wanted something fresh and new, like the Beatles were in those days. Instead, I’m left with the husk of a movie with great potential but absolutely no follow-through. Ain’t that a shame?

Most Valuable Actor: Jim Sturgess as Jude. Much like Moulin Rouge, the male lead was the strongest of the cast. Sturgess could have chewed the scenery with this role but chose to play it in a very civil and understated tone, which fit the character quite nicely and supported the fact that the rest of the characters seemed drawn to him. An excellent casting choice.

Ace Ventura

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective          
Starring Jim Carrey, Courtney Cox, and Sean Young
Year: 1994
IMDB / Wikipedia

Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls           
Starring Jim Carrey, Ian McNiece, and Simon Callow
Year: 1995
IMDB / Wikipedia

Remember when Jim Carrey was funny? Sure, he’s funny now, but he’s much more of an esoteric kind of funny than the commonly accepted funny that he was in the 1990s. He is, by my count, the only actor in cinematic history to charm audiences by speaking out of his anus. There’s something to be said for that kind of actor.

Even the hipsters who claim to have been Carrey fans since his days on In Living Color can admit that Ace Ventura was the role that solidified him as a comic genius and a movie star. Made for almost nothing, this movie went on to do excellent box office business domestically and worldwide and the films have reached a plateau eclipsing a cult status. From here, Carrey was able to pursue other lucrative movie ventures, from the comedy (The Mask, Dumb & Dumber) to more dramatic films (The Truman Show, The Majestic) and even the very dark (The Cable Guy, The Number 23). And to think, it all started with him lighting his clothes on fire and sobbing uncontrollably in the shower.

The sequel was a slap-dash cash grab (say that three-times fast) that recycled many of the jokes and gags from the first film into a new story and setting. The promise of the second film, and the fact that I actually took time to watch it, was the fact it had a pretty good story attached to it. It’s not a cerebral film by any means, but it did a good job creating some mystery and some great opportunities for adventure.

Being infinitely quotable and outrageously funny have become two hallmarks of a good comedy and these two have it in spades. That is why they keep getting airtime on cable networks during hours people may actually be awake to see them. Both offer great laughs, some mindless entertainment, and a chance to escape for a bit courtesy of Jim Carrey.

IMDB Trivia Tidbit: Jim Carrey has starred in five films that have had sequels or prequels: Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The Mask, Dumb & Dumber, Batman Forever, and Bruce Almighty, but [Ace Ventura] is the only film that had a sequel in which he himself appears and reprises his role.

The Help

Starring Emma Stone, Viola Davis, and Octavia Spencer            
Directed by Tate Taylor
Year: 2011
IMDB / Wikipedia

Every now and then, I will find it necessary to break protocol to tend to my extremely large Netflix queue. This is one of those times. 

I will never know the kind of discrimination that African-Americans in this country have experienced. I have never been told I couldn’t do something because of the color of my skin, I have never been passed over because of how I look, and no one has made me feel like less of a person because of my aesthetics. Well, I have experienced those things, but my plight is nothing compared to what African-Americans suffered through for hundreds of years in this country.

Though based on a novel, this story was true somewhere. White women, not wanting to give up their time and their happiness to care for their children, hired black women to handle all of the domestic responsibilities. This was more prevalent in the south than anywhere else, but it lasted for decades. Though no longer slaves to these white families, they are not treated much better. In this dramatization, several of these maids take the opportunity to speak out anonymously to an author who wants to tell their side of the story.

On paper, this is a great idea for a story. It’s a way to break the paradigm that history is written by the “winners” and to show that the equality that was being fought for wasn’t just for creature comforts. On paper, this would have been a great vehicl for those things, but it turned out to be something much more underwhelming than I thought.

The story, itself, was rather clunky and didn’t show much of the motivations of the characters. The author “Skeeter” (Stone) seemed to be only motivated by he ambition to become a serious author right of out college and she wanted to do something to get back at her mother who had fired the maid who had raised her. She faced adversity from her debutante friends who thought things were great the way they were and the maids who felt that they could never say anything for fear of retribution.  If based on historical fact, this book probably would have ended up with a very bloody backlash against these women but, since it was complete fiction, there could be the happy-ish ending that didn’t weigh too heavily on the minds of the audience.

Truth be told, the best part of this movie was the actors. Even the insufferable Bryce Dallas Howard (God, how I despise this woman) managed to do a good job at playing the Queen Bitch of the bunch. But the stars of this movie were, truly, the black women who played the maids and suffered on screen the way so many others did in real life.

In the end, it’s not that great of a movie. The line was blurred the entire time as to what they were doing was to further the author’s ambition, an act of petty spite by the maids, or whether it was truly a plausible action that fit in well with the rest of the Civil Right Movement. In my opinion, for whatever it is worth, this film tried so hard to make a great point but it failed in its execution (much, like I’m told, the book did). Worth a watch but that’s about it.

Most Valuable Actor: Jessica Chastain as Celia Foote.  This movie was not about her plight, per se, but she did have a plight. She was lost and Minny was able to help her reclaim her dignity and her sanity with a bit of kindness. Sure, Celia was naive and she was hopelessly lost before Minny saved her, but she was so delightful and showed so much respect, it was a needed element in a movie so full of disarray and listlessness.