Movie Reviews

Editor and publisher: Reining in Mr. Write

Colin Firth, left, as Max Perkins and Jude Law as Thomas Wolfe in "Genius." (Marc Brenner/Roadside Attractions)

In the movie industry and in film critic circles, there's a term called a parking lot movie.

That's a film so good, so compelling or so thought provoking that movie-goers emerge from the creative darkness of a theater into the harsh bright light of reality and talk -- and perhaps argue -- about what they have just witnessed all the way to the car.

Genius, the dramatic verbal sparring match between early 20th century novelist Thomas Wolfe and his editor-publisher Max Perkins, drove me far beyond the aforementioned parking lot.  For the greater part of this morning, I've thrown myself into digging deeper into this volatile relationship between one of the most important writers of his lifetime and the word master who published and molded his work into Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River.

Pairing accomplished British actors Jude Law and Colin Firth perfectly as Americans Wolfe and Perkins, Genius dares to stick closely to something rare in a based-on-truth night at the movies:  truth.  We can thank a trio of filmmakers for that.  The movie is based on A. Scott Berg's biography Max Perkins:  Editor of Genius.  Berg spent nearly a decade developing his Princeton University senior thesis on Perkins into the biography.  Gifted screenwriter John Logan (Gladiator, Any Given Sunday, Hugo) has fought to get this film to the screen for 20 years.

As for first-time director Michael Grandage, also from Great Britain, the respected actor-playwright has the most difficult task of all; combining all the elements into a cohesive biography of two towering forces of literature who may have been forgotten, or almost forgotten by too many.

I like the way Grandage doesn't feel the need to mention the Great Depression in words in this drama set partly in 1929.  His scene where Wolfe and Perkins walk down a New York street and encounter a soup line for the first time suffices nicely.

Genius is a clash-of-the-titans extravaganza not of swords, sorcerers and special effects, but of words.  I can assure you the battles here are just as grisly.  Every word or phrase lost by the loud, grandiose young author who writes furiously in pencil using the top of a refrigerator as his desk wounds Wolfe deeply.

Jude lays the Law down with rare, bombastic abandon as Wolfe, challenging, befriending and fighting with expertly skilled Charles Scribner's Sons editor-wordsmith Perkins.

Firth has the tougher acting chore as the editor who has previously worked with  novelist titans F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby) and Ernest Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms).   The best actor Academy Award winner for The King's Speech in 2010 perfectly corrals Perkins' quiet demeanor into a wordsmith who doesn't just correct spelling and grammar.

Perkins was perhaps the first truly great editor-collaborator.  His keen sense of story structure and ability to pare down phrases to their true essence is at first celebrated by Wolfe, who delivers his second manuscript to Perkins' office in several crates.  The novel that would eventually become  Of Time and the River originally numbered 5,000 pages.

It's not easy for women to stand out in a male-dominated movie.  However, Laura Linney (The Truman Show) and Nicole Kidman (an Oscar winner for The Hours) make the most of their screen time as Perkins' devoted wife and Wolfe's mentally unstable mentor/lover.

It's probably no accident that Genius arrives in movie theaters on Father's Day weekend.  Wolfe's writing, especially in Look Homeward, Angel, was, in his own words, "the search for the father of our spirit."  Perkins, the father of five daughters, nurtures Wolfe at times like the son he never had but always longed for.

If I can fault Genius for anything, it's for trying too hard to include all the elements of the Wolfe/Perkins relationship.  Fitzgerald weaves in and out of the story fairly effectively, but Hemingway's inclusion, brief and sporadic, seems tossed in just to include his weighty novelist reputation.

That's a small flaw, indeed.  Any movie that compels us to want to learn more about the real people behind the characters, is a must-see for everyone. 

Beyond that, Genius is an exciting journey and a true joy for anyone who respects writers and loves the power of words.

From this aisle seat, sublimely crafted words are the real special effects.

MPAA rating: PG-13 ( Some thematic elements and suggestive content)

104 minutes

Jalapeño rating:  3½ (out of 4)

     

Field plows into frumpy, fantasizing 'Doris'

Sally Field as the title character in "Hello, My Name Is Doris." Seacia Para/Roadside Attractions

Generally speaking, when an extraordinarily gifted actress like Sally Field, a two-time Academy Award winner (Norma Rae, Places in the Heart), is out front, a film is strong enough to warrant a trip to the neighborhood movie house.

That’s almost the case with "Hello, My Name Is Doris," but not quite.

Field, nominated for a third Oscar as Mary Todd Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln in 2012, pours her acting soul into Doris. She’s a 60-something New Yorker from Staten Island who has just lost her mother and now must fend for herself at work, with her friends and, perhaps most importantly, when she’s alone.

Not unlike Doris, however, there’s just too much baggage in this layered comic-drama for even a gifted pro like Field to carry herself. Doris is not just conflicted, as any lonely woman in her 60s might be after losing her closest human contact (her mother).

In many ways, Doris is still a teenager in her mind, even though she’s nearing retirement age at the office where she keeps accounts in a cubicle that can barely contain her volatile angst. Let’s just say her path to happiness and mental stability is as cluttered as her home, where she throws a fit when relatives and a psychologist try to get her to part with a hoarded single snow ski she has no use for.

There’s enough going on in Hello, My Name Is Doris to suggest that Field would have a Field day (if you’ll pardon the pun) rumbling through the mental mess that is her title character. Unfortunately, this tale of an aging wallflower desperate to blossom into a relationship with the handsome young new art director named Max (John Fremont) careens off into something that’s a little bit Walter Mitty (an uncontrollable fantasizer) and a lot made-for-TV movie material.

Director Michael Showalter, who also co-wrote the script, is working with material first explored in an eight-minute NYU student film. Expanded to 90 minutes, however, Hello, My Name Is Doris runs out of creative gas, much like so many of those funny Saturday Night Live skits that died on the feature-film vine.

Field is fine, more than fine, in fact. She jumps into the lovable frump bag that is Doris body and soul. There are no complaints from this aisle seat about Fremont, currently starring on the small screen as Schmidt opposite Zooey Deschanel on the Fox sitcom New Girl. And it’s fun to see Tyne Daly as Roz, a steadfast best friend to Doris.

Unfortunately, Hello, My Name Is Doris is not constantly compelling enough to live on eccentricity alone on the big screen. It might play well on TV in prime time, but somewhere down the list of cable channels that attend more to matters of the heart than matters of essential cinema.

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MPAA rating: R (profanity)
90 minutes
Jalapeño rating: 2½ (out of 4)

'Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,' an intoxicating war drama

Lance Cpl. Andrew Coughlin (Evan Jonigkeit) and Kim Baker (Tina Fey) use their weapons of choice in a "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" firefight. (Paramount Pictures)

Here’s my only real beef with Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: It’s a witty, gritty war-correspondent drama posing, or more appropriately being marketed, as a comedy, which it is not.

Is it because Tina Fey, one of our most gifted comedians, is out front as a stateside cable news producer thrown into the explosive turmoil of the Afghanistan war zone in the early 2000s?

Could it be because the co-directors, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, co-wrote the hilarious darkly comic Bad Santa and aimed for something like the late Robert Altman’s comic-war drama MASH of 1970?

Well, “Atten-hut,” film-making soldiers. What you have marched to the screen here is a superbly nuanced drama (with occasional comic turns, granted) about a cable news desk jockey.

Kim Baker (Fey) is a producer so mired down in a life where she “writes news copy for dumb pretty people to read” that she’s willing to venture to a war-torn country where fecal matter actually permeates the air. She’s not quite as emotionally bottomed-out as Tom Hanks’ character was when he agreed to leap into a fiery volcano in Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), but she’s close.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is based on print journalist Kim Barker’s 400-page The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Screenwriter Robert Carlock, an Emmy winner for his work on NBC’s 30 Rock, which also starred Fey, focuses on the author’s sometimes horrifying adventures in war-ravaged Afghanistan.

Baker, asked point blank by fellow war correspondent Tanya Vanderpoel (Margot Robbie of Focus and The Wolf of Wall Street) if she can borrow Baker’s video crew for sex, is tossed first into the Fun House, a sex, booze and caustic comic dormitory of sorts for war reporters, then the war itself. Fitting in as a seasoned journalist is out of the question at first. She marches off to war with a bright orange backpack and fatigues that still have a store label on the pants leg.

But a funny thing happens once Whiskey Tango Foxtrot gets past all the slightly irritating stabs at dark war comedy. A beautiful drama emerges. Fey, as so many comedians are, turns out to be a superb dramatic actor. She plants her feet solidly in this conflicted character who becomes a seasoned war reporter in a hurry and may just become a little too intoxicated by the rush of real explosive danger.

In fact, this is a film overflowing with funny folks who are also gifted dramatic actors. Billy Bob Thornton, who played (and will play again next Christmas) the title character in Bad Santa, is outstanding here as Marine Col. Walter Hollanek, a leader with a constant 2,000-yard stare and a devotion to his men and duty.

Even though this film was shot in New Mexico, it captures the filth, the poverty, the desperation and the conflict of the Middle East extremely well. One of the things it does best is reveal Baker’s view of what she witnessed there as a journalist embedded in the chaos.

Extremely gifted actor Alfred Molina (Love is Strange) is so immersed in his character of budding government official Ali Massoud Sadiq that he’s almost impossible to recognize. Up-and-comer Christopher Abbott (A Most Violent Year) might just find that his performance as Fahim Ahmadzai, Baker’s fixer (interview arranger) is a catapult to stardom.

Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit series), as flirty, quick-witted photographer Iain MacKelpie, and Fey create some real screen magic as two lost souls flailing about trying to find some direction in their lives amid the madness of war.

Despite the fact that the filmmakers even make a feeble inside joke with the first letters of the military lingo title, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (You get it, right?), this film excels as what it is; an extremely well-acted drama about flawed humans fighting to keep even a loose grip on humanity.

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MPAA rating: R (pervasive language, some sexual content, drug use and violent war images)
111 minutes
Jalapeño rating: 3½ (out of 4)

How come 'The Judge'?

The judge's son (Robert Downey Jr.) draws up a contract to defend his estranged father (Robert Duvall). (Warner Bros.)

Judge, if I may approach the bench, who directed this cliché-filled misuse of two of our finest living dramatic actors?

Let me amend that, Your Honor.  Much of the blame must go to the screenwriters.  Oops, check that.  It seems that you, David Dobkin, co-authored the original story as well.  Well, guilty as charged, then.

The Judge, which hangs around for well over two drawn-out hours, is a hard-hitting father and son courtroom melodrama that plays out in small-town Indiana.  If it wasn't for Academy Award winner Robert Duvall and two-time Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr., this carnival of a courtroom drama would be thrown out of cinematic court the first time highly unlikely circumstances keep the plot chugging along to its inevitable, contrived conclusion.

That's the rub for critics and movie fans, though. The Judge pairs Duvall and Downey as an estranged small town judge on the brink of severe human frailty and the son who only interrupts his pending bitter divorce and his successful Chicago law practice of getting rich crooks off the hook because there's been a death in the family.

Once back in his old tiny Indiana burg, Downey's Hank Palmer clashes violently with the old man, Duvall's Judge Joseph Palmer, bumps into his old high school girlfriend "Sam" (Vera Farmiga) and steps in to defend his reluctant father when he's linked to a hit-and-run incident.

To be honest, Duvall and Downey together were all I needed to pay retail and stand in line.  Once there, though, I felt a little sorry for both tremendous actors who had to wade through one plot cliché after another to get to the money shots:  Duvall at 83 and Downey, who almost threw his acting gift down the drain through drug abuse, in fine form and duking it out verbally with the precise timing and nuance few other actors can bring.

Director Dobkin (Wedding Crashers) co-wrote the original story that became the flawed, almost laughable at times screenplay by Nick Schenk (Gran Torino) and Bill Dubuque (a first-timer).  Dobkin insults his audience and his actors repeatedly by asking everyone to suspend their disbelief to impossible limits.

What must Downey have thought when he read in the script that when he falls off his bicycle on the highway that the first driver by would be his old high school squeeze "Sam"?  Actually, it's testament to his will to stay in character that Downey (and Farmiga, who was so terrific opposite George Clooney in Up in the Air) got through the scene without breaking character and laughing hysterically.

This kind of silliness happens at all-too-regular intervals for, I suppose, comic relief in a movie crying out to play it straight and edgy as a taut drama about a father and son fighting through deep wounds to reconnect.

I can't even imagine Gregory Peck having to succumb to cliched bits of comic relief to portray deeply conflicted small town lawyer Atticus Finch. 

Of course The Judge is by no means a drama even remotely resembling the greatness of To Kill a Mockingbird or other memorable courtroom classics.

Occasionally, great acting trumps sloppy film-making, though.  This is one of those cases.

If you're a fan of Duvall (Tender Mercies, The Godfather) and/or Downey (Chaplin, Zodiac), The Judge is worth it just to see two great actors clash like verbal titans able to elevate even trite dialogue to the level of an art form.

MPAA rating:  R (for language including some sexual references)

141 minutes

Jalapeño rating:  2½ (out of 4)

Woody and his sisters

For movie directors, some of the most important choices come before the word "Action" is ever spoken.

Jasmine (Cate Blanchett), right, and Ginger (Sally Hawkins) fight to survive. (Sony Pictures Classics)

Casting is key, and Woody Allen made a brilliant choice when he selected Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett to play a New York socialite whose opulent lifestyle has shattered in the severe drama Blue Jasmine.

Allen’s prowess is equally impressive. At 77 Allen, like Clint Eastwood and other elder statesmen filmmakers, continues to impress. With Blue Jasmine, though, Allen showcases one of his biggest cinematic attributes: the uncanny ability to cast the actress.

Blanchett, the Australian acting powerhouse known for two turns as Great Britain’s Queen Elizabeth (Elizabeth in 1998 and Elizabeth: The Golden Age in 2007), is the latest in a long line of female Allen stars who have dazzled. His work with Diane Keaton in early comedies like Play It Again, Sam in 1972 and Annie Hall in 1977, which won Academy Awards for best picture, best actress (Keaton) and best director (Allen), is legendary.

Allen has always known how to write for and showcase talented women as memorable characters. Case in point is Mia Farrow, a former muse and companion. Farrow is a prime example with extraordinary performances in Hannah and Her Sisters, A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy, The Purple Rose of Cairo and several other Allen gems. In 2008 it was Penélope Cruz in an Oscar-winning performance in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

When we first meet Blanchett as title character Jasmine, she is chatting nervously and rapidly to a total stranger on a flight from New York to San Francisco. That’s the physical flight plan. Emotionally, the well dressed woman who we’ll soon learn has been known to chatter out loud to herself, is in catastrophic freefall.

Jasmine, once a well-heeled and high-heeled princess of Fifth Avenue thanks to her marriage to free-wheeling (financially, ethically and martially) husband Hal (Alec Baldwin), is popping pills to compensate for suddenly deflated financial circumstances. And because, in a desperation move, she is moving in with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and way down the social ladder.

No one should mistake Blue Jasmine for one of Allen’s funny movies. Earlier in his career, the versatile filmmaker leaned heavily on Ingmar Bergman, Sweden’s master of the dour and dreary, to churn out dramas such as Interiors (1978), September (1987) and Another Woman (1988).

Blue Jasmine, though, is pure Woody Allen. It succinctly chronicles a handful of humans in crisis from Jasmine, frantically grasping at perhaps a final chance to grab a sophistication lifeline by wooing a government official on the way up in Dwight (Peter Sarsgaard) to Augie (Andrew Dice Clay), her sister’s former husband whose own hopes of moving up in his blue collar world were dashed inadvertently, at least, by Jasmine.

By far the most significant relationship here is the delicate relationship between sisters who aren’t bound by blood, but who somehow come together to flounder around in the often-painful arena of life when no one else seems willing to help them battle the bull.

British actress Hawkins, a Golden Globe winner for her work in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky in 2008, is superb as Ginger, Jasmine’s savior and sounding board until she summons enough backbone to be her own person.

Allen’s latest dramatic masterpiece belongs primarily to Blanchett, however. The superior talent who took home a best supporting actress Academy Award as Katharine Hepburn in The Aviator opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in 2004, is a shoo-in for at least a nomination as best actress in a leading role this year. Blanchett’s portrait of a socialite melting into oblivion before our very eyes is both stunning and, at times, almost unbearable to witness.

Why? Once again Allen, who could be headed for another best director Oscar, has found his muse.

In this case it’s an apocalyptic one, and Blanchett is the perfect actress to channel her emotionally.

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MPAA rating: PG-13 (mature thematic material, language and sexual content)

Running time:  98 minutes

Jalapeño rating: 3 1/2 (out of 4)

'The Butler' could learn from the butler

President Eisenhower (Robin Williams) and Cecil Gaines in the cinematic White House. (The Weinstein Company)

Lee Daniels’ The Butler does something its title character, poised, non-intrusive White House butler Cecil Gaines, would never consider.  It rushes and over-serves. 

Generally, though, The Butler, as the sprawling political drama was called until a title squabble necessitated the addition of director Daniels' name, is a noble project of keen interest to anyone willing to take a hard look at the grittier side of U.S. history.

It should come as no surprise that Forest Whitaker, the Academy Award-winning title character of The Last King of Scotland in 2006, is superb to the point of jumping into the Oscar contender’s race again as Gaines.

Whitaker waved his fist in the air and screamed orders as dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland.  As Gaines, though, one of his generation’s most gifted actors gets under the skin and into the soul of a humble man whose granite backbone was forged as a young boy when he witnessed ruthless mistreatment of both parents on a cotton farm in the Deep South in 1926.

 Slavery may have officially been a thing of the past by about a half century by then, but this film’s early  scenes may inspire some in the audience to dig out a history book and check to make sure.

First as an act of survival, then as a vocation, Gaines learns to serve.  Once he makes his way to Washington, D.C., the observant servant lands a job first at a fine hotel and finally at the White House, where he stands out as a loyal African-American serving wealthy white folks.

The Butler begins to flounder when it becomes apparent that Daniels, the Oscar-nominated director of Precious:  Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009), and screenwriter Danny Strong (Game Change on HBO) haven’t set out to tell a personal story, but a personal story that will touch on every significant moment in black history from cotton field violence to Barack Obama’s tenure in the White House.

Not since Little Big Man (1970), which featured Dustin Hoffman and spanned about a century of Old West history, has a film bitten off so much.  Even with a running time of 12 minutes past the two-hour mark, The Butler rushes along; alternating scenes of Gaines serving seven presidents from studious Dwight D. Eisenhower (Robin Williams) to gregarious Ronald Reagan, who is very well-acted by Great Brit Alan Rickman, with Louis, Gaines’ eldest son who migrates south for college and chronicles the civil rights movement.

Some characters come and go swiftly in this father-and-son tale of reverent service by the elder that contrasts sharply with rebellious freedom fighting by the son.  That son, by the way, is performed without flaw by David Oyelowo (Lincoln), who appeared last year in Daniels’ The Paperboy and could be in the running for a supporting actor Oscar himself.

Oprah Winfrey also brings strong support as Gaines’ longsuffering, often boozed-up wife Gloria.  Perhaps a bit advanced in age to pull off scenes as a young adult, the near-legendary TV chat host and media mogul performs her difficult character with nuance and skill the rest of the way.

I also enjoyed Jane Fonda’s brief scenes as Nancy Reagan.  Not just for Fonda’s acting chops, which she has long displayed, but just for the irony of Fonda, the über liberal, portraying the wife of a famously conservative U.S. president.

It would be a mistake to think of The Butler as the accurately portrayed story of a humble man who had a backstage pass, as it were, to history and polished the White House silverware as his ostracized son fought on the front lines of the civil rights movement, however.

This is a case of a story “inspired by” the extraordinary life of Eugene Allen, who actually served eight presidential administrations.  Strong’s screenplay merely uses the real story (which can be found in Wil Haygood’s 2008 Washington Post piece titled A Butler Well Served by This Election as a dramatic launching pad.

Characters and historic conflicts are inserted to stir the dramatic pot wildly when, from this aisle seat, the man and his humility would have served the dramatic purpose just fine.

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MPAA rating:  PG-13 (some violence and disturbing images, profanity, sexual material, thematic elements and smoking)

Running time:  132 minutes

Jalapeño rating:  3 (out of 4)

Gimme that ol' time religion, a new putter

 
Lucas Black on the horse and Robert Duvall on the bag.  (Visio Entertainment)

Seven Days in Utopia

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Running time: 96 minutes

MPAA rating: G (suitable for all audiences)

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On the Web

"Seven Days in Utopia"

In a perfect cinematic world, a utopia, if you will, a wise, world-weary Robert Duvall on a horse would be quite enough to ignite dramatic sparks.

Utopia, however, is imagined perfection; an unobtainable, if noble, pilgrimage to a non-existent place.

"Seven Days in Utopia," lensed in the real Texas Hill Country hamlet of Utopia (85 miles northwest of San Antonio), features a somewhat real-life world-weary Duvall on a horse.  

Unfortunately, that is not enough to provide inspirational, not to mention entertaining, cinema.

Based on David Cook's book "Golf's Sacred Journey: Seven Days at the Links of Utopia," the big-screen version is a warm-hearted call to religion with professional golf and the sleepy Texas Hill Country as a backdrop.

It plays like an uneasy mixture of "Tin Cup," which featured Kevin Costner as an imploding golfer on tour, "The Karate Kid" and summer Bible school at the First Baptist Church in Grand Prairie, TX, which I attended in my youth.

Lucas Black, reuniting with Duvall after sharing the screen in "Sling Blade" and "Get Low," portrays troubled golfer Luke Chisholm.

There is no gospel, according to Luke.

Browbeaten by his father into becoming the next young sensation on the pro golf tour no matter what, the Waco native has a meltdown on the course, breaks his putter over his knee and drives off to somewhere, anywhere to heal his deep emotional wounds.

Quite by chance, it would seem, he winds up in Utopia, TX.  Johnny Crawford, not the actor-singer who played "The Rifleman's" son on TV in the late '50s-early '60s, but a beloved town character played by Duvall, takes the young man under his wing.  

Seeing something of himself in Luke, Johnny offers to teach the lost soul in golf spikes the proper way to play golf in a week.  He also tosses in how to get your head right and how to make the Bible a companion and life guide, although the life lessons come semi-stealthly and as an added bonus.

"Seven Days in Utopia" would work better as a G-rated golf ball swatter, Bible-thumper if an experienced director, like Duvall, for instance, took on added duties as director.  Duvall directed himself to a best actor Oscar nomination in 1997 as a Texas preacher in "The Apostle."

First-timer Matt Russell, a visual effects coordinator sliding into the directing chair, appears more concerned with how things look (and there are some gorgeous shots) than how flat and hokey scenes are playing.

Duvall is fine, although uninspired, in a role he could play in his sleep.

Co-star Black, though, acts like he is sleep-walking much of the time.  If Black has another facial expression other than the stone-faced one on display throughout here, I'd love to see it.
 
Some will call "Seven Days in Utopia" sentimental hokum that means well and speaks from the heart, but -- like the lightning bugs trapped in a jar in a slightly strained life lesson scene -- fails to ignite into memorable cinema.

I, unfortunately, am among those naysayers.

From this aisle seat, this is a difficult stance to take for three reasons.

(1) Duvall has deeply moved me emotionally and intellectually throughout much of my 31-year career as a film critic.  I will never forget Duvall's broken-down country-singer/songwriter Mac Sledge in "Tender Mercies" (1983).  Sledge convinced me when he said, "I don't trust happiness.  I never did, I never will."

(2)  This is a small-budget film obviously made with a lot of love for God, film making and the Texas Hill Country.

(3)  After over three decades offering my opinion on movies to anyone who would listen, read or watch, this is my final review of a debuting film.

(More on that to come soon.)

'The Help' wanted, very wanted

 
Skeeter (Emma Stone), left,  and Aibileen (Viola Davis) as unlikely cohorts in "The Help."  (Walt Disney)

The Help

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Running time: 146 minutes

MPAA rating: PG-13 (thematic material)

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On the Web

"The Help"

Every once in a while a movie comes along that's daring enough to lift the lid covering the grisly history of mistreatment of black people in this country up just enough for movie-goers to take a clear, often painful look at reality.

In 1985,Steven Spielberg's "The Color Purple" drew an Academy Award nomination for Whoopi Goldberg as Celie, a mentally and physically abused victim of incest first seen as a teenager and followed for 30 years.

"Precious," ironically also about an incest victim having a second child, moved the struggle against social injustice into modern-day Harlem.  Like Goldberg, newcomer Gabourey Sidibe, who portrayed the mentally tortured title character, made the short list of Oscar nominees, but did not win.

"The Help," based on Kathryn Stockett's best selling novel of 2009, operates in the same downtrodden arena. This time, though, there's a buoyancy of levity to ease the blows as snooty white society "ladies" mistreat their nannies and maids in 1960s Jackson, Miss.

Here's what those who dearly love Stockett's novel need to know first:  Don't worry.  "The Help" is, in my semi-humble opinion, one of the finest films of 2011.

If you don't fight back tears, laugh out loud and want to stand up and cheer more than once, it might be a good idea to have someone check you for a pulse.

Director Tate Taylor worked with Stockett, his longtime pal on this project.  They grew up in Jackson, Miss., so capturing the mood of the era is never a problem.  And there's this.  This project was churning along as a movie-in-the-works before the author even found a publisher for the novel.

For that reason, "The Help" deserves a break from the usual concerns the transition from novel to big-screen of hugely popular books ("Harry Potter," "Twilight," "Eat, Pray, Love") usually stir up.

Viola Davis, who earned an Oscar nomination for brief screen time opposite Meryl Streep in "Doubt," graces this inspiring tale of courage throughout.  Davis turns in a brilliant, understated performance as Aibileen Clark, a Mississippi maid and nanny who has raised 17 white children of employers.  During that long stretch of low-pay servitude, Aibileen saw her only child die needlessly.

Reluctantly, Aibileen reveals the secrets, struggles and sacrifices it takes to be a black servant in white households in the racist '60s Old South.  She gradually opens up to Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone), a recent Ole Miss grad who dreams of being a writer.  Skeeter, gradually standing up to her racist grownup of childhood pals, might just have an ear for a novel about black maids willing to tell all.  A New York City magazine editor is intrigued.

This may sound like grim subject matter, and it certainly is at times.  Armed with a smart, inspirational script he co-wrote, however, director Taylor ("Pretty Ugly People") uses the comic talents of Octavia Spencer ("Dinner for Schmucks"), who plays Minny (Aibileen's best friend), and others to garnish the difficult subject matter with effective Southern fried humor.

"The Help" is what I used to call a station-wagon movie.  We can update that now to call it an SUV movie.  That means gather as many friends and family members as you can pack into your car, van or sports utility vehicle and get to the movie house to see a spectacular crescendo of emotions likely to sweep you off your feet.

When you steady yourself, you might discover you're in a better place; a place of acceptance, compassion and understanding.

Grieve it to 'Beaver'

Walter Black (Mel Gibson) and, uh, friend. (Summit Entertainment)

The Beaver

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Running time: 91 minutes

MPAA rating: PG-13 (Mature thematic material, some disturbing content, sexuality and language including a drug reference)

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"The Beaver"

You heard the raging telephone tapes. You thought you had your mind made up about Mel Gibson, didn't you?

Well, not so fast, at least from the artistic standpoint. The man who may be Mad Max in real life, the man who has a Best Director Academy Award statuette on his mantel for "Braveheart" still has plenty to give when those troubled blue eyes stare into a movie camera.

Gibson and old pal and former co-star Jodie Foster ("Maverick") team up for something exceeding daring and pretty special with the dark, dark, dark depression drama titled "The Beaver."

We're talking two two-time Oscar winners. Still, "The Beaver," which Foster apparently lobbied to direct, is the kind of movie that turns a movie studio head's toupee prematurely gray.

Fractured families trying to heal themselves (or not) are not exactly strangers to a movie marquee. But this one wallows in the kind of rotted family tree you might find after turning over a rock, like Sam Mendes' Best Picture Oscar winner "American Beauty" of 1999.

Family man Walter Black (Gibson) suffers so deeply from depression that the doctors can do nothing for him. All the former toy company CEO -- who inherited the company from a father he hated and ran it into near-bankruptcy -- does is sleep.

The wife (performed with stunning quality by Foster) finally has enough and kicks him out. Walter is even lousy at suicide attempts. But when he retrieves a beaver hand puppet from a trash bin, suddenly Walter, who has lost his will even to communicate, finds a voice.

Not his voice, exactly, but a spokes-beaver with a guttural British accent.

Talk to the hand has probably never been used quite this literally in a motion picture. The outrageous, compelling screenplay comes from first-timer Kyle Killen, who lives in Austin.

In addition to Gibson, rising-star actor Anton Yelchin ("Star Trek," "Terminator: Salvation") is also superb as Porter, Walter's almost equally-depressed son. While the dark drama plays out among Meredith (Foster), Walter and The Beaver (even in bed), Porter is suffering through a complicated relationship with a high school cheerleader.

Norah, brainy but troubled as well, is portrayed very well by Jennifer Lawrence, the Best Actress Oscar nominee for her tremendous work in "Winter's Bone."

News of Gibson's telephone rants to Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his child and ex-girlfriend, didn't surface until after "The Beaver" was shot. So feel free to read whatever you will into what fueled Gibson's rage-filler performance here.

The fact is it's a kick-in-the-gut moving performance from an actor who has never lacked for verbal intensity throughout his long career. Foster, who is outstanding both in front of and behind the camera, is to be applauded for the emotional explosion she captures in only her third directing effort.

In a town and a career where image is everything, it takes guts to put on a beaver hand puppet and bare a soul, even if the depression and rage might be partially fired from the actor's own torment.

"The Beaver" will probably not appeal to many mainstream movie fans.

For those able to separate an actor's personal life from what he leaves on a movie screen, though, "The Beaver" is dam good.

Circus love is intense, in tents

 
Marlena (Reese Witherspoon) and Jacob (Robert Pattinson) can't fight the feelings. (20th Century Fox)

Water for Elephants

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Running time: 120 minutes

MPAA rating: PG-13 (moments of intense violence and sexual content)

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 "Water for Elephants

It may not pitch its tent as one of the greatest circus shows on Earth, but "Water for Elephants" looks and feels like one of them.

Based on Sara Gruen's 2006 bestseller, "Water for Elephants" revolves around three conflicted Depression-era characters: Marlena (Reese Witherspoon), the animal loving star attraction, Jacob (Robert Pattinson), a lost soul who happens upon a circus train chugging through the night, and August (Christoph Waltz) as circus owner and ringmaster.

Wait, what about Big Al?

Sorry, novel lovers, but Big Al, the lion tamer and Marlena's abusive husband in the book, has been combined with August in the movie.

"I just finished the novel last night," one of my Richland College students told me this week. "I can't wait to see the movie."

I hope my student is OK with the transition (and there are others). Like all novel readers, however, she must realize that books and movies are two very different animals.

It all comes down to simple math, really. The book takes about a dozen hours to consume. Movie makers must condense and combine to tell a story in about two hours.

"Water for Elephants" is at its best when it recreates the desperate times of the Great Depression. Thanks to fine work from director of photography Rodrigo Prieto ("Amores Perros"), director Francis Lawrence ("I Am Legend") is able to quickly set the mood.

It's 1931. Jacob, a Cornell University veterinary student, is taking his graduation exam when word comes of a family tragedy. All is lost, so Jacob wanders the railroad tracks. Late at night, a lonesome whistle blows and puffs of approaching smoke offer shelter.

Although he doesn't know it yet, Jacob has hitched a ride on the Benzini Bros. Circus train. Morning reveals the wonders of roustabouts setting up the big top, a beautiful, mysterious star attraction named Marlena and August, who's just as quick with a big smile as he is with jealousy and rage.

I haven't read the book. I prefer to let a movie blossom on its own terms without fretting over combined characters and the like.

That said, "Water for Elephants" is fairly predictable. Jacob falls for the married Marlena, of course. August's rage knows no bounds, so danger lurks around every pile of circus animal manure.

This film is so beautiful to look at, though, that it can be forgiven for telegraphing its shots.

Waltz, the Oscar-winning gleefully sadistic Nazi of Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," portrays a similar character here. Don't blame the actor, however. Waltz is just giving his director what the character demands. With that in mind, I appreciated his performance more.

Pattinson, the London-born vampire heartthrob of the "Twilight" franchise, forgoes the pale pallor and the swooning delivery to really dive into an American character. While not exactly Academy Award worthy, Pattinson (who can act) doesn't embarrass himself in the role.

In fact, if anyone in the cast disappoints, it's Witherspoon, the leading lady. Her performance as June Carter Cash opposite Joaquin Phoenix in "Walk the Line" earned her a Best Actress Oscar in 2006.

From this aisle seat, however, Witherspoon never fully connects with Marlena. It's difficult to explain, but she maintains an icy stiffness, even during scenes where she should come across as a warmer individual.

And, let's not forget the elephant in the room, or I should say, the big top. Tai is magnificent as Rosie the Elephant, a booze-lover that steals the show from about the mid-point.