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  • 2019 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
      • For Sama
      • Jojo Rabbit
      • Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood
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      • Alita: Battle Angel
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      • John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum
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  • Cinema Clash Podcast
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      • The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
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      • A Wrinkle in Time
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    • 1 Star >
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  • 2017 Films
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  • 2016 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • Captain Fantastic
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      • La La Land
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      • Paterson
      • Silence
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      • Moonlight
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    • 3 Stars >
      • Allied
      • Arrival
      • Author: The JT LeRoy Story
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      • Live by Night
      • Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World
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      • A Monster with a Thousand Heads
      • The Nice Guys
      • Passengers
      • Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
      • Star Trek Beyond
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      • War Dogs
      • Wiener-Dog
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • Café Society
      • Captain America: Civil War
      • Christine
      • The Clan
      • Deepwater Horizon
      • Eddie the Eagle
      • Equals
      • The Girl on the Train
      • High-Rise
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      • Lion
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      • Louder Than Bombs
      • Morris from America
      • Pete's Dragon
      • Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
      • Queen of Katwe
      • Race
      • Southside With You
      • Storks
      • Sunset Song
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      • Warcraft
      • Zootopia
    • 2 Stars >
      • Alice Through the Looking Glass
      • American Pastoral
      • Bad Moms
      • The BFG
      • Blair Witch
      • The Choice
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      • Everybody Wants Some!!
      • The Finest Hours
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      • Suicide Squad
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • The 5th Wave
      • Allegiant
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      • Bad Santa 2
      • The Boss
      • Central Intelligence
      • Ghostbusters
      • How to Be Single
      • The Huntsman: Winter's War
      • Ip Man 3
      • Zoolander 2
    • 1 Star >
      • Gods of Egypt
      • Ice Age: Collision Course
      • My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2
      • Now You See Me 2
      • Ratchet & Clank
      • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • Ben-Hur
      • Norm of the North
      • Ride Along 2
  • 2015 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • The Big Short
      • Ex Machina
      • Jafar Panahi's Taxi
      • Steve Jobs
      • The Tribe
      • While We're Young
      • Youth
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • Best of Enemies
      • Bridge of Spies
      • Brooklyn
      • Clouds of Sils Maria
      • Concussion
      • The End of the Tour
      • The Hateful Eight
      • Inside Out
      • It Follows
      • Mad Max: Fury Road
      • The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
      • The Martian
      • Mistress America
      • The Revenant
      • Room
      • Shaun the Sheep Movie
      • Sisters
      • Spotlight
      • Star Wars: The Force Awakens
      • Straight Outta Compton
      • Truth
    • 3 Stars >
      • The Age of Adaline
      • Avengers: Age of Ultron
      • Black Mass
      • Carol
      • The Cut
      • Entourage
      • Fresh Dressed
      • The Good Dinosaur
      • Grandma
      • James White
      • Janis: Little Girl Blue
      • Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet
      • McFarland, USA
      • Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
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      • MERU
      • Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
      • Mustang
      • Pan
      • The Peanuts Movie
      • Pitch Perfect 2
      • Pixels
      • San Andreas
      • The Second Mother
      • Son of Saul
      • Spectre
      • Trainwreck
      • We Are Your Friends
      • Woman in Gold
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • American Ultra
      • Anomalisa
      • Ant-Man
      • The Assassin
      • The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
      • Boulevard
      • Crimson Peak
      • The Danish Girl
      • Far from the Madding Crowd
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      • Furious 7
      • The Gunman
      • Hippocrates: Diary of a French Doctor
      • In the Heart of the Sea
      • Jurassic World
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      • Listen to Me Marlon
      • Macbeth
      • The New Rijksmuseum
      • No Escape
      • Spy
      • The Visit
      • A Walk in the Woods
      • The Water Diviner
      • The Wolfpack
    • 2 Stars >
      • The 33
      • Aloft
      • Black Sea
      • Do I Sound Gay?
      • Fifty Shades of Grey
      • Focus
      • Freeheld
      • Get Hard
      • The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2
      • Joy
      • Minions
      • Mississippi Grind
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      • The Salvation
      • The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
      • Seventh Son
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      • Tomorrowland
      • True Story
    • 1.5 Stars >
      • Chappie
      • Desert Dancer
      • Hot Tub Time Machine 2
      • The Divergent Series: Insurgent
      • Jupiter Ascending
      • Maggie
      • Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
      • Run All Night
      • Ted 2
      • Vacation
    • 1 Star >
      • The Lazarus Effect
      • Magic Mike XXL
      • The Transporter Refueled
    • 0.5 Stars >
      • The Gallows
  • 2014 Films
    • 4 Stars >
      • Calvary
      • A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night
      • Inherent Vice
      • The LEGO Movie
      • Life Itself
      • A Most Violent Year
      • Mr. Turner
      • The Theory of Everything
    • 3.5 Stars >
      • American Sniper
      • Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
      • The Boxtrolls
      • Boyhood
      • The Equalizer
      • Fury
      • Gone Girl
      • Guardians of the Galaxy
      • The Imitation Game
      • Like Father, Like Son
      • Mommy
      • Nymphomaniac: Vol. I
      • Particle Fever
      • Selma
      • Top Five
      • Whiplash
    • 3 Stars >
      • 22 Jump Street
      • Alive Inside
      • Beside Still Waters
      • The Book of Life
      • Captain America: The Winter Soldier
      • The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: THEM
      • Draft Day
      • Edge of Tomorrow
      • Get on Up
      • Godzilla
      • The Grand Budapest Hotel
      • The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
      • I Am Ali
      • The Judge
      • Kill the Messenger
      • Locke
      • Love Is Strange
      • Nas: Time Is Illmatic
      • Night Moves
      • The November Man
      • The One I Love
      • The Overnighters
      • The Raid 2
      • Rosewater
      • Sin City: A Dame to Kill For
      • St. Vincent
      • Still Alice
      • Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon
      • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
      • Two Days, One Night
      • Unbroken
      • Under the Skin
      • Wild
      • X-Men: Days of Future Past
    • 2.5 Stars >
      • 3 Days to Kill
      • About Last Night
      • Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
      • Art and Craft
      • As Above, So Below
      • Begin Again
      • Blood Ties
      • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
      • Divergent
      • The Expendables 3
      • Fading Gigolo
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      • Horrible Bosses 2
      • The Hundred-Foot Journey
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      • Need for Speed
      • Non-Stop
      • Point and Shoot
      • RoboCop
      • Tracks
      • Transcendence
      • Veronica Mars
      • Winter's Tale
    • 2 Stars >
      • 300: Rise of an Empire
      • Alan Partridge
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      • The Art of the Steal
      • Big Hero 6
      • Blended
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      • Frances Ha
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    • 1 Star >
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    • 1 Star >
      • The Three Musketeers
      • Toast
      • Transformers: Dark of the Moon
  • Misc...
    • 2019 Middleburg Film Festival
    • 2019 AFI DOCS Film Festival
    • 2018 AFI DOCS Film Festival
    • 2017 Middleburg Film Festival
    • 2016 Middleburg Film Festival
  • Review Index
  • About Me

The Help

Picture

Directed by: Tate Taylor
Written by: Tate Taylor, Kathryn Stockett
Starring: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Bryce Dallas Howard, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Ahna O'Reilly, Allison Janney, Cicely Tyson, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen
Drama - 146 min

Picture
The Help is at once a joy to watch for its absorbing yet haunting story and for the superior acting by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer.  On the other hand, it is nauseating at times to suffer through the scenes of outright cruelty perpetrated by the white women of the south in the early 1960s.  It is one thing to read about Jim Crow in a book or listen to an old person nowadays discussing what it was like, but to see reenactments of just how dehumanizing and vindictive the times were is just unsettling.  This is an important story, fictional yes, but representative of a time and a place which reminds the audience just how ashamed we should be at aspects of our past.

A few decades ago in the south, it was commonplace for a white family to employ a black maid.  Maid is an all encompassing term for house cleaner, cook, nanny, grocery shopper, butler, and every other menial task you could think of.  They potty trained the toddlers, read them stories, and pretty much raised the children instead of their mothers who were enjoying that afternoon’s bridge party.  This particular story takes place in Jackson, MS and focuses on three main characters. 


‘Skeeter’ (Emma Stone) has just graduated from Ole Miss, one of her only clique to do so, and returned home to get her foot in the door at the local paper.  It appears she went to school for an education rather than to husband hunt which sets her apart from her friends.  She wants to be a writer but does not have the experience to get hired on by a true publishing firm.  What really separate Skeeter though is that she has a much more enlightened view on race relations.  This is odd.  Where did this character pick up the notion that perhaps certain things should not just be left alone and separate but equal is anything but? Skeeter’s mother (Alison Janney) does not display any sentiment towards her maid and Ole Miss was not widely acknowledged to be a bastion of forward and progressive thinking thought in 1963.  It is strange that Skeeter is of such a different mold than the rest, but there would be no plot if she was not.


Illicitly, Skeeter starts to interview the black maids of the town.  She spends most of her time with Aibileen (Viola Davis) and Minnie (Octavia Spencer).  These two maids share with Skeeter their horror stories of maltreatment, child neglect, and every other behind the curtain story their employer would not want anyone else to know.  Skeeter is combining all of the maids’ stories into a book to tell the rest of the country what is going on down south from the maids’ perspective this time. 


I have a hunch that come awards time, there will be a Best Actress nomination for Viola Davis and a supporting nomination for Octavia Spencer.  The film is strongest when they are on screen.  Viola showed traces of her character in 2008’s Doubt and this is Octavia’s first true starring role.  When the film flips back and focuses on the white women for a time, especially when it shows Skeeter trying to find a boyfriend or argue with her mother, the atmosphere loses its tension and the pacing slows until it gets back on track with the maids.  This film is truly unsettling at times, but well worth the audience’s discomfort to show them a time and a place not very long ago which was not just immoral, but malicious. 

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