Gifted

Review by Joseph Anthony

1997’s GOOD WILL HUNTING was the story of a genius with a tragic backstory played by Matt Damon. His future was the source of anxiety for those around him. While the well-meaning psychologist - played by Robin Williams - only wants Damon’s character to find happiness, the M.I.T. professor - played by Stellan Skarsgård - wants Damon to become a great academic mind and achieve full potential. And then there’s a motley crew that surrounds Damon.

GIFTED replaces Damon with a brilliant 6 year old girl, Mary (Mckenna Grace). Robin Williams is replaced with a caring Uncle, Frank (Chris Evans). Rather than Skarsgård, we have another M.I.T. academic (this time it’s Grandmother Evelyn played by Lindsay Duncan). Instead of a motley crew, Mary has support from loving neighbor Roberta (Octavia Spencer), school-teacher Bonnie (Jenny Slate) and the most adorable one-eyed cat, Fred.

Hidden Figures

By George M. Thomas

Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) meets John Glenn (Glen
Powell) in HIDDEN FIGURES.

It’s rare when a film can tackle topics as seriously as bigotry and racism and still make it feel as if it’s a feel good story.

That’s the best way to describe HIDDEN FIGURES, one of those stories that seem to be lost to time.  Or is it more apt to describe it as one that those who record history would just as soon forget?

Thankfully, there are those such as Margot Lee Shatterly, whose book serves as the source material for Allison Schroeder and director Theodore Melfi’s screenplay, who are diligent and intelligent enough to understand what may seem like a small moment in the here and now may actually be a bigger moment in history.

Paradise (now on video)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

Just about every year some entertainment writer (who's not laid off yet) announces it's the "Year of the Woman" in film or TV because Tina Fey has another magazine cover shot, or something. I always love that: `Year of the Woman.' Notice that it's never Year of the WOMEN. Like, there can be only one at a time. "Move over, Kathryn Bigelow, you're done, crone. This Catherine Hardwicke is the hot new... Oh, get out of here, Catherine Hardwicke, Kristin Wiig is the It Girl right now. Oh, Kristin Wiig, take your wrinkly, menopausal self out of our sight, we like Lena Dunham now." By the time this review runs, some other fresh meat will get Lena Dunham's premium parking space.

Diablo Cody was a hot property with her celebrated script for JUNO, catapulting her to majors, nabbing her a column in Entertainment Weekly, and gaining her a director's chair. But Cody's much-anticipated followup was the teen-horror semi-satire JENNIFER'S BODY...Which wasn't even bad, in my opinion, especially by the gutter standards of most teen-horror. But it was still ungood enough to cost Diablo Cody the Dorothy Parker esteem that the media had briefly bestowed upon her. That and maybe daring to get a year or two older than she used to be. The bitch.

The Help

Review by Pamela Zoslov

The movie version of Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel, The Help, eliminates one of the book’s main problems: Stockett’s inartful and controversial use of dialect in writing the first-person narratives of black maids in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. The book, to some readers’ dismay, is rife with “Law have mercys” and “Don’t you go sassing this white lady like you done the other.” Unless you are William Faulkner or Truman Capote or Flannery O’Connor, Southern black dialect is probably a thing you should avoid.

The movie, adapted and directed by Tate Taylor, places the dialogue in the mouths of some fine actresses, and the effect is much more natural than Stockett’s clunky prose on the page. The film gets more directly to the heart of the story, which is about the uncomfortable and often dangerous pre-civil rights relations between the races, focusing especially on the black women who cook, clean and raise the children of white women who treat them like chattel -- and sometimes like disease-carrying aliens.