Ava isn’t only banal, but also, in its half-hearted stabs at novel ideas, seemingly content with its banality.
In the end, the filmmakers settle for stigmatizing victimhood, abusing Sue Ann almost as much as her former tormentors.
Tate Taylor’s The Girl on the Train is a grimly deadpan lecture about messy truths and false perceptions.
As if taking a cue from its own title, the movie emphatically sets its sights on the upward trajectory of Brown’s career.
It’s unavoidable to look at Octavia Spencer’s sunny Oscar odds though the filter of co-star Viola Davis’s ascendance in the Best Actress category.
The directing race has boiled down to nine names, four of which you can pretty safely etch into stone.
It’s both unfair and too easy to shake out predictions for this category based on what is most likely to appeal to the Kindle Fire set.
A little more than table scraps, including the usual deleted scenes and making-of featurette.
The Help represents a pitiful lack of progress, and that’s hardly an indictment of the ways its characters and events are depicted on screen.
The Help is almost always more successful relating black experience than either white brutality or magnanimity.
The film’s especially detailed vision of time and place deserves to be seen in high definition.
The film’s succinct, well-paced plot avoids narrative convention and cheap sentimentality.