The Help (2011) - Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spenser

The story of a young girl who returns to her hometown of Jackson, Mississippi in 1963, she aspires to become a writer.

While her friends titter around the bridge table, she begins to ask the town's maids to tell their stories.

Civil riots are breaking out in Mississippi, one of the worst states in the country. The maids, afraid for their jobs, their families and their lives, decide to risk all to tell the town's secrets.

The movie stars Easy A's Emma Stone as Skeeter, the wide-eyed journalist. The two central maids are played by Doubt's Viola Davis and Spiderman's Octavia Spenser and give scene-stealing performances. Octavia, in fact, really steals the show.

A superb cast, the catty queen bee, Hilly Holbrook, is played by Ron Howard's baby girl, Bryce Dallas Howard. Jessica Chastain, from Tree of Life, is charming as the ditzy, white trash bombshell. And Allison Janney is wonderful as Skeeter's mother.

All in all, it was well done and not too smarmy.

My only concern is that some may think that this is based in fact. Although the notion is real and these types of incidents did occur, no book, entitled "The Help", was ever published in 1963.

And the most interesting factoid? One of the executive producers was Mohamed Khalaf Al-Mazrouei, chairman of the Abu Dhabi Media Company, and Nate Berkus, a designer and Oprah protege.

Inglourious Basterds - Brad Pitt (2009)

I don't know, I must be getting old.

And Brad Pitt is getting old.

But I just didn't think this movie was that good.

Don't get me wrong; I loved Pulp Fiction. But Quentin Tarantino's latest effort--Inglourious Basterds-- is more of the same, tired, overly violent crap.

The blood baths, so outrageous in Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill: Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, are no longer shocking. It is just gross.

And it just wasn't that funny.

I thought Pitt did an excellent job--I loved his bravado and his accent. A cross between John Wayne and Clark Gable, he was the funniest thing going. The plot was just silly, tho--a movie about wishful thinking and alternative histories.

The people who were laughing are predisposed to Tarantino. No matter what he says or does, to these folks, he's golden.

I was waiting for a spectacular soundtrack and was, again, disappointed.

Tarantino had his time in the sun. Now the sun has set and it is nightfall. He needs to stop while he's ahead.

I won't see another Tarantino. Not unless he really changes his ways.

Chéri - Michelle Pfeiffer (2009)

This gorgeously filmed movie, starring Michelle Pfeiffer, is an adaptation of two novels by famed French novelist, Collette.

Collette, a writer of the late 1800s and early 1900s, wrote the novel Gigi, upon which the same-titled film is based.

The novels, Chéri and La Fin de Chéri, are about a aging courtesan and her relationship with the son of a fellow courtesan.

Michelle Pfeiffer plays the 1890s version of a cougar with elegance and verve. Still startlingly beautiful, it is no surprise that Chéri, played by the equally beautiful Rupert Friend, is enraptured.

Opened with a fairy tale-like narration by the film's director,Stephen Frears, the stage is set for a magical, farcical tale with outrageously beautiful sets, costumes and staging.

Lovely to behold, it was a movie about beauty and its power to enrapture us and entice us to hold it at any price.

Pfeiffer did a wonderful job of capturing the certainty and knowledge of an aging beauty who knows her limits yet yearns to hold on to youth.

A truly French film, Chéri captured the ironic humor and angst typical of their films.

The movie also starred Kathie Bates, who made absolutely no attempt to use either a French or British accent. I was a little disappointed by this but she performed passably well.