A vet battles alien microbes — and PTSD

 

Somewhere in Encounter, there's a good movie, but -- as the saying goes -- I'm not sure director Michael Pearce found it. Riz Ahmed plays a former Marine who has seen too much combat and decides that he must rescue his two sons (Lucian-River Chauhan and Aditya Geddada) from being infected by an alien invasion that has arrived in the form of "non-terrestrial microbes." Ahmed's Malik snatches his two sons from their mother and stepfather and begins a road trip. Ahmed (Sound of Metal) engages as a man who either is a super-protective father or an emotionally damaged vet suffering from terrible PTSD. The young actors hold up their ends and Pearce offers up some impressive images. Octavia Spencer signs on as the parole officer for Ahmed's Malik. He'd been in jail for striking an officer and was dishonorably discharged from the surface. As the story progresses, we learn more about Malik's history. But the movie begins as a sci-fi thriller and morphs into something else, leaving it to us to find the proper point of view from which to see the movie's increasingly tense events. The most touching thing about Encounter involves watching two young people trying to figure out their father's strange behavior. Overall, though, a missed opportunity.

'Luce': a complicated look at hope and race

Watching Luce, a big-screen adaptation of a play by JC Lee, I kept thinking about playwright David Mamet -- not because the movie deals with middle-class delusions about life in a racially charged context, but because director Julius Onah establishes a climate that creates Mamet-like doubt about the truth of what transpires. Onah might have had just that in mind because he sets up a variety of oppositional forces: a mother’s belief in her son, a father’s hard-nosed skepticism, a teacher’s doubts, a bright young man's ability to role play and nearly everyone’s desire to see an outcome that confirms their preconceptions. A strong cast carries the story’s burdens with powerful conviction. Luce (a terrific Kevin Harrison Jr.) is an adopted child from Eritrea, who’s excelling his way through a college-bound senior year. Naomi Watts portrays Luce’s devoted mother and Tim Roth, his father. Octavia Spencer appears as one of Luce’s teachers; she appreciates Luce's intelligence but suspects that there’s something volatile brewing beneath the exemplary surface of the young man’s life. Onah, who also wrote the screenplay, adds a variety of additional issues to the mix, including sexual abuse of a female student (Andrea Bang) and the justifiable bitterness of another black student (Omar Shariff Brunson Jr). Unlike Luce, Brunson's character never gets the benefit of the doubt. The school's principal (Norbert Leo Butz) seems invested in telling whatever story he believes will make his school look great. I think it would be a mistake to view Luce as a movie solely about interracial adoption; it's more about the way people reveal themselves by investing their hopes in a promising young man. Onah deftly handles the movie’s many conflicting themes right up until an ending that isn’t entirely satisfying. Still, the movie’s willingness to tackle complex issues makes for provocative viewing, primarily because Luce pushes an audience to weigh the various positions of characters increasingly caught in a pressurized situation none of them entirely can control.

A fairy tale from Guillermo del Toro

The Shape of Water, a romantic fantasy about a cleaner and a "monster.''

Guillermo del Toro chases dreams, attempting (and often succeeding) in mixing horror and romanticism as he allows his ample imagination to invade reality. In his great 2006 movie, Pan's Labyrinth, del Toro produced a dark fantasy about Franco's Spain. Now in The Shape of Water, del Toro turns to American shores, for a fairy tale about the love between a mute woman (Sally Hawkins) and a creature who has been brought from the depths of the Amazon to the US by government officials who see him as a threat.

The second half of del Toro's conception -- the part involving an attempt by a government agent (Michael Shannon) to destroy the creature -- might be the weakest part of the movie, flirting with cliches about the way officialdom inevitably becomes the enemy of beauty and mystery.

But this creature is different. Called Amphibian Man in the credits (Doug Jones under a ton of make-up), the creature has the physique of a man but also has scales and the ability to be fierce when threatened. In the Amazon, natives thought Amphibian Man was a god. Rather than trying to trample his strangeness, they elevated it.

Perhaps never quite as poetic as its wonderful title, The Shape of Water nonetheless allows del Toro to give full vent to an imagination into which movies flow, cinematic tributaries that fuel his sense of invention. It's not coincidental that Hawkins' Elisa lives above a theater called the Orpheum where The Story of Ruth is playing or that her neighbor (a gay artist played by Richard Jenkins) obsessively watches old movies, preferring them to the news of the day.

Set in Baltimore during the 1960s, the movie alternates between two major locations: Elisa's apartment and her place of employment, a government installation where Amphibian man is being held prisoner.

Elisa and her co-worker (a down-to-earth Octavia Spencer) learn that the creature is being tormented by Shannon's character. An authoritarian jerk, Shannon's Strickland becomes the real monster, a self-justifying sadist disguised as a "normal" man. Shannon's Strickland lives in suburbia, indulges himself by buying a Cadillac and pounds away (literally) during sex with his mildly libidinous wife.

Michael Stuhlbarg makes an appearance as a scientist who wants to preserve the creature. He believes that it would be a crime to destroy Amphibian Man. Stuhlbarg's Bob has a double identity. It's not much of a spoiler to tell you that Bob is also a Russian spy and that the Russians have their eye on this creature. They, too, would like to harness its powers.

Hawkins excels in her performance as a silent woman who gradually reveals her strengths. From the beginning, del Toro establishes Elisa's affinity for water. For Elisa, water and sexuality are intimately connected. And, yes, Elisa not only has a romantic interest in the creature; she has sex with him. She explains to Spencer's curious Zelda how this union is possible in one of the movie's giggly joking moments.

Del Toro delivers on the promise of the title. There's a lot of water in The Shape of Water, arriving in the form of flooded rooms, downpours and the tank in which Amphibian Man languishes. Water is life and, as such, can't always be contained.

The movie's romanticism extends to its elements that in the 1960s might have been considered "subversive," a woman who can't speak, a gay man, and a black woman. It falls to these outsiders to appreciate Amphibian Man in all his scaly glory. It is only in union with Amphibian Man that Elisa finds her true identity. She's finally complete.

Those familiar with del Toro's work won't be surprised at the movie's visual mastery, greatly aided by the cinematography of Dan Lausten and the production design of Paul D. Austerberry; they help the movie live in a world all its own.

The Shape of Water doesn't quite reach the magical heights at which del Toro must have been aiming, but it stands as a work in which sweet and sour tones bump against one another with del Toro insisting that only in the full embrace of those we deem alien do we find our deepest humanity -- or maybe he's just telling a small story about a woman who deserves more than life has given her.

Either way, The Shape of Water brims with strange charm.

She's gifted. Is that good?

Chris Evans stars in a story that asks: What's the best way to raise a math genius?

Is it better for a child to be supremely gifted or ultra-normal? Let's define some terms. In the case of the new movie Gifted, a genius child is one who can hang with mathematicians twice or even three times her age, figure out brain-busting equations and become a splendid freak of nature, a prodigy who deserves to be separated from her rude and scoffing peers. Normal? Well, those kids play with other children, don't consider themselves part of brainiac aristocracy and generally fit into their surroundings.

If those sound like extremes, you're right. And that's part of the trouble with Gifted, which concocts many scenes designed to advance one side or the other. Nuance? Not really.

Frank (Captain America's Chris Evans) takes care of his seven-year-old niece Mary (Mckenna Grace). Mary's a math genius, but Frank -- who lives in Florida and who scratches out a meager living repairing boat motors -- doesn't want his niece to become an isolated outsider, a girl segregated from other kids by her astronomical IQ.

Mary lives with Frank because her mother (also a math genius) committed suicide. Before her death, Frank's sister suggested that Frank raise Mary. Mary's late mom grew up under the harsh tutelage of a mother (Lindsay Duncan) who focused on math prizes to the exclusion of nearly everything else.

Against the advice of his neighbor (a wasted Octavia Spencer), Frank sends Mary to public school. Her teacher (Jenny Slate) quickly recognizes Mary's capabilities and suggests -- along with the school's principal -- that Mary enroll in a school for gifted kids. A full scholarship will be arranged, but Frank resists.

To add to the movie's inflated poignancy, Mary has a one-eyed cat for a pet, another of the film's outcasts.

Before the movie ends, Duncan's Evelyn sues her son for custody of Mary. The drama takes us through foster homes, courtroom scenes, separations that are supposed to be heartbreaking, and the near-death of the one-eyed cat.

The movie ignores many potentially rich dramatic pathways, the most notable being its refusal to explore why Frank quit his job as a Boston philosophy professor to become a blue-collar dropout in Florida. If Frank really wanted to become Mary's guardian, he might have kept his job and his health insurance. He would have avoided looking irresponsible and bereft.

But Gifted isn't complex or subtle enough to explore such contradictions: They simply become part of a backstory that's more suggested than probed.

Shorn of his Captain America persona, Evans seems only a little less bland; Duncan does her best to convey the arch elitism if an IQ snob and young Grace proves cute and engaging.

The movie's basic conflicts are interesting enough, but director Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider Man and (500) Days of Summer) doesn't plumb enough depths: Instead, he throws lots of tasty ingredients into his stew and overcooks them until they soften and (alas) turn to mush.

Race, not space, the final frontier

A little-known story about the black women who helped make the space program fly.

The old adage constantly seems to be proven wrong. What we don't know usually does hurt us -- or at least makes us intellectually and spiritually poorer.

Consider that while watching Hidden Figures, a movie about the little-known role played by a group of black women in the space program during the 1960s. Director Theodore Melfi deals with a story that has remained as hidden from most Americans as the women who inspired it.

Melfi delineates the racism experienced by black women employed by NASA in a pre-computer world in which humans did the necessary calculations for space missions, confirming the trajectories of rockets, for example. The sophisticated mathematical work conducted by these women was an essential part of NASA's operations.

The story focuses on three women played by a talented trio of actresses: Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae.

Henson's Katherine Johnson receives the most attention. Johnson, a math whiz, is selected to leave the anonymity of the computation squad and work with the big boys in NASA's Space Task Group during a variety of important missions. Hell, in those days, all the missions seemed important.

Spencer's Dorothy Vaughan quickly realizes that computers eventually would replace the humans who did the calculating. So she learned about computers, and made her charges learn about them, as well. As a result, the women of the black computation pool were fully prepared to continue working when NASA began automating things that previously were done by hand.

It's interesting to recall a time when computers were room-sized; the one purchased by NASA didn't fit through the door to the room where it eventually was housed.

Finally, Monae's Mary Jackson pursues her ambitions by making the transition to a full-fledged engineer, a route that required defiance of Virginia norms in segregated education.

Melfi (St. Vincent) brings upbeat energy to his adaptation of Margot Lee Shatterly's book Hidden Figures: The Untold Story of the African American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race. The movie's star trio is more than equal to the task of showing us the inequities these women faced and the determination it took to overcome them.

We're talking about a time when bathrooms for the races were separate, when educated white engineers had difficulty believing black women possibly could be their equals, and when segregation was so ingrained that Johnson's white co-workers insisted that she drink from her own coffee pot.

Kirsten Dunst portrays an aloof supervisor who refuses to acknowledge that Spencer's Vaughan is doing the work of a supervisor -- work that Dunst's character couldn't begin to tackle. Still, Vaughn receives no extra pay.

Kevin Costner plays the gruff but understanding white guy who focuses on the mission to the exclusion of everything else, including race. Costner's Al Harrison insists that Johnson advance in the hierarchy by joining the Space Task Group. Johnson's skills in analytic geometry are better than anyone else's in the group, he realizes. End of story.

Jim Parsons takes the role of the opposition, a white engineer who has no interest in seeing black women enter a domain previously reserved for white men.

Too few of us know the story of these women, so Hidden Figures instantly qualifies as a revelation. Beyond that Henson, Spencer and Monae are playing women who succeed for reasons that most movie characters -- men and women included -- seldom do: They're smart.

For a movie about math wizards, the story is pretty much told by the numbers, but a talented cast gives Hidden Figures enough freshness to overcome its formulaic moments.

Besides, it's worth remembering that while sophisticated scientists and engineers were trying to reach the stars, social conditions at home didn't always reflect an equal amount of intelligence and daring.

There's lots of fun in 'Zootopia'

Sometimes fun is the best ambition.

I have no idea whether Zootopia -- the latest animated fantasy from Disney -- will become a classic, but I do know that it scores high on the fun meter.

So three cheers for a story about Judy Hopps (voice by Ginnifer Goodwin), a bunny who aspires to become a cop in the city of Zootopia. Police work has been Judy's ambition since she was a child.

Primed for action and a do-gooder's career, Judy wants to leave the countryside and her family of underachieving carrot farmers.

When Judy arrives in the city, she becomes the first bunny on the Zootopia PD. An unimpressed chief Bogo (Idris Elba), arbitrarily decides that Judy's fit only for parking duty. He doesn't believe a bunny can hold her own on Zootopia's mean streets, hardly a surprising opinion from a water buffalo.

Zootopia is unique because the animals all get along. That's why it's called Zootopia. Predators and prey may not be the best of friends, but the former have learned to refrain from devouring the latter.

While handing out parking tickets, Judy meets Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a conniving con artist of a fox who eventually teams with Judy to help crack a case involving the disappearance of 15 mammals.

If Judy can solve the mystery, she'll get herself off parking duty, maintain a position on the force and climb out of Chief Bogo's (you'll pardon the expression) dog house.

Judy and Nick make an odd couple as they learn some shocking news: Some predators suddenly are turning on prey, thereby threatening Zootopia's peaceable social structure.

Disney loads up on animals and voices, but I particularly enjoyed an arctic shrew mobster who'll remind adults in the audience of Don Corleone. Mr. Big, as he's called, is brought to gravelly voiced life by Maurice LaMarche.
Appropriately, I suppose, the Zootopia's DMV is staffed by sloths, a joke that surely will appeal to every adult who's ever endured what seems like an interminable wait at any department of motor vehicles.

The story evolves into a light-hearted police procedural that winds up preaching a lesson about acceptance and free will -- if that's not too grandiose a term for the fact that the animal characters are forced to decide whether to be ruled by instinct or choice.

Directors Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush do a fine job of keeping Zootopia amusing for kids and equally enjoyable for the adults who accompany them to theaters.

Disney's animators seem to have had a grand time creating Zootopia -- which consists of districts such as Tundratown, Little Rodentia and Bunnyburrow.

OK, that's a bit theme-parkish, but dividing Zootopia into distinct environments must have kept the animators from getting bored. It also gives Judy and Nick an opportunity to venture into Zootopia's bad neighborhoods.

At various times Judy must prove to herself and the world that she's no dumb bunny; the same goes for this frolic of a movie. The highest compliment I can pay Zootopia? It's no dumb bunny, either.

A racial drama misses the mark

A white grandfather fights for custody of his black granddaughter.

In Black or White, Kevin Costner plays Elliot Anderson, a successful Los Angeles attorney whose 17-year-old daughter died during childbirth. The child's father, a drug-addicted black man, took no responsibility for his daughter, so Elliot and his wife raised young Eloise.

But when Elliot's wife dies in a car crash, the girl's paternal grandmother (Octavia Spencer) proposes that she share custody with Elliot. He rejects what seems like a perfectly reasonable offer.

Her son may be wayward, but Spencer's Rowena appears to be entirely responsible. She cares for her nieces and nephews, presides over a happy household and runs a successful real estate business.

Despite the fact that he's drinking too much and dealing with grief, Elliot finds himself in the middle of a custody fight that dominates what becomes an increasingly unconvincing look at the divide separating an affluent LA lawyer his scrappy opponent.

The problem: Black or White doesn't delve deeply enough into the characters who are upholding different sides of this custody fight.

The movie also stacks the deck against Eloise's father (Andre Holland), a troubled young man who turns up about half way through the movie, claiming that he's reformed.

Holland's Reggie is so obviously ill-prepared for fatherhood that the movie never gives him a chance. He tries to extort money from Elliot, and winds up in a late-picture confrontation that's neither believable nor fair.

Costner does a good job portraying alcoholic denial and the unexpressed anger Elliot harbors about his wife's death, but he's stuck in a scenario that goes where most second-rate dramas land, the courtroom.

There, writer/director Michael Binder cooks up a strategy in which Rowena's brother -- an attorney played by Anthony Mackie -- tries to convince the presiding judge that Elliot's a racist with a bad drinking problem.

Perhaps to keep us from losing sympathy for Elliot, he's portrayed as a somewhat responsible drunk. Elliot hires an unwaveringly earnest math tutor (Opho Koaho) for Eloise. Elliot also asks the young man to double as a driver when he's too inebriated to get behind the wheel himself, which is most of the time.

Black or White doesn't spend enough time with Rowena to make us understand what she wants for Eloise, and it never allows her to articulate a reasonable argument about why a black child needs to be exposed to other blacks.

Elliot seems to be living an all-white life.

The movie tilts that way, too. Black or White spends entirely too much time with Costner as it leads us toward a finale in which one side essentially gives up.

Too often, Black or White misses the opportunity to explore the gray areas that could have shed real and productive light on an interesting problem. The movie concludes as if it has resolved its issues. I'm not sure, though, that it ever really tackled them.

All aboard for a compelling ride

A wild, weird dystopian journey that demands to be seen.

Lately, I've been wondering why we can't seem to get enough of dystopia? I don't need to recount all the ways in which the world's a mess, but it's intriguing that just about every tentpole movie (from Edge of Tomorrow to Transformers: Age of Extinction to The Hunger Games) mires itself in the gloomiest possible vision of a future we once saw as endlessly bright -- or at least that's the story we tell ourselves about the past.

TV, of course, has joined the vigorous march toward doom. This week, I watched the opening episode of HBO's The Leftovers, which (happily) is not another cooking show. The jury may be out on the show's merits, but it brings dystopian flavor to a present in which a third of the population has vanished -- for no apparent reason. The great disappearance seems to have resulted in a thorough demoralization of those who remain, the leftovers of the title.

That shows airs at the same time as The Last Ship, a TNT production about the lone surviving naval ship in a world vanquished by a plague-like virus.

As a culture, we seem to be wallowing in mass depression -- and even if the box office has flagged a bit -- we seem to be enjoying our gloom immensely.

Me? I've grown weary of the dystopian thinking that has burdened the artistic imagination. But maybe even that attitude reflects the general malaise. What the hell's wrong with me? I'm having trouble enjoying mass destruction.

Now comes Snowpiercer, an international hybrid of a movie from Korean director Bong Joon-ho (The Host), and it may help restore my faith in hopelessness.

Perhaps because its director is Korean and perhaps because Bong bases his movie on a French graphic novel called Le Transperceneige, Snowpiercer has become an art-house offering.

Don't be misled. Snowpiercer is an action movie wrapped in an iron-clad vision of a society in which survival depends on brutally enforced class divisions that may have resulted from an intense competition for limited resources.

Bong's refreshingly preposterous movie takes place on a train that circles the globe. The lives of those on board are maintained, but the train goes nowhere. The whole idea of destinations seem to have vanished.

How did this happen? Global warming was heating the planet to intolerable levels. Someone figured out how to cool the planet, but the solution went too far, turning the entire Earth into a snow-covered wasteland. The only survivors are on the train to nowhere, lurching endlessly through sub-zero temperatures.

As can happen when a group is totally suppressed, the lower classes who occupy the rear of the train are becoming restless. Curtis (Chris Evans) and his friend Edgar (Jamie Bell) decide it's time for a revolt.

This means organizing their fellow sufferers and fighting their way to the front of the train, where people haven't been reduced to living in squalor and eating nothing but protein bars that look as if they're made from a combination of recycled rubber and Gummy Bears. They're not.

A mysterious figure we don't see until the film's final act presides over the train and its regimented inhabitants.

Bong creates plenty of excitement as the rebels attempt to traverse the train's length, exposing the train's social structure as they go, and pouring on plenty of revolutionary violence.

Bong obtains fine performances from a cast that includes Octavia Spencer as the mother of a boy who's taken to the front of the train for unknown reasons, and John Hurt, as a sagacious old man who became a peon when he was banished from the front of the train.

We also meet Mason (an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton), a bureaucrat who travels the length of the train making announcements for the purportedly revered leader and doling out punishments to those who express dissatisfaction.

Alison Pill has a wonderfully exuberant turn as a school teacher who instructs young people and who also leads them in insanely cheerful devotions to the unseen leader.

Korean actors Kang-ho Song and Ah-sung Ko, play a father/daughter team of drug addicts who join the fray.

Intricately realized and totally unhinged, Snowpierecer can't be watched without feeling a bit of trepidation, probably because much depends on what happens when our revolutionaries finally reach the front of the train, where actor Ed Harris becomes a presence.

It pains me to say that the finale is a bit of a letdown. How could it not be? Harris doles out a bits of expositional and philosophical dialogue that don't quite deliver the hoped-for payoff.

But don't let that stop you from seeing one of the most creative, strange and propulsive movie's of the year. Flaws and all, Snowpiercer -- like its perpetually moving train -- takes us on one hell of a trip.

A shocking, powerful 'Fruitvale Station'

A stunning look at the killing of an unarmed young black man.

If you're looking for a timely movie, I doubt you'll do better than Fruitvale Station, first-time director Ryan Coogler's sad and powerful film about Oscar Grant III, an unarmed, 22-year-old black man who was shot and killed by a Bay Area Rapid Transit cop on Jan. 1, 2009.

Though different in its particulars, Grant's true-life case inevitably demands comparison with the highly publicized story of Trayvon Martin -- and rightfully so. Both cases point to the vulnerability of young black men who sometimes find tragedy simply because they're young black men.

Coogler's movie leaves us speechless and stunned, even though we know what's going to happen from the outset. The film's power lies in the skill with which Coogler brings us close to a troubled young man, making sure we understand both Oscar's strengths and his weaknesses.

Coogler isn't out to canonize Grant, who had served prison time, smoked and sold marijuana, lost a supermarket job because of chronic tardiness and generally felt at loose ends.

But it's also clear that Grant -- played with a full range of emotions by Michael B. Jordan (Friday Night Lights and The Wire) -- is trying to listen to his better angels. We see this when he's playing with his daughter Tatiana (Ariana Neal), whom he obviously loves, and we see it again when he finally opens up to the child's mother (Melonie Diaz).

Oscar's also devoted to his mother (Octavia Spencer), a woman who expects him to toe the line. During a prison visit to her son, Spencer's character delivers a heartbreaking dose of tough love.

Although Fruitvale Station includes a few flashbacks, it mostly takes place during the last 24 hours of young Oscar's life. He tries to persuade the manager of the supermarket where he worked to rehire him; he phones his sister; he shops for seafood for his mother's birthday dinner; he debates with himself about the wisdom of trying to generate income by selling marijuana; and he eventually heads out for a night on the town in San Francisco with Diaz's Sophina and a few friends.

Fearing New Year's Eve mayhem on the roads, Oscar's mother urges him not to drive. She thinks the train will be safer.

It wasn't. Grant met his end on an elevated BART platform when transit cops showed up to deal with a fight on a train, a tussle instigated by a white guy looking for trouble.

Coogler isn't interested in easy moralizing, and we hardly need a lecture to remind us of the deep injustice of what happened to Oscar. The cop who shot Grant was captured on a video made by a passenger with a cellphone -- and used briefly in the movie. The officer, who said he thought he was using a taser rather than his gun, was sentenced to two years in state prison. He served a year.

To its credit, Coogler's film never feels like a screed aimed at the police; it's a clear-eyed view of what happened to one young black man who set out to party with friends and wound up dead.

Coogler makes it clear that Oscar was at a crossroads in his life, and we're left to deal with the grief and bafflement created by so much unfulfilled promise. Jordan's performance -- by turns wary, charming, angry and sincere -- makes us think that Oscar would have turned the corner. The only thing we can know for sure is that he damn well should have been allowed to try.

My Oscar predictions: Supporting roles

Every year, it's incumbent on critics to make Oscar predictions. Rather than flood you with predictions, I thought I'd try something different this year. Throughout the coming week, I'll gradually work my way toward best picture as I consider the major categories. So without further ado, my first predictions for the 2012 Academy Awards, which will be handed out on Sunday, Feb. 26.

Best supporting actor, the nominees are:
Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Nick Nolte, Warrior
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Sure I'd love to hear a Nick Nolte acceptance speech, but I'm going with the conventional wisdom in this category. Christopher Plummer will win for his portrayal of a late-blooming gay man in Beginners.

Best supporting actress, the nominees are::
Bérénice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer, The Help

As always, a difficult category, but Octavia Spencer is the frontrunner who will prevail. If I had a vote, I'd cast it for Janet McTeer, who played a woman posing as a man in Albert Nobbs.

Caveats: Some critics believe there could be a groundswell of support for Max Von Sydow because he's had a long and estimable career. I wouldn't bet on it. Berenice Bejo might ride the coattails of The Artist, a favorite for best picture, but I'm thinking that Spencer will turn the rest of the field into also-rans.*

Join me, Denver Post Film Critic Lisa Kennedy, Starz Denver Film Festival Director Britta Erickson and Oscar maven Bob Becker for an Oscar preview Cinema Salon, 7:30 p.m., Wed., Feb. 22 at the FilmCenter/Colfax, 2510 E. Colfax Ave. We'll predict, I'm sure, but we'll also talk about why we still care (if we do) about the whole damn business anyway.

Well-acted 'Help' could have hit harder

Viola Davis gives an outstanding performance, but the big-screen adaptation of a wildly popular novel lacks bite.

The Help. the big-screen adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's best-selling 2009 novel, attempts to explore the complex relationships between black maids and the white women who employed them at a time when the civil rights struggle was just beginning to change the South.

Set in Jackson, Miss., The Help boasts some impressive acting, as well as some understanding of the indigestible mixture of gentility, brutality, tension and moral rot that defined the Jim Crow era.

Deluded whites may have thought of their maids as part of the family, but they objected if the maids wanted to use the same bathrooms as the rest of the "family," and they certainly weren't above patronizing and exploiting women who labored for as little as $182 per month.

Despite all this, The Help shows that black maids often loved their white charges. Struggling to make ends meet, black women raised white kids with wisdom and affection -- even while being subjected to unconscionable doses of daily humiliation.

On screen, The Help displays great sympathy for the maids on which the story focuses, but the movie's also saddled with a tired ploy, building its story around a recent white college graduate (Emma Stone) who aspires to be a writer. Hoping to provide a platform for voices that hitherto had not been heard in the white community, Stone's Skeeter decides to tell the stories of Jackson's black maids.

Skeeter approaches Aibileen (Viola Davis) about helping to tell these stories from a black point of view. Aibileen, we learn, raised 17 white kids, and when we meet her she's tending to the daughter of an incompetent and indifferent white mother.

A word about Davis, who was nominated for a best-supporting actress Oscar for her work opposite Meryl Streep in Doubt. Davis seems incapable of hitting a wrong note. She carries the weight of Aibileen's past with bitterness, rue and grace. You get the sense that Davis knows the truth of every scene in which she finds herself, and isn't afraid to speak it.

The outspoken Minny (Octavia Spencer) emerges as the movie's other principal maid, a sout powerhouse of a woman who winds up working for Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), a befuddled bleach-blonde who's inept at being a wife and whose lower-class origins revolt Jackson's bridge-playing set.

Spencer can be a funny and quick, but I had a slight qualm about the way she turned Minny's indignation into entertainment.

Sporting a mass of tangled curls, Stone creates an intelligent small portrait of rebellion as Skeeter deals with her mother (Allison Janney), a cancer-stricken woman who wants nothing more than to see her daughter marry.

Bryce Dallas Howard plays Hilly Holbrook, the movie's resident ogre, a white woman of bitchy, racist sensibilities. The Help has been criticized for turning Howard's character into a caricature. I get that, but it's worth remembering that subtlety wasn't a hallmark of Southern racism in 1963.

As non-threatening as a racial drama can be, The Help unfolds episodically with occasional references to brewing turmoil in the South, notably the murder of Medgar Evers. Evers' murder galvanizes the maids, encouraging them to tell their stories to Skeeter, who needs at least a dozen such tales to get her book published.

Carefully appointed and prone to nostalgia, The Help hits its share of wrong notes: A joke about "the terrible awful" -- perhaps the movie's biggest crowd-pleaser -- is as overworked as the movie's maids; and first time director Tate Taylor, an actor and friend of the novel's author, can't resist drawing out the movie's ending lest he leave risk leaving us even a little uninspired.

Worse than any of that, The Help -- which is a bit of a curio -- may encourage misguided feelings that racism somehow has been safely locked in the closet of the past where it no longer can do any harm. For all its virtues, The Help doesn't go far enough, hit hard enough or dig deep enough. It could have benefited from less burnish and more bite.