The Help

RATING:***** (5 stars)

Jackson, Mississippi circa 1961. A young woman returns home from college with aspirations to be a journalist and a writer to realize just how bad the lives are for the black women in the segregated south who take care of white families.

For lack of a more succinct way to put it, The Help is the emotional Oscar-contender for late summer. At varying parts you will be smiling, laughing, and even crying. While Emma Stone and Bryce Howard are convincing, be on the lookout in a few months to see Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer on nomination lists for their simply amazing performances.

In a summer lineup of action, comic books, and sequels, The Help is a drama that we've been yearning for, and the fact that it's centered around a time and place that many of us can relate to (even for those of us not actually alive yet) just makes it all the more powerful. If you need a little more reason to see it in theatres before it hits video, rest assured that this is one of those movies that once it hits DVD will be rented out for weeks on end. So stop reading and go see it!

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Horrible Bosses

RATING:*** (3 stars)

Reaching a turning point in their lives, three friends decide they need to kill their bosses if they are going to be happy.

What should have been a funny and raucous popcorn comedy flick this last week turns out to be a kind of funny popcorn movie that just... seems... to... keep... going. Seriously, I checked my watch at least a half dozen times during this film, eacy time with the same thought, "How much longer do they need to wrap this up?"

With a dynamite cast that is more than capable of grabbing laughter and running with it, Horrible Bosses fails on an epic scale due to its pacing. The runtime claims the film is only 100 minutes--which seems conservative considering that this film really should have been much closer to that 75 minute mark. The slapstick comedy is there, but the story itself seems to plod along so often that you begin to wonder how long they plan to milk particular scenes before moving on.

All-in-all nothing fancy here, and if you can handle the slow pace of the film it makes a solid matinee to catch for some laughs and to escape from the summer heat.

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Green Lantern

RATING:**** (4 stars)

When test pilot Hal Jordan is granted a mystical ring, he is given the honor of being a member of an intergalactic peacekeeping organization--but he is not sure if he is up to the task.

Green Lantern is one of the few movies that you can say with reliable certainty could not have been made even a decade sooner because the technology simply wasn't there. For those unfamiliar with the character, his powers are fairly unique and all-encompassing: he can fly (#1) and he can create LITERALLY ANYTHING HE CAN IMAGINE if he concentrates hard enough (#2). So as you can imagine, there is a fair bit of CGI in this film because without it the movie would be an animated picture instead.

If you look around, you have probably heard a fair number of bad or so-so reviews for this film already, and here is my assumption as far as why that is: over-hype. Yes, Green Lantern is a big-budget comic book movie; that does not make it the Iron Man of 2011. What we do have, however, is a very solid action movie that is very much worth the money to go and see in theaters where you can take full advantage of all that CGI. Whether you spend the extra cash for 3D is your option--it is available in 2D as well.

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Super 8

RATING:***** (5 stars)

In the summer of 1979, a group of young boys filming an amateur movie witness a train crash that might not have been an accident after all, and might also explain some of the strange disappearances and phenomena happening in their small Ohio town.

The latest to come from the imagination of producer/director/writer J.J. Abrams is a must-see thriller for the summer of 2011. Taking strong cues from Steven Spielberg, prepare to be thrown back to a strikingly good portrayal of late-1970's middle America... and then watch the mystery unfold.

The relatively unknown cast (the only face I recognized among the major roles was Kyle Chandler) gives a surprisingly good performance, but the real beauty of the film is in the depth of the characters and the sets themselves. Super 8 is not a film that is going to have you on the edge of your seat the whole time or that will have you overcome with emotion--but you will be involved the whole time and you'll love every second of it.

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X-Men: First Class

RATING:**** (4 stars)

In the early 1960s, Charles Xavier forms a group of people with wondrous genetic mutations that give them amazing powers. Among them is his closest friend, Erik Lensherr...

Hopefully if you are a serious X-Men fan, you have thrown classic canon to the wind by now with the X-Men films. That being said, X-Men: First Class is a rather good film easily on par with the first X-Men movie that hit theaters just over a decade ago. Expect some well-done special effects, but you can also plan to expect very little in terms of character depth from anybody in this film with the exception of our three main mutants.

Professor X (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) are the focus of the story here--at least, they are the only characters who we get to see any kind of growth from and get even a vague idea of what makes them tick. First Class is really the origin story for the two leading men, and don't be at all surprised when you see Fassbender powerfully commanding the screen more often than not--look to see him in more roles henceforth.

Long story short, if you can happily (or blissfully) ignore some of the standard X-Men canon, you are in for a real treat of a film with X-Men: First Class.

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