Dear White People (2014)

“Dear White People” is the political college racial satire that was supposed to send the university where I work into gasps of “Oh, no, they didn’t!” hysterics. But most of the audience, every race and age you can dream of, chuckled nicely, sort of, while others dozed off or texted. If the best satires stay with you forever, think “Strangelove,” this is “PCU” on an Internet-sourced budget. Anyone recall “PCU”? Flick is set at some sunny liberal arts school that once served rich white kids, but still wobbles at that whole desegregation thing. Tyler James Williams -– he’s on “Walking Dead”!! -– is the closeted gay nerd trying to fit in amongst Black Power radio DJ Tessa Thompson and spoiled racist GOPer Kyle Gallner. One example why this is such a yawn: The climax has a party where white kids dress in black face to booze and laugh off slavery. The whole scene fizzles. The end credits show real images of college kids –- good Southern GOP children all, Hello, MSU -– doing the same, and I got out of my seat in rage. See? B-

Inside Man (2006)

Spike Lee goes as mainstream (mostly, kind of) in the off-kilter bank-robbery crime drama Inside Man (2006) that dares be honest about all that pent-up hostility we Americans of every stripe, color, language, religion, and tax bracket bury deep. The shit we don’t admit to. Post 9/11. It’s sizzling, like a James Ellroy book on screen, popping with glorious visuals, thank you cameraman Matthew Libatique (“Black Swan”) and music men Terence Blanchard and A.R. Rahman (well before “Slumdog Millionaire”). It’s NYC and Clive Owen has led a group of thieves into a high-end bank to rob it, holding hostages, while NYC dicks Denzel Washington and Chiwetel Ejiofor investigate and keep their careers; see, Denzel’s cop’s nose maybe is unclean. Or maybe it is. The more I watch “Inside,” the more I grove to its trickery and its commentary on America right now. Near 9 years on, it crackles fresh. It is as much a movie within a movie as “The Game.” And who exactly is the title character. Is it even a man? Hello, Jodie Foster. A

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

It amazes me “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” was ever needed. But so goes American history. It opens with a 1960s pop song playing as a giddy couple make its way from an airport to the girl’s childhood home, where she will introduce him to Mom and Dad. The couple is mixed race, her white (Katharine Houghton) and him black (Sidney Poitier). The taxi driver smirks. The parents (Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey) are open liberals, but just how so? We find out in one long evening. Yes, it’s coy now, post-Loving vs. Virginia, but not too easy. Poitier’s fiancé puts a burden to the parents: Accept me and our whirlwind romance now or I call it off. Can anyone demand that? His doctor character is such a saint, it near smothers debate. The screenwriters intently did this to fully play the race card, but does it serve character? What if he were a reporter at Tracey’s old man’s paper? The dialogue is still sharp and Tracey –- then dying of cancer -- is powerful. Hepburn, too. Her crying is contagious. A-

12 Years a Slave (2013)

I don’t want to know anyone who doesn’t walk out of “12 Years a Slave” a crushed soul rebuilt from the ground up by the final and finally at-last hopeful moments of this true horror tale that is deft enough to show beautiful –- stunningly so -- landscapes amid recreations of terrifying acts of inhumanity that were the start of this great (and terrible) nation. 

These shots are clear: As they degrade the lives of those they see as less than themselves, the allegedly greatest of our kind –- rich, educated, and privileged beyond measure -– bring ruin to their own lives with the heinous need to control and take all treasure. 

Brit-born filmmaker Steve McQueen (“Shame”) has done what few American directors have dare tried: Tell the brutal story of slavery in the United States with unblinking detail and absolute you-are-there authority. 

This is the anti-“Gone with the Wind,” with its Southern celebration and happy slaves, and certainly the anti-let-us-have-fun-revenge-flick “Django Unchained,” which I like less and less the more I recall my two, one too many, viewings of it. 

Solomon Northup was a born free African-American in 1840s New York, a musician and engineer, until he was kidnapped and sold into bondage below the Northern line into death, rape, and forced labor that should shock anyone with a hair of decency. 

Chiwetel Ejiofor (“Children of Men”) plays Solomon, a man who must deny his own greatness and abilities, essentially his outright normalcy as a human, lest he be murdered or worse -- and yes there are worse fates -- by his white masters who will not see anyone of color as their equal. 

Solomon does this for 12 grueling years, his longest stretch as “property” of a sadistic drunkard (Michael Fassbender, a regular in McQueen’s films) who is abusive to all around him, including his own wife (Sarah Paulson) who can equal her husband’s acidic temper. 

This is an age when a black slave could be killed for learning to read or write, an act I cannot even muster in my head as a reality. But McQueen shows us many disturbing realities – including a brutal whipping that Solomon is forced to take part in – as every day, and as much a part of the American spirit as apple pie, George Washington and fireworks. 

To deny this, to ignore it, to wish it away as a past that should be forgotten and “get over it,” -– and I heard that a lot in Alabama and here in Virginia from racist cunts who then turn around and celebrate the rah-rah-rah spirit of the Robert E. Lee and the Confederacy, or what their university did in 1881 -- is a great as sin as those who meted out this disaster of inhumanity. 

Ejiofor truly, sorry this sounds cliché, this film has robbed me of most words, astounds in the lead role. I have been a fan of his for years, and now just stand in awe. He plays a freeman forced into not just slavery and near unspeakable cruelty an acting chore, a sick live stage act that lasts some 4,400 days, an educated, bright, angry, hopeful man who must show near none of those traits. 

That’s what sticks with me. Burying oneself as dead although you are yet alive, and long to see your wife and children, and parents, etc. 

In one bravo scene, three quarters, McQueen dishes out a scene that pulls no punches: Ejiofor as Northup looks out into the sky of his “home” and then directly into the camera at the audience, daring us to not just continue in his harrowing story but to never forget his suffering and the untold numbers of his fellow slave captives in an American that only called itself free, but in a blatant knowing lie, a wink as the rich and powerful killed hundreds of thousands, or more, of people of color, all for greed, and wealth, and land. 

The final moments, and this is no spoiler that Solomon lives, where he apologies –- apologies –- to his family for missing out on their lives, just laid waste to me. Can you imagine? I simply cannot, and have no words. McQueen and company have left me near silent. 

(Note: As with “The Butler,” a host of big names pop by for cameos, Brad Pitt among them, but these roles are mostly commoners, owners, bigots, and others, and the cameos do not stick in the crawl as, say, John Cusack does as Richard damn Nixon. OK, stop, hold on, Pitt almost grinds and pops too much a saint-like liberal progressive.)

Lest we need proof this story must be told, loud and in every corner, lest it ever be forgotten, a darling of the right-wing conservative movement has written a review of “12” –- without seeing the film, and stating he has no intention to -– saying McQueen and the film are too “harsh” on slavery, which has economic merit and can actually be healthy…. That such thought still carries cultural weight today is truly paralyzing. 

And makes “12” all the more vital. (If you can, read the book source. STAT.) A

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

George Romero’s low-budget, non-Hollywood horror classic “Night of the Living Dead” is as shocking and brilliant and subversive as near any film ever made. It’s no midnight fright flick test-marketed to hit Farmville, USA, and score big bucks and TV play. This is why American Cinema rules, and why the best of the lot are almost always outside the kingdom’s gates. These creators who have no master also have no notes to follow, or stocks to please. 

Yes, Romero has made the modern Bible version of the zombie film, the capstone by which all others build upon, emulate, and fall short. The plot is basic –- even for its time -- following a small group of people trapped in a farm house as zombies (referred to as “ghouls”) attack from outside, first a handful, then a dozen, then a horde. Among the heroes are a woman (Judith O’Dea) who just watched her brother fall to an attack and will soon see him again, and a man named Ben (Duane Jones) who happens to be passing through town. 

Ben is African American, and a professor. Think about that. In 1968. Such an idea must have smoked Hollywood’s mind then, and owners of cinemas, too. No way “Dead” played south of the Mason-Dixie line. Not during American then. Hell, not now in some parts. Not when Ben is giving orders and slugging anyone who dare crosses him. 

So, take “Night” as allegory of a sick nation being turned upright, shocked out of its “Keep America White” brain dead coast of hate. Or take it as a freakishly brilliant “man’s got to do what a man’s got to do …” heroics of any horror story, brilliantly told. I fell the first way. You chose your path. 

Too, Romero lays out his graphic violence in stark back-and-white imagery that still sends a shudder. So many film rules die here, because Romero could kill them. Dig that little girl. Dig the first attack in a cemetery as a lone figure drifts in and out of the frame, barely in focus, like a dream. 

This is a ticking time bomb of survival, and when the sun rises and light blows out every shadow, Romero drops the hammer. See, I had not seen this movie until just now. (Go on, mock. I deserve it.) I watched stunned, convinced halfway through I found a new Top 10 Favorite, and dead certain at the very end. Genius. A+

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)

Perfect case of best intentions, and short results. “The Butler” aspires for Oscar glory and to do nothing less than tell the story of African-Americans and their plight to obtain true equality in America through the eyes of one White House butler (Forrest Whitaker) and his family (Oprah Winfrey as an alcoholic wife, and David Oyelloyo as an activist son). 

The titular butler is Cecil Gaines -– based ever so loosely by a thin thread on real-life figure Eugene Allen -– and his prideful job and moral millstone is to play silent witness to the terrible and great moments of the 20^th century Civil Rights movement as he serves tea and roast beef to a line of succeeding American presidents. Naturally, or so the film wants us to believe, each POTUS is won over to see the light of love and racial equality by Gaines’ stoic silence and dedication to the job, making sure the butter knife is just perfectly set so. 

Look, Whitaker knocks the part out, no surprise. He’s been a favorite actor of mine since “Platoon,” and his quiet anger and love shine through in scene after scene. But he’s still standing still for 99 percent of the film, like an end table. Mouth shut. It is Winfrey who near owns the film. Her rounded performance captures illness, anger, love, and jealous hate of the attention Cecil gives Jackie Kennedy, and is the sharp. The wife, though, barely leaves the house. That’s a mixed-bag. See, Daniels’ staging of those at-home scenes with Whitaker and Winfrey shine and sting as we finally see the American story through the hearts of our nation’s most belittled people. This is no “Leave it to Beaver” American Dream lie sold by conservative Tea Party drones. 

But, damn, “Butler,” is a mess. We get an eye-rolling list of Hollywood big names as those presidents, each one more miscast than the last: Robin Williams as a fuddy-duddy Ike, John Cusack as an “SNL” version of Nixon, and -– worst move ever -– Alan Rickman as a Reagan so piss-ant dreary, one wonders if anyone here ever saw film of the real man. Reagan dripped charisma. Love him or hate him, you know the man practically sparkled. Rickman? Not at all. Sorry. These cameos stop the film and had the audience snickering. 

As well, spread out for five decades and hitting every historical race marker like some warped liberal version of “Forrest Gump” -– that feels racist to say, but it’s true -– “Butler” plays like a road trip with a rush-rush-rush pop racing the family car down I-95, yelling to the children in the back, “There’s New York, there’s Philadelphia, there’s Washington, we’ll make Orlando by noon,” never stopping to see Independence Hall. 

This history is too important for such treatment. The scenes of black protesters at lunch counters being molested and tortured are soul-crushing, and this is not ancient history. This story would have made an amazing television series on HBO, with room to truly explore what it means to work in a marble building that represents the highest office in all the world, but have absolutely no power of one’s own, unable to even safe your own child from death or a policeman’s billy club. Mr. Allen’s life seems to have played more quieter than the story here. I want to see that life. Not a stand-in quietly serving Hans Gruber supper. B-

The People Under the Stairs (1991)

Wes Craven sure as hell is a master of horror, but he’s also a master of comedy, the latter trait knife sharp in “The People Under the Stairs,” a gore-filled laugh-riot that has a racist, NRA-card-packing psychotic redneck yuppie-wannabe cannibal brother and sister turned married couple (whew!) as the landlords of the L.A. “ghetto,” ruling over low-income African-Americans, stashing money and gold in their lunatic mansion. That’s right, the goofiest rich white stereotype, played over the top by Everett McGill and Wendy Robie -– they also played husband and wife on “Twin Peaks” -– who turn up the crazy to 1,011. Also stashed in that creepy-ass house: A Horde of teenagers, including a girl named Alice (A.J. Langer), all held hostage by the kooky couple, each child disposed of if they dare hear, see, or speak evil. Our hero is a black teen (Brandon Adams) who longs to be a doctor, to save his dying momma, and yet faces a life of crime. Craven dumps clichés faster than body parts, but it’s all for sick-twisted satirical laughs, and darn if they don’t work. B

Fruitvale Station (2013)

I cannot recall a more timely film in recent years. Seemingly every week in some U.S. city, police and vigilante pricks (Zimmerman) are gunning down unarmed black men at a clip not seen since … pre-1960? It just happened in Charlotte, and it’s the cold plot behind true story “Fruitvale Station.” We open with cell phone footage: 22-year-old Oscar Grant is shot point blank in the back New Year’s Day 2009 by a transit cop. He dies hours later. We then flashback to Oscar’s (Michael B. Jordon) final day as he desperately steers away from peddling drugs, works his way back into the graces of his girlfriend and daughter, and helps celebrate his mother’s (Octavia Spencer) birthday. It is she who suggests Oscar and his pals take the train that night. Writer/director Ryan Coogler’s drama is full of gut-puncher tragic moments like that, but also too syrupy scenes where Oscar plays chase with his tot in slo-mo magic hour light. The best moments come when they show Oscar as just a guy, any guy, struggling to correct course, thinking he has time, not knowing he does not. One day, maybe, films like this will be of the past. A-

Taken 2 (2012)

“Taken 2” is pure GOP values: ’Merica is pure and strong, and every last Muslim is an evil perv-o killer, and women are helpless creatures who cannot drive a car or plan a vacation without male supervision. Fox News would endorse it. The themes are serious, I think. Liam Neeson again plays the ex-CIA agent who shoots,stabs, stomps, and rips apart dozens of evil foreigners to save his daughter (Maggie Grace) and now kidnapped wife (Famke Janssen) from slavery. We’re in Turkey and Islam looms like a disease, and every person of color -– be it police to hotel clerk -- is part of the conspiracy. Fox News. It’s all less than 90 minutes, so the trip is mercifully short, and Neeson is fast becoming a thinking man’s Chuck Norris, even if the thinking is fascist and WASP. To get a PG-13, director Olivier Megaton (his real name?) goes bloodless and when necks break in Neeson’s fists, we hear no sound because snapping bone is somehow more offensive than gunfire. The editing is terrible, and so  is the slant that Neeson (wonderful actor) is taking onscreen. D+

The Impossible (2012)

“The Impossible” follows a family dragged low by one of history’s greatest disasters: The 2004 tsunami that killed 300,000 people in Southeast Asia. Director Juan Bayona and Sergio Sánchez (both of  “Orphanage”) make this true story horrifying real as they place us inside the deadly wave with the characters as they fight not to be drowned, crushed, or impaled. 

Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts -– both fantastic -- head the wealthy Brit family and when disaster hits, parents are separated. Mom with an older boy, dad with two younger sons. Mom is sickeningly wounded. Dad is sickeningly worried. Bayona and Sánchez make their ordeal personal, like the family swept up in Wouk’s “Winds of War.” 

But wait. The real family in this tragedy was Spanish -- not WASP -- and every major character we follow in this tragedy is WASP. The indigenous locals? Side characters. Helpers. Magic negroes, to be bluntly nasty. 

Great as this film is, these diversions choke like a swallowed stone. The movie studio trusted a Spanish team behind the camera, but not in front. Yes, movies (“Argo”) constantly shuffle ethnicities, but here with so many nonwhites killed, getting past that hump is … impossible. B

Django Unchained (2012)

In his near-three-hour blaxploitation spaghetti western homage/ripoff “Django Unchained,” Quentin Tarantino serves up a blood-soaked raw piece of pulp fiction that makes “Inglorious Basterds” and its Nazi history redux seem Disney fluffy. He tackles slavery in the 1850s America and shows it in all its vile, morally offensive code, and does not blink -– a black man is ripped apart by dogs as whites standby cackling, and the “N” word is used as verb, noun, adjective, and an exclamation. I winched, blanched, and shut my eyes at the violence, and the images of African-Americans forced into chains and depraved medieval torture equipment. 

Vulgar and soul-killer upsetting? Yes. On purpose. How can it not be, how can any examination -- even fictional and heightened -- of slavery not make anyone with half a soul cringe, and look away in horror. Shame. But, hell, I say “Gone with the Wind” is far more offensive to the core because it shows slave-ripe America as some kind of utopian Candy Land. It was all good. The South was happy. I hate that film. Tarantino must as well. He fires on all cylinders, his anger at America’s past strong. Conservatives hate this film because it dares show America -– of 150 years ago -- as a moral cesspool no better than Nazi Germany. Leftists such as Spike Lee hate it because they didn't think of this film, cathartic in twisted ways, first. Thank God for Abraham Lincoln, and go see “Lincoln.” These films would make a wild double bill. 

Speaking of Candy Land, Candieland is the name of a Mississippi plantation run by a ruthless land owner (Leonadro DiCaprio) where Django –- a freed slave turned bounty hunter played by Jamie Foxx -– and his killer mentor (Christoph Waltz) seek to free the former’s wife. That’s the gist and final hour of this epic that is bloody brilliant in a dozen ways, a long overdue F.U. to Southern Whites, and their modern GOP apologists who use patriotism as a weapon of hate. 

There’s so much more to the plot, but I would exhaust myself spilling every detail. Cinema master that he is, Tarantino cannot justify the 2 hour 45 minutes running time. He takes a dig at the pre-KKK as the idiot cowards they were and are, but the scene is overlong and kills an otherwise tense encounter between the racists and our heroes. More scenes throughout play overlong or repeat themselves over and over again.

Further, his main characters are not strong enough, nor his plot strands or dialogue. No one here reaches the deep well of Waltz’s Nazi in “Basterds,” or Samuel L. Jackson’s hit man in “Pulp Fiction.” Except for Django’s rebirth as a killer throwing hate and bullets back in the faces of his oppressors, no one else moves an inch forward or backward. We get two over-the-top bloody shoot-outs in the same room split apart by a half-hour in which Tarantino drags his ass around as a slave trader with an Australian accent worse than I could ever mimic. 

In “Basterds,” Tarantino staged a key scene around a dinner and ratcheted the tension so tight, just as my heart was about to explode, his mayhem onscreen exploded. Here, during the big dinner scene, the air lets out, the talk drags on for 20 minutes, then the carnage hits. Then more talk. Then more carnage. Then more talk. Tarantino seems to have written a screenplay in which no idea was bad, and he could not depart with a page. 

So many grand ideas go unrealized. For the first time, I second-guessed Tarantino’s leadership as the Cinema God. See: DiCaprio’s sick twist prince -– and by gosh, he is damn good as a hothead-maniac -– runs a slave gladiator camp. He enjoys watching men of color kill each other in forced do-or-die sport, and his character demands a certain … repayment. Yes, he dies. But that death is cheap, quick, and with no deep wit.

But the real disappointment for me is Kerry Washington as the wife of Django. Great actress. Wonderful. But she is given nothing to do but react -- scream, run, serve, faint, and stand still when a gun is at her head -– after a lengthy buildup that promises a bad ass woman of fire. I wanted to her bash in skulls with the wine picture she is forced to carry, scream and tear apart people. Tarantino bares her body and scars, but not her inner-raging soul, and damn hardy, I know Broomhilda (her name) has one. I hardly believed this character came from the same mind that wrote “Jackie Brown” and “Basterds.” Or the “Kill Bill” series. Tarantino loves women in the best way.

I’m being far too negative. This is not a bad movie. It screams genius, daring, red-faced anger for great lengths. The acting is aces all around (Foxx is deadly cool, and Waltz is clearly relishing every line and twist of his beard), and Samuel L. Jackson re-creates the entire character of the “house slave” as a villain named Stephen. He’s no -– get that name, step n’ fetch it character -– but the true brute force behind Candie’s world. Watch him stand tall at the end.

Tarantino spends so much time making homage to spaghetti-western troupes and bringing in cameos (Johan Hill, Bruce Dern), I wished he focused more on Jackson’s traitor of all traitors, a bent-back man who is a far better power player and con man than Waltz’s bounty hunter. I would have watched another our of Jackson and Foxx going at each other. And sat in fear and awe. Nonetheless, this is near-unshakable film, and Tarantino knows it. Genius? Classic? Must own? No to all three. But unshakable, for sure.

After taking on fantasy Jewish revenge on Hitler, and now putting an African-American in a saddle with guns blasting racist Southerners, one has to wonder where QT will go next: A grindhouse take on Jesus? Or back to gangster-types? Tarantino still remains the most-surprising American filmmaker of our time. Whatever he does next, I’ll be there, eyes wide open. B

Blazing Saddles (1974)

Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles” is setup as the lowest common denominator flick ever made, complete with barbecued beans and farts around a campfire, but that’s the real joke as “Blazing” blazes the false square-jawed Anglo heroes old Hollywood Westerns and their rah-rah-rah Americana propaganda, the very racist founding of our great nation and all the right-wing patriots who shrug off slavery and massacres as not that bad. Brooks pushes every over-the-top, vulgar joke to the point of jaw-dropping delirium. Some work, some don’t. And Brooks ain’t kidding around. The plot is almost beside the point: Circa 1874, Cleavon Little is Black Bart, an African-American railroad worker handpicked as a prank to become sheriff of a small town marked for railroad right-of-way. His sidekick: The Waco Kid, the fastest drunk in the west, played by Gene Wilder. Alex Karras is a thug with an acute philosophy of life, Harvey Korman a bigot, and Madeline Kahn is so f’n tired. Brooks, working from a caustic script co-written by Richard Pryor, opens with a sing-along scene of “Sweet Chariot” as the best put down of white thug bigots ever put to film. Classic. P.S. I know bigots who’ll never “get” this film. A+

Gangs of New York (2002)

I’ve re-watched “Gangs of New York” several times recently, and still come to the same conclusion I felt in 2002: It’s a powder keg film at its opening with Daniel Day-Lewis and Liam Neeson swinging axes and blades as 1840s rival gang leaders in New York’s Five Points, the sector of race, religion and pride ran over. Bill “The Butcher” Cutting – that’s Day Lewis – stands unbowed as Neeson’s Priest falls dead. I was slack-jawed then and now at the onscreen carnage. Yet, the film’s remainder never balances or even gels, making for a fascinating disappointment from director Martin Scorsese. The story dissolves in an odd (and literal) telegraphed narration as the Priest’s grown son (Leonardo DiCaprio) seeks vengeance against Cutting. A climatic riot/gang fight/naval attack is so spastic, we require text to pinpoint what’s going on. Too much. Not enough. It’s a tremendous telling of democratic America’s terrible, blood-soaked birth that Tea Party folks refuse to believe. (They actually think this nation began with freedom for all and biblical values, and want to go back.) It’s just not a satisfying film, feeling sliced even at 160 minutes. Day-Lewis is volcano, spewing a violent code of “honor” shocking in its depravity. DiCaprio wilts in his presence. B-

The Help (2011)

“The Help” is impossible to hate or dismiss. If you have a sense of justice. But make no mistake about it, this is a Disneyfied dramatization of the long civil rights struggle by African Americans, and yet – a Hollywood tradition in “Glory” and “Mississippi Burning” and dozens upon dozens of other films – it chooses to focus on wealthy white characters. The people who should be our total and absolute focus are secondary.

Worse, for every heartbreaking scene of racism, evil decorated in twisted Southern American Christian pride, the filmmakers serve up a comedic aside or comeuppance to let us know, we will leave the theater feeling good. No, “Help” is not great. But by the sheer strength of Viola Davis’ acting and the scary notion that an entire block of American voters consider this era to be America’s finest, it must be seen. Flaws and all.

Let us get my major grind out of the way. “Help” is geared toward the widest American audience possible, so it will not cut bone. It will not show the true Jim Crow South, made horrifically real and alive in the book “Carry Me Home.” (Read that book. Do it. Now.) It will not dare go the route of Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X,” with a rightfully angry black man -- that is a fine, true Civil Rights film -- ready to tear down the institution that has torn him down his entire life. It mostly avoids blood and death, and follows a liberal, white, pretty girl, because that’s what Hollywood thinks we want. Looking at box office receipts, they nailed an “Easy A,” to bring up Emma Stone. (“Easy A” is Stone’s biggest hit film.)

Stone plays the hero: Eugenia, a … wait for it … newspaper reporter (liberal!) who starts out writing a housecleaning advice column but soon dives incognito into telling the stories of black maids/ nannies – The Help -- hired by wealthy families. Including her own. In a Hollywood story, a young black woman or man could never dream up this idea. No. Help, so to speak, has to come from outside. Just like the heroic FBI (!!!) had to help in a certain Gene Hackman film I mentioned above. (Talk about a crock of history.) And, I know, it’s all based on a book. A best-seller. Whoopdeefriggin’ do, my point still stands.

But I digress. Stone’s newly minted University of Mississippi grad Eugenia returns home to the town of Jackson as an aspiring writer, her eyes now open to the horror that she was raised in and never thought of for a second. Eugenia’s first choice for the book is Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), the caretaker of her best pal’s daughter. Aibileen is, of course, scared of revenge from her white employers and local Klan, the latter of whom never actually appears. That would scare test screening audiences after all.

Eugenia asks upfront dumb questions: Do you regret raising the babies of others, whilst missing out on the lives of your own children? And do you have dreams other than being a maid? Well, no, shit, girl. Really? But here’s the beauty of this film: Davis rips the film from Stone with a fierce, devastating performance. She makes that awkward scene work. When Aibileen talks of her life, her body language vibrates with heartbreak, sadness, regret and, yes, anger, directed at herself and the world that belittles her based on skin color. (I can’t image being so treated, I’d rage forever. I would burn buildings down, no lie? Would you not?)

We also follow another white family, headed by a Stepford Wife-type monster, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. She is the villain, a young lady who speaks of Christian charity and yet proclaims Separate but Equal must always stand. The character veers close to caricature, but Howard – pouring out judgmental evil from her eyes – makes it work. Hilly, that’s her Southern Belle name, takes great pleasure in ridiculing her own maid, Minny (Octavia Spencer). And Hillies still exist today, no lie, and I have met them.

It is Minny who serves a dish of revenge, the comedic comeuppance, and brings about the film’s most controversial moment. It’s funny. I admit I laughed. I did. I also wondered if any such thing could have ever truly happened, in a state where murder upon African-Americans for the lightest infraction was the norm. The whole gag seems a modern, not historical, touch. I suppose from the book. I skipped reading it. Thankfully, the final scenes have Aibileen taking on her oppressors. No Eugenia about. It ends seriously, with quite a heart-breaker, and with an uplift.

So, see the film. Watch it for the scene toward the end where Eugenia walks into Aibileen’s home and sees a roomful of African American women. It is the first time I have ever seen a summer Hollywood flick that featured a roomful of African American woman, and that in itself says the struggles depicted here are not ancient history. They still exist. And be warned, when we have presidential candidates saying our Founding Fathers worked to end slavery and congressmen who shrug off the Civil Rights Act as passé federal oversight, and make a half-hearted apology that they were taken out of context. Jim Crow, institutionalized racism with state’s rights ... it could happen again. (That “Take our country back” mantra is a threat, do not doubt it. We have a black man in the Oval Office.)

But also know this: When you are watching and laughing along at the funny bits (and I am guilty) in a movie about this era, remember not many people were laughing during the real 1963. Not in the South. The emotions, I gather from stories told to me and read by that occurred before my birth, were far more grim. On both sides of the divide. Give me “Malcolm X.” It is far closer to the ugly truth. This could play on TV, Sunday night movie, uncensored, and not raise a pulse. B-

Windtalkers (2002)

John Woo’s “Windtalkers” is sold as a never-before-told chronicle of Marine-trained Navajos who used a code based on their language to communicate military ops over radio during World War II. Naturally, this being a Hollywood drama, “Windtalkers” actually follows a white guy (Nicolas Cage) as he struggles with war wounds of body and soul, and relegates the persons of color (Adam Beach and Roger Willie) to supporting bits, and most shockingly their Navajo-spoken subtitled-in-English almost mute. Yes, battles are staged with absolute chaos and one can feel the heat of explosions and spent cannon shells, but war flick clichés abound, from campfire sessions to the devoted nurse to the nasty bigot who will have a change of heart. Beer bong alert: A serious drinking game can be made of Woo’s trademark slow-mo action shots. There’s a great story buried here, one that tackles the ironies of a people once hunted and killed by and subjected to white American rule, now fighting for that very nation with their lives. But this ain’t it. Not unless Cage -- playing a ridiculous Rambo killing machine with perfect aim -- is part Native American. C-

The Pawnbroker (1965)

Sidney Lumet’s “The Pawnbroker” – photographed in a stark black and white – is merciless, poignant, unsettling, and packs a devastating finale. It was the first American film to deal with the Holocaust from the perspective of a survivor. Rod Steiger – in arguably his greatest role – is that survivor, Sol Nazerman. Once a professor with a wife and children, Sol now runs an East Harlem pawnshop that plays front to a local mobster (Brock Peters). The shop offers dry cleaning, but only launders money. Sol loathes his customers, and everyone around him. They are “scum” and “creatures,” hate has bred more hate. As a devastating anniversary looms, the brick wall that Sol has built up and over his human shell cracks. Sol either will be reborn, or will get the death he longs for. Lumet inter-cuts long memories and quick violent images from Sol’s past: Subway cars become death trains, while a half-naked woman recalls his ravaged wife. The images are startling. “Pawnbroker” is dated in portions, some portrayals of African-Americans and Hispanics skate close to stereotype, but this is one hell of a film. Lumet’s genius is on display throughout. Steiger beautifully plays several ages and bursts with grief and God-hating rage. A

The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

If “The Outlaw Josey Wales” is on TV – unedited – I’m there. This tale of a supposed “outlaw” (a farmer) out for revenge against the Union troops who slaughtered his family stands tall among Clint Eastwood’s many classics. Eastwood plays the seeker of vengeance as he alternately is hunted by Union forces, and tracks them himself. Along the way, Josey befriends a young doomed gunslinger (Sam Bottoms) and – in a hilarious and touching moment -- a Cherokee Indian (Chief Dan George) who’s smarter than anyone on screen. The action, humor and blood throughout are killer, especially a scene where Josey rests as blood-lust Unions cross a nearby river. The scene’s set-up – and the all-knowing cackle of an ancient hick woman – is one of my all-time favorite movie scenes. The long ironic commentary here has America portrayed as a land of lawlessness and savagery, run by European-Christian descendents who killed untold numbers of Native Americans for … their alleged (and of course untrue) lawlessness and savagery. This film is un-PC as hell, and that’s part of its beauty. This is Eastwood as his highest powers, equal to “Unforgiven.” A+

From Paris with Love (2010)

At one point in “From Paris with Love,” John Travolta’s mad-dog CIA super assassin orders food from McDonalds, and he drops the three words that returned the actor to fame 16 long years ago. “Royale with cheese!” But this isn’t Tarantino. It’s Luc Besson, still floundering after a mid-1990s string of hip hits, on screenplay, and Pierre Morel in the director’s chair. These guys made “Taken,” with Liam Neeson as a mad-dog CIA hit man out for blood. Travolta’s Charlie Wax also is out for blood, but I can’t recall why. Drug runners. Assassins. Bad Chinese food. An uptight U.S. Embassy assistant (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) who yearns to be a famous CIA hit man. Whatever. As with “Taken,” we have a ridiculously high body count; proud and bloody anti-woman plot points; and a stink eye for anyone not, umm, European. A perfect entertainment for right-wing fanatics. “Pulp Fiction”? Non, monsieur. C-

Romper Stomper (1993)

“Romper Stomper” put Russell Crowe on the world stage. He plays Hando, a fireball of unending menace, a neo-Nazi skinhead with a devastating temper and raw sexual power. He is the leader of a ragtag pack of Melbourne racists -- all jobless, essentially homeless, stealing all that they own, and coming and going in a beat-up old clunker car, packed in like sardines. They blast hate music celebrating the glory of their white European heritage all the while. It’s a dark, uneasy satire: These thugs are not even self-aware. (Hando is fully in the know, he just doesn’t care.) Director/writer Geoffrey Wright doesn’t get all preachy on us, he doesn’t have to. Hando’s best mate is Davey (Daniel Pollock), a young man tiring of his thug life, and the arrival of a fiery, lost red head (Jacqueline McKenzie) is just the right push for the men to break apart. This is a violent and unflinching drama that loses its punch only once -- a scene where a young boy is shot. (The scene is handled badly, and feels overly faked.) Crowe, eyes ablaze, cuts through every other actor and set piece like a molten sword of hate. A

Freedomland (2006)

"Freedomland" has great performances from the always reliable Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson as a frantic mother whose son has gone missing and an urban Jersey police detective, respectively. It could have been a great film, and it wants to be with such serious topics as racism and economic strive. But it's not. It never takes off, and some of the fault may lay in its obvious Susan Smith rip-off mother who goes full-wrong and creates a mythical black-man villain as the fall guy. But that's not the real problem. The downer lies in the film trying to be an upbeat social science lesson. It lays riots, child abduction, murder, beatings, mental illness, police brutality and all sorts of heavy issues on us, and then spins in a "Can't We All Get Along" mantra and a child's painting of children -- green, red, blue and yellow -- dancing in a circle. It's lefty-liberal brain is as empty as Rush Limbaugh's right-tighty noodle. C+