The Help (12A)
HHH
Dir: Tate Taylor
With: Viola Davis, Emma Stone
KATHRYN Stockett’s best-selling novel set in the Mississippi of the 1960s is given a lavish big-screen retelling sure to please fans. With its mostly female cast and dedication to telling a powerful story in a moving way, Tate Taylor’s film is what they used to call, in a good way, a “women’s picture”.
Though some may wish it was more hard-hitting, for a certificate 12A picture it gets its points across well enough. In a cast that ranges from a toddler all the way up to Sissy Spacek, it is Viola Davis who takes the acting honours as the African-American maid who decides to speak to a writer (Emma Stone) about what it’s like to be a substitute mother to white people’s children yet not be allowed to use the inside bathroom. Bryce Dallas Howard makes a magnificent queen bitch determined things should stay as they are in the south, while Octavia Spencer is excellent as the maid who takes her on. Gives in to sun-dappled schmaltz towards the end, but satisfying all the same.
FEATURE – PAGE 18
Anonymous (12A)
HH
Dir: Roland Emmerich
With: Vanessa Redgrave, Rhys Ifans
WAS Shakespeare a fraud? That is the provocative question posed on the posters for Roland Emmerich’s period drama. I’m not sure you could argue strongly for or against after this confused and confusing exploration of the theory. Rhys Ifans plays the Earl of Oxford, who, in this version of history, is the one wot wrote the plays as a form of protest against the royal court of the day, led by Joely Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave playing the younger and older Elizabeth. Meanwhile, a blowhard actor by the name of Will Shakespeare (Rafe Spall, as usual the best thing in the picture) takes all the credit to keep the Earl safe. Roland Emmerich, who directed The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day, gives the tale a blockbuster pace but too much explanation arrives too late. Rather like a Shakespeare play, Anonymous takes an age to sort itself out while begging your indulgence for lots of long, boring stretches in which there’s much ado and speechifying about nothing.
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