Octavia Spencer

[5] An aspiring writer decides to tell the stories of African-American maids during the turbulent ’60s, risking community scorn to publish the truth. The Help, based on the novel by Kathryn Stockett, weaves the stories of several black and white women in Jackson, Mississippi. Emma Stone plays the writer, with Viola Davis playing her first interview subject, a woman who recently buried her young adult …

[6] Screenwriter John August (Titan AE, Big Fish) makes his directorial debut in this headtrippy movie about an actor, a TV showrunner, and a video game designer whose lives interconnect in a mysterious way. Ryan Reynolds plays all three characters in three different ‘chapters’ of the film. Melissa McCarthy and Hope Davis also appear as three different characters, with McCarthy always playing a comforting friend …

[7] Pixar’s Onward takes place in a world of elves, trolls, dragons, and unicorns, but it’s also a world where all these creatures have forgotten how to use their magic. So their world is a lot like ours — centaurs are cops, fairies ride motorbikes, and unicorns eat trash out of dumpsters. The heroes of our story are two elf brothers — one who believes …

[7] Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer reunites with The Help director Tate Taylor on this horror-thriller about a lonely woman who befriends a group of high school teenagers. The teens enjoy hanging out and drinking beer in her basement until the woman, affectionately nick-named ‘Ma,’ becomes too needy and demanding of them. As they try to distance themselves from her, Ma takes drastic measures to bring them …

[7] Guillermo del Toro serves up a fantasy love story set in the 1960s in which a mute janitor at a top-secret research facility falls in love with… well, a fish man. Sally Hawkins plays the janitor and Doug Jones (a Del Toro regular) plays the fish. Hawkins is endearing and Jones is always reliable, but the supporting players outshine them here. Richard Jenkins is great …

[9] South Korean director Bong Joon-ho (Mother, The Host) directs this tale of class warfare set in an ice-age Armageddon wherein the last few living humans reside aboard a technologically advanced train that constantly circumnavigates the globe. Chris Evans (Captain America himself) stars as the working class hero who rises up against the train’s cold-hearted aristocracy, leading a revolt from the train’s back end slave …