DVD: The Help (12)

"Looking after white babies, that's what I do," explains Aibilene Clark (Viola Davis), a maid who, along with a legion of subjugated black "helps", tends to vile white women in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi in Tate Taylor's rousing tearjerker.

Emma Stone's young reporter persuades the quietly rebellious Aibilene and her pal, the forthright Minny (Octavia Spencer), to be interviewed for a book. There have been more brutal depictions of racism in the Deep South, but although this melodrama is undeniably manipulative in places, it doesn't lack for anger and authenticity from Davis and Spencer. Tears guaranteed.