1. The Help (2011)
The Help was the major name at the 2012 Academy Awards: nominated for best film, it featured an Oscar-winning performance from Octavia Spencer and Oscar nominated performances from Viola Davis and Jessica Chastain. Based on the book by Kathryn Stockett, the film is set in 1960s Mississippi and chronicles the unlikely friendship between three women who seek to change the world of inequality and injustice in which they live. Skeeter, played by Emma Stone, is a college graduate who decides to write a book recording the lives and experiences of the black maids working in her Mississippi town. Enlisting the help of Aibileen, a maid who has dedicated her life to raising her employees children and the strong-willed Minnie, who has recently been fired, Skeeter begins to interview the maids of Jackson, an act which is to have far-reaching consequences. Set at the height of the Civil Rights movement, the film deftly portrays this era and highlights the contrasting views and the issues of the time. The Oscar-nominated performances are fantastic, Viola Davis performance as Aibileen in particular is heart-breaking. The Help is a moving, enjoyable and unusual drama which skilfully captures life in the 1960s American South.