The trailer for The Secret Life of Bees created an expectation that the movie would slowly build into into a overwrought, sentimental conflict movie. So I was not looking forward to the inevitable moment when my wife added it to our Netflix queue. 
I had expected that Queen Latifah’s August Boatwright and her sisters – conspicuously educated and cultured black women living amongst the early 60’s deep southern racially ignorant majority of whites – would have to fight to keep custody of Dakota Fanning’s ridiculously-named Lily Owens, a young white girl whose mother had died (accidentally by Lily’s hand) and who, early in the film, flees the hand of her father (Paul Bettany), a man who has lost any capacity for human kindness.
Happily, the trailer, like so many others, inaccurately represented the tone of the film. While there is plenty of drama, and the film wouldn’t be entirely out of place on the Lifetime channel, I think I enjoyed the film more as a result of the relief that eventual conflict between Fanning and Bettany plays a minor role in the film. The filmmakers (and the novelist whose work was adapted) certainly take aim at the tear duct, but the casting and uniformly solid acting (from the above as well as a nearly unrecognizable Sophie Okonedo and from, to my surprise, Alicia Keys) keep the film from completely collapsing under the weight of its emotional content.)
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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