Allied, an old-fashioned war drama, starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard, an actress with a striking resemblance to Angelina Jolie is sure to become a classic film!

She announces to her neighbors that her husband arrives soon. Marianne Beausejour (Marion Cotillard) lives among the Westerners residing in 1942 (World War II) Morocco. Her husband, Max Vatan (Brad Pitt) arrives. He meets her friends and they are sufficiently charmed. The couple then goes back to the apartment she rents for them. That's when the coaching begins. Because they are not really married. They have never even met before.

Each is on assignment as a spy. He's a part of Canadian intelligence. She's a French Resistance fighter. The have to convince those around them that they are husband and wife. The sexual tension between the supposedly married couple builds immediately. A little bit more on her part than his. He believes that acting upon their desires would undermine their operation.

Once their assignment is over, he's ordered to London. But now he's in love and asks Marianne to marry him and join him in England. She does. They have a baby girl and all is well until he's given the task of investigating his wife!

Allied, directed by Robert Zemeckis, is a truly outstanding movie and will become a film classic. First and foremost, it succeeds because Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt rock together. They have more chemistry that Pfizer. Their banter is amusing. Max is supposed to be from Paris but Marianne dismisses his French as definitely Quebecois. As they sit outside the first night in Morocco, aware that neighbors are watching, she guides him in appropriate couple behavior and says at this point we would laugh. He responds, "We're married. Why would we LAUGH?"

Marion Cotillard has sort of a Joan Crawford quality. She had to have a large presence in this role. And she did. It would have been easy for her to have been overshadowed by this powerful story and her internationally known, top of his game, co-star, Brad Pitt.

This is an excellent screenplay written by Steve Knight. The characters are rich, the scenes flow fittingly from one to the next, and drama and intrigue builds steadily throughout the film.

I do have to take Allied's filmmakers to task over diversity. Throughout the scenes of military operations in England, there were no black servicemen. According to Timeline Museum, there were 130,000 African-American troops in England during this film's time period. And that does not include thousands of Caribbean soldiers. By the way, there was a great deal of controversy among the white and black American military forces over the British women's attraction to these men they called, the Tan Yanks.

I will give Allied a D+ in cast diversity because it does feature a lesbian storyline.

Despite my diversity cast rating, Allied is a remarkable production. It gets our highest rating, See It!

Allied, opens today, November 23, 2016, is rated R (for violence, some sexuality/nudity, language and brief drug use) and is 124 minutes in length.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, written by J.K. Rowling, is a See It! or Rent It. I'll leave that up to you!

It is 1926; wizard Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) arrives in New York City from England pausing to hear a speech from a social movement leader ranting against witchcraft and wizardry. While focused on the speaker, one of the several magical creatures Newt has stored in his briefcase escapes. Just when Newt has recaptured the varmint, he has a chance encounter with a local resident Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) who happens to have a case very similar to Newt's. The two accidently grab each other's bag.

Tina Goldstein (Alison Sudol), a witch who is on probation with MACUSA (The Magical Congress of the United States of America), arrests Newt for being an unregistered wizard and takes him to MACUSA, hoping to regain her status. But she warms to Newt and joins him in his search for his lost bag. This leads them on a journey of trying to get the bag, impress the MACUSA, helping Jacob with his goals, among resolving other issues.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is written by J.K. Rowling and is connected to the Harry Potter series. And, I never liked that series. Stories, about a group of British youth learning wizardry, were never very interesting to me. And this cast of characters is even less appealing than Harry, Ron, and Hermione.

Fantastic Beasts' story is convoluted and takes more twist and turns than a drunk, cross-eyed mouse in a maze. The imagery is outstanding, but frankly, many of the creatures seem to be thrown in to meet viewer expectations, more so than truly fitting into the flow of the story.

Cast performances are adequate. However, some stood out. Colin Farrell as a wizard and Director of Magical Security for MACUSA was appropriately mysterious and vexing. Dan Fogler, as Jacob Kowalski, enriches the production with a strong performance as an average, decent guy who gets drawn into the world he never knew existed.

As to cast diversity, Fantastic Beasts gets a "C+". Members of the MACUSA are very diverse, including the president, Seraphina Picquery (Carmen Ejogo) who is "black" (Nigerian father, Scottish mother). This film fails in a way many period pieces do, by displaying U.S. urban areas without diverse populations.

Fantastic Beasts is set largely in Manhattan and not only did the many street scenes feature only white people, they were all very well dressed as if no lower income folks were allowed on thoroughfares.

In 1926, there were about 170,000 black people living in Manhattan alone and comprised about 10% of the New York City population and would have been much more visible than shown in this film. At that time black residents would have walked the public streets, to and from work, or shopping just like any other residents.

In fact, New York City's first black police officer, Samuel James Battle, had been sworn in some 15 years earlier in 1911.

Another flaw in period pieces is that they apply current day sensibilities to events which would have been non-issues at that time. Here, a mother beat her son and there was much sympathy for him and fanfare over that fact. Parents beating their children in the 1920s was not only acceptable – but expected - behavior.

The ultimate verdict for this film is Rent It, except if you are a Harry Potter fan, then I would say, "See It!"

Fantastic Beasts is rated PG-13 for some fantasy action violence and is 133 minutes in length.

It's a bittersweet time. Christmas is approaching. Walter (Danny Glover), a retired auto repair shop owner, tries his best to make the most of the holiday season. But it's hard. He lost the love of his life; his wife, the mother of his four children, his beloved, Grace (Rachel Kylian). Things are not completely somber because his four children, two daughters Rachel (Gabrielle Union) and Cheryl (Kimberly Elise) and his sons, Christian (Romany Malco) and Evan (Jessie Usher) are coming home.

The kids are adults with their own array of issues. Rachel and Cheryl never grew out of their sisterly rivalry. Also, Rachel's trying to make it through law school as a divorced mother of a precocious daughter, Niya (Nadej K Bailey). Rachel also does her best to put the brakes on her old high school flame, Malachi (Omar Epps), who still lives in the neighborhood. Cheryl's husband, (J.B. Smoove) is an ex-NBA player with a wandering eye who constantly relives a winning shot he made in an NBA championship game. Son, Christian is married to Sonya (Nicole Ari Parker), is pre-occupied with running for Congress and is paying very little attention to his wife and two children. Then there's Walter's and Grace's later in life, oops baby, Evan, who is a college football star recovering from an injury.

Also, dropping in is Aunt May (Mo'Nique), Grace's sister, a well-traveled backup vocalist for some of the 80s most famous singers.

Almost Christmas shares with viewers the five days of this family's Christmas get together.

Just from the abbreviated plot summary above you can see that this is a very busy storyline. Half the stuff going on, I didn't even include. That's the problem; it's too much. With a large cast and each individual is dealing with multiple issues, it's sort of a Grand Central Station, on screen.

The film features a successful, educated upper-middle-class black family. Yet the writer, David E. Talbert, embraces standard Hollywood African-American gathering must haves: they have to do a partially or fully choreographed dance; there has to be fisticuffs, and there has to be a gun pulled.

Maybe my experiences are atypical. I have been to hundreds of social events organized and attended by black people and I don't recall a single fight and no guns have ever been displayed. However, I have to admit there have been a few dance lines to breakout!

The film's humor is so predictable and is seen coming minutes before it happens. For example, Cheryl's husband takes a tumble after he climbs on the roof to fix a blinking Santa Claus. And it strays a bit from reality. Like the fact that Christian is in the middle of a run for Congress. As a political junkie, I can say, there are no congressional elections or primaries near Christmas.

Almost Christmas does shine in a couple of ways: like the flashbacks of Walter's and Grace's time together. There is a deep and undeniable love between the two that is obvious from character's glances, making words unnecessary.

This is an outstanding cast. It is good to see Danny Glover, Gabrielle Union, and Kimberly Elise among others on the screen. They individually and as a group, just get it done. Great casting of Nadej K. Bailey as Gabrielle's daughter as they have a very strong resemblance. Speaking of Glover, he has involvement in no less than six films between now and the end of next year!

As to our cast diversity rating, Almost Christmas gets a "B". Of course, the cast is primarily African American with a few white supporting actors, like John Michael Higgins who plays Christian's campaign manager. However, there are no Hispanics or Asians in notable roles.

So what's the verdict on Almost Christmas? It ekes out our highest rating, See It! The overall entertainment value combined with a very strong cast makes it worth a trip to the theater. It's about two hours long and is rated PG-13 (for suggestive material, drug content, and language).

I'm pregnant. Eighteen-year-old Mildred Dolores Jeter, told her 24-year-old boyfriend, Richard Perry Loving. His response, "That's fine." A few days later he decides that they should get married.

This is a situation that has played out, uneventfully, countless number of times: Boy meets girl, girl gets pregnant, and they get married. But this situation was different in some very important ways: It was 1958. Mildred (Ruth Negga) was black. Richard (Joel Edgerton) was white. And they lived in Virginia. And their getting married was illegal. But it wasn't clear if they even knew it. Richard explained to Mildred it would be less paperwork to get married in D.C. So they drove to the nation's capital where they said their vows with Mildred's father witnessing. Afterwards, they returned to Mildred's parents' home in Central Point, Virginia where they would live. At 2:00 am some weeks later, the sheriff and his deputies burst into the Jeter's home, stormed into the young couple's bedroom and arrested them. Loving tells the story of the couple's momentous efforts to have their union recognized in Virginia.

While portions of the film, Loving, drags like toilet paper stuck to a shoe, the historical lessons, strong performances and poignant story makes this a See It!

I have an affinity for movies based on actual events. Especially stories about unlikely heroes. And there are probably no more unlikely world-changers than Mildred and Richard. Two very ordinary individuals whose families had been bound by a long friendship. Socializing and working together. Among their circle, their dating and getting married seemed natural and reasonable. As if they were oblivious to the cultural and more importantly, the legal norms, of the 1950s south.

However, there were some family members questioning their judgment once the legal problems set in. They also learned that the system didn't treat equally. Richard was released after one day in jail and despite being pregnant, Mildred remained behind bars for five days.

While the "story" is the star of the film, the cast is nevertheless, exceptional. Interestingly, both leads Edgerton and Negga are foreign born. Edgerton was born in Australia and Negga in Ethiopia and reared in Ireland. There is some well-deserved Oscar buzz surrounding both performances.

Jeff Nichols wrote and directed Loving. Nichols, a white man from Arkansas, shot the film in 35 mm giving it the visual quality of a movie from that time period. He also opted to focus on the ebbs and flows of Mildred's and Richard's relationship and not the lengthy legal entanglements. However, that focus on them includes a lot of casual conversation resulting in the film being slow in some parts. Ultimately, Nichols must be commended for the way he brings this story to life.

Loving is a fascinating production that captures the lengths people will go when driven by one of the strongest of human emotions – love.

Finally, the irony of the couple having the surname "Loving" cannot go unmentioned.

The movie is rated PG-13 for thematic elements and is two hours and three minutes. And it's a See It!