Beloved

A searing story of slavery's perpetual chains, Jonathan Demme's thoroughly respectable adaptation of Toni Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel will disappoint the book's admirers, even though it's nothing if not faithful: Many of the film's highlights come directly from the book. In 1873, former slave Sethe (Oprah Winfrey) and her daughter Denver (Kimberly Elise) live just outside Cincinnati, shunned by their neighbors. Sethe's adolescent sons have long since fled, terrified of the supernatural force that thrashes around in their home; gone too is her beneficent mother-in-law, Baby Suggs (Beah Richards), a self-styled preacher who exhorted her flock of former sl...