‘Divine Secrets’ a chick-flick extraordinaire

In theaters

DIVINE SECRETS OF THE YA-YA SISTERHOOD. Directed by Callie Khouri. Written by Khouri and Mark Andrus. 117 minutes. Rated PG-13.

Callie Khouri’s “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” is a tribal scream for drama queens everywhere. It’s everything it sets out to be and more – so much more – a film about a group of hard-drinking, hard-living, oxygen-tank-sucking, cigarette-smoking, sexagenarian Southern belles who define codependency, live their lives with a passion for meddling in the lives of others, yet who are somehow lovable in spite of being borderline certifiable.

The film, which Khouri, who wrote “Thelma & Louise,” and Mark Andrus adapted from Rebecca Wells’ novel, is a chick-flick extraordinaire, a movie whose only oversight seems to be that estrogen wasn’t listed among the film’s producers.

The film stars Sandra Bullock as Sidda Lee Walker, a young New York playwright on the verge of realizing her first Broadway hit when she upsets the balance of her universe by stupidly dissing her mother in an interview for Time magazine. Sidda’s mother, Vivi (Ellen Burstyn), you see, isn’t just any mother. She’s Hollywood’s idea of a Southern mother, which means that her backbone and temperament are more the stuff of steel than magnolia.

No, Vivi doesn’t have snakes writhing in her carefully coifed hair, but she does have a split tongue and a mean mouth, which frequently gets her into trouble and eventually causes a major rift between her and Sidda as the movie opens.

Calling for an intervention, Vivi’s blood sisters, Caro (Maggie Smith), Teensy (Fionnula Flanagan) and Necie (Shirley Knight) – all bound to Vivi by a childhood oath – drug Sidda and steal her away to the swamps of Louisiana, where they ply her with booze, fill her in on why her mother is such a controlling witch – and why Vivi is nevertheless deserving of Sidda’s love.

In a series of flashbacks, the film unfolds, dipping into the past to explain the present. As the young Vivi, a vivacious woman whose dreams of becoming famous never come to fruition and whose one true love died in the war, Ashley Judd shows a good deal of poise and restraint until a certain plot element asks her to do neither. What happens to Vivi won’t be revealed here, but it asks Judd to dig deep and act beyond the ease of her pretty smile. The results are just plain humiliating.

Still, as a whole, the movie is good, often winning and funny. With James Garner as Vivi’s long-suffering husband and Angus MacFadyen as Sidda’s long-suffering boyfriend, “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” sustains its hysterical mood and turns it into a badge of honor, which, as these things go, isn’t just the point but the exclamation point in its characters’ lives.

Grade: B+

On video and DVD

MONSTER’S BALL. Directed by Marc Forster. Written by Milo Addica and Will Rokos. 108 minutes. Rated R.

With two major, unexpected twists buried deep within its script, a superb, Academy Award-winning performance from Halle Berry and a director eager to peel away the layers of bigotry, racism and hate ingrained in a small Georgia town, Marc Forster’s “Monster’s Ball” is one of those rare contemporary movies that lingers in the mind and doesn’t let go.

The story itself is like a bruise, but don’t expect it to heal. The film stars Billy Bob Thornton as Hank Grotowski, a death row corrections officer who lives with his mean-spirited father, Buck (Peter Boyle), a former corrections officer himself and now an unapologetic racist and misogynist, in a home that’s as battered and as broken as their own lives and relationship.

Living with them is Hank’s son, Sonny (Heath Ledger), who unwittingly shares his father’s favorite prostitute and works alongside him on death row. Together, these three generations of men represent a changing South, with the roots of racism buried less deep in Sonny, a brooding young man who unleashes the full weight of his father’s rage when he botches an inmate’s death by electrocution.

For most directors, capturing the Grotowskis’ story would have been ambitious enough. But Forster has other ideas in mind, and changes his film’s course and tone by interweaving the lives of Leticia (Berry) and her morbidly obese son, Tyrell (Coronji Calhoun), into the mix.

When tragedy pulls Hank and Leticia together, the film itself comes to a boil as this black woman who doesn’t trust white men – and this white man who has been taught to hate blacks and women – enter into a life-altering interracial affair.

In each other, they recognize a loneliness and a despair that crosses color lines. It’s what they do with that recognition – and how they come to terms with what it potentially could mean for the rest of their lives – that turns “Monster’s Ball” into such a quietly gripping, unforgettable film.

Grade: A

Christopher Smith’s reviews appear Mondays and Fridays in Style, occasionally on E! Entertainment’s “E! News Weekend,” Tuesdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5” and Thursdays on “NEWS CENTER at 5:30” on WLBZ-2 and WCSH-6. He can be reached at BDNFilm1@aol.com.