Room

**** out of ****

Not to be confused with the infamous disaster that is The Room, Room is a movie worth remembering for competent filmmaking, acting and emotional weight. Like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Tideland, this is a movie that approaches a morbid concept but lightens the atmosphere by favoring the perspective of a child who accepts a twisted reality as normal.

The screenplay by Emma Donoghue, based her award-winning novel, tells the story of a mother and five-year-old son living as prisoners in a small locked room with a mini-kitchen, bathtub, toilet, bed and tiny skylight above. The mother was kidnapped at age seventeen by a man who has spent the past seven years raping her, which resulted in her pregnancy with the child. The mother has raised and nurtured the child with a strong exercise and hygiene regiment to keep him healthy and instills in him a worldview that fits their situation: He believes the walls of “Room” to be the limits of the world.

At the movie’s nerve-racking halfway point, the two outsmart their captor and triumphantly achieve liberation. After being reunited with the mother’s family, the rest of the story is about the adjustment to freedom, under the unusual circumstances of attention from doctors and the media. The mother doesn’t know how to shake her afflictions and is intensely determined to reeducate her child who is trying to make sense of the vast real world he never knew. He often asks the haunting question: “Can we go back to Room?

The child’s joy, curiosity, and fear are wonderfully conveyed by Jacob Tremblay and the mother is excellently played by the very talented Brie Larson (Short Term 12), who deserves the recognition this film will give her. Joan Allen, Tom McCamus, and William H. Macy play the relieved –yet troubled family adapting to the changed daughter and the child who is the product – yet savior – from all her years of suffering. The casting of the captor is tastefully that of a less recognizable face, through Sean Bridgers.

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson (Frank), this film is an achievement of realism portraying human strength under very unusual circumstances. Donoghue’s novel and screenplay are undeniably inspired by the Fritzl case in Austria - but thankfully not a retelling of that appalling piece of history, which was exceedingly more upsetting than this work of fiction. I still believe that inspired fiction makes better cinema than embellished non-fiction and avoiding the exploitation of real-world cases allows Room to effectively explore the boundlessness of a mother’s love in a very moving way. Highly recommended. 

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

*** out of ****

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the seventh entry in the sci-fi/fantasy franchise, which started in 1977. It is the first movie to take place after 1983’s Return of the Jedi and is also the beginning of a third trilogy of movies among endless “expanded universe” films currently in development by the new Disney-owned version of Lucasfilm. With all those eccentric details aside, I am happy to say that this is a fun adventure film with plenty to enjoy for longtime fans as well as the uninitiated.

The new story follows a young woman named Rey (Daisy Ridley), living a sad existence as a destitute scavenger on a desert planet; a robot named BB-8 carrying important data; a turncoat stormtrooper named Finn (John Boyega); Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac), an expert fighter pilot; and a mysterious masked practitioner of the Dark Side of The Force named Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), working with a rebirth of the Empire, known as The First Order.

Following a formula deliberately similar to the original Star Wars movie, Rey and Finn learn about the existence of The Force and the importance in defeating a giant oppressive regime holding a catastrophic secret weapon –but this time the young heroes find mentors in old familiar characters from the original trilogy.

Han (Harrison Ford), Chewie (Peter Mayhew) and Leia (Carrie Fisher) are all back and the ongoing subplot of this new trilogy revolves around the disappearance of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), last of the Jedi and the only hope to everyone - and everything that is good in that galaxy far, far away.

As the first Star Wars movie to be made outside of its creator George Lucas’ control, I got what I was expecting:  An awesome production with cinematic cinematography combined with effective special effects - starring characters who possess character surviving against threats that feel threatening. Prequel haters should know what I’m talking about here.

If a franchise is a malfunctioning or broken piece of equipment and director J.J. Abrams is a mechanic, he’s the guy you call. He locates the original instruction manual and restores everything back to its factory settings. You should be thankful that he got it back to proper working conditions, but you may also feel that guilty urge to stop him from using it as soon as possible. Star Trek Into Darkness is reason enough.

Abrams is not a creative force; he's a competent maker of films with deep perception for achieving tone by borrowing from the best. He hasn't made a great Star Wars film; he's merely fixed Star Wars by giving it the same mission all over again. Let's hope it's for the better.

Some fans will be disappointed in this film’s inability to tell a new story or the unending questions regarding what took place over the last three decades that resulted in such bad circumstances for the old heroes. I never had a finite opinion of what became of the galaxy after the Emperor's death or what our heroes would do next. I just know that I’m very appreciative of this film's new characters. They just may be more interesting than the old ones.

My only major disappointment with this new movie is in the briefly shown new supervillain, The Supreme Leader Snoke, which may be the first dip in Andy Serkis' progressive legacy in inhabiting compelling motion-capture CGI characters. Snoke is just too generic looking for Star Wars if not a distraction from all the realism this film achieves. 

The Force Awakens is far from perfect, but it rights a lot of wrongs that have happened to the franchise. The important thing to take from my viewing of the film is that I was rarely uneasy with what I was experiencing. It was a fun movie with the guts to make bold decisions in order to get things moving again. I can’t wait to see what happens next, but until 2017, I’ll try to get on with my life.

Brooklyn

***1/2 out of ****

John Crowley’s Brooklyn, stars the excellent Saoirse Ronan, who you may remember from 2007’s Atonement –for which she earned an Oscar nomination at age thirteen. She was most recently seen in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. In Brooklyn, she carries the entire movie as a young Irish lady in the 1950s, immigrating to America to seek out work after giving up on prospects in her home country.

The film focuses on the pains of being homesick and the struggle to make a new life for oneself. The film’s period look is vibrantly colorful and polished - nearly to a fault. I didn’t always believe its environment, but its dreamlike atmosphere makes the movie a very comfortable theatrical experience. Ronan is expectedly excellent, carrying nearly every scene in the film. Thanks to talented co-stars like Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters the movie does feature some charm outside of Ronan’s screen presence, but her love-interest co-star, Emory Cohen, only succeeds at seeming sweet. Somehow, he lacks a genuine touch to his performance.

Regardless, Crowley’s direction and the screenplay by Nick Hornby come together with Ronan’s acting in a beautiful looking, cleverly paced film that can remind anyone of how time passes when big changes happen in life.

Spotlight

**** out of ****

In Spotlight, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Billy Crudup and Stanley Tucci all star in a journalism procedural recounting the Boston Globe’s 2001 investigation that exposed widespread child molestation committed by priests and the Catholic Church’s role in covering it up.

The film has a vibe similar to All the President’s Men, for its no-nonsense approach to heavy content and thankfully resists showing uncomfortable flashbacks. This movie tastefully tells the stories of its victims through words, not imagery. The acting is as solid as the screenplay, which I’m sure is the product of thorough research.

Spotlight is directed by Tom McCarthy and it puts his shaky career back on track, even if this relatively low-budget movie, which is driven by dialogue, requires the support of multiple studios. I wouldn’t be quick to say that this is a movie that begs to be seen on a big screen, but it’s a rare thing now, when a major theatrical release is perfectly compelling on the simplest of levels.