Oscar Watch 2016

It feels a little more futile for me to be keeping up with the Oscars every year, but somehow I always end up watching anyway.  I skipped the Emmys and Golden Globes, but fully intended to watch this year's ceremony.  Alas, at some point over the last year my TV stopped being able to pick up the digital signal for my local ABC station, and I didn't notice.  Of course, ABC still refuses to stream the Oscars live without a pre-existing cable contract, and only in certain markets, so I was out of luck.  I resolved to just skip the whole ceremony, enjoy my evening, and catch up with the clips the next day.  And then I went out to dinner with the family in a restaurant with a television, and ended up catching the middle hour anyway.  When I got home and poked around online, Chris Rock's monologue was already available, and then I managed to get the TV reprogrammed in time to watch Leo talk about global warming and "Spotlight" win Best Picture.

24 hours later, the whole telecast is online in various places.  I polished off all the parts that I missed in a little over an hour, happily skipping several thank you speeches, musical numbers, and the recaps of the Best Picture nominees.  Say what you will about who should have won, and Chris Rock's performance as host, but this was one of the most exciting and interesting Oscars in some time.  For one, it was completely unpredictable, full of politics and controversies.  Aside from Leonardo DiCaprio and Brie Larson's locks on Best Actor and Actress, everything else was up in the air.  Rylance beat Stallone.  Iñárritu won two in a row, and Lubezki his third, but the big prize went to "Spotlight," which didn't win anything else except screenplay.  "The Martian" was shut out completely as "Mad Max: Fury Road" rampaged through all the technical categories to rack up the highest total of the night: six Oscars for the fourth entry in a summer action franchise.  The big exception was the Visual Effects Oscar, which went to the very deserving "Ex Machina."

And then there was the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, which had everyone on edge all evening.  Chris Rock's ten minute monologue seemed hellbent on making everyone as uncomfortable as possible, but I appreciated the guts it took to deliver it.  Yeah, the jokes were stale and Rock's may no longer be the best choice of provocateur for this situation, but he's still able to keep people's attention.  That really was the whole point of the controversy, to make sure that the industry is aware of its representational shortcomings.  I don't think that either the Compton or the Girl Scout cookie bits worked, but they sure helped to keep everything in context, and everyone on their toes.  The presenters were certainly a diverse crowd too - Whoopi, Lou Gossett Jr., Kerry Washington, Lee Byung-Hun, Priyanka Chopra, Morgan Freeman - and kudos to whoever got Joe Biden and Louis C.K. on the list.  Tell Sacha Baron Cohen and Stacey Dash to stay home next year.  Oh, and Dave Grohl singing the Beatles for the Memoriam was a welcome break from years and years of warbling divas.  I wasn't a fan of most of the musical performances, but he and Lady Gaga had a great evening. 

  

There were the usual disappointments.  I really, really wanted Don Hertzfeld to win Best Animated Short, and for Roger Deakins to break Lubezki's streak.  Neither of those things happened.  I was bracing myself for "Revenant" to take Best Picture after Iñárritu's win, and was so relieved when it didn't.  I still can't help getting caught up in the races, even if my biggest position this year boiled down to that I didn't want "The Revenant" or "The Big Short" to win Best Picture.  I liked both movies fine, but I just didn't like what that would indicate about the industry as a whole if they won.  "Spotlight," while not one of my favorites, was a perfectly solid, respectable winner for a very strange and wild year.  It's rare that the bulk of Oscar drama hasn't dwindled by the night of the ceremony, but this time around the race actually picked up after the nominations and got more uncertain with every industry award checkpoint along the way.  I wish we had more years like this, even if the movies themselves weren't the best crop. 

My favorite thing about last night's ceremony was pretty minor.  The Animation categories are usually presented by kid celebrities or a comedian with no real tie to the industry.  This year they had animated characters present both.  The Minions presented Best Animated Short and Buzz and Woody from "Toy Story" presented Best Animated Feature.  And it was charming and weird, and felt right. 

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A Look at "Carol"

There's something about the way that Todd Haynes lights his two leading ladies, Cate Blanchette and Rooney Mara, in "Carol."  They look like a pair of Golden Age Hollywood stars, even though "Carol," unlike some of Haynes' previous work, doesn't especially resemble a film of that era.  I spent a good amount of time in the early scenes, trying to decide whether Mara looked more like Audrey Hepburn or Natalie Wood.  It was surely a deliberate choice, contextualizing the film's narrative in familiar, nostalgic cinematic terms.  After all, Patricia Highsmith's source novel, "The Price of Salt," was written in 1952.  Why shouldn't it's tale of a forbidden love between two women be told through 1950s screen iconography?

Mara plays Therese Belivet, a clerk at a Manhattan department store, who one day spies well-to-do housewife Carol (Blanchette) out Christmas shopping, and is immediately smitten.  After selling Carol a train set, Therese visits her home to return a pair of gloves, and finds her feelings are reciprocated.  The two become involved, as discreetly as possible.  However, Carol is in the middle of a contentious divorce with her husband Harge (Kyle Chandler), and Therese's boyfriend Richard (Jake Lacy) is making overtures about marriage.  Inevitably, as Carol and Therese's relationship becomes more serious, they find it more and more difficult to keep up appearances.  Carol is in an especially precarious position, and risks losing her social standing and her relationship with her young daughter.

In the reaction pieces I've seen online, those who have had difficulty connecting with "Carol" tend to call the film cold and remote.  They appreciate its technical achievements and visual artistry, but simply do not find the central relationship between Carol and Therese compelling.  I can see why, because so much of the film seems so subdued, with the two leads careful to maintain their distance in a repressive, unfriendly world.  Two women together was so unthinkable in the 1950s that most of the characters do their best to talk around the subject when confronted with it.  Even Carol and Therese can't seem to bring themselves to acknowledge their love directly.  A great deal of the film concerns itself with their yearning, loneliness, and difficulty in accepting what they want.  The pacing is measured, the tone is contemplative, and the mood is melancholy, as reflected by the excellent Carter Burwell score.  A great deal of the romance is played out in a series of silent, lingering looks.  Therese watches Carol through windows and through the lens of her camera, until she can summon up the nerve to do more than just look.

I expected Cate Blanchette to be excellent here, and she is of course.  Onscreen she's luminous, poised, and charismatic.  Even when the façade of perfection slips and Carol's desperation shows, she's still never anything less than lovely.  However, this movie is a showcase for Rooney Mara's talents.  Therese is an amateur photographer, and much of her arc has to do with her development as an artist.  We see Carol's influence on her taste and style, and especially on her eye.  What begins as a passive gaze becomes more and more active, mirroring Therese's role in the relationship.  It's such a subtle, delicate performance, all about the smallest shifts in attitudes, little moments adding up to monumental changes.  I can't wait to see where Mara's career goes after this.

I confess that I want to like "Carol" more than I actually do.  I have a tremendous amount of affection for the characters, for the Phyllis Nagy script, for the Christmastime in New York visuals, and especially for that score.  However, I don't think I appreciate the filmmaking on nearly the same level as the viewers who seem to be really enraptured with the film.  "Carol" strikes me as a small, exquisitely made melodrama that will be best enjoyed by a particular audience in the right mood for it, and I don't think I quite match that description - or ever will.  Todd Haynes' work requires more commitment than I think his fans realize, though it's very comforting to see that he still has a loyal audience.

It's been a banner year for GLBT film, and it's only right that Haynes be at the forefront once more.
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Rank 'Em: The 2016 Best Picture Nominees

All caught up on the nominees, so here's the rundown of how I liked them, from best to worst.  I still think that "Spotlight" is going to win, even though it's not my favorite, with "The Revenant" as a potential candidate for an upset.  And yes, it's really a shame that "Carol" and "Inside Out" aren't in the mix too.

"Brooklyn" - It's a small, unassuming little Irish movie about a young girl becoming a woman, about falling in love, and about the immigrant experience.  It looks old-fashioned at first glance, but the performances are lively, the direction is sure, and the writing is endlessly delightful.  I don't know how anyone could resist its charms.  In a year of giant tentpole blockbusters and endless franchises, it's a relief to find that movies like this are still being made, and being made so well.

"The Martian" - The secret weapons of "The Martian" are its humor and optimism, which immediately set it apart from all the other terribly serious space exploration movies of recent times.  This is the first hard-science space movie I can remember really having a good time with in ages, and I just adore its can-do spirit and pro-science attitude.  Also, this is a great comeback for Ridley Scott, who has finally managed to get himself out of his rut and put his skills as a seasoned sci-fi visualist to great use.

"Room" - Two remarkable, and beautifully linked performances make "Room" something special.  Jacob Tremblay as a five year-old boy named Jack, and Brie Larsen as his fiercely protective mother, turn what could have been a by-the-numbers psychodrama into something far more thoughtful and affecting.  I think the film probably works better if you don't have its secrets spoiled for you, but I knew all of them far in advance and still think that this is one of the best films I've seen all year.

"Spotlight" - As much as I enjoy all the actors involved, there's no one that really stands out in the ensemble of "Spotlight," and I think that's to the movie's benefit.  This is a bare bones, straightforward procedural, looking at the ins and outs of the process of reporting a highly sensitive news story.  There's drama in abundance, but all of it remarkable grounded and restrained.  I can't remember the last time we had a proper investigative journalism film this good, and I hope we see more like it.

"The Big Short" - Now on the opposite end of the spectrum we have Adam McKay using his comedy powers to make the subprime mortgage crisis into something coherent and entertaining to the average moviegoer.  This one's very rough around the edges, and I'm not a fan of some of McKay's filmmaking choices.  Still, you have to admire the audacity of the celebrity cameos, the pithy asides, and tackling this kind of material to begin with.  High marks for coming out of nowhere to deliver this surprise.

"The Revenant" - I have nothing negative to say about Emmaneul Lubezki's gorgeous cinematography or the intense, painful performance of Leonardo DiCaprio as Hugh Glass.  However, the movie struck me as Alejandro Iñárritu aping Terrence Malick, and felt more and more gimmicky and thematically muddled as it went along.  It was epic, yes, but to what purpose?  I fully appreciate how difficult it was to make the film, but that shouldn't mean it has to be this difficult to watch too.  

"Mad Max: Fury Road" - It's a good action film, a great one even, but I confess that I don't understand why it's garnered the amount of praise it has.  I love the chase sequences and the shiny, chrome worldbuilding, but I wanted more from the narrative and the characters beyond what we got.  I absolutely understand and respect what George Miller did here with his storytelling, but it simply wasn't enough for me to think of it as anything other than a fun, disposable weekend matinee of a movie.

"Bridge of Spies" - I was looking forward to the usually trusty combination of Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, but came out of the movie feeling frustrated with their usual brand of earnestness and idealism.  It clashed so badly with the tone of the Cold War spy story that they were trying to tell.  Fundamentally there was nothing wrong with the direction or the Coen brothers' script or any of the performances, but this time it was in service of a film I just couldn't swallow.

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"The Danish Girl" and "The Revenant"

Almost done with the nominees.  Another pair of reviews for another odd couple pairing of movies ahead.

I've had very mixed feelings toward Tom Hooper's movies so far.  I found his style in "The King's Speech" distracting and flat out hated its application in "Les Miserables."  I didn't mind him so much in "The Danish Girl," though, where the camera is fairly restrained and unobtrusive.  There's a definite sense of caution here, as the filmmakers are dealing with a highly sensitive subject: Lili Elbe, one of the first transgender women to undergo sexual reassignment surgery. 

It's the 1920s in Copenhagen, and landscape artist Einar Wegener (Eddie Redmayne) is happily married to portrait artist Gerda Wegener (Alicia Vikander).  One day when a model for one of Gerda's paintings is absent, she recruits Einar to pose in her place in women's stockings.  The episode affects Einar deeply, and he has soon created an entire female alter ego for himself, Lili.  Initially Gerda encourages this, thinking it's all in fun, and finds Lili to be a wonderful subject for her paintings.  but then Lili goes out in public, again and again, and begins a secret relationship with a colleague, Henrik (Ben Whishaw).  Soon, Lili no longer wants to be Einar, and Gerda has to grapple with the loss of her husband.  She finds herself drawn to Einar's old friend Hans Axgil (Matthias Schoenaerts), as Lili searches for a way to more fully become a woman.

There have been several well-reasoned pieces in circulation that detail why the portrayal of Lili Elbe in this film is problematic, particularly as to how Einar and Lili are often treated like they're different people, and the male gaze is often uncomfortably present.  However, what got to me was how timid the film was, often portraying Lili as a martyr figure, a romantic notion more than a flesh and blood human being.  The performance didn't help - Eddie Redmayne is visualy striking as Lili, but the character herself only seems to be able to express melancholic longing and vulnerability, and is dreadfully passive in her interactions with men.  I found Alicia Vikander far more engaging as strong willed, ambitious Gerda.  She's the POV character, the stronger personality in the marriage, and ultimately the more relatable, sympathetic figure. 

I found "The Danish Girl" an enjoyable watch mainly for the visuals, which are lovely.  Hooper does his best to reflect Einar and Gerda's work in their environs, and gets a lot of mileage out of exploring the artistic community that they belong to.  However, I didn't find the story of Lili Elbe compelling because there is so little to the character.  Most of the film feels like it's Gerda's story, with Lili only really coming to the fore very late in the story.  "The Theory of Everything" was quite similar, spending so much time on Stephen Hawking's disabilities and relationship with his wife, it had a hard time making the case for his scientific genius.  While there's no question that Lili Elbe is a woman, we learn so little about who she is - her internal world, who she is beyond her desire to change. 

And so we come to Hugh Glass and "The Revenant," which is Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu and Emmanuel Lubezki doing Terrence Malick by way of Andrei Tarkovsky.  And after being forced to sit through the endless slog of this movie, I'm feeling much more charitable toward their last collaboration, "Birdman."  Don't get me wrong.  "The Revenant" is gorgeous, with spectacular cinematography and some admirable, committed performances from a talented cast.  Accounts of what the filmmakers had to go through to get the film made are highly impressive.  However, "The Revenant" is chiefly a grim, painful exercise in plumbing the depths of human misery.  And that is just never going to be my thing.

The year is 1823, and Leonard DiCaprio plays Hugh Glass, a frontiersman who guides a party of fur trappers through the wilderness of South Dakota.  Their luck is bad, and they are attacked by a band of Natives searching for a kidnapped woman.  Glass is then mauled by a bear, who leaves him badly wounded and close to death.  Captain Andrew Henry (Domhnall Gleeson), the leader of the group, leaves three men behind with Glass so that he'll receive a proper burial - youngster Jim Bridger (Will Poulter), conniving reprobate John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), and Glass's own teenage, half native son Hawk (Forrest Goodluck).  As Glass clings to life, haunted by visions of his dead wife (Grace Dove), the three men clash over what to do with him.  

Now, there are many things about "The Revenant" that I like - the strong depiction of Native American characters, the bleak period setting, and especially the challenging nature of the filmmaking itself.  However, the concept of DiCaprio fighting the elements and dragging himself back from the brink of death is a lot more appealing than actually watching it happen.  To put it bluntly, the majority of the movie is DiCaprio crawling, stumbling, staggering, and lurching though Lubezki's beautifully shot landscapes to track down the evil Fitzgerald.  And frankly, I'd had enough of that after about an hour and a half, but the movie runs 156 minutes total.  For all the dreamy flashbacks, and all the reverence of the natural world, Iñárritu  is no Malick.  He's very good at capturing a hellish experience, but his work lacks the poetry and transcendence I needed to fully embrace it. 

So points for ambition and some very high highs, but this is not a movie I found easy to appreciate.

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The 2015 Movie Showdown That Didn't Happen

Once upon a time in 2013, it seemed like every big franchise was planning a movie to be released in 2015.  There were over twenty-five potential blockbusters in the queue, including the next "Avatar," "Batman," "Bourne," and "Die Hard" movies.  I amassed and posted a list based on reports from a couple of sources, and marveled at the possibility of so many of these movies coming out in the same year.  But of course, they didn't.  And I think we could all get some benefit from looking back at those early, hazy predictions of a franchise movie showdown to end all showdowns, and comparing them to how things actually turned out.

From the initial list of twenty-seven potential 2015 blockbusters, only twelve were actually released in 2015.  Seven of those, however, ended up among the top ten global box office earners of the year: "Avengers : Age of Ultron," "Jurassic World," "Mockingjay, Part 2," "Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation," "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," "Spectre," and "Inside Out."  The other three were "Minions" and Furious 7," which were delayed from 2014, plus "The Martian," which had only just been optioned by Fox in 2013.  Of the other five 2015 releases, three more were in the top twenty: "Hotel Transyvania 2," "Terminator Genisys," and "Ant-Man."  Only two were flops: "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip" and the "Fantastic Four" reboot.  When it comes to the biggest franchise earners, it looks like the studios are pretty prescient about their hits long in advance.

Of the fifteen movies on the initial list that didn't open in 2015, three have no release date at all, including the planned "Avatar" and "Die Hard" sequels, eight were moved to 2016, three to 2017, and one was bumped up to a 2014 release date.  That was "The Penguins of Madagascar," which underperformed significantly, and was the beginning of a whole raft of troubles for DreamWorks Animation.  Keep in mind that the later 2016 and 2017 releases could be delayed again.  These are the weaker titles from the original batch - smaller and fading franchises like the fifth Jason Bourne film and the third Robert Langdon film.  My guess is that only two or three films that were delayed to 2016 will be among the top ten grossers:  "Finding Dory," "Independence Day: Resurgence," and "Batman v. Superman."  I wouldn't bet on anything that was pushed to 2017.

I made a couple of predictions about some of these titles three years ago, some of which were right on, and some of which were completely wrong.  It looks like "Terminator: Genisys" was indeed the end of the line for the "Terminator" franchise for the foreseeable future.  The proposed sequel has been pulled from the schedule, and all further plans are on hold.  And keep in mind that the film rights revert to James Cameron in 2019.  On the other hard, because so many films were moved around on the schedule and delayed, pretty much all the big head-to-heads were avoided.  The studios seem determined to avoid competition wherever they can, so the big films were actually pretty evenly spread out.  No blockbuster apocalypses either.  Sure, there were a few bombs, but there's been no sign of any major anti-franchise sentiment yet.  A couple of the older franchises like "Jurassic Park," "Mad Max," and "Rocky" even came roaring back to life, delivering surprise hits.

As we look ahead to the quickly filling schedules for 2017 and beyond, though, I'm finding it hard to work up much enthusiasm.  There's not much coming up that can match the thrill of a new "Star Wars" movie or a Batman v. Superman throwdown.  The biggest franchise event coming up is the two-part "Avengers" movie, and after "Age of Ultron" came out so half-baked, I'm quickly cooling on the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  However, there are plenty of other films that I'm happily tracking the development of, and hope to see onscreen in 2017.  Darren Aronofsky's got one in the works with Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem.  Alex Garland's has something that sounds like a distaff "Stalker" remake.

But it's far too early to say anything yet.  Below, find the full list of the 27 would-be 2015 blockbusters I originally discussed in 2013, and where they actually ended up.

2014

The Penguins of Madagascar

2015

The Avengers 2
Hotel Transylvania 2
Alvin & the Chipmunks 4
Mockingjay Part 2
Jurassic Park 4
Mission: Impossible 5
Star Wars Episode 7
James Bond 24
Fantastic Four reboot
Terminator reboot
Ant-Man
Inside Out

2016

Independence Day 2
Finding Dory
The Batman and Superman Movie
Snow White and the Huntsman 2
Inferno (The Da Vinci Code 3)
Kung-Fu Panda 3
Bourne 5
Assassin's Creed

2017

Get Smurfy
Pirates of the Caribbean 5
Alien Covenant (Prometheus 2)

No release date

Avatar 2
The Adventures of Tintin 2
Die Hard 6

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"Mr. Robot" Has a Few Bugs

I think the biggest trouble I had with USA's cyberpunk thriller series "Mr. Robot" is that I saw Channel 4's "Utopia" and FX's "Fargo" first.  So all the things that "Mr. Robot" does well - the shock value, the violence, the over-the-top characters, and the interesting cinematography - I've already seen done better. 

Still, credit where credit is due.  The pilot is an extremely strong piece of television, where we're introduced to Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), a depressed, paranoid, drug-using computer programmer, who works for a cybersecurity firm and hacks people's personal information after hours with frightening ease.  Socially anxious and increasingly alienated, he has few connections, aside from his childhood friend Angela (Portia Doubleday), who got him his current job, his psychiatrist Dr. Gordon (Gloria Reuben), and his neighbor and dug dealer, Shayla (Frankie Shaw).  One day, after shutting down a DDoS attack, he's approached by Mr. Robot (Christian Slater), the leader of a hacker group called fsociety.  He's also targeted for recruitment by Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström), an ambitious young executive at E Corp (which Elliot calls Evil Corp.), his firm's biggest client.

There are elements here that stand out as innovative and original.  The hacking that features in the show is reportedly technically accurate, and the hacker subculture is much more true to life than Hollywood usually manages.  I love that the lead is played by Rami Malek, who delivers a hell of a performance, and immediately stands out from the crowd due to the fact that he's ethnically Egyptian.  I like that the villain is a psychopath who is terrible at being a psychopath.  I like the brooding electronica score and bleak visuals.  The oppressive framing is a lot of fun.  I like the use of the unreliable narrator, and how this allows the show to simply call the evil corporation at the heart of the show Evil Corp. with a straight face.  I like that "Mr. Robot" manages to pull off a few genuine surprises.

I just wish it were better as a whole, cohesive show.  Frankly, the writing is mediocre and the characterization of everyone aside from Elliot is haphazard at best.  A lot of the clever ideas are rendered less effective by blunt handling.  I had a hard time differentiating Shayla and fsociety hacker Darlene (Carly Chaikin) for multiple episodes.  I'd ding Christian Slater for his bland portrayal of Mr. Robot except that the creators give him nothing to work with beyond a mystery that was too satisfied with itself.  The cast is good and smaller players like Michel Gill and Bruce Altman should get a lot of credit for giving their characters some nuance.  But then you have Tyrell, who despite Martin Wallström's best efforts, is essentially a Swedish Patrick Bateman rip-off, and seems to belong in a more outlandish, hyperreal kind of program.

Pacing is also a major problem.  The middle episodes in particular drag badly, as Elliot keeps getting sidetracked from his end goals by one crisis or another.  There's little sense of stakes and only occasional spurts of momentum.  In order for some of the big surprises to really have impact, we have to be on a limited information diet.  However, this means that Elliot gets sidelined for huge chunks of the show, leaving us with Angela or Tyrell as they pursue other agendas.  Now both of these storylines yield some good things eventually, but they really muck around with the structure of the series, often losing the subjective reality elements that made the pilot so compelling.

 

What I think really bothered me about "Mr. Robot" is that it thinks that it's smarter and edgier than it actually is.  It's terribly self-satisfied about doing such a good job with the hacking terms, to the point where a minor character actually points this out.  Sex and violence are constantly used for shock value, often in fairly distasteful ways.  So many characters are shallow, vapid, and act in ways that only disillusioned young internet nerds think people act.  And then there are the title screens, which are employed an awful lot like the ones for the "Fargo" series, except that creator Sam Esmail's name is brightly emblazoned on each one, like it's part of the title.  In short, "Mr. Robot" is exactly the kind of show you'd expect from someone like Elliott Alderson, if he were a real person.  And I don't trust that the show's creators understand how to use that.

I'm not unhappy that I finished the first season, but I think the second will almost certainly be less effective, and I'm on the fence as to whether to continue.  Without the surprises of the last few episodes, and with the novelty of the premise having worn off, how far can the creators take this? Will they turn to more shocks and more boundary-pushing or figure out how to actually build its characters?  The jury's still out, but I'm not hopeful for "Mr. Robot's" future.

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Two in the "Room"

I wish I could have gone into "Room" not knowing as much about it as I did - I paged through the novel during an airport layover shortly after it was published, and managed to spoil the majority of it for myself.  That way I could have enjoyed watching the story unfold, and gradually learned more and more about its haunting little universe along with the main character, a little boy named Jack.  Even revealing the full cast list is probably too much information, so I'll be very vague about details in the following review.  However, I found that knowing pretty much everything that was going to happen in the film still didn't prepare me for it.

Jack (Jacob Tremblay) lives in Room with his Ma (Brie Larson). He's never known anything else beyond it, identifying the images on the television as "not real," and the skylight above as looking up on Heaven.  A man named Old Nick (Sean Bridgers) visits every few days  and brings supplies, but Jack has to stay in the Wardrobe when Old Nick is there, because Ma has forbidden that they have any contact.    Jack is happy in Room, but when Old Nick visits on his fifth birthday, Ma learns that their existence is threatened.  She hatches a plan that will require Jack to leave Room and go on a dangerous journey, in order to save them both.

Brie Larson gives one of her best performances here, and absolutely deserves all the kudos that she's been receiving, but "Room" wouldn't have been possible without Jacob Tremblay.  The child's voice and point of view are what give the movie a special poignancy, that add new dimensions to all the plot developments that look straightforward on the surface, but turn out to be anything but.  Tremblay often reminds me of Quvenzhané Wallis in "Beasts of the Southern Wild," as Jack is another very young child who is able to treat a horrid environment as a place of wonders, who creates his own personal mythology for the world based on limited information provided by troubled parent figures.  Tremblay, however, has the more difficult assignment of playing Jack at different stages of his emotional development, and different levels of awareness about his situation.  And he's remarkable at it.

I can't get over how genuine this kid is on camera, bratty and petulant at times, but never losing the audience's sympathies.  Some of his dialogue is overly precious, but he delivers it well enough that you can believe he came up with the lines himself, and his reactions are wonderfully natural and unselfconscious.  I'm very curious about how some of the trickier parts of the performance were handled, but then I'm also wary of peeking behind the curtain and ruining the illusion for myself.  He's also helped immensely by being paired with Brie Larson, who, for the lack of a better term, he has real screen chemistry with.  And then there's director Lenny Abrahamson, who never shies away from putting Tremblay front and center.

I was surprised by the intensity of the film, especially in the second half.  There's a big, showy, suspenseful sequence at the midpoint that offers a lot of thrills and emotional fireworks.  However, even when it seems like the immediate danger has passed, there are always more issues to confront, new realities to adjust to, and more old wounds being ripped open.  Tensions can boil over anytime, and they do.  The changing relationship between Jack and Ma drives the story, and the characters' struggles to reconcile their conflicting needs and wants are plenty riveting on their own.  I love how their differing views of Room affect them, and how Ma slowly comes to realize that Jack is better equipped to deal with a particularly difficult situation than she is.

The only other Abrahamson film I've seen is "Frank," which I didn't care for, and which wasn't nearly as good a showcase for his talent.  Here, Abrahamson turns common household items into beloved friends, domestic rituals into character-defining moments, and shots of blue sky and power lines into a glorious moment of discovery.  "Room" was made on a very modest budget, and the scope of the story is very small, but it never feels that way.   In other hands, the same material could have turned out very differently - fodder for a low budget genre exploitation flick, perhaps.  However, it's heartening to discover that with the right talent involved, a small but heartfelt film like "Room" can still be made, and made well.
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