SummaryJack (Jacob Tremblay) is a spirited 5 year-old who is looked after by his loving and devoted Ma (Brie Larson). Like any good mother, Ma dedicates herself to keeping Jack happy and safe, nurturing him with warmth and love and doing typical things like playing games and telling stories. Their life, however, is anything but typical—they ar...
SummaryJack (Jacob Tremblay) is a spirited 5 year-old who is looked after by his loving and devoted Ma (Brie Larson). Like any good mother, Ma dedicates herself to keeping Jack happy and safe, nurturing him with warmth and love and doing typical things like playing games and telling stories. Their life, however, is anything but typical—they ar...
A prize-winning page-turner becomes a moving, harrowing and redemptive drama about the ties that bind a mother to her child. Be warned: one box of tissues may not be enough.
It just might be the most impressive piece of filmmaking I’ve seen in 2015, and it features a great lead performance by a rising star, a memorable supporting role by a familiar veteran — and one of the most amazing acting jobs by a child I’ve ever seen.
Brie Larson gives a tour de force performance in this instant classic. Haunting and beautiful, Room takes you through a nightmare situation from the point of view of a child's innocent eyes. It is a masterclass in visual storytelling.
I went into this movie with rock-bottom expectations. Maybe it was from a spate of absolutely abysmal movies that were billed as "shocking" or "horrifying" or somesuch other nonsense.
Room genuinely surprised me, and in a good way. It gets across the extreme stress and horror of Brie Larson's character without being gratuitous. Obvious content warnings include things like involuntary imprisonment, drug use, and sexual assault, though the latter is never directly shown and is made all the more impactful for it, in my opinion. Other tryhard directors would've gone all-in, spending minute after agonizing minute putting the repeat violation of our heroine on full, needlessly graphic display. Abrahamson has shown that he understands the concept of less is more and that one can convey a nightmarish situation without being totally wanton about it.
This is also one of the very, VERY few movies that genuinely made me care about a child character. Between Abrahamson's direction and Jacob Tremblay's superb talent (seriously, if the kid keeps giving performances like this, he's got one HELL of a career ahead of him), Jack is...well, he's a character. A lot of directors just toss a child into the mix and assume you're going to care by default and forget that they need to actually BE characters. That, or they make the kid out as being way too well-behaved, outright angelic, or intelligent for someone of their age and it kinda breaks suspension of disbelief. I could legitimately see a kid like Jack existing. He acts like a 5 year-old, for both good and ill. He interacts with his mom and others like a child would, in those circumstances.
The 2nd half is also done VERY well. The movie could've easily ended at the closing of the 1st half and nobody would've batted an eye. It also could've easily made the 2nd ****, grimdark borefest being needlessly gritty, miserable, and depressing. Again, nobody would've batted an eye if it'd have done that. But, it didn't. The 2nd half was, to put not too fine a point on it, honest. It was sweet at times. Harrowing, too. Even stressful. Again, though, all done in the right way, at the right times, and handled both maturely and realistically.
My wife and I started watching this at midnight, and neither of us so much as had a drooping eye the entire time. Easily one of the best movies I've seen in a while. Its emotional, its honest, and its harrowing without descending into grimdark territory or wallowing in disgusting, pointlessly graphic nonsense.
All in all, an excellent movie and well worth watching if you can handle the subject matter.
Room is a startling movie experience, peculiar in setting and profoundly simple. It's a story of love born out of unseen horror, of nurture conquering nature. Room must be felt to be believed.
Room is ultimately not something you’d readily call enjoyable, but it is a cathartic and provocative reminder that life is full of possibilities and outcomes.
'Room'' might very well be one of 2015's best movies, however I seem to be in a minority of not liking it 100%. ''Room'' is a very special movie, a one of its kind really, the story was original, the acting was one of the years very best, but it missed a dramatic flair and some scenes dragged on for too long and a noticeable off balanced structure of acts.
Room may be an annoying film for some (including me for some parts) thanks to its impressive and original initial premise and frustrating because of all the missed opportunities.
However the chemistry and love/hate relationship between ''Ma'' and Jack is impeccable and a feast to look at.
Room has great potential, but soon in the movie it decides to leave behind all the possibilities/potential for a more solid and overwhelming drama, which is good but could've been great.
Overall ''Room'' is a very good film, but not flawless and ''the best in years'' like many people are claiming it to be.
Ma: "You're gonna love it".
Jack: "What?".
Ma: "The world".
Room tells the story of a relationship between a mother and son, as she raises him while confined to a 10x10 room and what happens when they finally get out.
Since the 2016 Oscars are on Sunday and I've been lacking quite a bit on seeing as many Oscar contenders from last year. Room was one of those movies, as I've heard nothing but great things about it and how truly unique it is (from what I heard). It was a real shame that I had to wait for a while to get a chance to watch this movie, because it's been a very slow month over here in jolly good England. But after finally seeing the movie after that long wait, I can say that the movie was pretty underwhelming, and that's really disappointing saying that.
Brie Larson has been sweeping the award season this year, by taking home: The BAFTA, Golden Globe, Critics Choice award and the SAG award, and it's very deserving. Brie Larson delivered a tremendous performance and she was without a doubt the best part of this movie. I'm so happy that Larson is finally getting noticed since everyone pretty much forgot about "Short Term 12" and her performance in that film that got very unnoticed. Larson shows off her acting skills in this movie and I know for a fact that she will receive an Oscar on Sunday night. She was truly brilliant in this movie and one of her best performance so far.
Lenny Abrahamson (director of the movie) brought us the 2014 film "Frank", which I really liked and I couldn't wait to see want he will bring to this movie, and what he brought was somewhat of a mix bag for me. I'm happy for him to get an Oscar nomination, but I didn't find anything that special or groundbreaking when it came to it's directing. Most of it is just copy and past from the book that this movie is based on, so Abrahamson can look on what he's doing. I didn't read the book (and never will) but I've heard a lot of people who did read the book say that the book is better than the movie, and even the author herself said the same thing. The directing isn't anything Oscar worthy, but it's decent directing at best for Abrahamson.
The first act of this movie was very strong and it did kept my interest. That's the biggest positive I had for this movie is it's first act.
Jacob Tremblay is an unknown star to me and for everyone else, so this is basically he's break out role. I did look up on what Tremblay has been in before and I found out he was in "The Smurfs 2" which wasn't that good. But all that aside, I thought he's performance was alright, nothing outstanding, but nothing terrible. He's better than most kids I've seen in recent movies, but I also have seen better ones as well.
Now for the problems: The second act wasn't as strong as the first act. The movie did lose me a couple of times as I became disinterest as it went along.
The movie did feel like a sugar-coated version of the book and as I said before I haven't even read the book, but for what I heard from other people, the book is more graphic and dark than the movie. I get this question asked a lot when I say the movie sugar-coated from the book, "Would you rather have graphic scenes of **** from the book", well if that's what the book is suppose to be, then yeah, and it's not because I want to see someone get ****, but if you what me to give a crap about the characters and their struggle to see how their suffered, then the film makers shouldn't have sugar-coated it. I feel like if this movie was handled by a different director, it would have been a much better movie. The movie is basically telling you that there's violence and **** that happened, but there's nothing really graphic about it. The movie tells you to care about things that it never bothers developing and if you are going to make a movie on a subject like that, and pretend that this horrible thing that happened, again, you shouldn't sugar-coat it. Take "12 Years a Slave" as an example: That movie was graphic, brutal, honest and that's what made it an amazing movie, because it took a real life story like slavery that's suppose to make you feel for the character's and makes you look at what their been through and say to yourself "Wow, that was truly awful". Now look at Room, we have a single character and the movie is telling you to feel bad for her and what shes been through, but it didn't show any of it, and it's not like it has to be graphic for the sake of it, but it didn't even try to develop it.
Overall Room was very overwhelming and kind of bland. I know a lot of people are going to get mad at me for not loving this movie as they do, but that's just my opinion.
The Academy nominates this after school special for Best Picture along with its not ready for film school graduation director when there were so many more accomplished films snubbed as well as masters like Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott. What a disgrace!
Though the acting is fine, however nothing so exceptional, the movie to its greatest detriment suffers from poor structure which absolutely minimizes its emotional impact. A good director would have restructured the novel. Instead this neophyte stays faithful because he has no balls. The cheap video look chosen delivers a made for TV movie (not the good kind), and even worse are the quick news style zooms which is the first thing a total amateur does in trying to make a film; or what many veterans do under the total fallacy that it makes the audience believe in the reality on screen more. I saw a phony let's play make believe production from start to finish. And so much has been made of the movie's limited locations and the difficulty in crafting a compelling story within such confines. Firstly, that is misleading to what is actually the case here. Secondly, this little movie was of course infinitely easier to make than so much other grander, more logistically difficult fare was. That's a fact.
Boycott the Oscars not for lack of diversity (an absurd lie by the left, the record of their choices over the many years clearly speaks for itself), but for sheer incompetence in shamelessly falling for **** content over actual quality of movie-making.
Production Company
Element Pictures,
Bord Scannán na hÉireann / The Irish Film Board,
Film4,
FilmNation Entertainment,
No Trace Camping,
Ontario Media Development Corporation (OMDC),
Téléfilm Canada