Movie Review: Just Mercy (2019)

A legal drama, Just Mercy is a forceful exploration of a system designed to deliver flawed outcomes at the expense of the underprivileged.

In the late 1980s, Harvard Law School graduate Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), who is Black, moves to Alabama to establish the Equal Justice Initiative, a law practice dedicated to helping wrongly convicted low-income prisoners. Initially, his only assistant is local human rights activist Eva Ansley (Brie Larson). They start investigating death row files, including the case of Walter "Johnny D" McMillian (Jamie Foxx), sentenced to death for killing an 18-year-old white woman. 

Bryan uncovers evidence of racism in the local justice system, including Black suspects receiving woefully inadequate legal representation, with District Attorney Tommy Chapman (Rafe Spall) and Sheriff Tate (Michael Harding) only interested in protecting the status quo. Bryan struggles to prevent the state execution of elderly convict Herbert Richardson (Rob Morgan), a Black Vietnam War veteran suffering from PTSD. But he does find the entire case against Johnny D hinging on the dubious testimony of criminal Ralph Myers (Tim Blake Nelson), and doggedly sets out to secure a new trial.

A biography based on Steveston's 2014 book, Just Mercy successfully combines outrage with persistence. Director Destin Daniel Cretton co-wrote the screenplay with Andrew Lanham, and exposes an entrenched legal process reeking of racism and satisfied with executing Black men as a proxy for actual crime-solving. The film carries Stevenson's quiet authority like a beacon of light through the sewer, startling rats with audacity.

The positives are potent. Stevenson standing up to District Attorney Chapman is a demonstration of invasive courage confronting obtuseness. The textured side-story of elderly inmate Herbert registers as a front-row seat to contaminated justice. And the two central performances are sturdy. Michael B. Jordan adds the essential trace of self-doubt to Stevenson's fortitude, while Jamie Foxx conveys resignation sparking into hope when his new lawyer actually takes the time to get to know the McMillian family background. 

Some weaknesses in structure and narrative emphasis do emerge. The 137 minutes of running time are marginally excessive, Cretton seemingly intent on chronicling every legal step and meeting. Despite the length, the murder victim and her family in the Johnny D case are entirely ignored, a case of righting one wrong but also diminishing the original tragedy. The Eva Ansley character played by Brie Larson fades in significance after a promising start.

But as obstacles are piled in his path, Steveston boldly goes straight to the source in the form of flawed and only witness Ralph Myers. Here Tim Blake Nelson emerges squinting into the neon light, inhabiting an unforgettable performance full of pitiful opportunism. Jordan and Foxx are excellent; Nelson is a deliriously twisted mess.

It takes a while for the drama to move into the courtroom. Once there the scenes are effective but also relatively routine, although the ability of local judges to embrace rot remains astounding. Deploying facts to counter farce, Just Mercy shocks with dignity. 



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Movie Review: The Glass Castle (2017)

A drama about family ties, The Glass Castle explores the long shadows cast by a difficult upbringing.

In 1989, Jeannette Walls (Brie Larson) is a New York City newspaper gossip columnist engaged to financial advisor David (Max Greenfield), and trying to distance herself from an unconventional past. Her parents are squatting in an apartment building, and as she works up the courage to let them know she is marrying David, her story is revealed in flashbacks.

Jeannette's father Rex (Woody Harrelson) and mother Rose Mary (Naomi Watts) are raising four children in poverty, instability, and without formal schooling. The family is always on the move and barely one step ahead of the bill collectors. Rex is an alcoholic and cannot hold a job; he is also a big dreamer and waxes eloquent about grand plans to build an innovative glass castle for his family. He has a close and trusting relationship with Jeannette, the most astute and observant of the kids.

Rose Mary is an amateur painter and mostly stands by Rex, eventually convincing him to relocate the family back to Welch, West Virginia and settle in a ramshackle house near his mother Erma (Robin Bartlett). With the kids always near starvation and Erma's abusive personality adding further strain, Jeannette and her siblings plot a new independent path to break free from their parents.

Based on a true story adapted from Jeannette Walls' autobiographical book, The Glass Castle is complex drama carrying echoes of The Mosquito Coast and Captain Fantastic. While fathers refusing to abide by the norms of society are a stock cinematic topic, director Destin Daniel Cretton, who also co-wrote the script, overcomes familiarity with a beguiling story of familial love colliding with child maltreatment. 

At the centre of the story is Rex as the wayward father figure still influencing every aspect of Jeannette's life. His anti-authoritarian behaviour combined with natural (if wasted) charm, alcohol abuse and worrying disregard for the necessities of life create a dangerous edge. But in the flashback scenes, Cretton balances Rex with one good deed compensating for every despicable act. His failures as a traditional father are accompanied by limitless imagination, unconditional love, lessons from the school of life and encouragement to pursue dreams. His mother Erma's behaviour offers hints as to why Rex is the way he is, but ultimately Jeannette rightfully and righteously parks her resentment at her father's doorstep.

As an adult she inherently knows Rex would approve of neither her marrying a dull financial analyst nor pursuing a career as a gossip columnist. Yet he is unable to modify his boorish behaviour and embarrasses her at every opportunity. Their father-daughter bond is close to failure, but Cretton excels in several moments when the child Jeannette is the only person who can influence Rex. From convincing him to join the trek to Welch to imploring him to stop drinking, her voice resonates with him like no other.

Brie Larson is mostly dour in a thankless role full of brooding, and despite the childhood scars Jeannette steers towards snug rather than provocative resolutions. In contrast Woody Harrelson is the stand out performer and the driving energy behind the film. With a mischievous smile and a story for every occasion, he rounds Rex into a father who can be simultaneously loved and despised. 

The Glass Castle is an unattainable dream spun by a deeply flawed free spirit, and it rises to reflect his personality, cracks and all.



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Movie Review: Short Term 12 (2013)

A social drama, Short Term 12 explores the world of troubled young adults with mature awareness.

In Los Angeles, Grace (Brie Larson) and Mason (John Gallagher Jr.) are supervisors at the Short Term 12 group home for troubled teenagers, and help rookie supervisor Nate (Rami Malek) settle in. Not much older than the young adults they look after, Grace and Mason are in a relationship, although she has trouble expressing her feelings and talking about her own troubled past. When she finds out she is pregnant, Grace initially schedules an abortion, but later confides in Mason.

The residents include Marcus (Lakeith Stanfield), who is gloomy as he approaches his 18th birthday. Sammy (Alex Calloway) is deeply insecure, has fits of screaming and often attempts to escape. Luis (Kevin Hernandez) is cocky and spends most of his time antagonizing Marcus. 15 year old Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) is a new arrivee with a sour attitude, claiming her dad will take her home for the weekend. Grace tries to reach out and establish a connection with Jayden, as she senses a common background drawing them together.

The continuum between caregiver and care receiver, and the firm tenderness and intelligent empathy required to manage teens going through traumas, are weighty topics for a movie to address. Director and writer Destin Daniel Cretton tackles the difficult terrain with a firm hand and credible sensitivity, and the independently produced Short Term 12 emerges as a remarkably confident and memorable effort. Running an efficient 96 minutes, the film stays within itself as an individual-scaled snapshot of humans in transition.

Cretton draws compelling characters and slowly reveals their internal struggles. Grace emerges as the heart of the film, a woman not far removed from her own agonies, now doing her best to steer teenagers to calmer waters. Brie Larson delivers a breakthrough performance surfacing Grace's dichotomy of a strong desire to help others coexisting with an inability to confront her own past.

Grace is inexorably drawn to provide the support that she never received. She sees a version of herself in Jayden, who at 15 years old is an expert in pushing everyone away as a defence mechanism and is still living in the shadow of an unstated horror. Kaitlyn Dever teases out hints of Jayden's vulnerability while building her sturdy emotional resilience with surly postures.

Cretton is interested in the troubled teenagers as tragic symptoms of multiple social ills. In a heartbreaking scene, Marcus recounts his childhood story and the resultant rage within him through rap lyrics. But here both the kids and the horrors they are escaping hide in plain sight. The film features sparse and realistic sets, capturing a modest and mostly nondescript aesthetic. Short Term 12 is just a large house with multiple rooms, and from the outside most resembles a school campus.

And once they cross the threshold of 18, the kids age out of the system and are essentially on their own, a prospect causing Marcus enormous stress. The number ticks over, but the scars run deep and the vulnerabilities continue well into adulthood, as Grace knows only too well.

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Movie Review: Kong: Skull Island (2017)

A monster adventure movie, Kong: Skull Island provides rollicking action without ever rising to any new heights.

In a prologue set in 1944, an aerial dogfight over the Pacific results in American pilot Hank Marlow and a Japanese pilot crash-landing onto a mysterious island. As they try to kill each other, they are interrupted by a massive ape.

In 1973, monster researcher Randa (John Goodman) and geologist Brooks (Corey Hawkins) secure funding from Senator Willis (Richard Jenkins) to explore a recently discovered island. They recruit adventurer Conrad (Tom Hiddleston) to lead the team, while anti-war photojournalist Weaver (Brie Larson) talks her way onto the expedition. Lieutenant Colonel Packard (Samuel L. Jackson), fresh from the disappointment of the Vietnam War, is tasked with providing protection.

Packard's helicopters penetrate the storm clouds surrounding the island, and Brooks drops seismic charges to explore the subsurface geology. The explosions irritate Kong, a massive ape and de facto ruler of the island, and he proceeds to decimate the invading helicopters. The survivors have to navigate their way to an extraction point, but Packard insists on re-engaging with Kong to avenge his losses. Conrad, Weaver and others stumble upon more monstrous creatures, as well as the elderly Marlow (John C. Reilly), who has survived since World War 2 and is living with local tribespeople.

Yet another Hollywood retelling of the Kong story, this version is not half-bad. Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts conjures up more-than-decent monster special effects, and the many battles with and amongst assorted oversized creatures provide frequent highlights. As per the title the film remains confined on the island once the expedition lands on Kong's turf, and with no final chapter featuring capture, relocation and urban chaos, Kong: Skull Island settles down as a solid if routine metaphor for the Vietnam War, fully immersed in the jungle environment.

Kong is the local dealing with internal threats, Packard is the helicopter-powered invader arriving uninvited and all guns blazing, Weaver represents the anti-war disengagement movement as well as the press recording proceedings, and the rest of the film is sweaty jungle warfare with multiple-fronts, internal divisions and some unexpected alliances.

Vogt-Roberts shrewdly steers well clear of interspecies lust, romance and infatuation, the bond here between Kong and Weaver limited to gestures of mutual respect, empathy and understanding of interdependence. Packard slips into the villain role, the warmonger intent on violence as the solution before understanding what the problem is. Kong also has his hands full with suitably ugly Skullcrawlers, ugly beings who emerge out of their subterranean habitats to take on all comers.

With stock character definitions and no narrative surprises, Kong: Skull Island stays faithful to its mission: oversized high energy entertainment, unprovocative but polished.

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Movie Review: Trainwreck (2015)

A raunchy romantic comedy, Trainwreck asks whether wild girls also deserve an opportunity to find true love.

As young girls, sisters Amy and Kim Townsend witnessed their parents divorce and were lectured by their father Gordon (Colin Quinn) that monogamy is an unrealistic expectation. 23 years later, Amy (Amy Schumer) is a magazine writer in New York City, living the wild single life, drinking heavily, smoking weed, and sleeping with a succession of men behind the back of her superficial boyfriend Steven (John Cena). Meanwhile, Kim (Brie Larson) has settled down and is starting a family.

Amy receives an assignment from her editor Dianna (Tilda Swinton) to interview sports Dr. Aaron Conners (Bill Hader), who has devised better surgery procedures to mend the knees of world famous athletes. Despite being polar opposites, Amy and Aaron start to fall in love, threatening Amy's carefree attitude towards life. At the same time Gordon moves into a long term care facility, and his ailing health also forces Amy to reassess his influence and her priorities.

Written by Schumer and directed by Judd Apatow, Trainwreck is a modestly successful attempt to spice up the rom-com genre with a wayward woman at its centre. Having taken her father's advice to heart, Amy is the antithesis of women usually plonked into the middle of a romance. Amy is a foul-mouthed party girl, living life on her own terms, hurting others with her me-first behaviour and straight talk, and looking down upon anyone settling for settling down, starting with her sister.

With Schumer in top comedic form, the jokes arrive at a fast and furious pace, and about half of them hit the target. Amy is at her best offering wry commentary at her own expense or saying it like it is in front of an aghast audience. Much less successful are some cameos by the likes of Chris Evert, Marv Albert and Matthew Broderick, offering nothing but bloat. Basketball stars LeBron James and Amar'e Stoudemire also appear as themselves but fare better and actually contribute some laughs.

Trainwreck gets caught in possession with a central character who is likeable because she's crude and who literally refuses to actually sleep with anyone after sex. It's an emotional dead end if the objective is a happy ending, and for all the raw honesty infused into the character of Amy, fundamentally the film collapses specifically because the romance between Amy and Aaron is based on nothing other than script requirements.

A top-notch celebrated surgeon to the stars and a foul-mouthed trainwreck falling for each other simply does not convince, and neither of them demonstrates any capacity for genuine change to accommodate the other. Either Amy stays true to herself and alone, or softens her edges to be loved. Back on the rails, perhaps, but betraying herself and much less fun.

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Movie Review: The Spectacular Now (2013)

A teen high school drama and romance, The Spectacular Now treats its characters with respect but stumbles on some uneven tones.

Sutter (Miles Teller) is in his last year of high school, half-heartedly applying to colleges. Sutter is popular, but lives for the moment, barely studies, and has no plans for the future. He has a strained relationship with his mother Sara (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and does not know much about his father except that he left the house years earlier. Sutter is also a heavy drinker, keeping a flask handy and gulping alcohol at every opportunity.

His long-term girlfriend Cassidy (Brie Larson) finally dumps him when she catches him in the company of another girl, but Cassidy is really tired of Sutter's overall aimlessness. She starts a relationship with star athlete Marcus (Dayo Okeniyi), but Sutter does not give up hope of winning her back. Meanwhile he meets the down-to-earth Aimee (Shailene Woodley), a hard working low profile student with her own dominating mother. Sutter takes Aimee on as a project to introduce her to the fun life, and gradually they prod each other towards change.

Directed by James Ponsoldt and co-written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, The Spectacular Now takes a relatively serious look at a teenager as he stands at the crossroads. The film sets out to draw a stark line of contrast between the carefree, live-for-today attitude and the more cerebral, worry-about-the-future stance most young people tend to find natural. Sutter very much belongs in the former camp, to the exasperation of his friends and teachers, but he sees little point in anything except enjoying the current moment.

How Sutter, a seemingly intelligent, caring and capable young man, came to be so indifferent to his own future is revealed slowly, Ponsoldt content to let the story unfold at a relaxed pace. The majority of the film is mostly occupied with Sutter being Sutter, working hard at doing nothing, tentatively exploring the strange and new attraction he senses towards Aimee while at the same time finding it difficult to let go of Cassidy.

The deliberate exposition is both a strength and weakness. While Sutter emerges as a well-rounded and deeply flawed character, the film is repetitive and entrenches his self-destructive behavioral patterns, including uncontrolled drinking, driving while impaired and an inability to motivate himself to study. When the moment of truth comes and Sutter has to evolve or wither, he has precious little time and space to convincingly maneuver.

With the entire film riffing on themes from Say Anything..., Miles Teller channels a more adrift version of John Cusack's Lloyd Dobler. Shailene Woodley is impeccable as the star-struck new possible girlfriend, her quick entry into Sutter's hard drinking orbit one of the film's more disturbing themes. But The Spectacular Now reaches a gut-wrenching cinematic peak and emotional trough when Sutter finally and simultaneously catches up with his past and his future. Suddenly, aiming for the thrill of now does not appear all that spectacular.

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The Movies Of Brie Larson

All movies starring Brie Larson and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

13 Going On 30 (2004)

Greenberg (2010)

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)

Rampart (2011)

The Spectacular Now (2013)

Short Term 12 (2013)

Trainwreck (2015)

Room (2015)

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

The Glass Castle (2017)

Just Mercy (2019)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Room (2015)

An intimate drama about survival, Room is a child's view of an abduction ordeal. The film is original, but offers frustratingly little beyond its basic premise.

Joy Newsome (Brie Larson) is raising her son Jack (Jacob Tremblay) in a single room. As a teenager, Joy was abducted by a psychopath known only as Big Nick, and held captive as a sex slave in a back yard garden shed. A skylight is her only window to the outside world. Jack was born in captivity, and all he knows is the inside of the room, plus whatever Joy explains to him and what he sees on the rudimentary television. Every night Big Nick visits the room to have sex with Joy, with Jack confined to the closet. Once Jack turns five, Joy's thoughts turn to plotting an escape, and she will need Jack's help to succeed.

Directed by Lenny Abrahamson, Room is a small story built on one big idea. The film spends its first half literally in one small room serving as an entire habitat, and the second half exploring emotional damage, all from the perspective of five year old Jack. The film mixes intensity with a sense of wonderment, Joy portrayed as a hero and a victim, and the rest of the world a large, mysterious place filled with strangers, both intimidating and welcoming to a young curious mind.

The charm of Room is also its limitation. The world as seen by a five year old is a fascinating, sometimes scary place, but it is also a truncated, splintered perspective, lacking in depth and continuity. And while Room succeeds in capturing the astonishment and anxiety that comes from a child discovering what the world has to offer, by definition the film stops short of delving into any one issue beyond what young Jack can comprehend.

The second part of the film particularly suffers. Jack is an observer as the world outside the room opens up to him, and he witnesses adults grappling with the aftermath of the abduction ordeal. Joy has to find her bearings in the real world, deal with her parents (Joan Allen and William H. Macy), the media hounds, and self-serving lawyers, while redefining her purpose in life and struggling with feelings of guilt.

There is rich territory to explore, but Room can only offer partial scenes and fragments of discord, because this is all that Jack can discern. There are tender moments as Jack emerges out of his scarred shell and creates new connections with other grown-ups, but the film defaults to a menu of themes that would make for an engrossing experience, but without the follow-through to more fully deliver any of the items.

Brie Larson as Joy and young Jacob Tremblay as Jack are both quite touching as victims and survivors. The script by Emma Donaghue (who also wrote the book) never asks for cheap pity, and Larson emphasizes the smart toughness Joy had to call upon to raise her son in confinement and come through her ordeal. Tremblay avoids all the hazards of cuteness, and also steers Jack towards coherent stubbornness and a less-than-perfect disposition forged by a most unusual upbringing.

Room is innovative and appealing, both faithful to and constrained by its unique vision.

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