Promising Young Woman Review

4.0 Stars

Cassandra "Cassie" Thomas (Carey Mulligan) is smart and determined and was working her way through medical school when tragedy rocked her world.  Her best friend Nina was raped by their classmate Al Monroe.  The school and the legal system failed her.  Nina took her own life and Cassie never recovered.  Now, pushing 30, she lives at home with her parents in Ohio and works at a coffee shop to make ends meet.  

Promising Young Woman is Cassie's revenge story.  Her parents and friends (well, the coffee shop owner) are worried about her.  She's out late a night, she has no friends or boyfriend.  They're afraid to even think what she's doing.  What she's doing is trying to stop what happened to Nina from happening to anyone else, one sleazy man at a time.

The film starts in a club.  Three business men are at the bar, cursing up a storm, being misogynistic, complaining about a female co-worker when they notice Cassie completely drunk sitting by herself on a nearby couch.  One of the men (the one who actually seems like a decent guy) offers to take her home.  Like every other guy, he tries to take advantage of her inebriated state.  She lets him get just far enough before revealing her sobriety.  I thought from the preview that Cassie killed the men to teach them a lesson.  Spoiler alert: she doesn't.  She just hopes to scare them to the point they never do this again.

One day, while she is working in the coffee shop, a former classmate Ryan (Bo Burnham) enters.  He is sweet and goofy and endearing.  After tripping over his own words, he tells her she can spit in his coffee if she likes.  He'd deserve it.  Without hesitating, she does.  He responds by asking her out.  He also tells her that Al Monroe is getting married.  Thus begins the conflict: she really likes Ryan, but she is on a mission.

The preview for the movie began with Cassie speaking with Dean Elizabeth Walker (Connie Britton).  Cassie is there under the pretense of being interested in resuming her medical schooling.  When asked about her previous departure, Cassie reminds her of what Al Monroe did at that school.  Dean Walker dismisses Cassie by saying they get accusations like this all the time.  The revenge she gets on Dean Walker, well, let's just say it's personal, and it's gets her point across.

Promising Young Woman was Written, Produced and Directed by Emerald Fennell.  Other than a short film in 2018, this would be Fennell's directorial debut.  She is nominated for 3 Oscars: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay.  Carey Mulligan is nominated for Best Leading Actress.  This is Mulligan's second Oscar nomination.  She was previously nominated for her role in An Education in 2009.

I originally predicted 4 Stars for this revenge flick.  I thought it might be akin to a Quentin Tarantino film, namely the Kill Bill Volumes.  I thought it was going to be clever, but bloody, yet funny and dark, all at the same time.  It was a lot of those things, but it wasn't bloody as I anticipated.  Carey was fantastic in the leading role with her dry sense of humor and often subtle delivery mixed with a deep and intense need for revenge.  There were several unexpected and unwanted twists and turns in the movie.  It was often uncomfortable, painful, infuriating, but also smart, sweet, and fun at times.  I am going to stick with my original prediction for Promising Young Woman and give it a solid 4 Stars.  It would have been worth the money in a theatre, it's something I'd want to watch again, and it may have a chance of finding a home in my permanent collection.  So, what movie will be on my mind next?  We shall see.

Room Review

4.0 Stars

 

Room is the story about 5 year old Jack (Jacob Tremblay) and his mother Ma (Brie Larson)  who are a typical loving mother and energetic son filled with curiosity and imagination in an anything but typical situation.  They are both living, surviving, trapped in a 10 by 10 foot space that Ma has called Room in her best efforts to protect Jack from the absolutely unthinkable nightmare that is the only life he has ever known, a life she isn't sure will ever be anything else.  However, miraculously, through Ma's ingenuity and guts and Jack's courage, one day, they escape.  With their 10 x 10 Room behind them, they face a new world (literally) of hopes, possibilities, challenges and fears.  

I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch Room or Spotlight next with the Oscars upon us, but a good friend of mine, Steve Williams, strongly recommended Room. I'll be watching Spotlight next, but thank you to Steve for the recommendation.  It was powerful.

Larson has had supporting roles in Trainwreck, The Gambler and Don Jon along with multiple TV appearances, but this is her first leading role and she also looks right at home.  In fact, her performance has not only earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but many critics are predicting she will go home with the win and after watching the movie, it would be an award well-deserved.

Room opens on Jack's 5th birthday.  We find out later that Ma was abducted 7 years earlier and Jack was born and raised in Room.  Her abductor makes regular visits (conjugal in nature) with Jack tucked away in Wardrobe.  We already know from the preview that they do eventually escape and are given a chance to have a life outside Room, so that's not a spoiler there.  I won't give it all away, but the escape will leave you breathless with white knuckles as you cling to whatever you have nearby.  I really only had two minor issues with the movie. First, after she is reunited with her parents, Ma is unsettled to discover they had split and her mother (Joan Allen) had met a new man.  Her father (William H. Macy) flies home to be there for the reunion, but quickly leaves and can't even look at Jack or address him.  And then we don't see him again and are left wondering what happened.  

The second minor issue I had was that the preview uses part of its limited time to share a scene after their escape between Jack and Ma in which Jack is concerned about their abductor finding them again.  Ma reassures him that it will never happen.  And it doesn't come up again at all.  It's handled just fine in the movie, but the issue is that the preview seemed to indicate it would be a factor in the aftermath.  It wasn't.  The aftermath of adjusting to the real world was dramatic enough as it was and didn't need to be in the preview.

Room is a touching, heart-warming, intense, gripping, original and well-acted and well-told story that I thoroughly enjoyed.  I predicted a solid 4 stars: worth the money in the theatre, worth watching again, and has a good chance of making it to my home collection, and that's exactly what I'm sticking with.  So, what movie will be on my mind next?  Most likely Spotlight.

Room Preview

Room is the story about 5 year old Jack (Jacob Tremblay) and his mother Ma (Brie Larson)  who are a typical loving mother and energetic son filled with curiosity and imagination in an anything but typical situation.  They are both living, surviving, trapped in a 10 by 10 foot space that Ma has called Room in her best efforts to protect Jack from the absolutely unthinkable nightmare that is the only life he has ever known, a life she isn't sure will ever be anything else.  However, miraculously, through Ma's ingenuity and guts and Jack's courage, one day, they escape.  With their 10 x 10 Room behind them, they face a new world (literally) of hopes, possibilities, challenges and fears.  

I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch Room or Spotlight next with the Oscars upon us, but a good friend of mine, Steve Williams, strongly recommended Room.

Tremblay was the voice of a Smurf in the Smurfs 2 and has done a couple bit roles, mostly in TV, but the preview makes him look quite comfortable in this leading role, like a seasoned professional.  Larson has had supporting roles in Trainwreck, The Gambler and Don Jon along with multiple TV appearances, but this is her first leading role and she also looks right at home.  In fact, her performance has not only earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, but many critics are predicting she will go home with the win.

Room is nominated for Best Picture, though The Revenant is all anyone can talk about as the favorite in that category.   It is unclear from the preview just how Jack and Ma ended up in the Room, nor how long they have been there, though it does seem that is the only reality Jack has ever known.  What is clear is that Ma must daily must up the strength and courage to be brave for Jack and not let him know how hopeless and terrible their life really is.  We already know from the preview that they do eventually escape and are given a chance to have a life outside the Room.  There is some indication that whoever was responsible for their imprisonment might possibly still be out there, as if adjusting to an entire world outside of a 10 x 10 Room wasn't already a daunting task.

Room looks like a touching, heart-warming, intense, gripping, original and well-acted and well-told story that I believe I'll thoroughly enjoy.  I'm predicting a solid 4 stars: worth the money in the theatre, worth watching again, and has a good chance of making it to my home collection.  Am I right?  We shall see.

Boyhood Preview

Director Richard Linklater's 12 year project has concluded in the Oscar-nominated film Boyhood.  Linklater has previously directed A Scanner Darkly, The Bad News Bears, School of Rock, Before Sunrise and Dazed and Confused.  This is Linklater's first time being nominated for Best Picture and Best Director; it's his 3rd time being nominated for Best Writing.  His previous 2 nominations were for Before Midnight and Before Sunset, which he co-wrote with Ethan Hawke who has also starred in many of his films.  Hawke also stars in Boyhood as Mason's father.  His performance has also earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination.  This is Hawke's 2nd acting Oscar nomination.  He was previously nominated for his role in Training Day.  Though neither Hawke nor Linklater have won an Oscar, Boyhood did earn the Golden Globe award for Best Director.  In fact, Boyhood has been nominated for 6 Academy Awards.  Patricia Arquette has been nominated for her performance as Mason's mother, and the film is also in the running for Best Original Screenplay and Best Editing.  

Boyhood is the literal coming-of-age story about a boy named Mason (Ellar Coltrane) as he grows from a 6 year old boy into an 18 year old man.  The reason I say literal is because Linklater filmed Coltrane, Arquette and Hawke for days at a time over the 12 year period.  We are allowed to witness Mason and his family not only go through things a normal growing boy would experience (love, divorce, step-parents, sibling rivalry, birthdays, graduations), but we also get to actually watch the family grow and age in this unique cinematic accomplishment.

There have been "coming-of-age" movies since they first started making movies.  It's not a new idea.  But usually it's about a teen or a pre-teen and what they go through in school, or with a love interest, or a family drama.  But these movies usually just limit themselves to a day in the life, or maybe a year.   It's about losing a bit of innocence or naivety, it's about having to grow up in a sense when solid, beautiful, vibrant colors all of a sudden have darker hues to them.  We've also seen movies that have spanned periods of time.  Mr. Holland's Opus spans 30 years, but their son is played by 3 different actors throughout the movie.  The Butler spans about 60 years, but uses different actors and lots of special effects make-up to achieve aging.  This is the first movie to cover this large of a time period using all the same actors to portray the same main characters throughout.  That being said, that's really all that looks unique about Boyhood.  It looks like it will have moments that make you laugh, make you sad, and make you reminisce, but all of the good ones do that as well.  I'm hoping the "12 years in the making" thing isn't just a gimmick and that there is actually a movie worth all the hype and nominations waiting behind the title.  I'm not going in with high hopes.  I'm predicting 3.0 stars.  I think it will be enjoyable.  I think it will be something I'd watch again when it's on TV, but nothing about the preview makes me immediately think this will be a movie I own in my home collection.  Am I right?  We shall see.