Movie Reviews

Spotlight

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  • Title: Spotlight
  • IMDb: link

SpotlightIn a true ensemble Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, and Brian d’Arcy James star as The Boston Globe investigative group (bolstered by characters played by John Slattery and Liev Schreiber) that pulled on the thread of a single story involving a Catholic priest’s sexual abuse of a child to uncover a story with staggering ramifications for the entire Boston community. Based on true events, writer/director Tom McCarthy‘s film follows the investigation as it uncovers a conspiracy of silence involving dozens of priests and hundreds of victims in the Boston area alone.

A bit of a throwback to the types of old school newspaper movies Hollywood has gotten out of the habit of making in recent years (at least memorable ones), Spotlight takes us on a year-long journey with the “Spotlight” team as, under orders from the paper’s new editor (Schreiber), they discover a story far bigger than anyone thought possible. Knowledge of the events doesn’t detract from the story McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer set out to tell. The revelations are still shocking more than a decade after the story saw print in early 2002.

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Trumbo

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  • Title: Trumbo
  • IMDb: link

TrumboBorn out of fear, the Hollywood blacklist and the subversion of American values by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Cold War is far from one of America’s prouder moments. Director Jay Roach‘s new film looks back at the Hollywood Ten, Hollywood screenwriters blackballed out of the studio system for their alleged involvement with the Communist Party. As the title suggests, the film primarily focuses on Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) and the struggles he and his family faced during the Red Scare.

Despite a prison sentence followed by being unable to write under his own name, Trumbo continued to secure work under a variety of pseudonyms and two of the scripts he wrote, but wasn’t given credit for, went on to win Oscars for Best Picture. John McNamara‘s script is a bit by-the-numbers in its depiction of events, but Roach gets a terrific performance by Cranston and surrounds his star with a first-rate supporting cast that includes Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, Louis C.K., Alan Tudyk, John Goodman, and Elle Fanning as McNamara’s script follows the bizarre professional journey of Trumbo’s career.

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Room

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  • Title: Room
  • IMDb: link

RoomBased on Emma Donoghue‘s novel, Room is both heart-wrenching and heartwarming at the same time as the world of a five-year old boy is changed forever. The film opens with Jack (Jacob Tremblay) and his mother Joy (Brie Larson) living together is a small room where the only daylight comes from a dirty skylight in the ceiling. Celebrating his fifth birthday, the room is all of the world Jack has ever known outside of television. To him Dora the Explorer is just as ethereal as trees, wide open spaces, animals, and other people.

The comings and goings of Old Nick (Sean Bridgers), who brings them groceries and occasionally spends the night with Joy, begins to reveal the truth of the mother and son’s situation to both the audience and the young boy who struggles to understand. Abducted as a teenage girl, Joy has lived for years as a prisoner. Believing Jack is now old enough to be of help in an escape attempt, and to be in danger from Old Nick, Joy attempts to explain to truth of the outside world, a dreamlike reality that Jack can’t quite wrap his brain around after being brought-up to believe nothing outside the room is real.

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The Assassin

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  • Title: Nie yin niangn
  • IMDb: link

The AssassinIt begins with murder and a failed assassination attempt in stark black-and white. Set in China during the waning days of the Tang Dynasty, the film’s title refers to Nie Yinniang (Qi Shu), a young woman trained since the age of 10 to be an assassin. 13 years later when Nie Yinniang shows mercy rather than kill a corrupt government official in front of his young son her master punishes the young woman by returning her home to the northern province of Weibo with orders to kill the cousin (Chen Chang) to whom she was betrothed to as a child before her life took a very different path.

A far cry from the sleek, fast-paced, wire-effects-heavy, and often bloody kinds of films that the genre has been known for in recent years, The Assassin is a slow-paced character study about a woman who struggles with the morality of a calling she’s so obviously skilled at performing. Despite the lush setting of misty mountains, director Hsiao-Hsien Hou‘s film isn’t as polished as expected with several abrupt transitions and a mix of inventive but also bizarre camera placement throughout the film’s 105-minute running time.

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Steve Jobs

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  • Title: Steve Jobs
  • IMDb: link

Steve JobsSteve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) has been the subject of several movies and documentaries in recent years. Aaron Sorkin‘s screenplay, based on the book by Walter Isaacson, isn’t your typical biopic. Rather than a look through the man’s life, Steve Jobs is instead a series of conversations between Jobs and the people closest to him behind-the-scenes at various product launches. Given how much has been covered about the man’s career, life, and personality the film’s choice skips over well-covered events such as the creation of Apple computers to focus on Jobs’ continual struggle to deal with the people closest to him.

Filling in gaps with montages and dialogue, the script focuses in on the Apple Macintosh launch in 1984, the NeXT Computer launch in 1988 following Jobs’ removal from Apple, and the launch of the iMac following Jobs return to Apple in 1998. Through these events we see Jobs’ relationships with longtime assistant Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogen), John Sculley (Jeff Daniels), Andy Hertzfeld (Michael Stuhlbarg), and Chrisann (Katherine Waterston) and Lisa Brennan (played by Makenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine).

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