Review: "Room"

"Room" falls into that rare category of movies that are truly miserable to watch, but you simply must.

By that I do not mean that it is terrible, but that it is so good at what it does that you will be miserable at times while viewing it. I guarantee that you will tear up during the screening and want to pull your hair, because experiencing raw human frailty at such a close remove is a taxing experience.

Like "127 Hours" or "Boys Don't Cry," the film's exhausting nature is intrinsic to its cinematic worth -- which is considerable.

Based on the best-selling book by Emma Donoghue, who adapted it herself for the screenplay, "Room" takes a tabloid headline premise and turns it into a highly remarkable study of the infinite layers of the human soul. Director Lenny Abrahamson sensitively takes us into a tiny enclosed space, and shows how terrifying that can be, and then lets us out of it into the world beyond, and shows us how frightening that can be.

Brie Larson is possibly the best actress of her young generation, and if you missed her in the excellent "Short Term 12" -- nearly everyone did -- then this movie should cement her status. She plays Ma, a young mother living with her son, Jack, who as the story opens is just turning 5. They are each other's entire world, because they have never left Room, as they describe their tiny, cluttered living space.

Without it ever being overtly said, we sense what has happened. Ma, whose real name is Joy, was somehow captured and imprisoned in this space. It was obviously a man, because that is how she got Jack. She has been there for years -- her ghostlike pallor and glum resolve instruct us so. She is long past the point of rebellion or despair, and has come to grudgingly accept her life in Room.

For Jack, she has built an elaborate ruse to keep him from yearning for the real world. Room is everything there is, he believes, except for the single window in the roof looking out on the sky, which is outer space. They have an old television that shows jumpy images, cartoons, shows, even newscasts, but he believes everything there is imaginary: "TV people."

The man, known only as Old Nick (Sean Bridgers), visits every now and then, always at night, to satisfy his carnal wants, and deliver food and supplies. Jack is put into the wardrobe on these evenings so man and boy don't interact -- they have never even met, by both his and Joy's choice, though Jack watches through the slats and is aware.

It's essentially the most depraved family unit in human history, where the father is keeping the mother and child locked up under his yoke.

Jack is played by young Jacob Tremblay, in one of those gasp-inducing child performances that is so unaffected and true that it only comes along once every generation or so. I think of Haley Joel Osment in "The Sixth Sense," and do not find Tremblay wanting in the comparison.

Jack is a creature of utter innocence, but also realistic 5-year-old petulance. He is beginning to question his world and push back against the way his mother defines it for him. One wonders how an adolescent would react to being in Room... which we won't know because they get out halfway through the film.

I won't say how, or why, but stating that their time in Room comes to an end will not spoil your experience. (The movie trailer gives away as much.) I don't wish to say too much about Joy and Jack's time after Room, other than it involves trying to integrate themselves into a family that is different from the one she left. Each struggles in their own way, but not the way we might expect.

This is one of the most emotionally wrenching experiences you will ever have at the movies. Larson and Tremblay form one of the closest bonds we've ever witnessed on screen, in a pair of performances that I'm sure will be remembered come Oscar time. Here is one of the year's best films.

Video review: "Source Code"

"Source Code" has one of those plots that you shouldn't spend too much time thinking about. It's a high-tech house of cards, with a science fiction backdrop that hasn't quite crossed all it's t's or dotted its i's.

There's time travel, sorta, and "Matrix"-like control of the human mind by nefarious forces. At the center, though, is a touching human story about a man trying to make sense of extraordinary circumstances.

Jake Gyllenhaal plays Colter Stevens, a helicopter pilot deployed in Afghanistan. He wakes aboard a speeding train, with a smiling woman (Michelle Monaghan) sitting across from him and talking to him like she knows him. He soon discovers that his consciousness has been projected into that of a man who's already dead -- because terrorists have blown up this train, killing everyone aboard.

Colter must repeat this scenario over and over until he discovers the identity of the bomber. In between his "missions," he finds himself in a strange metal pod, where a female commander (Vera Farmiga) whispers urgent instructions.

Even though the metaphysics of the story don't stand up to scrutiny, director Duncan Jones and screenwriter Ben Ripley still manage to engage us with a sympathetic protagonist and the mystery of his plight.

Information on video extras was still a little sketchy at press time. According to preliminary reports, it will include a feature-length commentary by Jones and Gyllenhaal, interviews, trivia and experts talking about the science of time travel. I didn't get a review copy in time, so I can't say if these features are on both the DVD and Blu-ray versions, or just one.

Movie: 3 stars (out of four)
Extras: I (Incomplete)

Review: "Source Code"

Most science fiction thrillers get the "hardware" part of the movie right -- the technology, the fantastical shifting realities -- and skimp on the human stuff.

"Source Code" is the exact opposite: A flick that engages us with its protagonist and his plight, but the technical part of the story never really seems to add up. After the lights came on, I was left scratching my head trying to figure out the metaphysics and quantum mechanics of it all.

Still, I was caught up in the tale of Jake Gyllenhaal as a soldier on a mission to stop a speeding train loaded with a bomb. In the end, the whys and wherefores became less important to the cinematic experience than the urgency of this time-traveler's duty.

Now, see, I already misspoke. Technically, Colter Stevens is not traveling through time. You'll have to bear with me here, since I can't reveal too much about this movie without compromising its secrets.

Colter wakes up on a commuter train, a sleek modern double-decker hurtling toward Chicago. There's a pretty, friendly girl named Christina (Michelle Monaghan) sitting across from him who acts like she knows him. He goes into the lavatory and sees another man's face staring at him. He's just starting to make sense of it all when a fiery explosion engulfs everything.

Colter wakes up in a dark, dank metal prison, like a Mercury astronaut capsule sunk to the bottom of the ocean. A woman's voice, reassuring but commanding, appears on a speaker asking him to recount what just happened.

Next thing he knows, Colter is back on the train, waking up back where he started. The scenario seems to be playing out exactly the same way it did before ... or is it?

Colter, a helicopter pilot on tour in Afghanistan, soon learns what's going on: He's a recruit in a top-secret new military experiment in "time reassignment." It seems the human brain has a sort of short-term memory track, about eight minutes long, that scientists can access even after death. They also have the ability to project one's consciousness into a similar person's mind and control their actions.

To wit: Colter is sent into the head of a mild-mannered school teacher who must find the bomber from among the hundreds of people aboard the train. Strangely, Goodwin, the officer guiding him in his missions (the capable Vera Farmiga) instructs him not to worry about defusing the bomb, but locating who set it.
Is this an alternate reality? A time loop? A "Matrix"-like facsimile meant to dissemble?

Furthermore, how can Colter keep repeating those eight minutes over and over again, doing something different every time, a la "Groundhog Day," without ever being able to stop the bomb from going off?

(One hint is the code name of the operation, Beleaguered Castle, a form of solitaire in which the player tries to build the cards into foundations, but most games end in failure after just a few moves.)

Director Duncan Jones (who made the wonderful and little-seen "Moon" a couple years back) and rookie screenwriter Ben Ripley ably keep the audience misdirected, making the mechanics of what's happening seem less important than the exigency of it.

So beyond the obvious concern of finding the terrorist, we're constantly asking questions: What exactly is the teacher's relationship with Christina? Why does Goodwin seem a little sad behind the sternness? What are Colter's handlers not telling him?

With "Source Code," the audience may not always understand what's going on, but we care about the outcome.

3 stars out of four