Powerful and thoughtful

Rating: 9/10 (31 January 2016)

When I tell people Room is great, they generally say one of four things: 1) "never heard of it"; 2) "I read the book and it was good"; 3) "you mean The Room, the worst movie ever made?"; or 4) "that sounds like a terrible movie."
Teenager me probably would've hated Room, but more sophisticated, adult me found Room to be a wonderful, tasteful exploration of existence, time, space, and what it means to be living in a world of good and evil. Room made me feel a way about a movie I haven't felt since I watched The Elephant Man years ago.
It would be easy to turn Room into a ham-fisted Lifetime movie, but the acting, pacing, and restraint of Room could go a long way to show Quentin Tarantino that you don't need a lot of yelling, dialogue, and forced situations to make a movie. Brie Larson (Ma) is certainly Oscar- worthy for a delicate and tortured performance that never gets derailed by any maudlin notes, and Jacob Tremblay (Jack) does some of the best child acting I've seen, even handling off-screen narration with impressive realism.
We get two distinct hours. For the first hour we are trapped in Room, finding small pleasures in small things, alternating with the terror of an evil man. The second hour does something amazing: it gives you a heartfelt examination of Jack and Ma entering the world, emotionally, physically, and somewhat spiritually. Never has the simple act of walking a scruffy dog or playing with a ball in a yard meant more on screen.
It's a shame so many people have never heard of Room, who all went to see the mindless action movies of this summer, who probably will never see Room.