Room (2015)

I dug Emma Donoghue’s smash-hit book “Room,” The film, with a screenplay by Donoghue herself, is actually -– get this -– even better. Jack (Jacob Tremblay) is newly 5 and desperately curious about life, but his world is the interior of a backyard shed. He is a prisoner, as is his mother (Brie Larson), held by a man known as “Old Nick.” Ma was taken 7 years before off the street, and has since lived in solitude, her only companion a child by rape. Ma adores Jack, her salvation. But Ma’s soothing lies are unraveling, as is her sanity as Jack grows and Room seems to shrink. “Room” is horrifying in its depiction of the hovel, the effect of rape, malnutrition, isolation, and claustrophobia, before it really turns the screws after. Larson and Tremblay do a masterful job of telegraphing every pain and small joy, and its Donoghue’s dialogue that sells it. Sparse. Sharp. Smart. Even more so than the book, Donoghue and director Lenny Abrahamson know trauma stays with us, it cannot be fully shaken, it destroys families, splits parents. Easy answers? None. Larson and Tremblay deserve every accolade coming. Donoghue, too. A

Kick Ass 2 (2013)

“Kick Ass 2” is a shit sequel to a razor sharp comic book movie that fingered the caped avenger genre and reveled in and questioned its own grisly violence. Love it, hate it, “Kick Ass” did just that. No shock: It was directed by Matthew Vaughn of “Layer Cake” fame. This downer has some guy named Jeff Wadlow at the helm. Plot: Vigilante/hero-complex teens Kick Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Hit Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) do battle with the -– wait for it -- Mother Fucker, the now super villain son (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) of the NYC mob boss (Mark Strong) killed in film one. MF dons his mom’s S&M gear and dishes out murder and rape. Too much. In one scene, policemen are chomped to death by a lawn mower. Rape gets a joke. Vaughn skated the line of taste, turning hero fantasy into grim shocker. Wadlow’s delivery is a tired echo and oddly boring with action scenes so haphazardly shot as to bring on indifference. The sick thrills thus become merely sick. Jim Carrey’s role as a psycho-for-Jesus G.I. Joe is over before it finds air, and Mintz-Plasse’s trip in a “Mean Girls” spin relies on diarrhea gags. Dumb ass. D+

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

Back in early 2010, the Swedish film of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” – original onscreen title “Men Who Hate Women” – was released in the United States. I loved the grisly Euro thriller about a disgraced journalist teaming with an emotionally scarred female hacker to solve a 40-year-old murder. Now the Americanized remake (re-adaptation?) arrives from director David Fincher, still set in Sweden, but with bigger names. Daniel Craig is the journalist, and Rooney Mara (“Social Network”) is Lisbeth, the hacker. This rock-solid take has a dark chilly mood to spare, and presents a more complex Lisbeth, a woman who has cut herself off from the world, calculating and scarily brilliant, but prone to still sadly eat Happy Meals. Mara makes the role her own, a bundle of disjoints and razor edges, silently raging. She rocks. Yes, it is disconcerting to see big-name actors traipse around in Swedish snow so soon after seeing other actors speak their own language in their own land, but Craig is oddly effective (and nerdy) as an everyman in deep turmoil. Scripter Steven Zallian smartly condenses the long post-climax. Still, check out the original, a true gut-puncher. 2011: A-

Martha Marcy May Marlene (2011)

“Martha Marcy May Marlene” left me dead cold. That is a compliment. This Sundance hit is a dark psychological drama-cum-thriller about a young woman (Elizabeth Olsen, younger sister of toddlers-turned-tabloid stars Mary Kate and Ashley) who runs from an upper-New York State cult/farming commune and reunites with her estranged sister (Sarah Paulson of “American Horror Story”) at the latter’s posh lake-front home. There, our girl of many names and pains unravels as a scared, paranoid and wounded woman who will wonder into a bed during sex, and yet fear a falling pinecone. Martha declares herself a “leader and a teacher,” but who is talking? She, or the vile/musician/ rapist/father figure (John Hawkes, again mesmerizingly sinister) who ruled her life for two years? Newcomer writer/director Sean Dirkin leaves no easy answers as his jump editing, changing film stock, and inscrutable screenplay leaves the viewer aloof and, in the final shot, horrified. Its best trick is to equal the rich, capitalist “green” American consumer as a cultist all their own. Ms. Olsen is a phenomenal actress, leaving us unbalanced as victimized (sinister?) Martha Marcy ... A-

The Warrior’s Way (2010)

Samurai warrior/cowboy mash-up “The Warrior’s Way” swings wide. Its goals are high: The grandeur and grit of classic 1960s epics by Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa, the mystical vision of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” and the violent, other-worldly feel of “300.” Plus slapstick comedy ala Looney Tunes. It fails on every level. “Warrior” is uncomfortably, offensively bad.

Here, a lone samurai warrior (Jang Dong Gun, as blank as a paper lunch bag) cuts down his familial enemies, but spares the life an infant girl. For his act of mercy, he is hunted by his own, and flees to Dust Bowl America. There he finds a derelict circus town ruled by outlaws (led by Danny Houston). If you’ve ever flipped past a Clint Eastwood film, you know what’s next. No cliche is left untouched.

There’s a woman, of course, an Annie Oakley orphan played by Kate Bosworth as if she were channeling Jesse from "Toy Story." The town’s mayor is a black midget (Tony Cox) named 8 Ball, who has an “8” stamped on his head. Racist much? Geoffrey Rush gets top billing and sucks up scenery as the town drunk, a former gunman with a broken heart. He gets in a few laughs.

Director Sngmoo Lee demands laughs for his violence. Bosworth’s cowpoke is tied to a bed for gang rape and the camera zooms in on her spread legs. Later, a pistol is held to the infant’s head. Laughing yet? Houston is at the crux of each scene, wearing a “Phantom of the Opera” mask. As for this CGI world, nothing feels remotely real or even ironically significant. This is a first-draft VFX reel in need of help. The fights are eyesore bad, every one. D-

Gamer (2009)

“Gamer” is the poster child for a Hollywood bankrupt of any new ideas and one remote soul. My God, I sound conservative. (Help!) Gerald Butler (“300”) scowls as a violent convict/loving poppa who is a pure and innocent soul who must fight his way to freedom via a world-televised bloodbath version of “Every Bad Futuristic Action Movie Ever Made.” No cliche is left unturned, and is, in fact, repeatedly groped and man-handled in the dark of this dark and seedy story. The sorriest attempt at wit in this witless shit-fest has Butler chug a fifth of vodka before battle, so he can later drunkenly vomit and piss the liquid out into a truck’s fuel tank. For his getaway. Because that works. Directors Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor pretend to damn a world that enjoys watching rape and murder on TV and in film, yet take joy as their jackhammer camera hovers over a woman’s pelvis as she is sexually assaulted and uses slow-motion for every bloody flying skull and toe. Relentlessly vulgar, and not remotely interesting. D-

Last House on the Left (2009)

I don’t think I got a full half-hour into “Last House on the Left,” a sadistic, nasty film that takes great lengths to show one teenage girl being gutted and another young woman be methodically raped. With the camera at ground level. I guess I’m not cut out to watch every film. If you can stomach it, let me know how. Or why. No Grade