The Marvels (2023)

There's a lot of "well, just because" logic in the plot of this superhero movie which teams Brie Larsson's Captain Marvel with two other characters with similar names - I don't remember who they are or what they are called but can tell you one was young and annoying and the other serious and dull - and this threesome must prevent a villain finding a powerful pair of stones/rocks/keys, but apart from that and the bemusement I felt (I never understood for example why or how the three heroes were physically interchanging during fights, or why it made any difference), nothing else about this run-of-the-mill superhero  business stuck in my mind beyond the end credits.

★★☆☆☆

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Just Mercy (2019)

Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and author of the book upon which this movie is based, is depicted here (by Michael B Jordan) setting up the EJI and working to free from death row a first client, Alabama prison inmate 'Johnny D' (Jamie Foxx) and if there are moments you wish this long and only very plainly told 5-star story were over, you'll sit through it in any case given the case Stevenson makes against capital punishment is unequivocal and uncomfortable, and incontrovertible is his presentation of the justice system, its courts, police, and jails as a flawed (but held up as sacrosanct) temple of white privilege - a theatre not furnished with iluminated exit signs for the benefit of the beset inside.

★★★☆☆

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Captain Marvel (2019)

I'm suffering study fatigue in my neverending Masters of Marvel course and if there were exams tomorrow I'd struggle to answer questions on the finer plot points of this Marvel superhero movie and how it fits with all the others, except to say it is set on Earth in the 1990s before (all?) the other movies, Samuel L Jackson's Fury is a young man with two-eyes who hasn't even dreamt up the Avengers yet, and a good running joke in the movie is how slow dial-up internet is, especially for the technologically advanced Captain Marvel, a low-affect hero but great female role model who in the face of male detractors keeps getting up, dusting herself off, and keeps on getting on with her job as a, um, Krull saving the Earth from invading, er, Skrees?

★★★☆☆

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Room (2015)

** SPOILER ALERT **

'Room' opens with "Ma" and a boy living in a confined space they call 'Room' and from there the pleasures of this movie in order are wondering at the nature of their strange circumstances, experiencing the really truly heart-stopping suspense of the film's revelatory escape scene, then being surprised by the film's unexpected, protracted and extremely emotional second half, but these parts are greater than the whole - the movie finishes and you realise what 'Room' in fact is: a narrative-free voyeuristic "these are the sorts of things that happen when" checklist.

★★★☆☆

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