In Mass, two pairs of parents sit down in a room and talk about a tragedy each of the children were involved in some years beforehand. Most of the film is confined to the one room, and besides for the opening and closing scenes, I'd estimate it's just the four main actors on screen for a good 80% of the movie. As a confined setting, dialogue driven movie, it's mostly effective. I don't think it was an absolute slam dunk, and it's hard to explain why.
This is the kind of movie that's really hard to say anything negative about. I don't want to criticise its message or seem like I'm dismissing its themes merely from not giving it a totally glowing review. For what it's going for, it's great. It's the execution and some creative decisions that aren't always perfect. It's also about a heavy and important subject, and truthfully, it's hard to work out why it didn't quite impact me the same way it seems to have impacted others.
There is at least a lot that I liked. It's hard to fault the acting from the four leads here, and I think that overall, the directing and writing were really strong, at least for the first half.
It's the kind of story I was always wondering how they could conclude it, and I don't know, many of the final scenes (and some creative decisions towards the end) didn't really work for me.
The way the film built towards an inevitable confrontation throughout the first half hour was masterful though, in terms of being subtle, realistic, and for the way it showed characters being apprehensive to approach the situation at hand head on. Once they did, the film lost something for me, though the acting was the one element that really worked all the way through; no complaints there.
This is the kind of movie that's really hard to say anything negative about. I don't want to criticise its message or seem like I'm dismissing its themes merely from not giving it a totally glowing review. For what it's going for, it's great. It's the execution and some creative decisions that aren't always perfect. It's also about a heavy and important subject, and truthfully, it's hard to work out why it didn't quite impact me the same way it seems to have impacted others.
There is at least a lot that I liked. It's hard to fault the acting from the four leads here, and I think that overall, the directing and writing were really strong, at least for the first half.
It's the kind of story I was always wondering how they could conclude it, and I don't know, many of the final scenes (and some creative decisions towards the end) didn't really work for me.
The way the film built towards an inevitable confrontation throughout the first half hour was masterful though, in terms of being subtle, realistic, and for the way it showed characters being apprehensive to approach the situation at hand head on. Once they did, the film lost something for me, though the acting was the one element that really worked all the way through; no complaints there.