Brie Larson has been around for a few years now, playing small, yet memorable roles in Hollywood movies – Jonah Hill’s love interest in 21 Jump Street, Amy Schumer’s sister in Trainwreck etc. – but she didn’t break through until she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her lead role in the heartfelt drama Room. And she didn’t really break through into the highest strata of movie stardom until this year when she started playing Carol Danvers in the MCU. She was the first female superhero to get her own MCU solo movie.
TIE: Don Jon (79%)
Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s directorial debut stars himself (even though Christopher Nolan warned him against starring in a movie he was directing) as a man who is addicted to pornography and Scarlett Johansson as his girlfriend. In any other comedy, this premise would be used for some crass gross-out gags, but in Gordon-Levitt’s hands, it’s about a lot more than that. It’s a poignant study of modern relationships, exploring the impact that such an addiction would have on a burgeoning romance. Brie Larson plays a supporting role as the title character’s sister, Monica, while Tony Danza plays his dad and Julianne Moore plays an older woman that he’s interested in.
TIE: Between Two Ferns: The Movie (79%)
When it was announced that Funny or Die and Netflix were teaming up to deliver a film adaptation of Zach Galifianakis’ satirical internet talk show Between Two Ferns, the question on everyone’s minds was the same: how? How do you turn awkward five-minute conversations with celebrities on a soundstage into a feature film? Then, the movie came out, and it was much better than anyone could’ve expected. After flooding his studio and temporarily killing Matthew McConaughey, a down-and-out Zach takes the show on the road. Brie Larson is one of the guests he interviews, and she proves anyone who ever suggested she doesn’t have a sense of humor about herself wrong.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (81%)
It’s a real shame that this movie was a box office bomb, because it’s one of the most inventive and fun action comedies in recent memory. Edgar Wright directed the movie in the middle of his Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy (after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but before The World’s End), based on the comic book of the same name about a guy who has to do battle with his new girlfriend’s seven evil ex-boyfriends.
Wright brought some of his signature artistic flair to every single scene, crafting unforgettable cinematic moments. Brie Larson plays Scott’s ex, Envy Adams.
TIE: 21 Jump Street (85%)
No one expected this movie to be any good. It was a reboot of a TV show from the ‘80s that no one in the modern day remembers or cares about. However, thanks to hilarious on-screen chemistry shared by stars Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum and self-aware references to suits who revive anything they have the rights to made by directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 21 Jump Street was one of the most popular and critically adored comedies of the decade. Brie Larson provided excellent support as Hill’s love interest, alongside such greats as Dave Franco and Rob Riggle.
TIE: Trainwreck (85%)
Judd Apatow was so taken with Amy Schumer’s semiautobiographical screenplay for the romantic comedy Trainwreck that he decided to make it his first directorial feature that he didn’t write. Brie Larson co-stars as Schumer’s character’s sister, named after the comedienne’s real-life sister and sometime writing partner, Kim. Trainwreck takes the conventions of the Hollywood romcom and flips them on their head, like having the female lead be the one who needs to be fixed and casting LeBron James as himself to be the male lead’s standard-set best friend character. It won’t win over any Schumer skeptics, but Schumer fans will love it.
Just Mercy (86%)
This recently released legal thriller starring Jamie Foxx and Michael B. Jordan, telling the true story of a man who was wrongfully convicted of a crime and sent to death row for years before he was able to successfully appeal the verdict with a hotshot young defense attorney, has been making waves in critics’ circles. Brie Larson appears in a supporting capacity as Eva Ansley, a real-life legal eagle who has spent over three decades providing legal services for death row prisoners in Alabama. Naturally, Just Mercy has a bias, but it’s a bias in favor of justice, so it’s forgivable.
The Spectacular Now (91%)
Brie Larson is the antagonistic component in this coming-of-age romantic drama. The love story is between Miles Teller and Shailene Woodley, set (as all coming-of-age teen stories are) just after high school, in the summer before all the characters are heading off to college. Larson’s character pushes them to get together as she breaks up with Teller in the opening scene. He then writes a college application where he claims that the breakup is the worst thing he’s ever experienced and goes out and gets drunk. His meet-cute with Woodley arrives the following morning as she wakes him up on the front lawn he passed out on.
Room (93%)
This film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Emma Donoghue (who also wrote the script) won Brie Larson an Oscar for playing a woman who was kidnapped and locked in a room for years. It was also the movie that made Jacob Tremblay’s career. He plays Larson’s son, a boy who was born in this room out of sexual assault by their captor. So, when they’re eventually rescued and he sees the world outside the room, he’s scared and confused. The movie is almost as heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure as the book it was based on.
Avengers: Endgame (94%)
Brie Larson apparently filmed all of her scenes for Avengers: Endgame before she filmed any of her scenes for Captain Marvel, so when we see Carol Danvers in Endgame, even though it’s the second time in the MCU that we’re seing her, it’s the first time that Larson is playing her. Fans expected Carol to play a larger role in Endgame, since Marvel had touted her as the first character whose power comes near matching that of Thanos, but in the end, she only had a few brief scenes.
It makes sense, ultimately, in terms of narrative, because characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor had developed a more personal connection with Thanos and also formed the crux of the story.
Short Term 12 (98%)
This indie delight is the movie that gave Brie Larson her start. She got the first leading role of her career playing Grace Howard, a supervisor working at a community center for troubled youths, in Short Term 12. As a character-driven movie, the focus is squarely on the performances of the cast as they deliver the sharp dialogue, and the acting here is so incredible and heartfelt that it carries the movie and then some. It’s a deceivingly simplistic story about damaged people who make deep, lasting connections with other damaged people, which is really what the power of cinema is all about.
