Short Term 12 or "Why the Oscars are run by idiotic old out of touch men"

Let me preface this by saying Short Term 12 was a gem of a movie, and is something that every single person reading this, or who loves movies should see.  However, it is also at times not for the faint of heart and will break your heart... repeatedly.

This little gem came out in 2013 and by all rights should have been Oscar bait.  It had a young cast with two up and comers to watch, it had a great score, it was clearly an indie movie with a heart, and it was about a serious subject.  These are the things that the Oscars usually love.  However, it was not seen by many people, it came out in a strong year for movies, and it was not championed by those who saw it.  It got no nominations, not even for the amazing Brie Larson who stands out in every role she takes.  I will now get off of my soap box and actually write this review.

Short Term 12 is about one of those group homes kids go to in between foster homes or when their home life has become deemed unfit for them to live in until certain things are corrected.  It is run by Brie Larson and her "boyfriend".  The first scene or so is the new guy getting there and being shown the ropes.  He is played wonderfully by Rami Malek, who is now the star of the new show Mr Robot and was the pharoah in the Night At The Museum movies.  Immediately you are shown that the kids in this place are troubled and truly just want to feel they belong somewhere and are loved.  Along with seeing what the kids are going through through their eyes we have a story line about how Grace (Larson) has found out she is pregnant and her own personal dramas start up with her boyfriend.  She isn't sure she wants to keep the child and bring it into a world that is so full of such awful things that these poor kids have experienced.  She meets a new girl coming in named Jayden, played by Kaitlyn Dever (if you don't know who she is you should probably stop reading this and watch The Spectacular Now, and the show Justified), this girl is different from a lot of the kids.  She comes from a home that seems just fine, rich father, well taken care of, etc.  Except she has some deeply seated issues that no one is quite sure what they are.  Grace begins to get to know her and realizes why this girl is there, why she has the issues she has, and ultimately why we have to keep trying to make this world better.  I won't give anything else away, you really should just go watch this movie.  It goes on and off of streaming on Netflix and is well worth your hour and a half of time.  This movie never fails to go from heart wrenching to making you laugh to making you think about deeper social issues.  It is not light popcorn fair though, and you should not go in expecting that.

Now for a little bit about the technical aspects and some trivia on the movie.  No spoilers ahead, no worries.  The music for this movie is perfect, and most of it was either written by or strongly helped by the director of the movie.  The movie started out as a short and the director used this to get some funding to turn it into a feature.  It was written by the director and strongly based on some of his own experiences growing up in the system.  Brie Larson wanted so badly to get the role of Grace she told to the director telling him she was volunteering to work with kids in a similar facility as this, but she had in reality been rejected by every one she applied to.  The film is a bit of a shaky cam sort of movie since the director did use a hand held camera for the entire shoot.

So that is all I have on this one.  It is an excellent little movie and when the Oscars were rolling around I did try and get it some notice on Twitter myself, and if you know me you would know that is a huge deal.  I just don't tweet, not my thing.  But it was ultimately ignored, and for many people that was a huge injustice.  This movie deserved to be recognized, I mean couldn't we have dropped the abysmal Amour from the list of films and add this?  You keep reading them, and I'll keep writing them.