I love nothing more than when a film that takes place almost entirely inside one room is able to be infinitely more powerful and impactful than a film made on a 200 million dollar budget. It's what movie-making has lost in my opinion, the ability to make magic on paper, rather than by throwing special effects and stunts at the screen willy-nilly. 'Mass' is an incredible film.

I'll start by talking about the cast. The script is quite amazing in that it somehow gives each and every one of the main four an exactly equal opportunity to shine. If you said to me which of the four was the star, or even which stood out the most I would struggle to pick one. The each take the limelight when it's on offer, and they each fall back into supporting the others when it's not their turn. The balancing act in this regard is excellent.

The film is like being hit with a sledgehammer in the best way possible (hopefully that makes sense to you). The film is so powerful that it really does feel like you are in these character's positions. Their pain is yours. The film also does a great job of knowing when to reveal information. There was a pointy where I thought to myself that the time was right to let us in on what was going on, and within 60 seconds the film had done just that.

The fact that this is a debut writing/directing effort by Fran Kranz is nothing short of amazing. The dialogue is mesmerising, the pacing is perfect and the class with which the ending was handled (this would not have been an easy film to write the ending for) was classy beyond his years. This is a film not to be missed and very close to the best 2021 had to offer. 10/10.

"Mass" just may be my favorite movie of 2021.

It breaks my heart that a movie this good is so little known. As I write this, the 2021 Academy Awards are a couple of weeks away, and "Mass" isn't even on the radar. The four actors in this give better performances than almost every person nominated for an Oscar this year.

"Mass" hurts to watch, but it's so good that I enjoyed the pain. It deeply unsettled me and left me shaken for quite a while afterwards. I didn't want to watch another movie for a week or so after seeing this because I didn't want to replace it in my head with something else too quickly.

I liked everything about this movie so much that I don't really want to single out any one thing. But good grief.... Martha Plimpton and Ann Dowd....that is all.

And that scene with Jason Issacs and the church choir. Oof.

Grade: A+

For some strange coincidence this is the third movie with this theme that I watched in a week. First I watched Run, Hide, Fight that I rated three stars (because it was just bad),then The Fallout that I rated with six stars (it was better but not great either) and now Mass (that started promising but that bored me after awhile). Three movies with the same theme, the American disease, mass shootings in schools. In Mass you just get a neverending conversation between two couples, which was interesting in the beginning but got boring towards the end. Everybody seems to find the acting great, and from some actors it was good, but it wasn't all that great from everybody in my humble opinion, not bad but not great either. I think the movie could have been better if they would have showed what really happened, instead of just showing us a conversation about it. It's all very low budget, which isn't always a bad thing, but in this case it could have lifted the quality of the movie a bit.