Short Term 12

Taking place within a foster care facility in the week that a new staff member and a new teenage resident arrive, we're introduced to one of the facilities' supervisors, Grace (Brie Larson). She and her co-worker/boyfriend Mason (John Gallagher Jnr.) work day in day out with some of the most damaged kids you could imagine, and do their best not to emotionally and psychologically bring their work home with them. But this new resident, Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), and her current troubled home-life causes Grace to finally confront her own familial demons head-on, whether she is prepared to or not.

In improper hands, this could have very easily been Dangerous Minds 2, but thankfully writer/director Destin Cretton (who worked within this foster care world for years) handles the subject matter with care. His screenplay is very naturalistic, filled with tiny moments that will lodge themselves in your brain for weeks after - one of the children's stories about a shark and an octopus, and the possibilities of what it might be a metaphor for, is especially devastating - and he has got an outstanding cast to help deliver the film's full potential.

Gallagher Jnr is great as the put-upon boyfriend, and Dever does great work with the potentially clichéd role of a fiery, angry-at-the-world teen girl, but the real stand out star here is Brie Larson. Equal parts tender and a tower of strength, painfully open and emotionally walled-off, she is a revelation, and we can't wait to see what she does next.

If there are any faults, it's that the movie doesn't exactly bring anything new to the table, it's still Good Teachers Helping Troubled Teens, and there's even a scene where someone raps about their issues. But it's all done with such earnestness that it never feels fake, and aside from one out-of-place scene towards the end, the drama never slips fully over into melodrama.

In a just world, this would be an awards magnet, but perhaps we'll just have to make do with the fact that this will likely end up as one of 2013's undiscovered gems. Seek it out!