Awards Contenders In Brief - A Monster Calls

Look, a boy's best friend is his mother, so when your movie is about a young boy whose mother is dying of cancer, that's pretty much a guaranteed tear-jerker from my perspective. But even still, J.A. Bayona's A Monster Calls is a film of such uncommon beauty that it deserves praise. I don't even really particularly care how well the film holds together because it does an absolutely tremendous job of earning the tears it so effectively rings in the last fifteen minutes or so.

A large part of that is due to the great performances from Felicity Jones (as said cancer-stricken mother) and Lewis MacDougall. MacDougall in particular is just perfect, getting the frustrated, conflicted heart of this kid who only fully comprehends what is going on (both within and outside of himself) subconsciously. Jones is heartbreaking; her fragile beauty has never been put to better use, and the strength she manages to project from her increasingly weakened body makes it all the more emotional when she finally has to tell her son that she isn't long for this world. It is an absolutely heart-wrenching scene, and couldn't possibly be better written or performed. I was an absolute puddle from that point on.

The basic story is this: Young Conor's mother has cancer. Unable to cope with the constant pain and upheaval (Dad has moved to America, Grandma is cold in that traditional English way, and Mum is constantly sick), he brings to life a monster out of a yew tree situated on a nearby church graveyard. The monster (perfectly voiced by Liam Neeson) says he will tell the boy three stories, and that in exchange, Conor must tell him one - his own. The visual effects work and animated sequences for the monster's stories are some of the most stunningly imagined scenes in recent memory - the raw beauty of this film is just out of this world. Bayona is perfectly attuned to Patrick Ness's story, choosing the best way at every level to film it. Maybe I'm being a bit overly complimentary because of the emotion the film wrung out of me (at the end of my screening, I cried out to no one in particular, tears streaming down my face, "Give it ALL THE AWARDS, dammit!"), but that it managed to do so so effectively and honestly is something worth celebrating.

Thursday Movie Picks - Storms/Adverse Weather

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three films that fit the week's theme (this week suggested by yours truly!) and telling us about them!)

Well, they say March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, and that's certainly true so far here in good ol' Manhattan - the winds have been whipping down the streets so strongly that sometimes they just push you right along your path. It's not awful but the wildly fluctuating temperatures are finally taking their toll on my body - I can just feel the cold coming on and I do NOT like it. I will be throwing everything in my arsenal at it in the hopes that it does not get worse, but I don't know... sometimes you can just tell when it's not going to go away...

BUT ANYWAY, who cares about my health (other than my mother)? We're here to talk movies!

One of the things the movies do better than any other art form is present "larger than life" events, which makes them ideal for showcasing the darkest side of Mother Nature. Unfortunately, most movies focused on such special effects-heavy adverse conditions don't have super-well-written scripts to go along with the impressive visuals, but I suppose you can't have everything.

Twister (Jan de Bont, 1996) I still remember seeing this for the first time in the local $2 second-run movie theater. I was 12. I don't remember if it was my first PG-13 movie or not, but I remember watching it in awe. Of nature, of moviemaking, of science... of just about everything on screen. Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt are exes and storm chasers who are flung back together for a series of mighty strong tornadoes - NOT AT ALL because they love each other, ONLY for the science! They have to get close enough to the tornado's path in order to drop a container of mini weather robots that look like metal balls. But also far enough away that they don't get sucked up into the tornado themselves. It's a dangerous game, but somebody's gotta do it, and they're both crazy enough to get right up in there to accomplish their goal - especially since there's also a rival, better-funded team lurking about. It's thrilling stuff, and the special effects still hold up - shocking for a film made twenty years ago. OH, and the name of the machine they created with all the weather robots? Dorothy. Which leads us to...

The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) In which a Kansas farm girl gets knocked on the head during a tornado and proceeds to accidentally kill one woman and be manipulated by a pink-wearing bitch who travels in a bubble and a charlatan of a Mayor into murdering another in order to return home. OR MAYBE it was all a dream! Oh, I kid, I kid. Everyone alive knows The Wizard of Oz. By now, it's part of our cultural knowledge - it's seeped into our collective consciousness in a way no other film has, and with good reason: It's the simplest expression of all the possibilities of film, the perfect introduction to movies for anyone. To know it, is to love it.

The Impossible (J.A. Bayona, 2012) Ya know what? I don't care about the whitewashing. I really don't. Yes, the real family the story is based on was Spanish, not British, but when we got these amazing performances from Naomi Watts, Ewan McGregor, and Tom Holland, I don't really care. And on a purely technical level, this film is just astonishing. The sound design is one of the best, most inventive I've heard, putting you right there in the middle of the tsunami with these characters. It's a stunning film that deserved not one bit of the backlash it received.