A Monster Calls

david75

Just saw this. Such a powerful and moving story. Brilliant performances. Bring lots of tissues. Out New Year's Day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Xbo-irtBA

u

The Black Oil

I wasn't in tears, but I enjoyed it. Quite a sensitive portrayal of the young lad here. Despite the subject matter, there were times when the tone of it felt warm, or at least that's how I read it. I liked how Neeson's character was unapologetically fierce too. Good use of close ups, trying to remember if The Orphanage was similar...

Decent start to 2017.

tunguska

Saw it tonight and i was a bit disappointed. Has a pacing problem and it just felt like somethig was missing. Moving in parts though and genuine but it couldve been a lot better. I noticed the books author wrote the screenplay and i suspect this could explain the pacing issue.

darkdubh

From the title I thought it was about a serial killer.

gmisk

david75 wrote: »

Just saw this. Such a powerful and moving story. Brilliant performances. Bring lots of tissues. Out New Year's Day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2Xbo-irtBA

u

Just to echo this....such a moving film I rarely cry at films but this had me in floods, not an easy watch but well worth it.

Slydice

Watched it. I was in bits!

Bits!

This film.

Oh man!

yerwanthere123

Just back from seeing this in cinema, thought it was pretty great, although slightly ruined by people talking towards the end. The young boy is a terrific actor.

saw t his yesterday, certainly not a kids film, or maybe it is. loved it, brilliant but as other posters have said, very very sad. Especially the hospital scenes, really good film though and I loved the animated story scenes too, that was a great touch.

El Duda

A Monster Calls - 9/10

Been really looking forward to this one as I read the book last year and it did not disappoint. This is a fantastic adaptation of a superb story, which stays very close to the book and really adds to it. Not only are the FX of the tree absolutely stunning (Pan's Labryinth an obvious comparison), the animated stories told by Liam Neeson's monster are beautiful to look at as well.

It's a tough watch as the main thrust of the plot is a boy dealing with his cancer stricken Mothers mortality. It deals with these issues elegantly and honestly. When the film finished, the whole theater was in dead silence and no one moved for a good few minutes. It obviously struck the intended chord with the whole audience.

Felicity Jones shows great range having this out at the same time as Rogue One. Sigourney Weavers accent was bit off in places but otherwise she was great. The rest of the cast were all superb.

gmisk

Great to see so many other people loved this film. Its disappointing to see it is doing fairly poor box office wise.
Cant understand La la land getting 14 oscar nominations and this getting none?!?!
Surely Lewis MacDougall at least deserved a nomination?

david75

It's a shame it got no Oscar nods. La la land is turgid but the studio and voting thing is so political it just happens that great films get lost while total crap sometimes gets forced to the top.

The kid absolutely deserved a nomination.

johnny_ultimate

An immensely frustrating film with its fatal flaw baked into its very DNA. This is a film so concerned with telling rather than showing that its emotional nuance and depth is exhausted well before the predictably tear-jerking finale. A Monster Calls is insistent on explaining and overemphasising its themes to the point where I felt a good act ahead of the characters at times (which I acknowledge is semi the point). And telling rather than showing seems the very point of a film concerned with the nature of storytelling - I can see why it perhaps makes for a more satisfying novel than book. It feels like an awkward compromise between adult and children's storytelling - something like My Neighbour Totoro handled such themes with much more nuance.

Which is not to say the film doesn't get a few things right. I'm not a big fan of CG creatures generally, but the tree here is solid enough. The stories themselves were stylishly told, and during / after the second one it felt like the two elements of the tale were operating in a harmony not seen elsewhere. While the performances are generally impressive enough - I enjoyed Neeson's more menacing approach to his voice acting - the cast are let down a bit by a badly miscast Sigourney Weaver, awful accent work doing little to help a performance already dangling close to caricature.

Ultimately, the goal of such a deconstructionist fairy tale is a welcome one - but the delivery, sadly pretty typical for Bayona, is too brute force to really have the impact it could.

yerwanthere123

A real shame this hasn't performed very well in cinemas, deserves to have been seen by a lot more people.

Tony EH

By christ, if that wasn't one of the most depressing films I've ever seen.

Not a kids film, not really an adult film. A strange one, which probably goes some way to explaining its poor box office.

I've only ever cried at one film before, that was 'The Elephant Man'. 'A Monster Calls' has made that two.

david75

Tony EH wrote: »

By christ, if that wasn't one of the most depressing films I've ever seen.

Not a kids film, not really an adult film. A strange one, which probably goes some way to explaining its poor box office.

I've only ever cried at one film before, that was 'The Elephant Man'. 'A Monster Calls' has made that two.

Is that not a testament to its quality?
Attended a preview of this with the author a few months ago. It's about dealing with loss from a child's perspective. And the defence mechanisms a child puts in place to cope with it all.

As a study of that, it's an amazing piece of filmmaking. They didn't have the budget for awards season is all there is too it. Real shame. The kid puts in a better performance than almost anyone this year. Certainly better than Ryan poxy gosling.

Tony EH

david75 wrote: »

Is that not a testament to its quality?
Attended a preview of this with the author a few months ago. It's about dealing with loss from a child's perspective. And the defence mechanisms a child puts in place to cope with it all.

As a study of that, it's an amazing piece of filmmaking. They didn't have the budget for awards season is all there is too it. Real shame. The kid puts in a better performance than almost anyone this year. Certainly better than Ryan poxy gosling.

Everybody's a child when the lose a parent.

As for quality, I do think it's a quality film. I was just musing on it's low BO. It's not exactly a children's film, but I can see many adults rejecting as such, without actually seeing it.

Don't get me wrong, I think it was a good film, but it's audience will be naturally small. It's also very dry and completely devoid of humour, which is a good thing IMO. But that's certainly not an indication of low quality.

As for Gosling, I'm sure he mumbles his way through another performance in that musical and I have zero desire to see that, so yeh, the kid has probably done a better job no doubt.

david75

Tony EH wrote: »

Everybody's a child when the lose a parent.

As for quality, I do think it's a quality film. I was just musing on it's low BO. It's not exactly a children's film, but I can see many adults rejecting as such, without actually seeing it.

Don't get me wrong, I think it was a good film, but it's audience will be naturally small. It's also very dry and completely devoid of humour, which is a good thing IMO. But that's certainly not an indication of low quality.

As for Gosling, I'm sure he mumbles his way through another performance in that musical and I have zero desire to see that, so yeh, the kid has probably done a better job no doubt.

The author also wrote the screenplay. I'd love to have read the book before seeing it but apparently as adaptations go it's 100% spot on. That's a rare thing.

Ps I love Ryan gosling. But his decision to la la land? It'll take a lot to come back from that. Guess it's his crossover movie into the real big time. He was always a bit interesting and niche up to now. He's been in some great roles/films. Up to now.

Tony EH

He's decent and I've been watching him in stuff since 'The Believer', which wasn't a good film, but he was good in it. I think there's a tendency to overrate him a bit though too. I've have to admit I've yet to see him in anything where I thought he was spectacular - or worthy of the extreme praise that's lauded upon him. That said, I've only seen about 6 or 7 of his films. The potential is always there with him though, so I guess that's what shines through.

'La La Land' I have no interest in. I simply dislike the genre. Musicals begin and end with 'The Wizard of Oz' and 'Singing in the Rain' for me, so that's an easy pass. My To Do list is already long enough.