A Monster Calls

Posted on January 5, 2017 at 5:50 pm

It turns out that there is something even more painful than the most devastating loss imaginable. That is the lesson of “A Monster Calls,” based on the Carnegie Medal and the Greenaway Medal award winning book by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay, from an idea by the late human rights activist Siobhan Dowd.

It takes place in the Irish countryside. “We begin,” the movie tells us, “like so many stories, with a boy too old to be a kid and too young to be a man and a nightmare.” The boy is Conor (Lewis MacDougall), whose adored single mother (Felicity Jones) is struggling with cancer and the ravages of its treatment. While other boys are gently awakened by their parents and sent off to school with a good breakfast and a lovingly packed lunch, it is Conor who makes breakfast for his mother (there are rows of medicine bottles in the kitchen cupboard). He also does the laundry before he goes to school, where a bully threatens him. He has a frosty grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) and an affectionate but useless father (Toby Kebbell). So, he is alone with his grief, his fear, his anger, and his paints, which he must learn to use to express them all.

Let’s think for a moment about the title: “A Monster Calls.” Is that “calls” as in “pays a call,” or comes to visit? Is it “calls” as in “calls out to?” Is it “calls” as in “calls out from?”

A teacher says sympathetically, “If you ever want to talk…” Conor’s dad arrives from America, where he lives with his new wife and new baby, and he takes Conor to an amusement park. But Conor does not want to talk and he is not amused. A glimpse of the old “King Kong,” Fear and Fury bookends, and a shiver-inducing creaking noise give us a hint that a terrifying, destructive monster may be coming.

And then, yes, Conor is visited by a monster, an enormous walking yew tree with the rumbling voice of Liam Neeson. Conor may think the monster is there to protect him, but that is not exactly true. He says he is there to tell Conor three stories, and then, he says, Conor must tell him one and it must be true. The monster’s stories have a yew tree connection, as does a possible new treatment for Conor’s mother. They begin like traditional fairy tales but do not pretend that the resolutions are fair or straightforward. The fury within the stories seems to take over Conor and he finds himself becoming violent before telling his story forces him to admit what terrifies him even more than the prospect of losing his mother.

This is a complex, richly imagined film with a deep understanding, clear-eyed but compassionate. The stories it contains help us to be honest about our own.

Parents should know that this film is about a boy whose mother is dying of cancer. There are some other disturbing images and situations, including a bully and a monster.

Family discussion: Which story surprised you the most and why? Why was it important for Conor to tell his story? What monsters live inside us?

If you like this, try: the book by Patrick Ness and “Secondhand Lions”

Silence

Posted on January 5, 2017 at 5:27 pm

Like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam-era adaptation, Apocalypse Now, Martin Scorsese’s “Silence” is the story of men who take a journey to find a former leader who has disappeared into the untamed natural world.

It is the mid-17th century. Two Portuguese priests, Father Rodrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garrpe (Adam Driver) go to Japan in search of their teacher and mentor, Father Ferreira (Liam Neeson). After receiving disturbing reports that he has publicly abandoned his faith, they say, “We have no choice but to save his soul.” They leave with “no luggage except our hearts.”

Ferreira had gone to Japan as a missionary and he and his colleagues had some success in converting Buddhist peasants. But Japan has now outlawed Christianity in any form, and as we see immediately, the officials have decided that the best way to eradicate it is to torture believers, forcing the priests to watch. Early efforts to fight Christianity failed because killing the priests made them martyrs, showing the strength and power of their faith when they refused to renounce it, even under torture. So the officials responsible for eradicating Christianity have had to develop a more subtle approach. Instead of torturing the priests, they torture and murder their followers, telling the priests that all they have to do to stop it is recant. It can be as simple as putting a foot on an icon of Jesus. “It’s a formality,” the Japanese official says in a soothing voice. “You don’t have to believe it.”

The priests have a choice: deny their faith in Jesus and Christianity or allow the suffering and death of innocent people. What should they do? Who has the answer?

For Martin Scorsese, who co-wrote and directed, this movie has been a passion project for three decades, since he read the award-winning novel by Shusaku Endo, inspired by the true stories of 17th century priests in Japan. Scorsese, who once thought of becoming a priest grapples here with the big questions about the letter and the spirit in the context of a time and a faith that traditionally has put a lot of emphasis on the letter as a frame and a discipline for the spirit. It is also a faith tradition that understands suffering as a part of faith practice, whether a way to appreciate the suffering of Jesus or to test one’s faith or to better understand others’ experiences, or to earn the rewards of heaven. The gorgeous visual scope and striking images are as powerful in telling the story of the clash of culture and religion as the narrative.

When it comes to performances, the film is off-balance, probably unintentionally, as the Japanese characters are more complex and completely realized than the one-dimensional priests. Garfield seems at sea as an actor, not just as a character, except in a few scenes where he has a chance to debate the “Inquisitor” (a wry, clever Issey Ogata). This movie about silence is at its best in the verbal jousting on faith, culture, truth, and power.

Translation: Extremely tense scenes of torture and brutality with some very disturbing graphic images, characters injured and killed

Recommendation: Mature teens-Adults

Family discussion: Were you surprised by the final shot? In the debate with the Inquisitor about culture and faith, who was right?

If you like this, try: “Unbroken” and “The Last Temptation of Christ”

Trailer: A Monster Calls with Liam Neeson

Posted on August 19, 2016 at 8:00 am

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness, inspired by the late Siobhan Dowd, is the story of a boy whose mother is critically ill. He feels utterly isolated. His father has a new family. His grandmother is cold and unsympathetic. The sympathy of his teachers just makes him feel worse. And then one day, a monster calls, a monster with stories to tell. The film stars Liam Neeson, Felicity Jones, and Sigourney Weaver.

Trailer: A Monster Calls with Liam Neeson and Felicity Jones

Posted on January 10, 2016 at 3:42 pm

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Ted 2

Posted on June 25, 2015 at 5:22 pm

“Subtle” is not a word that naturally comes to mind for a movie that features a bong in the shape of male genitalia (which is more powerful — the longing for weed or the ew-factor of a straight guy who does not want to appear to be sucking on a dong-shaped bong)? Or for a movie that shows us a fertility clinic accident drenching a character with an output of said body part, followed by a joke insulting African-American men and those with a genetic ailment. A trifecta!

The raunch-fest “Ted 2” does indeed rely on gross-out, juvenile, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, marijuana-philic, oh-no-they-didn’t humor, though much of it is more humor-ish, fake-funny, outrageousness pretending to be comedy. It spends most of its running time, too long at almost two hours, on jokes about bodily parts and functions, drugs, the joys of slackerdom, and pratfalls, which I admit pretty much sums up my least favorite kind of comedy. So if the two examples above strike you as hilarious, kick my rating up a couple of notches and go enjoy yourself.

The parts I did enjoy were the low-key, random, off-beat moments, especially in the performances of Mark Wahlberg and, briefly Liam Neeson. The gimmick may be the talking teddy bear, but the star of the film in every way is Wahlberg, who in the midst of a slob comedy gives a performance that is so precise and witty it is close to adorable.

“Ted” was an amiably crude film about a boy named Johnny who wished that his teddy bear would come alive, like Pinocchio, or the Nutcracker. Ted does come to life and decades later, John (Wahlberg) and Ted (voiced by writer/director Seth MacFarlane), are happily still best friends, enjoying the pleasures of adulthood (sex, porn, weed, beer) while happily holding on to childhood when it comes to thunderstorms and responsibility. The happy ending of course has to be unraveled for a sequel, so we begin with John now divorced from the long-time girlfriend who gently suggested he might want to grow up, and Ted getting married to his girlfriend, Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth). After a great musical production number right out of a Busby Berkeley film, we skip ahead a year, and find Ted and Tami-Lynn bickering to the point of not speaking to one another. So, of course they decide to have a baby. This requires the assistance of a fertile male human. Ted’s first choice is, of course, Tom Brady, so he and John come up with a plan to obtain a sample without Brady’s finding out.

It does not end well, so John volunteers to provide the sample himself, leading to the scene described above. That does not work out well, either, so they try adoption, which brings Ted’s situation to the attention of the authorities. Apparently, one has to be human to adopt a child. Ted is classified as property, and is thus ineligible to adopt, work, or even be married. This being America, they find a lawyer (Sam L. Jackson — get it? played by a very game Amanda Seyfried) to go to court and have Ted declared human. This leads to a thoughtful exploration of existential ontology.

Kidding! It’s just a series of dumb situations and dumb jokes made by dumb characters in various locations, including the aforesaid fertility clinic, courtroom, and very lovely home of Tom Brady, plus a pot farm and New York Comic-Con. Giovanni Ribisi returns as the demented Donny, who conspires with the head of Hasbro (did they really consent to product placement in this film) to kidnap Ted because, oh, who cares. Certainly not MacFarlane, who makes no attempt at any kind of storyline or character. He just throws in a gross joke, pop culture shout-out, or surprise cameo (the cast of SNL! Some “Star Trek” actors! Liam Neeson, who clearly did not learn anything from his appearance in “A Million Ways to Die in the West!” Patrick Warburton in a Tick costume!) instead. Neeson is wonderful. Wahlberg is terrific. But not enough to overcome the movie’s limp, puerile, vapidity.

NOTE: Stay all the way to the end of the credits for an extra scene.

Parents should know that this film has constant very strong language with crude and explicit sexual references, sexual situations, drinking, extensive drug use, comic peril, and violence. Some of the humor is intentionally offensive. Some is is just offensive. See the thoughtful discussion of the racist themes and jokes by Wesley Morris in Grantland.

Family discussion: Is Ted human? Who should decide?

If you like this, try: “Ted” and “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle”