Conor O’Malley’s (Lewis MacDougall) needs a friend. A sensitive child with a troubled home life, he’s being forced to deal with adult problems even though he’s only twelve-years-old. He is, as one character says, “too old to be a kid, too young to be a man.”
The young British boy’s troubles are many. His mother (Felicity Jones) has terminal cancer so he’s forced to move in with his strict grandmother (Sigourney Weaver). “If you get hungry there’s spinach in the fridge,” she says on the way out the door. “Don’t touch anything!” If that wasn’t bad enough his father (Toby Kebbell) lives in California and he’s the favourite of local bully Harry (James Melville). “I’m sorry you have to face this,” says dad, “but you have to be brave.”
One night at 12:07 he meets the friend he so desperately needs, a monster yew tree (voiced Liam Neeson) with roots for legs and long branches for arms. “I know everything about you,” he rumbles. “The truth you hide. The truth you dream.” Speaking in parables the giant tree tells Conor three stories to help him cope with the trauma in his life.
“A Monster Calls” is a quiet family drama about growing up and learning to grieve. It’s an intense topic and one that places it just outside of the kid’s entertainment category. An off-kilter tale that packs an emotional wallop in its final third, it defies expectations by allowing the characters to react in real ways. This is not sentimental fluff. Conor is in turmoil, plagued by nightmares of his mother’s grave and, as a result, lashes out in anger. It’s powerful and upsetting to see a young boy struggle with situations that he can barely understand let alone control.
At the heart of the story is Lewis MacDougall as Conor. He’s a child with an adult face that imbues the character with an unactorly authenticity that feels utterly real, even when he is talking to a giant tree.
Neeson’s voice is a thunderous roar that comes on strong but hides an undercurrent of tenderness and compassion.
“A Monster Calls” is a heartbreaking tale with a nightmarish climax that will be too intense for kids who may get wrapped up in the story. For everyone else it’s a fractured fairy tale with real insight and pathos.
Alfred Hitchcock made three of his greatest films with Grace Kelly and tried to lure her back to the big screen long after she retired. Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have a seemingly unbreakable cinematic bond and the world of movies would be far less interesting if Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski had never met. John Ford and John Wayne inspired one another to do their best work and Tim Burton and Johnny Depp’s shared eccentricities gave us unforgettable nights at the multiplex.
Muses inspire their directors to aspire to new heights, to push the limits of their creativity.
Add another to the list: Melissa McCarthy.
Over the course of four films — including this weekend’s Ghostbusters — she has upped director Paul Feig’s game and in turn he gave her the roles that broke her out of the TV sidekick treadmill and turned her into a big screen star. “It’s not even like we go, ‘We’ve got to do the next movie together,’” Feig says.
“It’s just that suddenly the next movie will pop up and I’m like, ‘You know who would be great for this?’ So it’s funny that people think we have an agenda to keep doing this.”
Agenda or not, their creative chemistry is undeniable.
Feig describes McCarthy’s audition for the first film they made together, Bridesmaids, as a “religious moment.” She was less sure.
“The whole ride home from the audition,” she says, “I was thinking, ‘I got too weird. Should I turn the car around and do that cheesy actor thing of I can do it better! Give me another shot!’”
The director cast her in the scene-stealing role of Megan — imagine a feral, female Guy Fieri — and it was her flashpoint.
Her wonderfully weird performance, complete with sexual hijinks and an explosive bout of diarrhea —“It’s coming out of me like lava!” — stole the show out from under other, better-known stars like Kristen Wiig — and earned her an Oscar nomination.
Next up for the dynamic duo was The Heat, an odd couple, buddy cop movie set in Boston co-starring Sandra Bullock.
McCarthy plays a tough-talking street cop who forms an unlikely alliance with the uptight Sandra Bullock to bring down a murderous drug dealer.
The role riffed on McCarthy’s signature character, the aggressive but damaged comedic persona. “I’ve played a lot of characters who are very vocal, very aggressive,” she told me in 2014.
“For the women I’ve played there is a reason why they are so ballsy and it is nice when you see the crack in the veneer and you realize, ‘It’s part of their insecurity. They stay loud so nobody yells at them.’”
Feig knows when to let McCarthy off the leash — there are some wild slapstick scenes here — but he also knows when to pull her back and let the script do the work.
This week McCarthy headlines Feig’s all-female Ghostbusters reboot alongside Bridesmaids co-star Kristen Wiig.
Will that be their final collaboration? Don’t count on it.
Feig is reportedly writing a Spy sequel as we speak.
“She’s so good,” he says, “and we just really have the same sense of humour.”
Director Paul Fieg and Company are not the Ruiners of Your Childhood. Your youthful “Ghostbusters” memories are alive and well, in your head, in your DVD drawer or digital download file folder. Ghostbros, upset their 1984 favourite is being rebooted with an all female cast, flooded the internet with low-to-no star reviews. As it turns out, the time they spent trying to torpedo a movie they had not yet seen, might have been better spent making room on their basement shelves for the new “Ghostbusters” figurines. Feig hasn’t desecrated a classic, he has added a new chapter, creating a light and fluffy concoction that moves the franchise into the future while paying homage to the past.
When we first meet Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) she’s a professor at Columbia trying to hide her past as a paranormal investigator. When a ghost-hunting book she co-wrote with Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy) comes to light she is let go. Like Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler before her, she leaves academia and becomes a professional New York City ghostbuster alongside Abby, proton pack engineer Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon) and former subway worker Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones).
After making a name for themselves they uncover a major plot hatched by hotel janitor Rowan North (Neil Casey). Upset his genius has been ignored by the world, he plans on unleashing an army of undead to come back and “pester the world” in an event he calls the Fourth Cataclysm. He has created a vortex that will allow whatever it is on that plane to come crashing down on this plane and flood New York City with ghosts. By the climax the movie dissolves into regular summertime C.G.I. tomfoolery as the Ghostbusters battle spirits in Times Square.
There is a sense of déjà vu hanging heavy over “Ghostbusters.” The new film doesn’t continue the original story, it reboots it, taking us back to the origins of the group. In other words, it’s a lot like the 1984 movie. From class four semi-anchored entities and proton streams to cameos from Slimer, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, Sigourney Weaver, Annie “Ghostbusters, whaddaya want?” Potts plus a glimpse of a Harold Ramis statue, the movie feels familiar but has been freshened up.
The cast doesn’t try to imitate Murray, Aykroyd, Ramis and Hudson. The new characters are just that, new creations plunked down into an existing world.
McCarthy and Wiig, reteamed for the first time since “Bridesmaids,” are solid and Jones is a formidable presence but most interesting is McKinnon as engineering nerd Holtzmann. She is unapologetically weird, as strange as her unruly asymmetrical haircut and a glorious addition to the “Ghostbusters” family.
Also welcome is Chris Hemsworth as the dippy receptionist who doesn’t have glass in his eyeglasses and says things like, “An aquarium is a submarine for fish.” He’s a walking non sequitur and very funny.
Like the old Abbott and Costello horror comedies, “Ghostbusters” doesn’t have any real scares but it will make you laugh. The script, co-written by Feig and “Parks and Recreation” writer Katie Dippold, is funny, if not exactly in a slap the knee kind of way, then in a slow boil constant giggle respect. Is it an out-of-this-world hit like Feig’s “Bridesmaids” or “Spy”? No. It occasionally suffers from a weird rhythm where scenes end suddenly and at least one of the cameos feels wedged in, but the overall effect is one of a respectful resurrection of a beloved franchise.
Best of all, it is self-aware. Reading on-line comments Erin comes across one that reads, “Ain’t no bitches going to hunt no ghosts.” Later Abby says, “Don’t read what crazy people write in the middle of the night online.” Are you listening Ghostbros?
At one time or another everyone has fantasized about, if not killing, then at least doing grievous bodily harm to an employer. The guys in Horrible Bosses, the 2011 comedy starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis, actually tried to make their fantasies reality.
The idea of squaring off against the boss man struck a chord with a lot of people and the movie raked in more than $100 million. So the inevitable sequel, Horrible Bosses 2, hit theatres earlier this week.
They’ll have to go some ways to top the last trio of bad bosses: Jennifer Aniston as a foul-mouthed sexual predator with a bad habit of using laughing gas as foreplay; a manic boss with no scruples in the form of Kevin Spacey; and a drug-addled loser with a penchant for cocaine and masseuses who inherits a business from his papa, played by Colin Farrell, who berates his employees for coming in late after attending his dad’s and their old boss’s funeral.
“Well, maybe that excuse would have flown when my dad was here, but I’m in charge now.”
But even that terrible trio pales in comparison to the worst movie bosses of all time.
One of the worst is Working Girl’s Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver). Parker is two-faced, and attempts to pass off her trusted secretary Tess McGill’s (Melanie Griffith) ideas as her own. Roger Ebert said of Weaver’s performance, “From her first frame on the screen, she has to say all the right things while subtly suggesting that she may not mean any of them.”
In the end, Tess teaches her a lesson about honesty and gets Katharine fired.
Katharine looks like a pussycat compared to Buddy Ackerman (Kevin Spacey), the tyrannical Hollywood producer in Swimming with Sharks.
“You are nothing!” he says to his new assistant Guy (Frank Whaley). “If you were in my toilet I wouldn’t bother flushing it. My bathmat means more to me than you!”
Guy finally snaps, kidnaps Buddy and tortures him. But in an unexpected twist, the extreme behaviour earns Buddy’s respect and Guy gets a promotion.
Finally, if you mix the swooping white hair and bad attitude of Cruella DeVille with the people skills of Vlad the Impaler, you will come up with Miranda Priestly, the worst boss in all of moviedom. Played by Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, Priestly is the editrix of a fictional fashion magazine called Runway who never met an assistant she couldn’t humiliate with a withering glance and a few choice words. “By all means, move at a glacial pace,” she says to newbie Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway). “You know how that thrills me.”
A quirky little film shot in two weeks on a shoestring budget, Tadpole was one of the finds at last year’s Sundance Festival. Oscar Grubman (Aaron Stanford) is an intelligent fifteen-year old with a problem. He is hopelessly in love with his stepmother Eve (Sigourney Weaver), a scientist who married his dad (John Ritter) after his first marriage to Oscar’s mom dissolved. Things become complicated when Oscar sleeps with Eve’s best friend Diane (Bebe Neuwirth), intoxicated by the fragrance of the scarf Diane happened to borrow from Eve. It’s a wickedly funny scene, and one that displays how blinded by love he is. It’s The Graduate by way of Oedipus Rex. Despite its unusual subject, Tadpole works on many levels. Aaron Stanford is terrific as the love-sick Oscar, but it is Bebe Neuwirth who steals the show. As the 40-something temptress Diane, she wrings every bit of impish humor from the character, but it is Sigourney Weaver in the less showier role who provides the emotional core of the film. As Eve, a woman married to her work as much as her husband, her reaction to Oscar’s advances provides real feeling, a sensitive turn that deepens the story. Tadpole is a funny, insightful coming-of-age story with great performances.
Imagine if there had been eight people named Zapruder in Dallas, Texas on Friday, November 22, 1963 and you get the high concept of the new thriller Vantage Point—one catastrophic event, eight different viewpoints.
In the chaotic minutes after President Ashton (William Hurt) is shot while giving a speech at a global summit on the war terror in Spain, two secret service agents, Thomas Barnes (Dennis Quaid) and Kent Taylor (Mathew Fox), try and piece together what happened. Thus begins the movie’s deep debt to Rashômon as the attempted assassination of the president is told from five different perspectives, including American tourist Howard Lewis (Forest Whitaker), who, camcorder in hand, videotaped the whole thing and television producer Rex Brooks (Sigourney Weaver) who was producing a new piece on the summit.
First the good stuff. Vantage Point does a nice job of showing the awful suddenness in which violence can happen, and the terrible consequences of terrorism. Director Pete Travis stages the ferocious opening with gusto. As shots ring out and chaos reigns his camera conveys the intensity of the mass panic that follows. Jittery camera work effectively conveys how the bad guys can take advantage of the chaos they create to follow through with their plans. The first time through it’s a thriller, too bad it loses its oomph in repeated viewings.
The story, starting form the beginning rewinds and unspools from the point of view of the major characters. It’s a cool idea but one that is flawed in its execution. The horror of the assassination and the subsequent terror attack is blunted by the constant duplication until it loses all impact and simply becomes tiresome.
This kind of fractured storytelling is very difficult to pull off without boring the audience. It would have been interesting to see what more accomplished directors like Christopher Nolan, Alfonso Cuarón or even Quentin Tarantino, all of whom have experimented with nonlinear timelines, would have been able to do with this same material.
Amid the bombast, blood and bombs Vantage Point presents itself as an anti-war manifesto, including a reporter who blames US foreign policy for the amount of terrorism in the world and a president who seems to understand that the US isn’t loved all over the world and favors showing moral strength over military strength. It would be easier to accept these ideas from a movie that didn’t eventually dissolve into a violent shoot out with a body count that rivals Rambo.
Wonky politics aside Vantage Point does have some exciting moments, and enough political intrigue to keep conspiracy theorists happy, but its awkward construction drags the whole film down.
“Nobody gets through high school unscathed,” says Gail (Jamie Lee Curtis), consoling her daughter Marnie (Kristen Bell). Marnie, now a successful PR person in Los Angeles was once an unfortunate looking girl with the even more unfortunate initials M.O.O. She was tormented in school by the popular girls, led by Joanne (Odette Yustman) a pretty, but vicious cheerleader. Joanne would have been a long forgotten memory, if not for the fact that she is engaged to Marnie’s brother. The weekend leading up to the wedding brings up long suppressed memories for Marnie, and her mother (Curtis), who, it turns out had a high school nemesis in Joanne’s aunt Mona (Sigourney Weaver), a wealthy business woman with the annoying habit of littering her speech with tidbits of French and Italian. Did I mention this is a comedy? Better stated, an alleged comedy?
“You Again” has one of those over contrived kind of kind of plots that could really benefit from a dose of reality. I don’t need deep torment from the characters to make their predicaments plausible, but a whiff of real feelings for the audience to hang on to from time to time would elevate the whole thing from the level of a Saturday night sitcom to something that could inspire genuine laughs. Slapstick is fine, and silly humor is OK too, but this movie wants us to sympathize with its characters and unfortunately we don’t because they’re not characters but the blandest of comedy stereotypes.
Not even a sprinkling of Betty White’s now patented slightly crazy grandmother character can liven things up, although a surprise cameo near the end suggests there might have been a better, and funnier story to explore with these characters. If only they had made the prequel first.
