BEAUTIFUL POIGNANT MELODRAMA 'A MONSTER CALLS' REVIEW!!

Author Ness penned this adaptation of his own novel, which is as poignant as his beautiful book and features brilliant performances by Jones, MacDougall, and Neeson. Director J.A. Bayona is no stranger to depicting intense mother-child dynamics. His 2012 historical drama The Impossible captured a mother and son's fraught post-tsunami journey; in A Monster Calls, there's just as treacherous a disaster looming over every interaction between Conor and his beloved mum -- the unspoken cancer that's eating away at her slowly but surely.

MacDougall gives one of the finest youth performances of 2016 as angry, sad, confused Conor, who's hoping beyond hope that his mum will get better but who also knows (as the Monster's visits and stories symbolize) that the inevitable is on its way -- and who's desperately afraid to admit that tangled up with anticipatory grief is a sense of possible relief. 

FelicityJones is also wonderful as a mother who desperately wishes she had "100 years to give" her son but knows it's not a possibility. But the heart of the film isn't simply Conor and his mother but Conor and the Monster, and Neeson's spectacular rendering of the yew-tree creature is both frightening and comforting. As he tells Conor, the truth, like people, is complicated and even contradictory, but it's what you need to face to move forward. All in all a great film that really touches the heart. 8.0/10