This Friday two first ladies step out of the White House, and both will be remembered for very different reasons. Michelle as an outspoken, charming and extremely affable first lady, beautifully wrapping up her husband’s second term. Jackie will be remembered as the shy and reserved widow, who had to bear the brunt of her husband’s murder less than three years into his first term. They also have something in common: they are both departing from White House for very tragic reasons, leaving the world in shock and despair.

The long-awaited biopic of Jacqueline Kennedy (Onassis) – played by Natalie Portman – is not quite a biopic, but an intense deep-dive into the most dramatic days of her life, from JFK’s infamous assassination to his funeral procession just three days later. It is interspersed with conversations with the journalist Theodore H. White (Billy Crudup) from Life Magazine a few days later, as he turns up at the Kennedy home in Massachusetts. Such narrow focus allows for dramatic profundity, and Portman’s performance is certain to impress you.

At times, Jackie comes across as a chain-smoking clueless bimbo aware of her intellectual limitations and grappling with fame. When asked about her affinity with the arts, she replies: “oh, that’s so complicated. I don’t know. We just get the best of everything!” (her daughter Caroline seemed to inherent her genes, as she demonstrated during a 2008 interview). At other times, she comes across confident and resolute: she confronts Bobby Kennedy (Peter Sarsgaard) and government officials with her decision to walk alongside her husband’s casket during the funeral procession, despite the security risks. She is teary and nostalgic as she touches the furniture, walks the corridors and dramatically packs her suitcase upon leaving the White House, just like Grace Garbo in Anna Karenina (Clarence Brown, 1935). Portman conveys deep and credible emotions.

Jackie is an effective political drama, but it’s also an unlikely addition to Pablo Larraín’s film portfolio. Not only it is the Chilean director’s first English-language feature, but it’s also an abrupt departure from his previous (and yet to be released) Neruda in at least two ways. Firstly, Neruda is partly imagined: one of the leads is a fictitious character, and so film ends as a lyrical allegory of the life of a writer/politician (the famous Chilen poet was also a senator for the communist party). Jackie, on the other hand, endeavours to recreate an accurate picture of the week that shook the US. Secondly, the films couldn’t be more distinct from an ideological perspective: Neruda celebrates a communist, while Jackie celebrates the communist-hunters. At one point, Jackie regrets: “my husband didn’t even have the time to finish off communists”.

Making convincing political dramas from very different ideological POVs is not a problem. Quite the opposite: it demonstrates that the director is a deft storyteller. Larraín is indeed extremely skilled at picking his actors, recreating past environments and putting together a cogent narrative. The problem with Jackie is that his subversive hand is missing: the clever use of silence of The Club (2016), the imaginative allegories of Neruda (2016), or the controversial subject matter of No (2012). Jackie is an immaculate and technologically accomplished film, and you wouldn’t expect any less from such an important biopic being released at such an important time. Larraín simply stuck to more conventional and formulaic Hollywood storytelling, and he never went the extra mile. In other words, Jackie is neither a blemish nor the best piece on Larraín’s bodywork. But it will almost certainly become his most commercially successful film to date.

Jackie is a magnificent movie so far as quality is concerned. It recreates the glory of the JKF era, in all of its romantic, pompous and iconic grandiosity. But it’s also celebration of a very dangerous establishment – particularly given the circumstances right now. The timing of the film couldn’t be worse. But neither is the filmmaker nor anyone else involved in the movie to blame for that. Like everyone else in the world, they probably never imagined that the US would choose someone as dysfunctional and unpredictable as Donald Trump to inhabit the same residence as the Kennedys.

Jackie is out in cinemas this Friday January 20th, and you can check the film trailer below before heading to the cinema:

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Below are our related pieces of interest:

• our review of Pablo Larraín’s Neruda (2016);
• our review of Pablo Larraín’s outstanding The Club (2016);
• our review of Pablo Larraín’s classic No (2012); and
• Our exclusive interview with Pablo Larraín.

Do you feel screaming, jumping around or just running away from this planet as the most reactionary and dangerous president in the history of the US will be in London on Friday, the 13th? Well, you are not alone.What’s about to happen this week is far scarier than Jason Vorhees, Freddy Krueger, Chucky and the grim reaper put together. Worst of all, it’s extremely real.

So Australian enterprise DesignCrowd – which describes itself as “the online marketplace for online services” – had a brilliant idea. they invited their users to come up with their own hair-raising and blood-curling interpretation of the freaky President-elect of the US in a horror movie, and the result couldn’t be more terrifying. The company had previously done a series called Politicians in Horror Movie Scenes, so the Donald Trump extension was just natural (and very necessary)!

Jo Sabin, Head of Community, Content, Communications at DesignCrowd, told DMovies: “We’ve run some super successful contests that have gone viral including politicians with man buns, Pokemon in classic movie scenes, and actors as hipsters, and this was definitely up there as one of the most popular. We were able to showcase how you can generate a huge variety of quality ideas from one simple design brief, in this case: What would Donald Trump look like in a Horror Movie?”

She also explains that there was no shortage of contestants and bright scary ideas: “the contest received more than 120 designs from designers all over the world and is one of our most successful in terms of reach and engagement.”

Check out our 10 picks below. And remember to flicker with caution: this is your worst nightmare come true!

Click here in order to find out more about DesignCrowd’s Donald Trump’s horror movie special.

This piece was originally entitled “Friday the 20th is the new Friday the 13th”, and was published on Trump’s Inauguration on January 20th, 2017. It has been republished under a new title for the occasion of Trump’s visit to London on Friday the 13th (in July 2018).

The wonderfully weird world of David Lynch is populated with strange and bizarre creatures: the deeply dysfunctional Laura Palmer, the severely disabled elephant man, the psychopathic gangster Frank, the various non-linear characters of Lost Highway (1997) and Mullholland Drive (2001), who meander back and forth in time assuming different personalities and predicaments, and much more.

David Lynch’s world is made for contemplation, and no one in their mind would like to dive into it. Unless you want to find redemption in snorting cocain with Laura, in being ostracised like the elephant man, or deriving sexual gratification from sadistic rituals like Frank. Alternatively you could take an unpredictable journey in time, unadvertingly crossing the dangerous line between the realms of reality and imagination. We would none of these endeavours to anyone who cherishes their sanity.

So how is it that someone decided to hire David Lynch to direct a television commercial? Were these publicists taking revenge on their bosses? Did they want to scare off their buyers? Were these commercials intended to be the brand’s kiss of death? Well, in reality David Lynch beautifully translated his genius into the world of advertissement, and there’s nothing awkward and repulsive about these publicity videos. They are very pleasant to what – an abnormality in Lynchian terms!

This Thursday David Lynch celebrates his 71st birthday. So we picked the seven most unlikely publicity videos made by David Lynch. There’s a pasta, perfume, heartburn medicine, shoes, car and even a pregnancy test! You would never imagine that these pieces were concocted by the master of the weird, bizarre and surreal!

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1. Have an Alka-Seltzer, if will help you to digest Lynch’s most unpalatable movie;

THIS ADVERT HAS NOW BEEN REMOVED DUE TO COPYRGHT ISSUES.

2. In case something smells fishy, just try Obsession, the latest fragrance by Calvin Klein;

3. Wondering whether you are pregnant? Clear Blue and David Lynch have the answer for you, in just 15 seconds;

4. If you ever get lost on a highway, at least make sure that you are driving a Nissan:

5. Feeling hungry? You just need pasta Barilla. This jolly and family-oriented advert featuring Gérard Depardieu is far more Jean-Pierre Jeunet than David Lynch;

6. Adidas should be your first choice for shoes, if if there’s no where to run; and

7. To finish off the list, a more suitable Lynchian piece, and possibly the scariest commercial you will see in your life: a clean up advert for New York City!

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Don’t forget to read our review of Blue Velvet Revisited (Peter Braatz, 2016), a doc being released this year and celebrating 30 years on the cult classic.

Jon Cvack has put so much effort into his first feature film that it never feels amateurish or inept. The director has a firm grip on every aspect of his movie: script, photography, lighting, editing, and the usual teething problems normally associated with a budding filmmaker (such as the occasional odd angle, or the vaguely clumsy dialogue) are entirely absent. The helmer has paid attention to every frame and every single line of his movie, and the result is an immaculate gem waiting to be unearthed.

Jack (Micah Parker) visits the town of his youth searching for some of his old friends. In the evening, he goes out on a binge with Frank (Laurence Fuller), which somehow culminates in the murder of a prostitute. Together the two friends set out on a bizarre mission to bury the body, thereby evading justice. They come across a number of unlikely characters, such as Frank’s old girlfriend and a self-loathing war veteran, on the way to the woman’s final burial ground. These people punctuate their journey with twisted reminders of mortality, justice as well as a test for their sense of loyalty and humanity.

The camera movements are constant and yet very subtle, in contrast to the multiple perspectives and ingenious, fast editing. The lighting is also remarkable: a very elegant neo-noir chiaroscuro provides the narrative with a comforting eeriness. They are mostly shades of red and yellow, wrapping the film with a warm layer of coziness and carnality, despite the grim subject of murder. There are very clever shots filmed from outside a moving car with the environment reflected on the glass. The result: the trees outside juxtaposed on the characters inside the car. This is a deft film trick achieved also by Kiarostami in Certified Copy (2010). In the movie by the Iranian filmmaker, Juliette Binoche drives through the streets of Arezzo (in Italy) and the buildings are juxtaposed on the driver and the passenger. Cvack’s version is no less impressive.

There’s plenty of blood throughout the movie, not just the prostitute’s, and yet this is neither a slasher nor a Tarantinoesque flick with very graphic and gratuitous violence. Aesthetically, Road to the Well is very close to David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997), minus the supernatural, plus some splattered blood. The narrative is consistently gloomy, suspenseful and dotted with weird people, red herrings, and other devices that don’t always connect. Don’t expect clearcut explanations for every little twist you see.

The sound score also deserves a special mention. The music is pervasive without being invasive, it supports the narrative without distorting it. It’s creepy but never tawdry. It blends in extremely well with every sequence, and at times it’s difficult to determine whether the sounds are diegetic or not. It gives the perfect finishing touch to a first-class endeavour.

The relatively long (at least for a new helmer) duration of the movie of 109 minutes does not affect integrity of the experience. This film will enthrall you from the very first second (it opens straight away without opening credits). It closes without a pompous climax, preserving the somber and strangely captivating mood established throughout.

Jon Cvack’s first feature will keep you thinking, looking back and wanting to put the puzzle pieces together for days to come.

Road to the Well was released earlier this month on DVD and VOD via Candy Factory Films – just click here for more information. Make sure you turn the volume up and the lights down for the full experience. Sit back and rest assured that you will get your money’s worth.

Watch the trailer for a taster of the delicious eerieness of this splendid American indie:

The shoemaker’s wife is always worst clad. Jean-Pierre Werner (played by François Cluzet, Dustin Hoffman’s French lookalike) is a reserved yet doting countryside doctor looking after patients in the rural communities, most of them elder and convalescent. He consistently gives his best to these people, sometimes acting as both a physician and caretaker, and always finding the most humane solutions for their treatment. But what shall he do upon finding out that he was an inoperable cancer on the left side his brain, and that he has to undergo radio and chemotherapy?

The director Thomas Lilti is a former doctor himself, and so he understands very well the moral and philosophical contradictions of such work. Jean-Pierre wants to honour his Hippocritic Oath and provide treatment as best as he can, but he forgets that his ability and judgment are to be affected by the aggressive therapy that he’s about to take. The realisation of his own vulnerability and mortality makes him angry and aggressive. His frustration shows when at one point he describes nature as “a barbarity”.

Jean-Pierre is not pleased when his bosses send him the young Nathalie Delezia (Marianne Denicourt, from Lilti previous film Hippocrates, made in 2014) to support and eventually substitute him. She’s very unexperienced, and instead of providing her with support, he’s often abusive. He thinks that he’s irreplaceable. Many of his patients don’t welcome her arrival either, with one slamming the door in her face. In such remote environment, where life has a languid pace, change is often frowned upon.

Lilti creates a warm film with emotional depth and humanity. He rescues the most beautiful and noble facets of the medical profession – unlike the also doctor-turned-helmer David Cronenberg whose disturbing films are more focussed on the physiological and pathological side of medicine. The French directors shuns melodrama in favour of slow-paced storytelling, supported by intense dialogue and robust performances – all in good, old-fashioned French style.

The movie is not without flaws, the most significant one being the soundtrack. The score is a little too loud and dissonant, more suitable for an unabashed tearjerker (which the film isn’t). The story doesn’t deliver the passion to match the majestic song in the last sequence of the movie – a ballad exhaustively used throughout the history of cinema. In other words, Irreplaceable is a heartfelt film, but neither a blow ro the head nor a punch to the stomach.

The French film is showing for three weeks only from Friday January 23rd at the Cine Lumiere in London – just click here for more information.

Right here you can watch the film trailer:

It doesn’t matter if you are a boy or a girl. You have to face it: women in films and in the media are constantly misinterpreted. Often the conventional role of women is associated with glamour and the “natural” ability to seduce. Sex symbols such as Marilyn Monroe don’t die. They become martyrs.

In the recent Why Him? (John Hamburg, 2016), the 21-year old girl Zoey is dating the tech millionaire Laird, an overconfident and vulgar nouveau rich. His behaviour, not too different from Donald Trump’s, scares Zoey’s father. Laird mission is clear: he needs to convince Zoey’s parents that he deserves to marry her. She is the ultimate cliché of the passive and old-fashioned woman: she is vulnerable, she wants to marry a millionaire and she even needs her parents consent before making a decision.

On the other hand, the non-conventional women roles are linked to feminism. Those women struggle to find a place in the sun. Evidently, they shun the roles of women supporting men. They don’t have the burden to provide the male subject with the illusion of wholeness and unity. Instead they are lonely heroines and warriors. The fiery and murderous protagonist of the Chinese movie The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 2016) is a good example.

But does it always have to be either one way or the other? Is it all that black and white?

Some characters – both fictional or in biopics – subverted the role of women in cinema, transposing this dichotomy between conventional, passive females and feminists. They challenged conventions and inspired me to become an independent woman. These dirty women are my personal favourites!

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1. Shangay Lily (Marlene Dietrich) in Shanghai Express (Von Sternberg, 1932)

Dietrich plays Shanghai Lily, a notorious woman for relying on men for survival. She traded sex for new dresses and a bed to rest her head at night. When she meets up with Doc (Clive Brook), both have to deal with fate. He is a former lover, who can’t bring himself to trust her, though he loves her. She loves him too. Can they step out of their comfort zone and surrender to love?

2. Pagu (Carla Camuratti) in Eternally Pagu (Norma Bengell, 1987)

Pagu is the nickname for Patrícia Rehder Galvão, who was a Brazilian writer, poet, playwright, journalist and translator. She devoted her life (1910-1962) to challenge the moral and social standards of her time. Pagu broke open the truth behind the image of women in arts. The Brazilian rock singer Rita Lee (Brazilian like myself) once wrote: “My strength is not brute/ I’m not a nun and I’m not a whore” in a song about the artist.

3. Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek) in Frida (Julie Tamor, 2002)

Surely, Hayek’s most important movie was Frida, which launched her as a producer. On a talk in TIFF in 2015, she revealed: “It took us eight years to get it done. Being ahead of the curve is the most painful place to be. You have to be ready to be rejected 2,000 times.” At the same time, playing the painter was very rewarding too. With Frida Hayek got rid of an obsession which lasted nearly 20 years. Her passion for the Mexican painter was so immense that after the movie was finished, she allegedly had problems with her left leg (in real-life, Kahlo was left crippled after an accident when she was 18).

4. Mabel Longuetti (Gena Rowlands) in A Woman under The Influence (John Cassavetes, 1974)

Teamed up with his wife and actress Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes explores ordinary characters, including women, who weren’t being portrayed at that time. The protagonist is a working-class housewife and mother, who has a serious nervous breakdown and is incarcerated into an institution for six months. She is a woman dedicated to the family who has no room of her own. She lives in constant silence and reflection, unsure of her abilities as wife or mother.

5. Michiko (Shima Iwashita) in An Autumn Afternoon (Yasujirô Ozu, 1962)

Frequently articles quote Japanese filmmaker Ozu as an artist who shaped the image of men (fathers and workers). But by portraying angry and silent women in his features, he evokes the unconscious suppressed role of women in Japan. The widower Hirayama lives with his 24-year-old daughter Michiko. She stays single in order to take care of his father, who tries to force her into marriage. One day he blurts out: “Aren’t you going to get married?”. The problem is that Michiko’s concept of a husband is based on her father. Hirayama drinks more than usual and is totally insensitive towards her. Michiko’s silent refusal to marry is an ultimate subversive decision.

6. Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) and Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) in Thelma and Louise (Ridley Scott, 1991)

What could be more thrilling than two women who leave their husbands for a road trip that leads to murder and violence? The film shell-shocked audiences not just because of the ending, but also because they murdered their rapist. Actress Susan Sarandon recently declared: “I’ve always thought of it as a cowboy movie with women instead of guys on horses. But it was pretty shocking that people were so threatened by it”. Geena Davis, founder of an Institute on Gender in Media, lamented how little progress Hollywood has made in finding roles for women in the last 25 years. She claims that we are making less movies with a female stars now.

7. Celie Johnson (Whoopi Goldberg) in The Colour Purple (Steven Spielberg, 1985)

Based on the eponymous book, this film follows the life and trials of a young Black woman, Celie Johnson, who is trying her best to find her feet after years of abuse by men. Her early years are a catalogue of painful events. Goldberg delivers an amazing debut performance, but she confessed she didn’t identify with the character: “I’ve tried to explain to a lot of interviewers that Celie has nothing to do with the black experience. It’s like, they were saying Celie is black and you are black and so you have all these things in common. Celie could be Oriental, Puerto Rican, and these same specific things could have happened to her”.

8. Orlando (Tilda Swinton) in Orlando (Sally Potter, 1999)

Based on the novel by Virginia Woolf, Swinton plays a sex-switching character who lives throughout four centuries. The story line reveals events of the sexual politics in Europe and in the Middle East while Orlando tries to break free the chains of sex and class. A masterpiece.

9. Gloria (Carmen Maura) in What Have I Done to Deserve This?! (Pedro Almodóvar, 1984)

Gloria lives a suffocating life in Spain. Though she is completely devoted to her husband, her two children and her mother-in-law, she is isolated. According to Almodóvar, “the world of the housewife amuses and horrifies me because it is monstrous in its alienation”. One day, her husband asks her to iron his shirt, and she kills him. And she doesn’t regret it! Carmen Maura is pictured as a nun at the top of the article in another Almodóvar movie: Dark Habits (1983).

10. Malala Yousafzai in My Name is Malala (Davis Guggenheim, 2015)

Women fight not only for knowledge; we fight for action. The documentary is perhaps a clear answer to what’s next for women of the world. Malala was only 15 when she was severed wounded by a Taliban gunshot in Pakistan. She miraculously survived and decided to speak up for womens’ right for education, triggering her to leave the country. Malala is a portrait of a resilient young woman who confronts her society with an audacious message.

Nick Griffin, then leader of the British far-right party BNP, famously said in 2009 that are no Black people in Wales. He would probably be surprised to find out that they exist in Italy, too. Lack of representation and misrepresentation of Blacks in the media, particularly in cinema, is not a problem exclusive to the UK, and it is likely far more pronounced in the Mediterranean country.

Maids, prostitutes, sorceresses, drug dealers and illiterate immigrants who barely speak Italian – according to the doc Blaxploitalian these were the roles commonly allocated to Black people in Italy. They are not suitable to be doctors and police officers, a tacit rule in Italian cinema seems to mandate. The astoundingly beautiful Letizia Sedrik was once turned down from a movie role for “sounding too Italian”, a privilege reserved for those with less melanine, and lucky enough to be born north of the Mediterranean.

This 62-minute featurette will take you on an insightful and didactic journey throughout the history of Black representation in Italian cinema, from Salambo (Domenico Gaido, 1915) to present days. Gaido’s film was the first one in the country to include a Black actor, conveniently uncredited (even now his name seems to remain a mistery). It includes interviews with notorious Afro-Italian actors such as Tezeta Abraham and Denny Andreína Méndez (who represented Italy in the Miss Universe 1997 and placed Top 6, stirring plenty controversy as to whether she was entitled to stand for the nation).

The director highlights that racism is intimate linked to the non-acknowledgement of past events. According to Kuwornu, Italians have wiped their colonial actions in the Horn of Africa from memory. They forgot that the Fascist regime openly encouraged Italians to move to places like Somalia, and it used images of sexy local woman in order to attract people. Their bodies were eroticised and painted as primitive, the movie claims. Conversely, Fascits chose to depict small and thin males, lest the virility of the average Black male intimidated Europeans.

This is essential watching as well as an action-to-call for anyone interested in Black representation in cinema and Italy’s racist stance towards foreigners. On the other hand, the discussions in the film remain largely confined to race, and the content is a little esoteric. The film opens up with British actor Idris Elba talking about diversity being more than skin colour, and also including age, gender, disability, sexual orientation, social background, sexual orientation, class and “diversity of thought”, yet the ensuing film narrative is mostly centred around race.

Blaxploitalian will show in February as part of the Pan African Film and Arts Festival in Los Angeles. And you can click here for information about film distribution and other screenings.

Don’t forget to view the film trailer below:

Our historical memory is sometimes extremely short, and many Italians would rather forget colonialism during the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. I Only I Were that Warrior was directed by Italian-born and Brooklin based filmmaker Valerio Ciriaci, and it deals with the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935/36.

The most recent symbol of the Italian colonial past is the 2012 monument in Affile (a commune in Rome) dedicated to Rodolfo Graziani, a prominent military officer who acted as Mussolini’s viceroy in Ethiopia. The erection sparked an uproar, voiced by left-wing politicians and national commentators, such as Igiaba Scego, an Italian writer and activist born to Somali parents in Rome, and the collective of Bologna-based writers Wu-Ming. Scego even launched a petition. This monument stands at the centre of Ciriaci’s documentary as Graziani himself; unlike their German and Japanese counterparts, Italian war criminals never faced trial.

For many years, Ethiopia tried to put the officer on trial, but these efforts were halted by Italian and British authorities, despite the fact that his name was on the UN list of war criminals. The British Foreign Office vehemently opposed Ethiopia’s inclusion in the UN War Crimes Commission and the trial on Italian crimes committed during the 1935/36 invasion.

The doc combines Italian and Ethiopian voices, exposing a wide spectrum of the perspectives of the brutal occupation. Ethiopians and second-generation Italians born to parents of the African Horn are aware of this horrible chapter of history, but many ordinary Italians are fully ignorant of the events, and still support the old Italian war motto “Italiani, brava gente” (“Italians, good people”). Take a journey through history with the support of historians and facist propaganda (which presented Ethiopia as an opportunity to find a new home and start a new life). Official documents reveal the strength of the brutal fascist iron fist before and after the Ethiopian invasion, as well as the use of chemical warfare.

The Italian historian Angelo Del Boca denounced these crimes for years after World War II and he quickly came under fire from many people, including the late journalist Indro Montanelli, founder of one of the Italian main daily newspapers, the right-wing daily Il Giornale.

There is no filter in If Only I Were that Warrior. We follow Ciriaci, but he does not appear in the documentary and there is a limited use of voiceover; the interviewees also include Ethiopians who have experienced the Italian brutality first-hand.

Docs like If Only I Were that Warrior and Asmarina (Medhin Paolos/Alan Maglio, 2015) raise awareness of Italy’s brutal past, as does the writing of Igiaba Scego. Various activists, historians and organisations such as the Centro Primo Levi played a major role in putting the film together.

If Only I Were that Warrior won the Italian Golden Globe for best documentary, and it also snatched a top prize at Florence’s prestigious Festival dei Popoli (2015). It can be seen on demand on Vimeo as well as on DVD, in Italian and English both. Find out more about the film and how to view right it right now by clicking here.

Don’t forget to watch the film trailer right here:

Conor is only 13, but he knows perfectly well what will happen just after midnight. He will have the same nightmare over and over again. He’s had it since his mum fell ill. But that night it seems different. Conor hears a voice calling him from the garden. It’s a monster!!!

A Monster Calls revisits the fairy tale genre, with a little help from special effects artists. After all a good fairy tale is nothing but a horror story. A wolf that devours your granny. A poor girl abused by her stepmother and forced to do the house cleaning. Three brothers that insistently witness their houses being destroyed by their worse enemy. Two orphans that are kidnapped by an old ugly cannibal woman. The list goes on…

Spanish director J. A. Bayona plays with the audience’s expectation of reliving childhood. Going back to your past is a ritual. It’s necessary in order to move on. In A Monster Calls, fear is the comfort zone. Based on the award-winning 2011 children’s fantasy novel by Patrick Ness, the film follows the story of Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall) as he retreats into a fantasy world populated with monsters in an attempt to deal with his mother’s illness and school bullying. Dealing with the truth is a real nightmare.

In that sense, the narrative is much more intriguing than a family movie such as Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995) or any of Pixar Animation Studios feature. The special effects are an allegory of the feelings of loneliness and abandonment. Conor lives with his mother (Felicity Jones), who is constantly doped with medicine. His father has raised another family and there is no space for him in his new house. His grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) lacks interpersonal skills with children. Her house has to remain as immaculate as possible. So Conor imagines a monster (voiced by Liam Neeson), who rescues him from his suffering.

But the rescue isn’t very straightforward, as the monster challenges Conor. Conor is a Brit version of Odysseus. He cannot flee forever. He eventually has to come back home to his harsh reality. He has to take care of himself. His mom has cancer, so he’s become both her caretaker and honorary maid. That means: this kid has to grow up fast. Conor is the opposite of Peter Pan, a deftly subversive device on a classic fairy tale.

J. A. Bayona has won seven Goyas, including Best New Director, with his debut feature, The Orphanage (2008). He is currently working on the sequel of the movie Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015). Let’s wait and see whether he finds a way of subverting such a mainstream and formulaic franchise.

A Monster Calls opens is on Amazon Prime on February 1st (2021).

JE – As long as this number is low enough, it’s ok. The problem is that things are not static, and this number will tend to grow. If it is say, 20% now, that’s ok. But when it reaches 33%, we have a critical mass. Then it would not be good to ignore this many people.

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Click here for more information about Beyond Citizen Kane and here for more about the 2016 Brazilian coup d’état.