What classics did you see last week ? (22 Dec - 28 Dec 2019)

Happy New Year COE! Wishing you and family all the best for the year,and one of my most memorable trips to the cinema in the 2000's is seeing Crouching Tiger on the big screen with a family friend. Due to having fairly crap reading skills at the time, they very kindly quietly read the subs to me,as I became enchanted by the film. Speaking of enchanted,how did you find A Monster Calls to be? I found it to be a beautiful movie,with this being what I wrote in 2017:

For her lone non-franchise role of 2016, Felicity Jones gives a brilliant, drained performance as the mum, whose frail grasp on life Jones uses in open body language to show the love she has for Conor keeps her fighting. Taking the roots of the film at only 14 years old, Lewis MacDougall gives an outstanding performance as Conor,with MacDougall giving Conor a mix of maturity in caring for his mum, and a burning ball of rage of being unable to improve the situation. Each entering as outsiders, Sigourney Weaver gives an earthy performance as Grandma, whilst Liam Neeson towers above the house in a performance deep with gravitas as the Monster.

Completing the novel after author Siobhan Dowd died from breast cancer,the debut screenplay by Patrick Ness beautifully balances dark Fantasy with a heart-felt family Drama. Separating the encounters between Conor and the Monster into segments, Ness makes each story the Monster tells reveal aspects of Conor that he does not want to face. Respectfully treating mums battle with cancer,Ness avoids any drop of Melodrama to keep the struggle that the family are facing grounded,from the uncomfortable silences of Conor and his mum having difficult relationships with grandma and Conor's dad, (played by a very good Toby Kebbell) to Conor having to face his nightmare of seeing his mum get released from the pain.

Painting the Monsters tales on the screen,director J.A. Bayona and cinematographer Oscar Faura take each tale off the page with richly macabre, Eastern European puppet-inspired animation, backed by an icy score from Fernando Velázquez. Continuing on themes shown in 2012's powerful The Impossible, Bayona seamlessly blends a stylised poetic quality with a dazzling emotional rawness, with the meetings between Conor and the Monster being covered in fading reds and browns. For his major theme of the torn family unit, Bayona elegantly uses extended takes and close-ups on half faces to capture the bond between Conor and his mum,as Conor learns the meanings of the monster calls.
10.