TIFF Quickies: A Monster Calls, Colossal, Santa & Andrés

Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto Film Festival 

A Monster Calls (JA Bayona, USA/Spain)
This fable about grief and growing up will surely be someone's favorite movie. Alas, it isn't mine. A Monster Calls is a simple fantasy about a boy named Connor (Lewis MacDougall) whose mother (Felicity Jones) is dying of cancer. His grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) and father (Toby Kebell) attempt to console him but the only solace Connor can find is in visitations from a giant tree monster (voiced by Aslan... excuse me, Liam Neeson) who promises to tell the boy three stories in exchange for the boy's own. The film is somewhat moving and fantastically visual in its three animated stories within the movie; they're sensory overload mashups of computer generated imagery, watercolor fluidity, and bold color choices. In both its earthbound and magical moments, though, A Monster Calls is relentlessly gilding the lily. It's so concerned with putting its parables over that its' constantly explaining them and telling us how to feel about grief and loss. Still, Bayona's movie is always coming from a place of compassion and humanity which can be a godsend in the soulless landscape of CGI heavy movies. While the tech elements are strong, particularly sound and visual effects (though why does the creature look so much like Groot?),  it all comes down to the boy and his mother if you want the tears. MacDougall & Jones are beautifully cast as they both look and feel like mother & son. MacDougall, who made his debut as a Lost Boy in Pan last year, impressively carries the movie with something like ease while filling up all the unspoken spaces with heartbreak and fury about his impending loss. Felicity Jones half-gone feeling in her final scenes provides generous Oscar clipping. If only the movie had given the emotions more room to breathe and to speak for themselves. If trees can walk and talk, and demand that we listen, feelings deserve the same respect. Less CGI and scripted preaching, more intuitvie tears, please. [Animated Stories Within the Movie: B+ /Movie: C+ ]

Colossal (Dir. Nacho Vigalondo, Canada)
Finally a movie that Hathaway fans (*raises hand high and shamelessly*) and the "Hathahaters" can enjoy together. This oddball movie from Spanish director Nacho Vigalondo places Anne Hathaway at the center of a kaiju movie. Nope, she's not a scientist or a hero - believe it or not she's the kaiju. Yes, she's Colossal's rampaging beast destroying Seoul ... not figuratively but actually! She's also "Gloria" a drunk who gets thrown out of her boyfriend's apartment (Dan Stevens) and ends up returning to her hometown where she takes a job with a former friend (Jason Sudeikis) who still harbors a crush. When Gloria realizes she's unknowingly wreaking havoc all the way around the world she's even more freaked out by her self destruction and drunken blackouts. If that all sounds like it might work better as a midnight madness short, you could be right. Colossal starts brilliantly with a priceless perfectly-pitched prologue in South Korea with a little girl and her dolly. Though it's numerous twists have a kind of welcome insanity, the length of the thing, and particularly its deadly over-investment in the Jason Sudeikis character (to the detriment of Gloria's own emotional arc) undoes it. Lop off an entire half hour of this film's running time and it might just work as a delightfully weird and funny cult oddity but as it is Colossal is something of its own kaiju, an lumberingly awkward, self-destructive beast which keeps crushing the precious little movie its building. [Anne Hathaway's Willingness to Do This Project: A / Movie: C+]

Santa & Andrés (Dir. Carlos Lechuga, Cuba/Colombia)
Havana born director Carlos Lechuga takes aim at the disconnection of idealogies amongst Cubans in this 80s set drama about a homosexual writer deemed a dissident and the woman assigned to monitor him to keep him from contacting international press and delegates at a local political event. Initially this drama's slow burn doesn't seem to be paying off with a dull first half hour and lots of shots of Santa & Andrés warily staring at each other and barely speaking. But their eventual emotional, if not political, understanding is wonderfully portrayed by the actors and smartly delineated in the screenplay. What the patient filmmaking lacks in verve it makes up for in insight, with each painfully tentative kindness between them feeling like a precious miracle in a climate of hopelessness. B

Swing Tarzan Swing: Casper Van Dien in "The Lost City"

Nathaniel R's been revisiting (and ogling) past Lord of the Apes this summer. We've now reached the late 90s...

In our Swing Tarzan Swing series we've now reached the late 1990s. A time in which I, Greystoke-loving Nathaniel who is known to swing enthusiastically on the ropey vines of time between decades, am stunned into something approaching silence. I've sat on this one for over a week, struggling for something to say. 

What possessed anyone involved to dive headfirst into a schlocky old school Tarzan plot/adventure while also incongruously connecting itself to the (comparatively) high-brow Greystoke? Early Tarzan films avoided England but for onscreen talking points or origin story allusions. After Greystoke Tarzan films must begin there, goes the apparently unspoken rule. So we first meet John Clayton (Casper Van Dien) as a rich heir happily immersed in all things Jane (Jane March) in England. As with the new 2016 Tarzan, it begins that way before John learns that his former friends are in trouble back in Africa. Into this stew of old and new Tarzan impulses we throw a few other odd tasting ingredients. This 1998 debacle (it grossed 10% of its budget) also wants to compete with the then relatively nascent and still "B" genre of the superhero picture (films like Spawn and Blade preceded it and X-Men was just around the corner). Its CGI, though, looks closer to work done in the mid 80s.

And, speaking of the 1980s, Lost City even lifts from Conan the Barbarian's (1982) snakey shape-shifting finale...

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The Furniture: Fantastic Voyage's Absurd Anatomy

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber... 

This week marks the 50th anniversary of Richard Fleischer’s Fantastic Voyage, as absurd and beautiful a film as Hollywood has ever made. It’s also a testament to what live action science fiction used to be like, before digital technology gave directors the tools to make every fantasy look realistic.

Inspired by the arms races of the Cold War, it chronicles a submarine trip into the tumorous brain of a brilliant scientist. The mission is to eliminate his cancer with a tiny laser, save his life, and preserve his miniaturization knowledge for the USA. It’s utterly ridiculous. Isaac Asimov, alarmed by the script’s plot holes, demanded the right to fix all of its problems for his novelization.

Of course, that might classify him as a bit of a fuddy-duddy. Trips into the body wouldn’t be nearly as much fun if they were realistic. If anything, they’d probably gross out the audience. 

Pixar understood this, creating an entirely new organ system for Inside Out. Fleischer’s team for Fantastic Voyage also prioritized the striking over the reasonable.

Much of this success is, of course, due to the production design...

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Curio: "Stranger Things" Owns Fandom Right Now

Do you miss our Curio series? I miss Alexa who loved to compile fan art for us. So in honor of that departed series, which we will perhaps revive whenever it occurs to us like, uh, right now, a tip of our hat to the Duffer Brothers for creating such a fansation with their Netflix series Stranger Things. My own feelings are kind of mixed on the series -- especially in regards to the need for a second season (I like my loose ends, thank you very much) -- but I can't disagree that it's totally addictive.

It's not just internet artists adopting the series everywhere you look but restaurants, too.

As AV Club reports a pizzeria did several days of Stranger Things specials. Check out those awesome menu options above. This wasn't even all of it. I'd have been torn between ordering the Telekine Sauce or the The DemoGorgonzola

comic by Brandon Chapman

The twitter account Sketch Dailies which encourages internet people to draw a specific topic each day has held a whole week in honor of Stranger Things with different character topics by day. So check those out if you're so inclined. If you love illustrators as we do, it'll offer you abundant choices of artists you could be following on the internet right now.

Related TFE Posts:
Kieran's Top 10 Things About Stranger Things
Daniel's Favorite Homages Within the Show
Nathaniel's Best of David Harbour (Chief Hopper)

Review: Star Trek Beyond

It’s Eric, an admitted non-Trekker, with some reflections on Star Trek Beyond.  

Is there a better rebooter in the industry than J.J. Abrams?  His last directing effort, a little film called Star Wars: The Force Awakens, expertly combined the franchises’ original charm and simplicity with a new sparkle that made it the best in the series since 1983.  And when Abrams kicked off Star Trek in 2009 for a new generation, he seemed similarly to balance many of the qualities dear to Trekkers’ hearts while introducing a new audience (of which I was one) to the series.   

Abrams also directed the next installment, Into Darkness, but here on Beyond serves as producer only while the director reigns go to Justin Lin.  Lin is an expert action director and has delivered some killer set pieces in volumes three through six of the Fast and the Furious franchise...

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