Rogue One, The Eagle Huntress, A Monster Calls The Film Review

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Hello and welcome to the Film Review on BBC News.

To take us through this week's cinema releases is Mark Kermode.

We have a festive feast. We do. We have this Rogue One: A Star Wars

Story, you may have seen some publicity about this. Very

interesting documentary called Eagle Huntress and looking ahead, we have

A Monster Calls. This is a stand-alone Star Wars movie that

comes between episodes three and four and takes its cue from the

opening of Star Wars in which it explains that before everything

happened in Star Wars, rebel fighters were trying to get plans

for the death star. This is that story. Felicity Jones is a loner

with a complicated back story who forms an uneasy alliance with the

rebels and because it is a stand-alone story, we get a lot of

new characters, not least a reprogrammed imperial droid who

trusts are as little as she trusts him. Here is a clip. Why dishy

ghetto blaster and I don't? What? I do how to use it. That's what I'm

afraid. Give to me. Were going to a war zone. That is not the point.

Where did you get it? I found it. I find that an survey unconvincing.

Trust goes both ways. You're letting her keep it? Would you like to know

the probability of her using it against you? It is high. Our bad

droid is always English? Exactly. That is probably quite humorous

moment. The film itself is rather dark, it is directed by Gareth

Edwards who made Godzilla. He made Monsters. He is -- when he described

this movie as like a war movie and there are lots of allusions to D-Day

and the Vietnam War and nods along to the dirty dozen and films like

that. Because it is a stand-alone story and because it is being

envisaged by the director as a war movie, it is tougher than a lot of

the Star Wars films, Abergele so, on the very positive side, the cast is

a real rainbow Coalition, the thing that science fiction does is in

visions whorls were race and gender have no role and I really like that

about this film. I like the fact that although it uses cutting-edge

CGI it feels like a film from the physical era of Empire Strikes Back,

it feels that one of the original movies and it is very coherent in

its own sense, despite the fact that there were lots of stories about

them doing research shoots and actually the story seems to be very

coherent and to keep true to itself. I thought it was dark and exciting

and I thought the characters were well done and I really liked

Felicity Jones and I thought she really carried the movie. It had

genuine surprises and when you think this could have been a caching,

anything that is a spin off, a Star Wars but, what does that mean? It

felt coherent and self-contained but fitted in with the Star Wars world

and leaned towards all the Star Wars movies I like and away from the

movies that I did not like. The third act, because of the fact that

it does not wimp out on its narrative, the third act felt really

exciting, with genuine jeopardy. No one was more surprised than me, I

have seen it twice and I thought it was even better the second time

around. I was really impressed. Did you see $200 million worth of screen

time? I never sat there thinking about how much it cost, I sat there

thinking, I hope they get out of this situation, that is a good

cliffhanger. It worked for me. Eagle huntress issue next and it sounds a

story. She wants to become the first woman in her family to become an

Eagle huntress, her father 's line of people who hunt with eagles has

been passed down. MH370 is her young subject and her father in carriages

are to follow in his footsteps -- Aisholpan. She says that women

cannot do this. The interesting thing is that she is a fantastic

subject and it is a really interesting story. The documentary

is very good looking as you can tell from these clips but it feels very

constructed, it feels like it is a film that has been put together in

the editing room and it feels at times where you feel that this is a

dramatic story which has been put together as opposed to a documentary

that just tells it as it is and there has been questions about the

exact voracity of the story whether she is the very first woman to do

this but apparently she is not. It doesn't matter, she is such a great

subject and because the vistas are so spectacular and the central idea

is so intriguing and interesting, it gets around whatever problems they

may have. Around Christmas, if you want a role

model that is a lot better than a few that I could suggest. Eagles are

big birds. They are huge. She has to go and get the Eagle and she is with

her father and she is hanging down the side of a mountain and her

father is saying, new girl. She has been very brave. You will enjoy

spending time in her company, she is an interesting subject it sounds

great, now A Monster Calls. This is out on New Year's Day and it is

about a young boy who is terrified of bullying and he is frightened of

being buried and he is visited by a tree monster played by Liam Neeson

who tells stories and through these stories he tells them it lays a

fantastical reality to the anguish which he is experiencing. Here is a

clip. Break the window six windows. Break them yourself.

Conor O'Malley, come on, harder! Yes! That's good. Yes!

Ooh! That's amazing. It blends seamlessly from the fantastical to

the more real. Fairy tales are really about dealing with very real

issues but dealing with them in a fantastical fashion and this does

this brilliantly. It is directed by Morgan Spurlock. -- JA Bayona. This

really harks back to the great work he did with the orphanage and it

manages to tell a story which is real and heartbreaking and feels

very true about a young boy, confronting the difficulties of his

life, but doing it through the medium of fantasy. It is similar to

Pan's Labyrinth. There can be very few children who wouldn't in some

way recognise and relate to this. It is a bit scary. A little bit but it

is like any good fairy tale, it appeals to the child in everyone and

the thing is, fairy tales are scary. You mentioned Pan's Labyrinth, it

was very distressing but I thought this was very impressive and very

moving and I was not the only person to leave the cinema crying at the

end but, it is very moving. It sounds great and there is an

animation as well. This is about a young man, he was trying to

reconnect through the world, he was trying to reconnect with the word

through Disney cartoons. It provided a connection with him and everyone

around him and it is uplifting. There are a fantastic animated

sequences in A Monster Calls and there are in Life Animated as well.

These films seem to suggest that animated movies are a really

interesting way of understanding the problems of the world and I thought

Life Animated was just great. Beautifully done, really sensitively

done, done with real intimacy and real intelligence and such an

uplifting story and again, a really positive story about the positive

power of movies and of the cinema. Your DVD of the week is David Brent,

I have to say. The genius of Fawlty Towers, put it this way, they knew

what they were doing and they did it in a short period and they did not

do any more. There were 13 episodes. It was limited. The David Brent

franchise I thought was brilliant and then I started not to think

that. I thought the same thing going on, do we really want to go back to

this character? The triumph of the movie as they do, it catches up with

him later, he takes time off from work to go on the road with his

terrible band and just like the source material, it is toe curling,

painful, but it has a lot of pathos and there are moments when you do

not know whether to laugh or hide your head in your hands and believe

me, I was really surprised that after all these years, it managed to

do that, move the story on and it actually managed to make the jokes

still funny and painful and make you care about it. I suppose the thing

that is so attractive about that character is that he really does

try... He is really trying. Somehow, he just wants to escape this offer

like that he does not get very far. In the case of this, he does get out

on the road and the spectacle of him playing in half empty gigs, it

smacks of reality. We will leave it there.

A quick reminder before we go that you'll find more film news

and reviews from across the BBC online at bbc.co.uk/film.

A catch up on our previous programmes on the BBC iPlayer.

That's it for this week though - we'll be back in the New Year.