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sion to have the priests speak in accented English rather than Portuguese is understandable but strangely annoying, maybe because Garfield, in particular, puts such obvious effort into getting his accent ‘right’.
Neeson, by contrast, who plays the missing Jesuit, affects no accent at all, in a film that details an extraordinary chapter of history but – maybe because one’s sympathies shift uncomfortably towards the cruel Japanese – never makes you particularly pleased that you’ve seen it.
Like Silence, A Monster Calls (12A) HHH also opens with one of those deep, dark Liam Neeson voice-overs, providing a hint of the strange Gothic tale to come. It’s the story of Conor (Lewis MacDougall), a lonely and rather artistic boy who’s having a difficult time – he’s bullied at school, his parents are separated and his mother (Felicity Jones) is very ill. So it’s difficult to say whether things are getting better or worse when he starts being visited at night by a tree monster – voiced by Neeson – apparently intent on telling him three stories before demanding one story from Conor in return.
Spanish director JA Bayona is at the helm and there are stylistic echoes of Pan’s Labyrinth. With so much visual imagination on display I wanted to enjoy it more than I did but the misery is a bit too all-pervading. Sigourney Weaver – who plays Conor’s cold-hearted grandmother – works obviously hard at her English accent and there’s a distinct shortage of likable characters.
Monster Trucks are those customised American pickups with glossy paint jobs and oversized tyres. But what if one of these trucks really had a monster in it? The result, Monster Trucks (PG) HH is one of the oddest films you’ll see all year, as ruthless oil-drillers inadvertently release three monsters from their subterranean lair, only for one of them to be found by Tripp – the oldest-looking high-school student and aspiring mechanic ever – who promptly shoves him into the engine compartment of the truck he’s been working on.
As you’d expect from original Ice Age director Chris Wedge, the monster – a sort of smiling and not unlovable tentacled version of Jabba the Hutt – looks terrific but while there is some knockabout fun to be had along the ridiculous truck-chase way, the inevitable environmental message really couldn’t be more confused.