this is out on new year's day, screenwriter patrick ness, working from his own source novel.who is terrified of bullying, and he's frightened of being bereaved, and he's visited by a tree monster played by liam neeson, which tells him stories, and through these stories lends some form of fantastical reality to the anguish which he is experiencing. here's a clip. break the window! break them yourself. go on. harder, conor o'malley, come on, harder! that's it, yes! ha—ha—ha! feels good, doesn't it?! wow! that's amazing. you can see what it does is blends seamlessly from the fantastical to the more real. the thing is, fairy tales are really about dealing with very real issues, but dealing with them in a fantastical fashion, and this does this brilliantly. it's directed byja bayona, who made the orphanage, which the guiding light on the project was guillermo del toro, and you can see a lot of him in this. bayona went to make the impossible, which was the tsunami drama, which was very well done as well. but this really harks back to the great work he did with the orphanage, and it