The house with a clock in its walls9/6/2023 ![]() My audience loved this film, and so did I. Magic is alive, dreams are afoot, never let go of that weird kid inside you, who loves things, feels things, and wants adventures.People clapped at the end. Genuine enthusiasm is impossible to fabricate, and my audience was feeling this film in their bones. Besides Destination Wedding, this has been my favorite theater experience so far this year. We laughed, gasped and gazed enraptured together. My screener was packed with press and public alike, and almost everyone was engaged, enthusiastic, and attentive. You will find the people who do understand. ![]() Don't worry about the people who don't understand. It's for anyone who can still remember what it's like to be a lonely kid who likes weird stuff, dreaming about being whisked away to live in a fabulous menagerie of delights with a weird uncle who teaches you magic. It's for those who are young, and those who are young at heart. Are you a prestigious middle-aged white male critic who turns up his nose at anything deemed "YA"? I have some news for you. The film has a fair amount of low-brow humor (the enchanted topiary lion tends to "poop" heaps of rotting leaves on people who get in his way, for instance), but this film is aiming for a very specific audience. Jonathan promises to teach Lewis magic (hell yeah!) and together our threesome attempt to find the clock before something terrible happens. But his uncle Jonathan has a wonderful adventure in store for him Jonathan is a warlock, a "boy witch", Florence is a witch (hell yeah!), and there's a dastardly gargantuan clock hidden in the walls of the house, put there by a wicked warlock Jonathan used to know, Isaac Izard ( Kyle MacLachlan). Like many of us who love horror and the strange, Lewis is a social outcast who desperately longs to be friends with the most popular kid in school. Lewis is something of an eccentric himself he wears goggles that mimic his hero, Captain Midnight, and carries around a dictionary whereby he learns complex words and their meanings. Jonathan's best friend is Florence ( Cate Blanchett), she of the mesmerizing haute couture in every shade of purple imaginable. He's sent to live with his uncle Jonathan ( Jack Black), a silly eccentric with some wonderful secrets who lives in a huge, magical mansion. Lewis Barnavelt is left an orphan when his parents die unexpectedly in a car crash. The house! The pumpkins! The tiny minute details on the books, the creepy dolls, Lewis' bedroom with the murals of moons, all the clocks, the costumes! Love after love after love. It's spooky, just the right amount of scary, and its heart is truly in the right place. ![]() How could I not love something as heartfelt and Halloween-candy-sweet as this? It will be a Halloween staple for years to come. ![]() He couldn't be a better fit for this material his enthusiasm is evident in every frame. Here, Roth is the chauffeur for a new generation of young people who like the weird stuff in life. The House with a Clock in Its Walls is the love of horror that blossoms in the pit of a child's stomach, that interest in the strange and unknown that often needs a mentor to come into itself. Whether you're a fan or not, you have to admit his love of horror is obvious and guileless. I get those sometimes with certain films. Starring Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, Owen Vaccaro ![]()
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