When Sigourney Weaver wants you to cry, goddammit, you cry. Weaver isn’t even one of the leads of A Monster Calls—those roles go to young Conor (Lewis MacDougall) and a giant CGI tree monster voiced by Liam Neeson—but whenever she shows up, she makes the movie better. Weaver plays Conor’s stiff-upper-lipped grandmother who takes him in as his mother (Felicity Jones) fights cancer. Conor would rather hang out with his tree monster BFF (which, you know, fair), but it’s his grandmother who holds his world together—she’s a subtle, hard-edged woman whose emotional displays are powerful in their scarcity.