Coraline is the latest stop-motion animated film from Henry Selick, best known for directing The Nightmare Before Christmas. It's based upon an award-winning novella of the same name by Neil Gaiman.If you've seen the trailers, they basically do tell you the gist of the film, but there's plenty that they don't tell you as well, of course. Coraline Jones lives with her aloof parents in a new apartment they have only just recently moved into. Then she discovers a passageway to the "Other Realm." Everything there is seemingly perfect to Coraline at first. Her Other Parents dote upon her lovingly, and Other Wybie -- a neighbor kid who Coraline finds to be annoying in the "real world" because he talks too much and doesn't listen to her -- is appropriately mute, and her Other Neighbors are also wonderful derivations of their real world counterparts. The only real oddity being the button eyes that everyone has. Coraline doesn't mind this though, because everything is just as she's always dreamed.
Well, before things suddenly become dark and extremely twisted, that is.
The final act is easily the best portion of the film. Of course, this is where Selick really pulls out the stops. He's obviously got quite the active imagination, and he put a lot of effort into making the horror-styled stretches deliciously creepy without being overblown. The production design is nigh impeccable. The film is a feast for the eyes, as it's filled to the brim with dazzling visuals. Visuals made even more eye-popping when watched in 3D.
Coraline is a testament to why I love stop-motion animation (and animation in general). So much time and patience has to be put into animation of this nature in order to make it so impressively vivacious and full of fluidity. Animation allows for one to be incredibly expressive without being held back by the shortcomings of live-action films and Coraline is a perfect example of this fact.
Coraline is a must-see film. Hopefully it will be recognized when awards season comes around next year, but we'll have to see how it stands up against Pixar's Up and Tim Burton's 9. Personally I think Coraline will be hard to top.
P.S. I forgot to mention this: Coraline reminded me heavily of Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth, which is also a must-see film.
6 comments:
Well currently I don't care about seeing it in 3D (although I'm not entirely sure it's even playing in 3D around here.... ) but that could change after I see it the first time around. Probably for the best to do it that way in the first place.
No question I'm going to have to see it eventually though. As I've said before, the comercials alone are enough for me to want to delve into this one. Especially being from the creator of Nightmare Before Christmas. Based on that fact alone I can already tell that what you've said about it in this review is more than true. I'm certain it'll be every bit as good if not better. And that's saying something, as Nightmare Before Christmas is up there as one of my all time favorite animated movies, for those very reasons. Between Selick, Tim Burton and Pixar I'm not sure there's too much American made animation that has quite captured the essence of what makes animation so great quite like they have.
Although Wall-E stands currently as my all time favorite animated movie, we'll see how this adds up in comparison I guess. If so I think it would be a sham to have it just up for best animated feature next year instead of best picture, much the same for Wall-E this year.....
I think Coraline's visuals would be just fine not viewed in 3D, but many of them would certainly lose a good amount of their visual punch.
If I had to choose between Wall-E and Coraline, I'd still have to go with Wall-E though. I just couldn't in good conscience give Coraline less than five stars. Coraline is certainly one of my all time favorite animated films.
Nah, it won't beat Pixar. As much as I'm sure Up won't be their best work, it should do pretty well on its own. I haven't seen Coraline, and although I want to, Zac's review (http://wintertospring.livejournal.com/290668.html) of the movie kind of puts me off.
But as long as it's epic and fantastical, I guess I don't really care.
Well, I don't know. Coraline may be beaten in the eyes of the critics and the like, but in my eyes I'm thinking that Coraline may still end up being my favorite animated film this year. Like I said: "we'll have to see." Up is certainly looking quite good, as is 9.
^ Yeah, it doesn't really matter as long as you like it. Critics shouldn't get in your way. (I'm a Pixar nut, and even though people seemed to hate Cars, I still love it.)
I consider myself to be a Pixar nut as well, so thinking that Coraline may be my favorite animated film of the year is certainly saying a lot.
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