{"id":5010,"date":"2009-08-03T22:03:58","date_gmt":"2009-08-04T06:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=5010"},"modified":"2009-08-05T04:56:08","modified_gmt":"2009-08-05T12:56:08","slug":"coraline-henry-selick-2009-usa-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=5010","title":{"rendered":"Coraline (Henry Selick, 2009): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden<\/a>. \u00a0Viewed on DVD<\/p>\n

\"coraline\" Following on from My Bloody Valentine, this is the second in my impromptu series of 3D films viewed in glorious flat-o-vision, and I\u2019m moving from horror to children\u2019s films.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t as much of a swerve as you might think, as Coraline<\/em><\/a> was originally conceived and written by Neil Gaiman, the celebrated author of classic paranormal graphic novels including the Sandman series, as well as 2005\u2019s movie Mirrormask.\u00a0 This is a fairy tale has more in common with Roald Dahl than Walt Disney, and director Henry Selick has instilled it with the same joy of the macabre as his previous stop-motion classic, The Nightmare Before Christmas.\u00a0 Coraline is a deliciously creepy tale of good versus evil that will enchant and delight young and old.<\/p>\n

Our heroine, Coraline, is a little girl with loving, but busy, parents.\u00a0 She wants to garden in the rain, they want to write a plant catalogue in peace.\u00a0 Bored and lonely, having rejected the company of her landlady\u2019s grandson and his cat, she discovers a tiny door that leads to an Other world.\u00a0 There, she finds her Other Mother and Other Father, living in a house just like hers, only better.\u00a0 Her Other Mother and Other Father dote upon her, lavishing her with gifts, delicious food and, most importantly, attention.\u00a0 But, of course, there is a price to pay.<\/p>\n

The best animated films succeed not because of the medium, nor in spite of it.\u00a0 From Bambi through to Toy Story, each succeeds because the tale is well crafted.\u00a0 Coraline finds success in the same way.\u00a0 While the animated style enhances the film\u2019s ability to carry us on its wildest flights of imagination, as well as giving complete creative control over the style and images, Coraline\u2019s tale could stand proud (and obviously has done with Gaiman writing the original novel) in another format.\u00a0 One of its greatest strengths lies in its detailed characters.\u00a0 Coraline Jones\u2019 depth comes from more than a pair of red and green filters.\u00a0 Gaimen and Selick have made her loveable but flawed, and Dakota Fanning brings her churlishness, arrogance and fear to life, as well as her nobler traits.\u00a0 You\u2019ll forget that she is a doll, long before this film is through.\u00a0 Her parents, voiced by John Hodgman and Teri Hatcher, might not get quite the same level of nuance, but they to work very well.\u00a0 They aren\u2019t bad people at all; they are just busy, finding it hard to find time for their daughter.\u00a0 I\u2019ve seen plenty of \u2018real\u2019 people in films who were less believable than these mannequins.<\/p>\n

The animation itself is stunning, as might be expected from Selick.\u00a0 The work is even more impressive than Nightmare, with the human faces being wonderfully expressive.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0It also works perfectly in two dimensions.\u00a0 At the start of the film I noticed occasions where the film was obviously using (abusing?) the gimmick of 3D, but these quickly vanished.\u00a0 That isn\u2019t to say that there weren\u2019t later moments that were designed to take advantage of the virtual depth that Real D provides, but they were slipped in gracefully and the film worked perfectly as a two dimensional production.<\/p>\n

So, my second dip into the 3D\/2D pool was a world away from the first.\u00a0 I may not have been immersed in the film\u2019s virtual realm, but I was immersed in the tale, and that, not binocular vision, is the important thing.\u00a0 Some have suggested that this film might be too dark for children, but I think that, apart from the very young, they\u2019ll be fine.\u00a0 Of course, the first film that I ever saw in a theater was Watership Down \u2013 a cartoon about fluffy bunnies adapted from a novel. \u00a0It\u2019s also a tale of murder and betrayal, with rabbits fighting to the death in a whirlwind of spit and blood.\u00a0 It is far scarier than this film and I survived just fine!\u00a0 Sure, children might grab a cushion to hide behind, but they won\u2019t be able to take their eyes off the screen, and neither will you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden. \u00a0Viewed on DVD Following on from My Bloody Valentine, this is the second in my impromptu series of 3D films viewed in glorious flat-o-vision, and I\u2019m moving from horror to children\u2019s films.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t as much of a swerve as you might think, as Coraline was originally conceived and written by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvd","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}