It’s probably been five years or more since I saw the original Taking of Pelham 123, which I rented back when I was going through a massive Walter Matthau phase.  And now that I’ve seen this film, the recent remake starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta, I’m eager to see the original again because I can’t remember what the original bad guy’s motives were, and I have a feeling they weren’t the same as they were in this version (this version’s motives being somewhat timely).

I figured this would be an entertaining, but not brilliant, movie, and I was right.  It’s not flawless, but it’s definitely a lot of fun to watch, especially if you’re a Denzel or/and Travolta fan, which I obviously am (hubba hubba x 2).  The story opens on a regular day in New York City’s MTA offices, with Washington playing Walter Garber, a former bigwig in the MTA who has recently been demoted to dispatcher following a scandal involving a bribe.  Unfortunately for Walter, he’s on duty the day a group of recent parolees, led by a man named Ryder (Travolta), hijack the Pelham 123 train.

It quickly becomes clear to Walter that the group knows a lot about the MTA subway system.  They stop the train in exactly the most advantageous spot in one of the tunnels, and quickly release most of the cars and passengers to make it easier for them to handle the set of hostages, which they then announce they are holding for $10 million in ransom.  But as the day goes on, it also becomes increasingly clear that Ryder has ulterior motives — that the ransom may not be his end game.  Can Walter, the mayor (played by James Gandolfini), or the lieutenant in charge of the hostage negotiation team (played by John Turturro) figure out what’s really going on before Ryder kills the hostages and/or absconds with the $10 million?

You can probably guess the answer to that question.  Go ahead, guess.  Yep, you’re right!

As I said, this movie isn’t perfect.  For one thing, I had the “ulterior motive” thing figured out way earlier than I should have and it was because of some heavy-handed hint dropping that could have been a lot more subtle.  Despite that, though, I found the whole ulterior motive thing pretty clever, all things considered, and it was fun waiting to find out if my theory about it was going to be proven right.

I also thought Denzel was great in this — I completely believed his character and, what’s more, I was really rooting for him as well.  Less convincing was Travolta, but only because I still think of him as more snuggly than bad-ass, even if the make-up department does kick down with a sinister goatee and neck tatt.

Overall, though, this is a pretty entertaining flick with some good acting, authentic suspense, and a fairly satisfying, if unbelievable, ending.  Definitely recommended to anybody looking for a good thriller.  And hey, gentlemen in the audience, they even somehow managed to throw in a couple of spectacular car wrecks for you, even though 95% of this movie takes place in an office and a tunnel.  Now THAT’S movie-making magic, my friends.

Recommended!

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Genre:  Thriller
Cast:  Denzel Washington, John Travolta, John Turturro, Luis Guzman, Michael Rispoli, James Gandolfini

Okay, so, I was down in Oregon this weekend visiting my parents, which means, of course, that I’ve got about five movie reviews in the works, at least one of which is going to be for a totally terrible disaster movie.  You know how this goes.  You’ve been here before.

THIS movie?  Is that one.   And while we were in the video store looking for our magical totally terrible disaster movie, it occurred to me that we actually have developed, over the years, an extremely detailed set of criteria for our selection process, believe it or not (and I suspect you do not, but listen up anyway).  Since you guys have been loyal readers for so long, I figured it was about time I let you in on the secret.  The secret to picking really entertaining terrible disaster movies.

First of all, you have to know, and know well, the disaster genre.  There are four primary categories of disaster movie, each of which has numerous subcategories.  All four primary categories are worth checking out, but, and this is key, not all of their SUBcategories are worth checking out.  Listen up:

Monsters – Good choices: snakes, gators, komodo dragons, zombies (see also: virus), dinosaurs, cave monsters, sea creatures (esp. sharks, squids), The Thing, The Blob, The Abominable Snowman (esp. incl. Lance Henriksen).

Bad choices:  bugs, rodents, bats.  Well, sometimes bats can be okay, but only if they are accessories for more interesting cave monsters.  Also, Bigfoot can occasionally be substituted for The Abominable Snowman (see: Abominable, which is actually about Bigfoot even though it doesn’t seem to know it — all the better to love you with, Matt McCoy).

Mother Nature — The best Mother Nature disasters are volcanoes, fires,  tornadoes, and other storms (including ice-age-inducing weather phenomena), as they tend to involve the greatest duration of actual disaster.  Earthquakes are over far too fast, as are tsunamis, and movies about either of those two things tend to focus more on the depressing aftermath than the build-up and actual disaster itself.  (Tornadoes work for this, by the way, because they frequently come in multi-packs.)  Stuff being destroyed = good.  People cleaning up debris = bad.

Space – Space disaster movies often bring as part of the package a ton of hilariously bad science (for example, gravity in places where it does not belong), as well as a healthy affection for nuclear weapons, computers and other gadgets, meteors, and exploding space debris.   Sometimes there are even aliens, though not nearly as often as we’d like.   These are all good things.   The key to a successful space disaster movie, though, is that it has to FOCUS ON THE SPACE DISASTER.  Not to go into too much detail, because it’s really not worth talking about (trust me), but that is where 2012: Supernova fell down on the job.   It may be worth noting, incidentally, that space disaster movies are 6.3 times more likely to feature naked women.  Do with this information what you will.

Diseases – Virus and other disease movies, as with storm or fire movies, are good because they tend to involve long-term actual disaster.  We like to problem-solve when we’re watching disaster movies — a good virus story leaves a lot of room for that sort of thing.  Also, some of the best zombie movies of late have technically been virus movies, and this is a combination I think can work extremely well (examples:  28 Days Later, Zombieland).  Overall, I have to say the Disease Disaster category tends to produce the most consistently watchable films, even though those films tend to be exactly the same in most regards.  If it works once, it’ll probably work forever, right?  Just ask the people who keep cranking out Saw movies.

Okay, now, knowing the genre can obviously help narrow down the selection:  put the rat movie back on the shelf, pick up the one about the komodo dragons.  But this still leaves hundreds and hundreds of potentially unwatchable movies.    How do you know which one you should rent when faced with several equally-acceptable-looking options?    Well, I am happy to report that after years and years of experimentation, my mother and I have finally discovered the secret.   We call it the 90 Minute Rule.  And it goes like this:

Any movie that is less than 90 minutes long is approximately 9.8 times more likely to be unwatchably bad (note: we did not actually do the math, but I am 87.68% positive that number is accurate).  Movies that are longer than 90 minutes, on the other hand, are far more likely to be the kind of bad you watch with giddy joy.  It’s so simple, it’s almost embarrassing it took us this long to figure it out.

There’s only one problem — what about a movie that is EXACTLY 90 minutes long.  Say, for example, 2012: Supernova?   This is where you can still run into trouble.  Because  a movie that is exactly 90 minutes long is a risk.  A MAJOR risk.  It could so easily go either way — there’s simply no predicting it.  And that’s where it helps to know someone who is willing to rent that movie and watch it for you and then tell you how it is.  For example, ME.

This is how it is:  Absolutely terrible.  (Note:  Not in a good way.  If it were absolutely terrible in a good way, I would’ve said, “Absolutely terrible (in a good way).”)  May it never be the case that the survival of our planet is ever riding on the brains of three “scientists” who are anything like the big wheels who drove the storyline in this wreck.  Because if it is, we’re DOOMED.

Anyway, try this technique out next time you’re looking for a good-bad disaster movie to rent and let me know how you do!  Just make sure you leave 2012: Supernova on the shelf.  WHERE IT BELONGS.

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Genre:  Sci-fi, Space Disaster, Crap
Cast:  Brian Krause, Heather McComb, Najarra Townsend

I was bored the other day and in the mood for a lightweight murder mystery sort of thing, so I plopped down on the couch and started flipping through Netflix’s “Watch Now” options on my Roku box until I came across this one.  Though it sounded like a completely standard “cops hunt elusive serial killer” story, I was intrigued by the cast, which included both Tom Noonan AND Bill Moseley.  Since that’s a combination that seems much more suited to a scary horror movie than a murder mystery (those are two creepy-ass mo-fos, if you ask me), it kind of gave me hope this film might be spookier and more entertaining than it sounded.

Right away I had a major beef with the picture, though, and that beef was the casting of Eliza Dushku as a homicide detective.  Setting aside the fact she’s a terrible actress, the more pressing issue for me was this:  Since when do cops get promoted to homicide detectives in their mid-20’s?  But you know what, I said to myself, whatever.  Maybe she was the Doogie Howser of her department, what do I know?  Let’s just suspend that disbelief thing, go along for the ride, and hope that Noonan and Mosely come along soon to save us from the silly.

Dushku stars as Detective Megan Paige and is, as the story opens, the chief investigator in the case of a murdered little girl (incidentally, this movie is loosely based on an actual series of crimes in Rochester, NY in the 1970’s).  The girl’s first and last names both started with the letter “C” and so did the town where her body was found, and Megan soon becomes convinced the three Cs are no mere coincidence.  She begins spending hours and hours in the attic of her house, going over every crime scene photo and file repeatedly until, eventually, she just cracks.  It begins with hallucinations of the ghost of the dead girl and progresses from there very quickly to an attempt at suicide, all while her boyfriend, a fellow detective named Kenneth (Elwes), watches on helplessly.

Cut to two years later and Megan is back on the force after spending many months in treatment for what was eventually diagnosed as schizophrenia.  To avoid a lawsuit, the force agreed to take her back on, though only in limited capacity as a records clerk.  But when another little girl’s murdered body is found — another girl with double initials found dead in a town that starts with the same letter — Kenneth, now her ex-boyfriend and also her boss, reluctantly lets Megan consult on the case, recognizing that she has insights into the original murder none of the other cops share.

(Annnd there’s where I rolled my eyes again, by the way.  Because, really?  You’re going to let the woman on thorazine for schizophrenia interview witnesses and handle evidence?  Good luck in court, fellas!)

BUT ANYWAY,this flick did keep me relatively entertained and it was almost exactly the kind of movie I was in the mood for.  And really, if  they’d cast a better actress in the lead role, it could have been a fairly intriguing examination of the conundrum that comes when the very thing that makes a person excel at their job (the intuition, insights, and focus Megan gains as part of her mental illness) is the same thing that ultimately is their undoing.  Dushku, though, overacts so ridiculously that she made the scenes that would’ve been pivotal to this theme just look silly.   Kind of too bad, because the supporting actors all did a fairly decent job, including Noonan and Moseley, as well as Timothy Hutton as Megan’s support group buddy and Carl Lumbly as her doctor.

It’s not a great movie, obviously.  It’s not even really a good one.  Nevertheless it’s decent, and perhaps most importantly, also FREE.  You could do a lot worse.  Trust me — I do a lot worse on a regular basis.

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Genre:  Mystery
Cast:  Eliza Dushku, Cary Elwes, Tom Noonan, Bill Moseley, Carl Lumbly, Michael Ironside

I realize this is going to sound weird applied to a film that features as many scenes of zombies snacking on human entrails as Zombieland does, but you know what my first thought was when I left the theater after finally getting my lame butt in to see this movie?  My first thought was, “I’ll be damned if that wasn’t the feel-good movie of the year.”

And it’s true — it’s totally and completely true!

Aside from that, though, I’m not going to tell you anything else about this movie.  Because everything else I could say (about, for example, the “double-tap,” Bill Murray, or Twinkies) is just going to ruin some of the fun of the discovery for you.  And the discovery was at LEAST half the fun of this one for me.  I had no idea most of  that stuff was coming, and I can’t remember the last time I laughed so ridiculously hard.

I will say this much, though:   I’m a little worried about Jesse Eisenberg, because this movie is essentially just Adventureland all over again, except with zombies and shotguns.

I’m also a little worried about Abigail Breslin, because this movie is essentially just Signs all over again, except with more shotguns and fewer anti-Semites (I assume).

And I’m definitely a little worried about Woody Harrelson, because this movie was essentially just Natural Born Killers all over again, except with more. . . less. . . I don’t know — something or other.

Bill Murray, on the other hand, is going to be juuuuuust fine.

So, hey!  Go see this movie, even if you are squeamish and you usually hate watching dead humans munch on other dead humans (note to my gore-hating husband:  sorry about that, sweetie).  When it’s over, you’ll be amazed at how good you feel about yourself and the world in general.  Because you know what?  Bring on the zombie invasion, just bring it on — bring it.  Now that I know the rules, I have no doubt I’m going to be JUST FINE (as long as I remember to buckle my seat belt and keep an eye out for falling pianos.  Also, thanks to a friend who recently bought me a set of THESE, my aim is improving, which can only help with the double-tap down the line.  . .).

Watch and learn, my peeps.  Watch and LEARN.

[Prequeue me at Netflix | Watch the trailer]

Genre:  Horror, Comedy, Zombies
Cast:  Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin, Emma Stone, Bill Murray, Amber Heard

After reading Moby Dick last month, I decided it was time for something frivolous.  Luckily, I had this Tess Gerritsen paperback handy.  I’ve read several other of her thrillers featuring medical examiner Maura Isles and police detective Jane Rizzoli and have enjoyed all of them.  Great mysteries, fairly decent science, and occasional bits of sarcastic humor from Rizzoli = good combo for a rainy day, plane trip, or the week after you’ve just waded through 900 pages about how to decapitate and gut a sperm whale.

In this one, Dr. Isles is called in to help a local museum examine a mummy they’ve just discovered in storage in their basement.  She’s pretty excited to be involved in something so big — “Madam X,” as the mummy is being called, is about to be the museum’s biggest draw ever.  But as she begins her examination, she’s startled to discover bits of metal in the mummy’s jaw — bits of metal that look suspiciously like dental fillings.  While the Egyptians WERE pretty medically advanced for their time, none of the museum curators remember ever having seen evidence of dental work like that before.

Then the good doctor begins to look a little lower in the body, only to find a bullet embedded in the victim’s lower leg.  While it’s possible the bullet could’ve gotten into the mummy later (a stray shooting, e.g.), it’s definitely not possible that the mummy’s bone would then have started to mend itself around it.  Obviously, this mummy is no mummy — it’s a modern-day homicide victim that’s been disguised as a mummy and hidden in the museum basement where the killer figured nobody would notice it.

Soon after Dr. Isles has gotten the cops involved, including Det. Jane Rizzoli, one of the museum’s curators vanishes and the plot thickens.  Where it goes from there, I’ll leave it to you to discover.  All in all, a great little thriller that kept me turning pages long past my bedtime and left me with the urge to stock up on a few more of Gerritsen’s books for the next time I need something fun.  Like tomorrow.

[MYSTERY]

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I didn’t know much about this movie when a friend of mine asked if I wanted to go see it with her last Saturday.  All I knew was that it was set in Nome, Alaska and had something to do with a psychologist doing a study on a group of patients all claiming to have been abducted by aliens.  Snowy Alaskan backdrop, extraterrestrials — sign me right up!

As it turns out, this movie is quite a bit more complicated than that (“convoluted” might be a better term), and quite a bit less entertaining than I’d hoped.

The story opens with actress Mila Jovovich as herself, telling us the film we’re about to see is a true story that will feature video and audio footage of the real Dr. Abbey Tyler and her patients interspersed with a series of dramatizations based on the doctor’s notes, starring Mila as Abbey.

I was sort of intrigued at that point, not because I believed anything Jovovich had just said, but because I thought the gimmick of combining a standard movie with a documentary-style one was kind of cool.  This interest did not last long, I’m afraid.

The story itself is pretty hokey — I know as soon as I say that, someone is going to harangue me for it in the comments (see thread from my Paranormal Activity review for an example), but, I’m sorry, I’m stickin’ to my guns on this one.  I do believe there’s intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.  In fact, I believe this so strongly I cannot understand how anyone could NOT believe it.  (And on that note, by the way, happy birthday, Carl Sagan!)

But I do not — repeat, not! — believe that if intelligent life comes to visit us on our planet, things are going to go down the way they always seem to in these kinds of movies.  For one thing, aliens in these movies always try to wipe out their victims’ memories so that the victims won’t remember anything that’s happened, right?  And, of course, this never works because the physical trauma is always so violent the victims’ brains end up giving them flashbacks that eventually trigger the reinstatement of the entire memory, right?  But here’s the thing — if the aliens are smart enough to fly here, beam us up, torture us, and then erase our memories, why aren’t they smart enough to make it so that our brains never record the trauma to begin with?  It’s not really that hard.  I mean, we can already do this right now on our planet, and we don’t even know how to achieve warp speed yet.  One word:  flunitrazepam.

But that’s just a minor dig, all things considered.  At heart, I simply have a lot of problems with the concept that life that is SMARTER than we are would also be MEANER than we are.  It seems to be a fairly universal concept that you can catch more flies with honey than with anal probes, and I think any intelligent alien civilization would probably also recognize this, even though we dumb humans don’t seem to put it into practice all that often.  Plus, there are plenty of crazy people on this planet who would willingly participate in alien medical studies.  Just put an ad in Craig’s List, fellas.  You’ll be all set.

The silliness of the plot, though, was not, in fact, this movie’s biggest problem.  Instead, its biggest problem was the very thing that intrigued me about it in the first place — the attempt to combine “dramatizations” with “actual footage” and sustain a sense of realism and suspense at the same time.  It just didn’t work for me.  Every shift was a jolt that took me back out of the story, and not only that, but the actors and actresses playing the “real” characters were absolutely awful, overacting to an almost laughable extreme (especially the woman playing the real Abbey Tyler and the guy playing her interviewer).   I never for a moment believed that the “real” footage was real; it had no sense of reality to it whatsoever.

Note to directors:  just because you shoot the crappy actors in grainy black and white video doesn’t mean we’re all suddenly going to believe what we’re seeing is an authentic home movie.  You have to do more than just lo-fi your camera equipment, I’m sorry.  (Though I do thank you for not even making an attempt to show us what the aliens looked like — props.)

Speaking of crappy actors, Will Patton must have had a terrible stomach ache after two hours of chewing all this movie’s scenery.  But Mila Jovovich wasn’t terrible — in fact, she and Elias Koteas (who is aging quite nicely, my friend and I agreed) were the only two decent performers in the entire film.  Unfortunately, they were given such an abysmal story to work with there was really nothing they could do to save the picture from its own inanity and cliché (oh, alien abduction genre — will no one ever try anything new with you?  You deserve so much better).

About halfway through the film, I looked at my watch, groaned upon realizing I still had at least an hour to go, and started thinking about all the laundry I needed to do once I got home.

That’s right — halfway into this movie, I started thinking about LAUNDRY.

I believe I need say no mo’.

[Prequeue me at Netflix | Watch the trailer]

Genre:  Horror, Crap
Cast:  Mila Jovovich, Will Patton, Elias Koteas.

In my continued quest to see all the movies John Carpenter has ever written or directed (see my recent review of Someone’s Watching Me for more on the plan), I picked this one up recently and plopped it into the machine this afternoon.  Rainy days are great for scary movies, and I was hoping this one would fill that role nicely.

And it did, sort of.  That is, this is not really a “scary movie” so much as it’s a psychological thriller.  But, as with Someone’s Watching Me, it’s pretty effective at what it’s trying to do, which is put you on the edge of your seat.  Plus,  it’s got a lot of really cool camera effects, some seriously fun 70’s hair and clothes, and, added bonus!  A REALLY young Tommy Lee Jones.  Complete with dashing 70’s (pre-”Manscaping”) unibrow action!  Mrrrowl!

Laura Mars (an also very-young Faye Dunaway) is a rich-and-famous photographer, whose photos are both compelling and extremely controversial.  Her subjects tend to be scantily clad young women posed in horrifying scenes of violence:  being beaten, being attacked by animals, looking like they’re dead, stuff like that.  Some of her critics say she’s glorifying violence against women, death, and even murder.  But Mars contends her aim is actually the opposite: to make people stop thinking of violence as anything worthy of “glory” to begin with.

For some reason, and I wasn’t clear on just why (though it’s probably better not to ask, I suppose), Laura suddenly starts getting psychic visions.  It begins with the vision of a young woman being viciously murdered, one of her models.  At first, she doesn’t trust what she’s seeing and assumes it was a hallucination of some kind.  But when it happens again — again she sees a murder through what appear to be the eyes of the killer himself — she goes to the police.  Detective John Neville (Jones and his brow) is assigned to her case and initially believes her to be a complete crackpot.  But when the serial killer continues, knocking off people progressively closer and closer to Mars herself, Mars continues to witness every single attack while it is taking place.  She has details she clearly could only have gotten one of two ways:  she’s either the murderer herself, or she’s having the psychic visions she says she’s having.

Eventually, Neville starts to believe her, and the two become close (and then fall in love) while they struggle to find the killer and stop him before he gets to Laura herself.  Now, the ending of this film had a twist I confess I found pretty hokey, in part because I’ve seen that same twist done at least a half-dozen times over the years and so I saw it coming and wasn’t too pleased when it actually arrived.   But I would imagine that in 1978, it was a fairly startling surprise to most movie-goers.  And the thing is, it was filmed with grace and acted well by both Dunaway and Jones, which went a long way towards making it swallow-able for me.

In fact, there are a lot of scenes in this movie that I felt were both filmed and acted beautifully.  The scene in which Laura and John first become intimate, for example, I found extremely moving and absolutely gorgeous.  Wonderful angles, lots of authentic tenderness for each other, etc.  The only problem was that it went on about five minutes too long, as did several semi-sluggish scenes in the middle of the film.   However, when the movie is “on,” it’s extremely suspenseful and entertaining.  A lot of it may feel somewhat cheesy to modern viewers, as would a lot of the scenes and acting in Someone’s Watching Me, I’m sure.  But, overall, I thought this was a very satisfying psychological thriller.  And dazam if Tommy Lee Jones wasn’t just sexy as hell in 1978.  Hottie McYummerson.

Definitely recommended, especially for viewers who like thrillers that aren’t crazy with the gory violence.  The murders are pretty tame compared to what we’re used to seeing these days.  And the best part?  You can actually watch this movie for free online — legally!  The full movie is available on the IMDb page (via a link to Crackle.com), and it’s also available for streaming on Watch Now for Netflix subscribers.  If you are in the mood for a good thriller this weekend, look no further!  (And then come back here and let me know what you thought!)

[Netflix me | Watch me online | Buy me]

Genre:  Thriller
Cast:  Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad Dourif, Rene Auberjonois, Raul Julia

I really wanted to get this one posted before Halloween but failed miserably.  The good news, though, is that it tastes really good with leftover Halloween candy.  So, go grab a “fun-sized” something or other, plunk yourself somewhere comfy, and hit the Boyfriend of the Week site to see who the new fellow is.  You might want to finish eating before you get to the first mention of that knife-in-the-Achilles scene, though.  If you’re squeamish.

Don’t forget to come back here for comments and conversation when you’re done!

http://megwood.com

I’m not generally a big fan of animated films — I’m not sure just why, since I almost always end up loving them when I do sit down and watch them.  But I’m rarely drawn to them intentionally.  Usually when I see an animated film, it’s because somebody else wanted to see it and I went along.  And so was the case with Coraline last weekend.  (The Case with Coraline — sounds like a Nancy Drew mystery. . .  I digress.)

While looking for a movie at the video store Friday night with my husband — one we might both want to see (no easy feat since we have dramatically different tastes in film; by which I mean, he actually likes GOOD movies) — he picked this one up, read over the back of the box, and gave it a little wave in my direction.  I looked up from the box I was looking at, The Thaw starring Val Kilmer and a whole bunch of disgusting insects (more on this in a future post), squinted, and then said, “Go for it,” in part because the only other movie he’d picked up was some kind of rock music documentary, also not typically my go-to genre, and I didn’t want to be there all night trying to find something mutually agreeable.  Besides, at least Coraline looked kinda spooky.  Good pre-Halloween mood setter?  Even if it IS a dorky cartoon?

As it turned out, not five minutes into this totally-not-at-all-dorky movie, I was COMPLETELY  IN LOVE.  The visuals in this film are fantastic — the colors, the shapes, the backgrounds, the characters.  And the story is absolutely great.  And John Hodgman!  JOHN HODGMAN, my friends!  Sigh.  Sigh of dreaminess.  Dreamy sigh.

It tells the story of a little girl, Coraline (not “Caroline”!), who has just moved into a big old house with her parents (Teri Hatcher and The Hodge), gardening writers who apparently hate gardening.  Go figure.  Coraline’s parents are hard at work on their latest book and so have little time for their daughter, who is a smart, creative girl with a lot of energy and interests.  Frustrated by her parents’ seeming neglect and missing her old friends tremendously, Coraline is the perfect target for an evil villain (not sure just what kind of entity she was — not really a ghost; more like  a cross between Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands) who desperately wants a daughter of her own.

The villain takes the form of Coraline’s mother — looking and sounding just like her except for the fact she has black buttons for eyes (like a doll).  She woos Coraline into her alternate reality, complete with “Other” versions of her father and her new friend Wybie, by lavishing her with attention and home-cooked meals, making her beautiful new clothing, and in general feeding right into every need or desire Coraline has ever had.

It’s not long before Coraline begins to realize the true nature of what’s going on, though — not just that the “Other Mother” is a bad entity who wants to steal Coraline (and replace her eyes with buttons too, eep!), but that she’s tried this before on other children and killed them when they did not conform to her wishes.  Eep, again!

Desperate to escape, Coraline finally finds her way back through the little door into her real life, only to find the “Other Mother” has taken her parents and locked them away.  Now, with the help of Wybie’s cat, who is able to travel easily between the two worlds himself, Coraline must craft a plan to rescue her parents, free the spirits of the dead children, and get her life back to the way it was.

Of course, a lot of elements of this story are familiar — it’s not really that different, if you think about it, from It’s a Wonderful Life:   Be careful what you wish for, e.g.  But here, the story is told with such great visuals and characters that it felt completely fresh and exciting to watch.  The animation is stop-motion and super-cool, and though we had the option of watching it in 3-D on the DVD, we went with 2-D instead, in part because my first (and last) 3-D cartoon experience was with last summer’s Up, and I felt that the 3-D had really muted the sharpness of the lines and colors of that film — two of the things I love the most about the look of an animated film.  I think it was the right choice here as well.    Not to keep repeating myself, but the way this film LOOKS is just wonderful.  It uses strange shapes — the bodies of the characters are strange, the shape of the cat, the tilt on the buildings, etc. — and bold, simple colors, and the combination was extremely effective.  The look of the movie gives it a creepy weight that I think the story alone might not have been able to attain.

Overall, I was incredibly impressed with this one!  If you have been putting off seeing it because you’re not that into animated films yourself, I definitely think you should give it a shot.  Recommended, in other words!  Also:  JOHN HODGMAN!!  I’m pretty sure for many of you, I need say no mo’.

[Netflix me | Buy me]

Genre:  Animation
Cast:  Dakota Fanning, John Hodgman, Teri Hatcher, Keith David

A reader just sent me a link to a feature on her site that ranks the 20 hottest vampires of all time.  Guess who’s number one?  Uh huh:  James Marsters!  Yum.

So, go read her piece, which is hilarious and sharp, and pretend you didn’t notice I didn’t get that Boyfriend write-up posted today like I said I would.  Go on now, shoo!  I’ll try for tomorrow, I swear!

http://www.guidetobeautyschools.com/hottest-twilight-vampires