Playing with Dolls

I've gone back and forth on whether or not I wanted to "review" movies on this blog.

For one thing, I see so many of them. For another, I seldom have anything terribly interesting to say about them afterward. I'm plenty good at discussing things I liked about them in conversation, but every time I've tried to write about a film it has come off as either bloviation or bathos.

So here is my compromise with myself: I will try to do a blog about movies I see in the theatre, but not the scads of them arriving every month from Netflix or flickering late at night on the movie channels of my cable subscription. Moreover, I will try to just write a few words about each film.

Starting with the first film I saw in 2009, Coraline.

The first thing to be said is that it was great. The second is to gape slack-jawed at you (as best I can in text) in imitation of my reaction to the 3-D in which I saw the movie.

I don't know when this 3-D thing started to be legitimate, but I had no fucking idea. I was amazed and filled with real wonderment just watching this already beautiful film. You have to see it to believe it.

As for the film itself - creepy and memorable and visually stimulating while simultaneously tripping enough of the switches in our collective consciousness to have some real resonance.

For some reason, what sticks with me most (other than the eerie uncomfortableness it trucks in) is the lighting. There are so many light sources in every scene, some from in world sources (which are often weird and wonderful), and some from just out of frame, and they all bathe the film in a changeable light palette - sometimes cool and sepulchral and sometimes warm and languorous. The way the film uses the lighting to communicate mood is subtle and stirring and deserves to be paid attention to while you're in the theatre being wowed by the movement and the 3-D.

It isn't a perfect film, but the stop-motion animation is the best I've ever seen and the story stays with you after you leave the theatre. What more can you ask of it?

So, I say see it.