Hola all. Massawyrm here.
I am not what you’d call a “process guy.” If there’s one major difference that separates the way Harry and I enjoy movies, it is that one, rather important fact. I quite simply see a project on the merit of the whole, the experience watching it, not the specific artistry that went into it. Harry on the other hand delights in how things were made, the techniques that went into it. And while I appreciate that kind of thing, it never has managed to sway my opinion on a piece. The reason I mention this is that for quite some time I’ve simply not been enthusiastic about seeing stop motion films. I think back to my review of THE CORPSE BRIDE (which I was really disappointed with) and remember remarking how I didn’t understand why it wasn’t simply made with CG – afterall, it LOOKED like good CG. Who cares if it was really miniatures on not pixels if they look the same?
Henry Selick is a custodian of history, the protector of a dying art. Personally I think that’s cool. That said, there are better, easier ways to do what he’s doing. Or at least there was – until he added 3-D into the mix. You see, if there’s anything that validates stop motion animation as a valid technique, it is that these miniatures, these sets, well, they really exist. When you shoot them in 3-D, there’s an actual, existing depth of field. When you move around things, they look different from alternate angles. They have a real, honest to God geography about them. So seeing it in 3-D produces something VERY DIFFERENT than 3-D generated for a CG film.
You have never seen a film like CORALINE before. It is a unique, beautiful, occasionally jaw dropping wonder that transports you to another world and treats you to a very special one of a kind experience. There are viduals here that words alone cannot truly wrap themselves around, locations that you have to see with your own eyes in 3-D to even understand what it is I’m talking about. Selick has created some truly alien, magnificently disturbing images that can only be compared to his own, earlier work. Nobody has an imagination quite like Henry Selick. He dreams in worlds unlike any of our own, and once every few years he’s allowed to take us with him.
CORALINE is one of those films you have to see just so you can have it in your cinematic vocabulary. It simply doesn’t compare to other stop motion films – nor does it appropriately compare to anything anyone else has done with 3-D. Selick never uses the 3-D as a gimmick. Shit doesn’t fly out at you from the screen. I took some crap from Herr Knowles a few weeks back for not giving a pass to MY BLOODY VALENTINE because he had fun with the 3-D, despite it being a shitty movie (at which point we disagree on how intentional the overt shitty-ness was.) That film, love it or hate it, rested on using the 3-D as gags. It never puts you in the movie – it brings the movie to your seat. It is the antithesis of CORALINE. CORALINE pulls you into the film, takes you into a world you’ve never seen and then shows you around the various nooks and crannies hidden there.
And like MBV, it is also a horror film – this one aimed at children. And a lot of the images in the film are disturbing, on a similar level to that which you saw in MONSTER HOUSE. There are some very creepy ideas and some brilliant execution that will no doubt fuel a number of nightmares in the younger members of the audience.
But if the film has one flaw, it is in the story. While a thoroughly beautiful film, it is still a feature length film adapted from a children’s book – and it suffers from the same problem as THE CORPSE BRIDE and a number of other expanded works. There are a few points where it feels like it is spinning its wheels, like it should be moving faster but has nowhere to go. You can tell the story of CORALINE in minute or so without really leaving anything out, so when you aren’t busy marveling at the garden or the jumping mouse circus or the Scotty Dog amphitheater, you hit the occasional moment where you feel a definite stall.
Fortunately for the film, every time it seems to fumble the ball it bit, it quickly picks it back up and begins to run with it again. It never gets boring – it only occasionally threatens to do so. I feel like it could have been trimmed a bit for pacing and might end up almost entirely flawless. That said, despite its pace, it is still an incredible movie that has things to show you that you have yet to imagine for yourself – and that is as much a reason to see this as the fantastically inventive story.
This is a prime example of where 3-D filmmaking is headed. There’s a reason 3-D has popped up every 25 years or so only to disappear back into the woodwork where it slumbered, waiting for the next generation. It’s because once you’ve seen one implement of destruction fly out at you from the screen, you’ve seen them all. What is going to keep it around this time is not the gimmicky gags, but the ability to immerse you in worlds in a way the cinema has never been capable of doing before.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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