Coraline 2009
I remember hearing a little about this movie, maybe when it was nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar (losing to Pixar’s Up). Eventually the Blu-ray was showing up in the Best Buy bargain bin and I was able to find out that it got very solid reviews and was worth buying. I was still a little leery of it, given that it is stop motion animation and I thought it was maybe European, but it turns out the company is American (owned by Nike’s Phil Knight) and is set in Oregon about a family from Michigan. It is actually pretty conventional and relatable, while still being very imaginative and visually spectacular. Coraline is a girl who has just moved into an old house with her preoccupied parents and discovers she can travel back and forth to a parallel world where her parents are cooler and more attentive. It is amazing that people still make stop motion animation instead of just using computers to get a similar effect, like in the Lego movies, but maybe taking so long to film a movie is a way to maximize the entertainment value as people sweat over every frame of the movie. Plus the story is just good. I agree maybe it isn’t as good as Up is, but it is definitely worth watching and still gets an A-.
Written: 10 Nov 2019
Owned on: Blu-ray