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Coraline

Brian McDonough — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 07:04:05 +0000

[rating:3.5] Director: Henry Selick Starring: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher Animation director Henry Selick (James & the Giant Peach, Nightmare Before Christmas) brings to life the creepy adventure story, Coraline, by Neil Gaiman (Sandman, Stardust, The Graveyard Book). That's a pretty impressive combination, and it works as well as you'd expect—the movie is inventive, well-crafted and it makes excellent use of the silly 3D glasses they pass out at the door. It doesn't feel like the “must-see” movie of the season, but you've got talented, solid storytellers crafting an inventive world that unfolds for a charming main character. Related posts:

Beowulf

Brian McDonough — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 20:00:17 +0000

[rating:4] Director: Robert Zemeckis Starring: Ray Winstone, Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich You remember that movie where a grotesque computer animation of Tom Hanks is, like, ticket collector on Santa's choo-choo train? Yeah, I didn't see that either. The reason I didn't see it is because while it was clearly meant to be heartwarming holiday fare, the characters were all animated in an excruciatingly near-realistic manner that rendered them more disturbing to look at than those Disneyland mannequin horrors. Robert Zemeckis' new film, Beowulf, is roughly the same kind of animation. It's set somewhere in Denmark in the year 507, and I'm pretty sure the place's name would translate as Uncanny Valley. You really have to overcome the not-quite-ness of the characters to enjoy this movie, and it's a huge leap to make. The good news is that, thanks to Zemeckis' no-holds-barred direction and a daring script by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, viewers should be able to cross that valley and enjoy the hell out of the two-hour experience. Related posts:

Stardust

Stardust

Brian McDonough — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 01:36:07 +0000

[rating:4.5] Director: Matthew Vaughn Starring: Charlie Cox, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro, Claire Danes Matthew Vaughn's adaptation of Stardust, the ten-year-old fairy tale written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Charles Vess, takes the best of that magical adventure and shakes it up a little for movie audiences. It's a remarkable and rare adaptation in which the essential story is preserved, and the deviations are an improvement for the cinematic presentation. It's also a film that strikes a perfect tone between the ponderous, serious, interminable Lord of Rings films and the breeziness of The Princess Bride, which both celebrated fantasy stories while being awkwardly self-conscious about how dorky such stories are. Stardust neither takes three hours to make you really, really believe in dwarves and well-mapped dream continents, nor does it apologize, scuffing its toe in the dirt, for being an adventure and romance. It's the late 1800s, and a village in the English countryside sits beside an unassuming entrance to Faerie, which has magic and a more medieval cast. A foolish boy trying to woo a girl (who sees him only as a foolish boy) promises to bring her a falling star they spot plummeting down to the east—across the wall that keeps separate this world and that. That the star turns out to be personified as an understandably grumpy (but, appropriately, radiant) Claire Danes, and that there is an evil witch and murderous princes vying for a throne also after the celestial prize, provide all the complications and misadventures you could want. Related posts:

Time knows you’re not cool

Brian McDonough — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 02:42:35 +0000

Time magazine seems to fancy itself an arbiter of coolness. Yeah, take a minute to let that sink in. Bookslut, the brilliant and brilliantly named literary blog, noted on Friday that Time had interviewed Neil Gaiman. A versatile and talented writer (and great blogger), Gaiman is poised to hit a new level of fame. In [...] Related posts: