Day: January 10, 2010

Coraline (2009)
With the voices of: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Keith David
Directed by: Henry Selick
Written by: Henry Selick, based on Neil Gaiman’s novel
Rated: PG
Rating: 5 (out of five)

Coraline is the third stop-motion film from Henry Selick, the mastermind behind The Nightmare Before Christmas.  (I will admit that I thought Corpse Bride was his handy-work too, but it turns out I was very wrong there.)  It is nothing short of brilliant.  When an animated film is so good that you forget you are watching animation, the creators have really accomplished something.  When they manage to do that against what seems like all odds, they’ve created something truly amazing.

Coraline Jones (that’s “CORE-a-line” not “CARE-o-line”) has just moved to a new apartment with her parents.  They are horticulturalists of a sort, but lately they’ve been putting aside actually cultivating a garden in favor of writing.  Her father is authoring a catalog that he hopes to be his magnum opus that will feed the family.  Coraline doesn’t care in the least and is more interested in having adventures.  Their new neighbors, Mr. Bobinsky, Miss Spink, and Miss Forcible, though colorful, aren’t enough.

On her first foray into her new surroundings she meets the son of her apartment’s proprietor, Wybie.  And a sly black cat.  Bored with their lack of creativity, she retreats back into her house and begins cataloging everything she finds.  Which includes an curiously small door that has been wall-papered over.  After sufficiently pestering her mother enough that she gives in, the door is opened, only to reveal a brick wall.

That night Coraline is awoken by a jumping mouse whom she follows through the house.  To the curiously small door.  Through the curiously small door.  And into the Other World, where she meets her Other Mother, and her Other Father, and the Other Wybie, and that strange cat.  Everything is perfect at first glance.  Her mother is baking tasty meals and her father is full of life and energy and all they want to do is please Coraline.  It takes her a few minutes to notice that their eyes are mere black buttons sewn onto their faces.

Retreating back to into the Real World, Coraline is once again faced with the sheer monotony that she feels makes up her life, and she quickly finds herself venturin g back into the Other World and becoming more and more at home there.  As is the case with these stories, it’s not long before she discovers that the black buttons are there for a reason, and that hiding under all the shiny facades of fun is something evil.

Coraline is a story about youth.  It’s about youth itself learning to embrace life and finding adventure.  It’s about youth’s influence on adults.  It’s about the adults lusting after youth in dangerous ways.  It’s about adults finding their youth again and their lives brightening and adults not leaving their youth behind.

Gaiman’s writing is always rooted in myths and folk tales.  What Gaiman always does well is to make these common tales uniquely his own.  Coraline is no exception to this.  And I hate the fact that I haven’t read the book!  (Though the movie, I hear, is sufficiently close to the book, there are some variances.  Notably Wybie, who isn’t in the book at all.)

More than being a great modern folk tale, Coraline is an amazing visual feast and an incredible technical achievement to boot.  I’ve linked an article at the bottom that was eye-opening.  Who knew that the Other Mother morphing into her real self was such a painstaking shot to produce!

All in all, this film deserves a spot on anyone’s shelf and is a great movie to get the whole family together.  Perhaps I have a dark vision of what family movies should be, but I still think it’s a great film.  Technically, creatively, visually – all of it comes together perfectly.

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Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZzY-PERLfY

Great article on the making of: http://features.cgsociety.org/story_custom.php?story_id=4924

Surrogates (2009)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Ving Rhames
Directed by: Jonathan Mostow
Written by: Michael Ferris and John D Brancato, based on the graphic novel by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele
Rated: PG-13
Rating: 2 (out of five)

A few years ago, Alex Proyas’s I, Robot (2004) came out.  It deconstructed Isaac Asimov’s phenomenal “I, Robot” stories and turned into an action vehicle for Will Smith.  I enjoyed the  movie but it definitely wasn’t good science fiction.  It was just good action.  That’s about the best thing I can say for Surrogates.

I have not read the graphic novel so I cannot make any comparisons in that regard.  There are some moments in the movie that are obviously painstakingly recreated from the frames of the novel.  Those are unfortunately few and far between.

14  years from now we have the technology to create and control “surrogates.”  These are lifelike androids that experience life for us while we remain back at home, lying in a pod that allows our minds to control the surrogates.  The great part of surrogates is that you get to feel everything they feel and have none of the side effects.  Sex has gone up, but STI’s have gone down.  The aging process is almost non-existent in the real world.  Surrogates don’t age, just their controllers do.  But also virtually non-existent in the real world is human connection.  There are reservations of humans — “meat bags” – where no surrogates are allowed to enter.  These havens of humanity are run by The Prophet (Rhames) who aims to restore life to it’s natural roots.

We open with a murder.  Someone on a motorcycle fires a pretty powerful weapon at two surrogates.  It causes their surrogates to fry – which isn’t new, as bullets through electronic components can cause some serious damage – but it also causes their controllers to fry as well.  The surrogate/controller who is killed is none other than the son of Dr. Cantor, the man who invented surrogates.

This sparks the first real homicide in years (surrogates kill other surrogates, people don’t kill people anymore).  Lt. Greer (Willis) and his partner (Mitchell) are brought on to solve the case.  Much is unique about it:  why did the safety mechanisms fail and cause the controller to die when the surrogate was fried?  What weapon is powerful enough to do that?  Why would someone do such a thing?  Is The Prophet involved?  They then get wrapped up in a conspiracy that takes us through to the movie’s inevitable ending.

Mostow also directed Terminator 3.  He hasn’t grown much as a director since then.  (On a funny note, I see that his next project is a re-tell of the Swiss Family Robinson – interesting change of scenery from sci-fi).  The movie is rather derivative as far as it’s production goes.  The action isn’t bold, the explosions are only “big,” the suspense is barely there.  This is true of a lot of movies that Hollywood churns out these days, and I can openly confess to liking a lot of them.  I even liked Terminator 3!  The real issue with this movie isn’t the production.  It’s the story.

Again, I haven’t read the graphic novel, and don’t intend to at this point, but the story here is what is wrong with this movie.  Re-read the paragraph above explaining the future society presented in this movie.  The one thing this story does is a great job of tantalizing us with these little, realistic details of how surrogacy has affected future society and humanity as a whole.  It only hints at it though, and only for the first few minutes as the credits roll.  It blatantly ignores, and even sometimes purposely avoids, parallels to our current society’s addiction to gadgetry and the “zoning out” it causes.  This movie is completely devoid of any social context whatsoever.  And that is it’s problem.

I’m not looking for this to be a social critique of technological advances and their effects on humanity.  I think it would have been a wrong choice to have done that.  What I’m asking for is a sense of what’s happened and the realization that this has a profound effect on how the characters would have gone about daily life.  Instead we get one single moment where Greer walks through the streets as a meat bag instead of a surrogate for the first time.

Look at District 9.  It’s not meant to be a social commentary on Apartheid, it’s not meant delve into social injustices, but because the story was borne of those conditions, it’s effects are directly presented on-screen.  I again think that it would have been the wrong choice for that film to have been a true social commentary, but at least it wasn’t afraid of the idea it projected.  Another brilliant example is Blade Runner.  The film doesn’t truly attempt to be a critique, but instead delivers us into a fully realized world that serves as it’s own critique, completely apart from what the filmmakers were filming.

A brief hint of what this movie could have been was provided by some early teaser posters.  Take a look here and here to see what I mean.

Action.  Check.  Some pretty explosions and car crashes.  Check.  A real world to set the story in?  Nope!

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Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwTJ7mCcFoY

Prof. Ishiguro and his “Geminoid” twin: http://www.irc.atr.jp/Geminoid/