Coraline y la Puerta Secreta

Henry Selick's "Coraline" is a smart adaptation of Neil Gaiman's extremely popular award-winning novella. Selick's screenplay is excellent and faithful without being a carbon-copy of Gaiman's story, and Selick adds some of his own dialogue to the film, so his contribution is most certainly not only visual, and chooses which dialogue to use from the novel wisely. Less of a horror story than the novella and more of a dark fantasy, "Coraline" features a well-written and well-drawn lead character and brings the novel's bizarre world to life without compromise. The film's fantasy world grows more bizarre each time we see it, and is as discomforting as it is fun. I missed the singing rats from the novella, but this was more than compensated for by the visual splendor of the garden scene, and there are numerous other examples of the changes from the novel making total sense as Selick's vision of the story differs from Gaiman, but doesn't betray the original work of art, only compliments it. The voice cast is very good and one cannot praise the spectacular animation enough. I was very pleased with the 3D presentation here, it was very, very rarely (only once or twice) used as a 'cool effect', and overall was very tastefully used to give the visuals more depth. Perhaps the first really good film to have a wide release in 2009, and looking at the next few weeks I see more than one film I'm moderately interested in, so this might end up being a pretty good year.

When i saw a teaser of this film i didn't imagine it would be a fantasy/horror movie for kids. That's great because there aren't many, and it must be difficult to display a colorful world with the right amount of frightening elements not to leave a child having bad dreams up to adulthood.

Coraline is a girl who wishes she'd had more attention from her parents, a prettier place to live and better neighbors. After she discovers the entrance to an apparently enhanced version of her reality, she'll soon find out that too much perfection can't be real.

Good and imaginative story, delighting visuals, creepiness from the beginning and a couple scary scenes make this an enjoyable film.

I had no intention of seeing this, but my friend and I were bored on a Friday night and I had free tickets to a movie theater. The only movie playing at 9:30 at night was Coraline. I had heard of the book before, but I never read it so I didn't know what to expect.

The animation was amazing. Every character looked awesome and had so much detail to them. With the 3-D, nothing really popped out of you, but it just gave it an extra depth that made it more real. I think it was so cool.

The movie was really cute. If you haven't read the book, it'll keep you in suspense. I really enjoyed the movie and recommend you see it. :)

The Movie Coraline is an animated film well worth watching more than once. SPOILER ALERT The movie starts out introducing Coraline, voice actor Dakota Fanning, who is new to the Pink palace and is soon introduced to the black cat, voice actor Keith David, and Wybie Lovat, voice actor Robert Bailey Jr., who both are stalking Coraline. We then meet her mother Mel Jones, voice actor Teri Hatcher, and her father Charlie Jones, voice actor John Hodgman. Corallines' new life is shown to be less than wonderful as she meets her other tenants and is unable to realize her dream of gardening. Soon she discovers another world, which is much better in every way tailored specifically to Coraline based on information gathered by a spying Coraline doll carried by Coraline unknowingly. The other mother quickly turns villainess, as she is unable to get Coraline to do what she wants. With the help of the black cat, Coraline is able to escape the other mother and return home saving other children's souls who were less fortunate than she was. As well as her parents who were trapped to lure Coraline back to the other world.

The movie end with Coraline now happy with her real world and realizing she had everything she needed there all along. The theme of wanting more than what you already have and not seeing how good you have it is common among films today. However, the creative imagination of Coraline takes a spin and makes a very unbelievable situation seem plausible. The motif of the movie is seen often as the theme is drawing on what is real and what is too good to be true. When the sound and lighting are as controlled as in Coraline the Director can really impress upon the viewer a believable world that you can see yourself involved. The songs used make the world's first the regular world and then the other world seem like a place of dreary and boring plainness and then a world of pure imagination yet also terror. When the other world is dissolving the technique of fading the edges into white is pure genius.

The angle also helps you see through a subjective viewpoint in the majority of the scenes, even though it is not truly the camera angle but how the slides are drawn to show certain angles. The theme is so crucial in Coraline because few people would think the way Coraline is acting at the start of the movie might even be bad but as the movie progresses you see how she is flawed in her original outlook and judgments of her parents and new neighbors.

Henry Selick, the director of " The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach", once again takes us to a world full of imagery and wonder...but this time...some of it is actually frightening. It was filled with such magic and enchantment that I completely forgot that it was a dark tale..until the occasional scares filled the air. It has some highly fun and amusing characters in it also, and that is the strongest thing of the movie. After viewing it, I came to the conclusion it was basically an "Alice in Wonderland" tale (girl entering new and strange world, plus the cat that talks makes it obvious) but this world has a dark twist. Filled with a great cast and terrific visionary, I feel this movie is fun for all ages (who says kiddos shouldn't be scared?)