Coraline review

 Number 610 on the top 1000 films of all time is Henry Selik's stop-motion animated horror-comedy Coraline.

Coraline (Dakota Fanning) has just moved into a new neighbourhood with her parents. Bored and neglected by her workaholic parents, she stumbles upon a whole new 'other-world,' where her parents have been replaced by loving, button-eyed dopplegangers. But is everything too good to be true?Teri Hatcher, French and Saunders and Ian Mcshane co-star.

Coraline surprised me. I wasn't much of a fan of Selik's feature-length directorial debut The Nightmare Before Christmas generally finding it too weird and zany. Don't get me wrong. Coraline was weird too, but it was also grounded in all too familiar themes of connection and family.

Like teenagers everywhere, Coraline just wants to feel like she belongs somewhere. Her parents are too busy to have time for her, she is in a new town without any friends and so she finds this new other world where all her prayers have been answered. But, of course, there's a more sinister side.

It helped you had fifteen-year-old Dakota Fanning in the lead who helped to bring this lonely character to life. The casting was good all round with comedy legends French and Saunders helping to inject some much needed light-relief in what was a deceptively dark film. Hatcher and Mcshane were also good in supporting roles.

And obviously the visuals were strong as well with the stop-motion being simultaneously ominous, creepy, other-worldly, psychedelic and eye-popping. What else would you expect from a Henry Selik stop-motion film?

Fargo film Review

 Number 175 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Coen brothers' 1996 black comedy crime film Fargo.

Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) hires two hitmen Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife to extort a ransom from her wealthy father. When the kidnapping goes awry and three innocents end up dead, police woman Marge Gunderson (Frances Mcdormand) investigates.

This is the second Coen Brothers' film I've seen after The Big Lebowski, and I've also watched Noah Hawley's TV series, Fargo, which was inspired by this very film. Out of the three, I definitely found the movie Fargo, the easiest to follow. It was the simplest with no enigmatic cowboys or UFO encounters.

But then again, it really was nothing special either. And that's down to how unmemorable the characters are. Upon writing this review for the first time, I couldn't remember any of the character's names apart from Marge Gunderson. When it came to the supposed protagonist, Jerry Lundegaard, (I'll come to this later,) his journey was murky.

I can't remember it being explained why he exactly wanted his wife kidnapped and ransomed apart from some vague explanation about how he desperately needed the cash. This kept his motivations opaque and I thought it was strange that we were focussing so much on a character who wasn't even the protagonist. Apparently, the real star was Marge Gunderson who doesn't appear until 33 minutes into the film.

Frances Mcdormand won her first acting Oscar for this film, but I'm not sure why. I haven't seen enough of Mcdormand's work to rate her acting ability, but Fargo didn't do her any favours. She doesn't appear until a third into the film, and when she does, she drinks coffee, eats breakfast and says "yeah," in her "Minnesota Nice." She only stumbles upon Showalter and Grimsrud's cabin by sheer dumb luck. Also I'm no gun expert, but I am sceptical that Gunderson's little Smith & Wesson would have the range to take out the fleeing Grimsrud. But I do think that Mcdormand was short-changed. She wasn't given enough to do to make her performance Oscar-worthy.

I'm not ragging on the film completely. I think Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare were great. Their scenes together provided a lot of the film's humour. Despite having only twenty lines of dialogue, Stormare had a brilliant presence, being a true menace in every scene. And Steve Buscemi is great in every film he's in.

All in all, Fargo was an entertaining crime thriller, but nothing special. Certainly not Oscar-material. And I know the "Minnesota Nice" accents were exaggerated, but it remains one of the weirdest accents in the US.