The Nightmare Before Christmas review

 Number 292 on the top 1000 films of all time is Henry Selik's stop-motion animated musical-fantasy the Nightmare Before Christmas.

Produced by Tim Burton - often being more associated with him than Selik, the Nightmare before Christmas focusses on Jack Skellington (Chris Sarandon) the king of Halloween Town. Becoming sick of the annual Halloween celebration, he is looking for a change. That change comes when he discovers Christmas and he aims to hijack the holiday for his own goals with disastrous consequences.

I was really looking forward to this film. Being well-versed with Burton's other work like Corpse Bride, with its trippy visuals, memorable songs and creative storyline, I had high hopes for a Nightmare Before Christmas, but the end result left me feeling more dead than alive.

While the actual labour that goes into stop-motion animation will always be impressive with the assorted animated characters being spooky and creative, it wasn't at the eye-popping level I was expecting. Instead of vivid colours, we were treated to a bland and lifeless colour palette. Rather the visuals were dull, even in Halloweenland. It made the trademark surrealism that we have come to expect from Burton fall flat. The visuals didn't contribute anything to the film from either a story or a visual perspective.

The musical numbers were lacking and uninspired. None of them were memorable. I watched this film only two nights ago and if I really scratch my head, I think I can remember the "this is Halloween" song and that's it. The songs were composed by frequent Burton collaborate Danny Elfman, but like the surreal animation, I'm not convinced the songs added much to the film. In some cases, it seemed to stray into song-musical territory like Sweeney Todd. The songs in that film were painfully mundane. The same can be said for the Nightmare Before Christmas.

Any storyline was buried underneath the lifeless visuals and banal songs. I'm not sure how well I can explain the narrative. This un-dead king is going through a mid-death crisis and falls through this trap door into some Christmas land where he decides to bring Christmas to his home, but, for some reason, also kidnaps Father Christmas and goes onto impersonate him. For some reason, there's a weird gambling monster made out of bugs and a  Dr Frankenstein-esque character who has created some Bride of Frankenstein who becomes Jack's love-interest.

I didn't care for this film too. I had high-hopes, but I was left disappointed.

Paprika review

Number 581 on the top 1000 films of all time is the Japanese animated sci-fi thriller Paprika.

Doctor Atsuko Chiba (Megumi Hayashibara) is a scientist working on the DC Mini - a device that allows her to view people's dreams. She uses this machine to help psychiatric patients by embracing her alter-ego of Paprika. One of these people is Detective Toshimi Konakawa (Akio Otsuka.) However, the DC Mini is then stolen by a dream terrorist.

This film was like if Christopher Nolan decided to make Inception as an anime. Surely, Paprika was as equally confusing and convoluted and complicated. I'm sure this was supposed to be the point, but I struggled in following the film. It jumped so often between dream and reality that I wasn't sure which was supposed to be which. And then when the dreams started bleeding through to the real world, all hope was lost for me. There's no denying it was a good concept though and the animation was great, but I really wasn't sure what I was supposed to be watching.

I think another problem was that Paprika felt very unfocussed. There weren't that many characters, but there also wasn't a clear protagonist. Paprika is supposed to be the main character - she is billed first in the credits, yet there was also considerable time spent on Detective Konakawa as well as other characters like Doctor Tokita who invented the DC Mini. It did give the film an uncertain tone. I also thought that the DC Mini was a strange name for a device like this. It kept make me thinking of a car that was made in the DC universe.

While slogging through this list, I have encountered many films that haven't personally been for me. I'm sure to anime-lovers this would be the 581st greatest film of all time. But I did not care for it at all.