Movie night night: Parnassus & Coraline

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (or, as it is known to many people "Heath Ledger's last movie") is a Terry Gilliam piece. If you've previously seen anything written by Gilliam you may assume that there are fantastic elements and bits and pieces, and you may also be prepared for those bits to be a bit jumbled here and there.
The idea of Doc Parnassus is, to me, based on the the indecisiveness of humans and thus the lack of responsibility in us. This doesn't sound too bad, does it? Doc Parnassus doesn't really follow through, though. I assume the screenplay underwent major modifications after Ledger's death and that might be the reason the film left me with the feeling that it lacked something. The story was ok, but too shallow. I'm not saying it's a horribly bad movie, I'm just saying it's not as good as it could [should] be. It's all fun and games and visually explosive, but the story just doesn't hold up to the themes.

__________

The second movie of the night:

Coraline.

Now, I was never a fan of dolls, so I watched this movie fully aware that I might get nightmares tonight. I'm looking forward to it.

Coraline is visually fabulous, and it's a wonderful adventure. Spiced with a hint of Disney's evil witches, it is an interesting idea to use love as the power of the antagonist. And it works. And I liked it. See, a film review about a good film is so much shorter, I mean what should I say other than "watch it". It's beautiful, it's creepy, it's inventive, it's fresh. Watch it.

However if you do own a cat.. I highly recommend being fully aware of where your cat is. Mine kept making strange sounds in his sleep somewhere behind the sofa, and that just made the soundscape of the film even more powerfully creepy than it already was.

Now then.. nightmares ahoy!