Coraline is the stunning feature-length debut of Portland’s Laika animation studios, directed by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas), and based on a 2002 novella by Neil Gaiman. A young girl named Coraline Jones and her parents move to Ashland, Oregon, into a remote Victorian boarding house with a mysterious past. Amid the rain and gloom, and miles away from her friends, Coraline soon becomes bored as her parents, both writers, are consumed with work. Things appear to take a turn for the better (and the surreal), however, when Coraline discovers a secret passage leading to a parallel world. Down this rabbit hole are doppelgängers of everyone in Coraline’s life—her mother, father, weird neighbors—all of whom are fun, exciting, and attentive to her every whim. One small catch: the “other” people all have buttons for eyes. Coraline soon unlocks the mysteries of the other world and discovers that parallel worlds are no place like home. Heavily influenced by Alice and Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, Coraline is packed with dazzling displays of stop-motion animation, and is creepy enough to earn a PG rating. It features the voices of Dakota Fanning as Coraline, Teri Hatcher and The Daily Show’s Jon Hodgman as her parents (and “other” parents), and Keith David as a smooth talking cat.
The Class (Entre les Murs) Sony Pictures Classics
2008 French with English subtitles
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The Class is a fictionalized account of a year in a culturally diverse Parisian middle school class, based on the semi-autobiographical novel by former teacher François Bégaudeau. Shot in documentary-style, complete with handheld cameras and non-professional actors (Bégaudeau himself plays the teacher, also named François), the film aims for, and achieves, a degree of realism absent from most American films concerning similar subject matter. Indeed, teacher François is clearly not a hero or a martyr, but like his adolescent students, a human being capable of pettiness, ego, and anger. The students, many of whom are of African, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern descent, confront and frustrate François, especially with their challenges to the conventions of French society, and François arguably mishandles the confrontations at times. The Class is not especially plot-driven—most of the scenes involve François and the students talking in class or the frustrated but well-meaning teachers talking about the students in their off hours. Beneath the incessant banter, however, are subtle moments of devastating drama, including a subplot involving the school troublemaker and the administrative proceedings following an in-class incident in which he accidentally injures a fellow student. In all, the class in The Class serves as a microcosm of modern urban society: tense, hostile, but ultimately hopeful. A gripping, brilliant film, not to be missed.
Che is director Steven Soderbergh’s epic, two-part biopic about Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the iconic Argentine Marxist revolutionary (and author, physician, politician, etc.). Benicio Del Toro plays the title role, and (deservedly) won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival. Part 1, entitled “The Argentine,” essentially picks up where The Motorcycle Diaries leaves off: it opens with Guevara en route to Cuba on the open sea, and then focuses on the Cuban revolution, led by Guevara and a young Fidel Castro, who eventually topple the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Part 2, entitled “The Guerilla,” takes place several years later, and centers on Guevara’s ill-fated attempt to lead a similar revolution in Bolivia, and his ultimate capture and assassination (aided by the CIA). Together, the films run nearly four-and-a-half hours, and they’re certainly an ambitious and demanding viewing. Despite the length, though, Che’s scope is surprisingly narrow and in-depth, focusing on the two time frames mentioned, as well as a brief, wonderfully shot, black-and-white sequence of Guevara in Manhattan circa 1964, attending the UN General Assembly (and a high society party) as the Cuban delegate. Soderbergh’s camerawork has a lyrical quality throughout, and he gives each part a distinct style and tone to reflect the disparate events. And while Soderbergh claims in interviews to have taken an “agnostic” approach to Guevara’s political views, Che has been criticized for sanitizing the negative (read: violent) aspects of Guevara’s revolutionary tendencies. Whatever your politics, however, Che hammers one point home: Che Guevara was probably more passionate about freedom-fighting and revolution than any of us have ever been about anything in our lives.
