The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - A Modern Classic? I'd say yes!

With November comes the knowledge that Halloween is over and the winter holidays are coming. If you are American you have Thanksgiving in November, but since I'm not, I decided to look at a movie that is between the two holidays, much like the month of November. As a bonus, I've seen this movie at least a dozen times. So, let's take a look at one of the best Halloween/Christmas movies, The Nightmare Before Christmas.

After a successful Halloween, the Pumpkin King Jack wanders off feeling bored of the holiday, and finds a selection of doors, opening one of them, he finds himself transported to a different world that intrigues him, a world of bright colours and a fun atmosphere called Christmas Town. After he tries to find what made the world so appealing to him, he decides to try his own hand at the holiday and has Santa Claus kidnapped. Unbeknownst to him, Santa is sent to Oogie Boogie, a devilishly evil being that finds joy in the idea of killing the jolly man. After Jack makes a mess out of the holiday of cheer, he must rescue Santa and return things to the way they were. A part of me feels like I made the plot a bit more complex than it actually is, it really is a simple plot but it is just so solid and well paced that you kind of forget about its simplicity.

While the movie does partake in time skip montage, with one exception, there aren't really a whole lot of questions surrounding the plot. Even the subplot surrounding the other main character, Sally, is integrated well into the story, as both Jack's and Sally's stories intersect in different ways, like how she tries to warn Jack about her premonitions around his attempt at Christmas, or when she escapes her room to give Jack a gift. They're small moments, but they still bring the two stories together. As a whole, the plot is smooth as butter, and even though it does follow some familiar beats, it does some things different with them, like having the emotional low of the film not only be a song number that transitions into him feeling better, but it's having him work out these thoughts on his own. I don't think I see that very often, especially not in more recent films.

Since I brought it up, let's talk about the music. Let's start with the background music, because a lot of it is really good. Danny Elfman does a wonderful score, I don't know if it is one of my favourite scores, but it is really good. I have a copy of the soundtrack on vinyl, so I have heard a few of the backing tracks a couple times, though let's be honest here, the song tracks are the most memorable part of the movie.

I criticized the Steven Universe movie for having a song every minute or so, I think this movie is a good example of how to do something like that and make it work. While songs are pretty frequent, they are used as song numbers should be. They can showcase how the character is feeling (Jack's Lament, Sally's Song and Poor Jack), or they can be used to make some scenes more interesting (Town Meeting Song, Kidnap the Sandy Claws, and Making Christmas). Plus, the movie establishes things before the songs, so we know that Jack is not feeling very cheerful before he goes into his song. On top of that, the songs were great, "This is Halloween", "Oogie Boogie's Song" and "What's This?" are some of the favourite songs in any animated movie, I'm a sucker for this soundtrack, I not only got it on Vinyl, but I also got that "Nightmare Revisited" album, with the songs redone by bands like Marilyn Manson, Korn, and The All-American Rejects. Rise Against does a pretty good cover of "Making Christmas".

I think the other thing that makes the songs good is that the characters are really strong to. We can understand that Jack is feeling bored or lonely with Halloween, and we can relate to him wanting to recapture that joy when he first arrived in Christmas Town. Oogie Boogie is another good example, as we can pick up that his is a slimey being that takes joy in causing harm and discomfort. Side characters don't get much of the spotlight, but as this movie is only slightly over an hour long, it's understandable. This brings us to Sally, and if I am going to be honest here, Sally is one of my all time favourite characters in media. I love that she is not just a passive observer, when she overhears that Jack might be in trouble, she takes initiative and tries to rescue Santa. Even though she doesn't always succeed in her plans, the important thing is that she tried and took initiative, hands down one of my favourite characters ever.

The only thing left to discuss is the visual aspect of the film. I watched this film on Blu-Ray so, the visual detail I could see was much better than a VHS. There are so many little details in this movie you are never going to see them in one sitting. On this recent sitting, I just realized that one of the motifs on Jack's front gate is a scared cat. Other nice details are things like character movements, the splotched lighting on the Professor's brain, and environmental details like etching in the stone and bark, and textures on characters clothing. Even the pallets are great, with Christmas Town being a stark contrast to Halloween Town, and even in the character palette with Sally being more colourful than Jack, though I think Anim8ball covered that part of the film much better than I could.

As for the animation itself, while the entire film is really smooth, I can't help but notice some shortcuts that were taken, and even in the more expressive characters like Jack and Sally, I could still see some jerky moth movements, though I am not sure if that is because I've done stop motion animation myself, I am going to school for animation or because I was taking a more critical look at this movie. Anyway, the visuals of this movie are great, and unique too as Disney hasn't really done anything like this since, which is kind of a shame, but I guess it does make this movie stand on its own.

I don't think it is any stretch to say that I really love this movie. Even after having seen it a dozen times, even after looking critically at it, even after looking through the tie-in Trivial Pursuit game cards. I can't hate this movie, there is so much to talk about this movie, like did you know that the speaking voice of Jack Skellington is Chris Sarandon? Yeah, Prince Hunperdink from The Princess Bride! and there were 180 individual heads for Jack as well, and though the movie was based on a poem by Tim Burton, the only characters that were in the poem originally were Jack, Santa and Jack's Dog. I have the Trivial Pursuit tie-in game, I can keep going.

To wrap this up, I think that if you enjoy the classic holiday specials of Charlie Brown or the like, you're going to enjoy this one too. Even if not, the music, visuals and silky smooth plot make it more than a nostalgic memory. It is a legitimately good movie, and I cannot recommend it enough, it is one of my all-time favourite movies, and chances are, you already plan to watch it every October, December or both.

First Impressions: Klaus (2019)

Ah November, the time of remembrance, the full swing of Autumn and the month of telling people that it is NOT time to put your Christmas decorations up. However, as it is close to the month of many holidays, it is around this time that some holiday movies start to come out. Last year, The Grinch graced the silver screen in November, and this year, it seems that the early holiday release is a Netflix Original film called Klaus, which had a release in select theatres, but not in my city so I saw it on Netflix. Oh well.

I will say I was interested in this movie, a part of me wants to say that I kept my expectations in check because of other Netflix original films like Next Gen and Duck Duck Goose, yes Next Gen sucked, don't @ me. Sadly, those thoughts slipped my mind because, it looked interesting. After having just saw it, was it any good?

Plotwise, this movie is kind of predictable. I could peg that this movie would have the reveal, and the low-point and the get-together in the climax, it's pretty paint-by-numbers.

I should clarify here that because a plot is predictable or paint-by-numbers, doesn't mean the plot is bad. It just means that it isn't going to surprise you with any major development. A paint-by-numbers plot is not the be all and end all of a movie. I mean, I've seen The Princess Bride so many times I could recite it, but I still love watching that movie. The plot is but a mere ingredient for a movie, and like all ingredients it can be used well, used poorly, used a lot or used infrequently, something we love or something we aren't fond of...

So while the plot might have been predictable, that doesn't mean the movie as a whole is rubbish or lousy.

So, what about the other aspects of the movie?

Honestly, the movie is a bit of a slow burn character wise. The movie begins with all the characters being unlikable, even hateable. However, by the end of the movie we do start to get wrapped in the charm of things like the citizens of the town begrudgingly doing nice things for each other, and even some of the sacrifices they make. While I started off hating a bunch of the characters of this movie, by the end, I actually really liked them.

I will say though, some of the characters' speakings and mannerisms were very modern. I don't hate modernisms in movies like this, but they do kind of take me out of the experience a little. I don't think it took me out of the experience enough to fully lose me, but when these modernisms did occur they did take me a little out of the mood.

That being said though, I will say that the animation and art style was really good. When we got our first view of the town, it gave a German Expressionism vibe, a visual style used in the silent film era in a lot of German productions like Nosferatu. I feel like that is the visual style they aimed for, with the jagged and pointy architecture. Of course, the lighting is also incredible and some of the perspective shots in this movie are amazing. You really get the idea of the shots as well as them looking cool. The main art style of the movie also looked incredible, it reminded me a lot of the web animation titled "The Backwater Gospel", where you could barely tell whether the characters were 3D models or 2D drawings. I really like this style because it shows what you can accomplish with CG and how you can integrate traditional aesthetics with the modern technology.

Honestly, while I don't think Klaus was an incredible movie, I got to admit there is a lot to like here. While the plot was predictable, it was pretty solid, the characters became likeable, the animation and art style were great. Honestly, while I don't think this is my favourite of the Netflix Original releases this year, I will say it is pretty good. It is worth checking out, I think it is too early to really know if this will make my permanent Christmas watchlist, but who knows. Speaking of which...

Anyway, I think this is a good movie and it deserves a good recommendation rating.

This has been the Entity of Darkness and I'll see you next time at my humble little Odeon.

First Impressions: Arctic Dogs (2019)

How many paint-by-numbers animated features have we had this year? We had Wonder Park, UglyDolls, Abominable was a pretty safe movie in formula, Missing Link was close, Addams Family was kind of that. Not that I dislike all of those movies, but once you notice the formula, you start to notice which movies follow it to the letter. Arctic Dogs is a movie that follows it to the letter.

This movie is a really formulaic plot, it contains all the tropes of any other children's animated feature, for a lot of this movie, it was actually reminding me of Shark Tale, though this movie is better with the plot than Shark Tale, which is not saying a lot really. I mean, you have the generic characters, the generic set-ups, the generic "Kiss before they do something dangerous" the whole formula has been done, and unlike with Abominable or Missing Link it didn't have many redeeming qualities to make it worth seeing.

Characters are annoying, you have your typical lead that makes up stories to make himself look better, the big guy with a kind heart, the goofy friend, you even have your own minions expy, because we haven't enough of those. There is no character that I even remotely gravitated towards for anymore reason than that I like foxes, but even then Zootopia, Fox and the Hound, Robin Hood, all movies with fox characters and all better than this.

Animation wise, this movie is unimpressive. There were moments that could have been impressive, but most of the movie is bland to look at and the animation itself is... okay, I guess. Visually speaking this movie is not worth the theatre trip.

You know, when I saw the poster for this movie, I kind of expected it to be a direct-to-video affair, it looks and feels like it. Like, from the poster and title alone, it looks like a movie you would see in the discount bin. The fact that this movie was produced by Assemblage Entertainment does not help matters. The visuals of this movie are not terrible, but not theatre quality in my opinion. I would not be surprised if this was going to be a Direct-to-video feature and then got thrown into the theatres for one reason or another. Though the casting might have been why it was a theatrical release though.

Quite frankly, there is not a lot worth talking about wit this movie. It is bland to look at, formulaic, bland, boring, and humourwise, jokes that would have been worth a slight chuckle at most were the funniest things in the movie. It is not worth getting angry at, not worth seeing and sure as hell not worth the 13.50 I spent for the ticket. If you want to see it, I'd say "Save your money for Frozen II", that one looks promising.

God this was bland....