Coraline (2009)
Animation, Drama, Family |
Coraline is a American stop-motion animated dark fantasy horror film directed and written for the screen by Henry Selick based on the 2002 novella of the same name by Neil Gaiman. Produced by Laika as its first feature film. The film depicts an adventurous girl named Coraline finding an idealized parallel world behind a secret door in her new home, unaware that the alternative world contains a dark and sinister secret.
Eleven-year-old Coraline Jones and her parents, Mel and Charlie, move into an old mansion that has been divided up and is now known as the Pink Palace Apartments. As her parents struggle to complete their gardening catalog, Coraline is often left alone. While using a dowsing rod she plucked from a bush in the garden, attempting to find a well nearby, she meets the landlady’s grandson, Wyborne “Wybie” Lovat, and the feral Black Cat who follows him around.
During their conversation, Coraline is unimpressed with Wybie, and he informs her that her dowsing rod is poison oak, which gives her a rash on her palm. Later, she meets her new neighbors: Mr. Bobinsky, who is supposedly training a circus of mice, and retired burlesque actresses Misses Spink and Forcible. Wybie gives Coraline a button-eyed rag doll he discovered in the trunk of his grandmother’s car that eerily resembles her. Later, while she’s exploring the house, the doll lures Coraline to a small door in the living room that is bricked up and can only be unlocked by a button-shaped key.
That night, a mouse guides Coraline through the door, a portal to a seemingly more colorful and cheerful version of her real home. Coraline meets her Other Mother and Other Father, button-eyed doppelgängers of her parents that appear more attentive and caring…
Director: Henry Selick
Writers: Henry Selick (screenplay), Neil Gaiman (book)
Stars: Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Keith David, John Hodgman, Robert Bailey Jr., Ian McShane
►Cast:
| Dakota Fanning | … | Coraline Jones (voice) |
| Teri Hatcher | … | Mel Jones / Other Mother / Beldam (voice) |
| Jennifer Saunders | … | Miss April Spink / Other Spink (voice) |
| Dawn French | … | Miss Miriam Forcible / Other Forcible (voice) |
| Keith David | … | The Cat (voice) |
| John Hodgman | … | Charlie Jones / Other Father (voice) |
| Robert Bailey Jr. | … | Wyborne ‘Wybie’ Lovat (voice) |
| Ian McShane | … | Mr. Sergei Alexander Bobinsky / Other Bobinsky (voice) |
| Aankha Neal | … | Sweet Ghost Girl (voice) |
| George Selick | … | Ghost Boy (voice) |
| Hannah Kaiser | … | Tall Ghost Girl (voice) |
| Harry Selick | … | Photo Friend (voice) |
| Marina Budovsky | … | Photo Friend (voice) |
| Emerson Tenney | … | Magic Dragonfly (voice) (as Emerson Hatcher) |
| Jerome Ranft | … | Mover (voice) |
| Christopher Murrie-Green | … | Toy (voice) (as Christopher Murrie) |
| Jeremy Ryder | … | Toy (voice) |
| Carolyn Crawford | … | Wybie’s Grandmother (voice) |
| Yona Prost | … | Shakespeare Rascal (voice) |
| John Linnell | … | Other Father (singing voice) |
Sources: imdb & wikipedia