“Coraline” DVD, Blu-ray: Henry Selick’s beautifully rendered stop-motion film “Coraline” is so masterfully realized it already has staked its claim as one of the animated movies to beat at next year’s Academy Awards. The film follows Coraline Jones (voice of Dakota Fanning), an unhappy tween with blue hair and a bluer mood who recently moved with her distracted parents into an apartment building in the wilds of Oregon. The house in which they now live is a massive Victorian, with three other tenants sharing the two other apartments. They include two bawdy former burlesque performers (Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders), and Mr. Bobinsky (Ian McShane), a balloon-bellied ringleader of his own private circus. In them, Coraline seeks escape from the uncomfortable truth of modern-day life — her mother (Teri Hatcher) and father (John Hodgman) are working so hard to pay the bills, they don’t have time or patience for her. Coraline’s mother is particularly grumpy and unloving. She would rather blog about gardening than tend to her own flower. As for Coraline’s father, he lives so deeply in his head he has no eyes for Coraline. From them both, Coraline longs to escape, and so when into her life comes an opportunity to do so, she pulls an Alice and slips through a hidden door. Through it is a tunnel that leads into a parallel world, where Coraline meets her Other Mother and her Other Father, who might have buttons for eyes, but my, are these two ever nice to her. Other Mother cooks and smiles. Other Father addresses Coraline with a directness she has never known. It’s all good — too good — as Coraline comes to realize with a growing sense of fear that she’s up against the dark and otherworldly. Mirroring “WALL-E,” “Coraline” is a movie whose story doesn’t come before its superb animation — it matches it. This movie unabashedly holds up a mirror to its audience and wonders how many children and parents are seeing themselves reflected back. It is just this that deepens the movie and makes it relevant. “Coraline” is a fantastic tale sheathed in delight, mystery and wackery, but look into its bleak crevices and behold what for many the family unit has become. Rated PG. Grade: A
“I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” Blu-ray: So, here’s the joke. Two firefighters — Chuck (Adam Sandler) and Larry (Kevin James) — decide to get married when Larry, a widower, learns that his children won’t be covered by his life insurance policy should he die on the job. Apparently, the only way to right that wrong is to get married, with the film hooking its comedic bandwagon onto one wobbly caboose. Since Larry loves his dead wife too much to consider marriage to another woman, he decides to go for playboy Chuck, a loudmouth creep who reluctantly agrees to become Larry’s domestic partner so they can trick the system. What will they serve at their wedding? How about a big slice of homophobia? Beyond the fact that the movie has critical issues with stereotypes — the Asian community, for instance, also should be thrilled — the real sins here are that the film is stuck in a time warp, it isn’t funny and its forced ending of tolerance and acceptance is just plain disingenuous. Rated PG-13. Grade: D
“300: The Complete Experience” Blu-ray: Do we really need the “complete experience”? Isn’t this sort of like putting lipstick on a pig? In spite of its many extras (hours of exclusive content; featurettes; documentaries; BD-Live; and “The Complete 300: A Comprehensive Immersion,” which allows you to view the movie from three different perspectives at once), this new set still is sandbagged by beefcake gone berserk. Set in 5th century B.C., the film follows the three-day Battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 bellowing, muscle-bound Spartans got pumped up to rumble against a million Persians. It’s something of an understatement to say that they were outnumbered, but as the movie sees it, they nevertheless were gifted soldiers aided considerably (or screwed considerably — you decide) by Sparta’s King Leonidas (Gerard Butler), who led the fight and, as history tells us, lost it in a crimson rush of valor. For a film filled with so many characters, not one is fully realized — not Leonidas, who bellows as if he just sat on the Hot Gates themselves; not the Persian emperor Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), who is one wig shy of becoming RuPaul; and not Leonidas’ enemy Theron (Dominic West), whose evil fails to spark a half-cooked subplot involving Leonidas’ wife, Queen Gorgo (Lena Headey). Adapted from Frank Miller and Lynn Varley’s graphic novel. Rated R. Grade: C-
“Pushing Daisies: Season Two” DVD, Blu-ray: Death literally is popping up everywhere in the second season of “Pushing Daisies,” a highlight now available on DVD and Blu-ray disc. The show offers an ingenious twist on the crime solving-romantic comedy genre, with a pie-maker named Ned (Lee Pace) able to bring the dead back to life with a touch. This proves invaluable in finding out who might have killed certain people and why, but it also complicates matters significantly since one more touch from Ned will leave them dead for eternity. This second season continues to handle all the romantic dilemmas surrounding Nick’s relationship with Chuck (Anne Friel), who was murdered once and whom Ned brought back to life. They love each other, but since he can never touch her again (doing so would mean instant death to Chuck), their relationship hovers in a kind of romantic purgatory, one treated here with wit, longing and finesse. Grade: B
“Watchmen: Director’s Cut” DVD, Blu-ray: Zack Snyder’s unfortunate take on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ popular graphic novel, “Watchmen,” is so pretentious and long (nearly three hours of tedium), it collapses under the weight of its own bloated ideas. This pseudointellectual superhero mess is self-indulgent, self-important and, worst of all, boring. It’s flat and unconvincing, an overhyped dud that’s one major disappointment, not to mention a waste of time. The film — and this is a review of the film, not the novel, a distinction some of the novel’s more passionate fans nevertheless will overlook — is such a misfire, it’s no wonder Moore himself removed his name from the project. He didn’t want to be directly associated with something he knew wouldn’t translate well onto the screen. Turns out he was right. While Snyder achieves a dark, beautiful-looking movie that complements Gibbons’ surreal illustrations, the dense story line remains made for the page. It’s there that one’s imagination can take root and fill in the corners, and where layers cannot only deepen, but thrive. Film, however, is a literal medium, and that’s problematic for a story as complex and arch as the one offered here. Moore saw that, and so he stepped away from it. The result is a movie crippled with shortcomings, not the least of which are the performances from a cast saddled with unremarkable characters and even worse dialogue. Rated R. Grade: D
WeekinRewind.com is the site for Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s blog, DVD giveaways and movie reviews. Smith’s reviews appear Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.