Coraline

Director Henry Selick (A Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach) comes up with his strangest film yet, based on the twisted book by Neil Gaiman. Coraline (voice of Dakota Fanning) is dissatisfied with her new home life in Oregon with Mom and Dad (voices of Teri Hatcher and John Hodgman), where things are quite boring. She finds a portal to a parallel world inhabited by her “other” mother and father, where they act suspiciously nicer but have buttons for eyes. Coraline soon discovers that nothing substitutes for your real mom and dad as her other mother morphs into a creepy spider creature thingy that wants to keep her prisoner. The stop-motion visuals are constantly engaging, but the movie itself gets a little sleepy in spots (a problem I also had with James and the Giant Peach). If you have the opportunity to view it in 3-D, definitely choose that option.