LOVETHISMOVIE.

See it. Visually intoxicating someone else said. I have never been compelled to state out loud, “Wow, I really like what they are doing with these credits” at the beginning of a movie ever before. It is like a painter made a movie.

The story is good. For me characters usually mean the most and this was a little light on the characterization, except for the protagonist, but hey, that’s ok.

This definitely goes on my “movies people ought to see and by and large haven’t” list. Also on that list is “The Inheritors”, a German film. Totally different from this one but SO good. And “All the Mornings in the World” (or of the world?), French. Go, see some unusual and unrelated movies and have fun!

All snobery aside. All nitpicking at the plot aside. All “if only’s” and other comparisions, because I could pretty much hate any movie ever made if I really wanted to.

This is my favorite movie.

It’s about a young woman, who is definitely a Four on the Enneagram, trying to find herself and her relation to her mother. The movie is visually intoxicating, and has a lot of interpretation and symbolism. All characteristics rank high in my brain.

If you’re a rabid Neil Gaiman fan, you’ve probably already seen this, so it doesn’t matter. Don’t read it because it will just make you froth at the mouth and scream for my head on a stick. I have read most of what he’s written and I consume everything by Dave McKean that I can get my hands on. I don’t think they’re infallible, though.

That being said, I was let down by this. There’s a lot of stunning visuals, and for that alone, I would say that it’s worth seeing, but everything else, the plot, the acting, the dialogue, some of the sets and costumes, editing and pacing shows that this is a first time effort for many involved. Some of the circus troupe actors look and sound like they went to a local LARP meeting to recruit them. I was watching it late at night, but I fell asleep before the end, which is very rare for me.

I hate to be that guy, but I have to point out a few things that are common misconceptions. The last comment says that anyone with a Mac can make movies. Right… Anyone with a Mac, a ten million dollar budget, and the assistance of the Jim Henson’s Muppet Workshop can make MirrorMask. Also, I believe Frank Miller wrote “Sin City,” though maybe he was involved in some movie version of the video game SimCity, I could be mistaken. Also, MirrorMask has nothing to do with comic book movies. It wasn’t based on a comic, or on anythng.

Ultimately, I’m very glad for McKean that this did far better than anyone planned. It was originally planned as a direct to DVD release, and the fact that it made it into theaters at all is an accomplishment. But people talk as if it’s the Dark Crystal or Labyrinth of this generation, and I don’t think it lives up to either of those or other work of Gaiman and McKean’s.

I will say that it does make me extremely excited to see more movies of McKean’s in the future.

What SimCity did for Frank Miller, MirrorMask does for Gaiman/McKean. AS McKean points out in the extras, anyone with a Mac can make movies today making this a revolutionary event for movies on par with adding sound. There is a wealth of storyboards out there in comics that don’t need much tampering with. In addition, production of less popular comic books is more feasible. Directors used to treat movies like plays and gradually learned that this was a medium that could do things that plays can’t. On the other side, I think many directors have treated comic book stories like movies such as Spiderman, and Daredevil. With movies like Mirrormask, Simcity, and Ghost World, we are getting more from comics than the characters. They are expanding the way we think of a stories look and feel, and enriching the setting and plot. The Watchmen is in pre-production!

Very Gaiman, very visual, very cool.

I bought myself this for my birthday.

It’s so beautiful.

This was one of the strangest movies I have seen in a long time. I sat mesmerized through the entire story, wrapped up in the haunting fantasy world that was created. As others have written, it’s a shame this movie didn’t get a wider release. I would have loved to have seen this on the big screen.

I’d been anticipating this movie for a year and I wasn’t disappointed. I thought it was great. I haven’t a complaint about the story, the visuals or the music. While it’s inspirations are quite easy to spot, it didn’t make it any less enjoyable.It really is too bad that this didn’t get a wide release.

That being said I don’t think this will be a movie that everyone will like.

I absolutely loved this movie! Being that it was a limited release I never got to see it on the big screen, but even on my own little TV, it was worth the rental fee, and it will be so worth the money I spend when I buy it. Not only was the cinematography spectacular, but the music was beautifully haunting and the character interaction was superb. I was delightfully creeped out by the sphinxes and hopefully romantic about the relationship between Helena and Valentine!

Loved it, loved it, loved it!

For months I anticipated Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Mirrormask for months now. I’ve been a big fan of both men’s individual and collaborative work for years, and when I learned they’d created a film together, along with the Jim Henson Company, I was thrilled. I was very disappointed when it didn’t receive a wide release and never played in a Halifax theatre. It comes out on DVD on Feb. 14, but I was lucky enough to watch an advance this week. It’s absolutely everything I had hoped for. It’s one of the finest films I’ve ever seen visually and the story is definitely Gaiman at his finest. It’s been compared to a darker telling of Alice in Wonderland, and I think that’s fitting, but it has a depth and appeal uniquely its own. Definitely a neglected gem, this will be a must-have in a month’s time.