By Mathew Kumar

February has begun, and it’s as if all of the movie distributors have woken up after hibernation, because there’s a sudden deluge of films, and astonishingly not all of them have been shoved out just to get it over and done with.
They key film this weekend is Coraline, Henry Selick’s stop-motion (and 3-D!) adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s children’s book. Interestingly this one has no involvement from Tim Burton, so when we think of creepy-looking stop-motion we should probably think of it as “Selicky” rather than “Burtonesque.” Though its trailers make it look like little more than a 3-D thrill ride (characters constantly reaching into the screen, waving their hands about, etc.) Gaiman’s stories adapt well to the screen—we were pleasantly surprised with Stardust when we finally saw it—and NOW‘s Norm Wilner admits certain moments gave him “the heebie-jeebies,” so we’re looking forward to seeing it.
Wendy and Lucy also opens today. It won the Toronto Film Critics Association best film award (and star Michelle Williams picked up best actress), and as an otherwise overlooked movie this story of one girl, her dog, and a series of unfortunate events in rural Oregon is easily next on our list to see after Coraline.
Other films out this week include He’s Just Not That Into You, which has received surprisingly middling reviews despite characters in the trailer making already dated nonsense statements such as “He MySpaced me.” However, we still suspect that if you’re clever enough to turn on a computer and navigate it to this website, you’re probably out of the slightly technophobic demographic of this film.
There’s also The Pink Panther 2, given an even more surprising three-star review in Eye Weekly by Paul Isaacs, who claims, “Man falling down while shouting in a funny accent? Hilarious.”
Is it really?
Otherwise, there’s Cassandra’s Dream (Woody Allen’s third try at remaking Crime and Punishment), Nurse.Fighter.Boy, and Push.
Finally, Cinematheque Ontario continues its Canada’s Top Ten screenings (Pontypool is sold out, though), and there’s the ReelPolitik Film Festival and the Kevin Smith Film Festival—though we’re pretty set in our opinion that the Clerks TV series was the best thing he ever did (and we’ve basically said as much before).