I watched Coraline last night and it’s going to stick with me for a while. The movie was really well done overall — though the structuring of the final adventures reminded me a little too much of the classic video game structure — but what really worked for me was the 3D visuals. I haven’t seen any of these new generation 3D movies before so it was a totally novel experience and was also completely mind-blowing. It went far beyond the gimmicky “ooh something is poking out of the screen” shots that permeate old-school 3D. Those are there to be certain, but the much more breathtaking and beautiful sites are the simple scenes augmented by the third dimension. Beautiful scenery shots transform from paintings to giant dioramas with an almost unreal depth that both unnerves and comforts. Things in the background are not merely smaller, but farther away. It adds to the surreal environment in which Coraline is set, but even for more traditional stories it could drastically alter the movie-going experience and the depth of the visuals available to the director. I don’t see it supplanting traditional two dimensional filmmaking but it’s nevertheless a remarkable vision and, now that I know what I’ve been missing, given a choice between a 2D and 3D playing of a film I’d almost certainly opt for the latter.