The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, 76 min)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107688/
Rarely do I choose to watch a movie on television - mainly due to censoring issues and being afraid of seeing an in-some-way edited film. But the "movie channel" was showing this so I chose to watch it (and also because I'd never seen it).
The movie is about Jack Skellington (Danny Elfman for speaking / Chris Sarandon for singing) trying to merge the Christmas and Halloween spirits. Sally (Catherine O'Hara) tries to save Jack from corrupting Christmas's purity with Halloween's scariness.
The entire film is stop motion with an intricate landscape and colorful characters. It's amazingly well done and so fluid it almost seems like it's digitally done. These effects have very much stood the test of time.
The story itself is somewhat lacking. I didn't feel that Jack ever learned from his mistake. He rescued Santa, sure, and there was enough time to "save Christmas" but Jack had good intentions all along. Sally only realized everything would fail through a vision and everyone else seemed happy to be bringing the Halloween spirit to Christmas. The "feel good" ending with Jack and Sally is a must for a tale of this sort, but I never felt Jack learned the true spirit of Christmas. Though maybe it helped him realize he's the Pumpkin King and that was the point of the movie all along.
Overall, I gave this film a 6/10. It's somewhat disappointing in the conclusion that seems thrown together. The Halloween and Christmas spirits seem merged into such a blend where neither is recognizable at the end. However, the stop motion nature of this film is phenomenal and the overall tone of the movie is enjoyable. It's a shame the goth/emo scene adopted this and pretty much ruined it.
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