Movie Critique

Week 5 Movie Critique:

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Your Name

HUM 150 – Introduction to Film Studies

University of Phoenix

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a children’s stop motion movie which was directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burton. The plot of the movie is based on the poem written by Tim Burton in 1982. The movie was released in 1993 by Touchstone Pictures and distributed in the United States. I was nine years when I first saw this movie in theaters and even now this movie continues to entertain me. During this film’s critique, I will explain as to why I enjoy and recommend this film.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a cinematographic film in which the characters are puppets and are made to move to create the whole movie plot. The Nightmare Before Christmas starts with the symphony that develops with time gradually into beautiful tone that engages the viewer to look and listen with concentration. The movie starts with the camera focusing onto a dark forest which has several Halloween related pictures posted on the trunk of its trees such as pumpkin heads and skulls. After that, a deeply voiced narrator speaks and introduces the theme of the story. The scene then dissolves and a graveyard appears in which several Halloween figures dance about and sing This is Halloween.

The plot of the movie starts with Jack Skellington as the lead character. It can be seen that the characters are made from artificial models but it cannot be determined whether the movie has been made using clay motion or high-resolution computer graphic programs. The motion of the figures is constant and precise. Moreover there is no delay between the hearing of the voices and the appearance of the artificial scenes associated with the sounds. The movements of the mouths and the talking associated with them are very accurate and no fault can be pointed out with this regard.

The sound effects used in this movie are very engaging. Each action of the...