In her new home, Coraline feels a tad ignored by her parents, and by the other strange adults who also live in her building, and slightly annoyed by Wybey, the boy next door. But a strange key that seems not to match any of the doors in the house appears, and when some mice point her towards a door she's never seen before, she's soon in a strange new version of the house, seemingly so much more attractive than the world she's left behind. But sometimes you should be careful what you wish for....

Director Selick is responsible for a couple of the most interesting stop-motion animations of the last 20 years, The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. Writer (of the book) Gaiman has a nice angle in slightly-twisted fantasy, from Stardust to his magnum opus, the 75-issue comic book saga "The Sandman". Combine the two of them and you get an utterly gorgeous, fairly thrilling, and only just a tad unsettling story for children of all ages (in fact, children who are in their mid-thirties like myself may possibly get a whole lot more out of it than those of a slightly more, ahem, ADD-related generation - the story-telling is at a reasonably gentle pace for the first thirty-or-so minutes).

In World War II, an elite platoon is formed, made up of Jewish soldiers, known to their enemies as "The Basterds". Led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt), and joined by undercover agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Kruger), they intend to get retribution for the Third Reich's crimes... and to take down its leaders, in the most violent ways possible.

Like most of Tarantino's works, this is a cinematical-reference-pa-looza, and whilst, yes, this is doing the War Movie, a fair few other genres also get the nod (among other things, appreciators of German Avant-garde cinema of the 1930s may get a few nice surprises). But for those who haven't been spending their time dedicated to appreciating cinematical rarities, there is still a strong narrative being told here, combining violence and retribution with a very personal idiosyncratic flavour, and you can definitely appreciate it on that level.